But this is the Easter, the Easter, the Christmas season. I'm getting ahead of myself. This is the Christmas season. And every time Christmas rolls around, we usually do a Christmas message or an advent or something like that. But I'm gonna continue in Philippians, because I think that's where the Lord wants me to go. So I'm gonna stick with it, at least for the time being. So let's pray and jump right in Philippians chapter three. Father, you are good. Your word is good. Lord, you are a sure foundation. We can solidly rest upon you. We can trust in you. We know, Lord, that you never change. Everything in this world changes. Everything is shifting sand. It's here for a moment, then it disappears. It's not stable. But, Lord, you are stable. Forever your word is settled in heaven. Your word does not change, you do not change. Our security, our hope is all found in you, Lord. And so I pray that you would help me to share those things that are important to your heart with your people today, Lord. These are your people, they're precious to you, each one of us, Lord, that claims Jesus as Lord and King over our lives. Lord, we are precious to you. You've demonstrated that to us so vividly. In his life in his death in his resurrection and in the promise of his return lord We are blessed So I pray for your anointing and grace to be upon me as I share your word in jesus name. Amen All right. We were looking at uh philippians chapter three and We looked at uh for a little bit of what paul had looked at as far as his advantages And some things you remember what's going on? There's People that are coming in to flip by and claiming that you have to be. circumcised, you have to follow the law, you have to do all these things to be accepted by God, to fully enjoy salvation. And so what Paul is doing is he goes through the advantages that he had, and some of those advantages were natural, and some of them were advantages that he walked into or chose in his life. And some of you, do you remember there were four things that Paul had absolutely no control over. If you look, At verse 4, Paul says of chapter 3, though I also might have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so. So if anyone thought they could boast about what they had in their flesh, in other words, in their humanity and who they were to be acceptable to God, Paul says, I've got more to boast about than most other people, probably more than anybody else at that time. And there were four advantages that he had. One of them was he was circumcised the eighth day. You remember that? He was born as a Jew. He didn't become a Jew later on. He was born as a Jew and he was circumcised according to the law. He had a pure descent. He was from the stock of Israel. He could go back to his tribe. He could say, I'm from the tribe of Benjamin. And Benjamin was also the place, if you recognize history, the tribe of Benjamin, owned the area where Jerusalem was. So it was where the capital city was, where King David lived and all those benefits that came for Benjamin as a tribe. Paul says, I come from the tribe of Benjamin. And so he was blessed in that way. It's not only that, but he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. He spoke the Hebrew language. He was not only born as a Jew, but he embraced all of Judaism as a Hebrew person. He had the Hebrew culture behind him. So everything in his natural descendancy, or where he came from, I should say, his ancestry, said that if anybody could be a good believer in Yahweh, if anybody could be a good person who deserve salvation. It would have been Paul. It would have been, well his name was Saul at the time as most of you know. But then he said there were things that he tried to acquire on his own effort. Down in verse 6 he says, or actually in verse 5, He says concerning the law, he was a Pharisee. That's something he chose to be. He chose to be a person who lived by the law, the strictest part of the law. Do you realize the Pharisees would actually count the spices that they had? They would only eat certain amounts and certain kinds. Everything of their life, their diet, was all scripted. And Paul says, you know, As a person, I chose to be a Pharisee, the most religious, quote, righteous group in the Jewish culture, more than any other. The group that lived by the law of God, more than the Sadducees, more than anybody else. The Pharisees were known as the law keepers. And he says, that's what I chose to be. And not only that, but he says that concerning zeal, I persecuted the church. If anybody has a right to say that they're a Jewish person that stood for Judaism, that stood for the things of the Hebrew culture, it was me. Because I persecuted those that were following this guy, Jesus or Yeshua. I persecuted them. I had zeal. If zeal would get you into heaven, Paul would have been there. But then the last thing he says, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. He's stuck by everything that the scripture said as much as humanly possible. According to people, if people looked at Saul, they would say, there is a blameless guy. There's a guy that's got his life all together. He's right with God. He's gotta be right with God, according to men's expectations. But the fact was, he was lost. much like many people today. They have a lot of heritage. They have a lot of things going on in their life. They've been in church. I know people who have been in church since the time they were babies that do not know Jesus. They've heard about Jesus. They've heard him preached. They've grown up in the church. They lived Moral lives in terms of what other people would look at them They would look and say well that person's got to be a Christian obviously they go to church all the time They're with they're with the believers every time something's going on. They're always a part of it. They give to missions They do all these different things But there are people who are actively involved in churches that do not know Jesus and And I bring that out and I've highlighted that a number of times because we should never be deceived thinking that we have salvation simply because we're part of a group or because we've grown up in a group. There's a statement that's been used for a long time. I don't, and it's a true statement. I don't know who came up with it, but it's this. God has no grandchildren. God has no grandchildren. He has children, those who have been born again by the Spirit of God, who through faith have received Christ, but he doesn't have any grandchildren. Nobody comes into the kingdom of God. Nobody comes into salvation on the coattails of their parents. No matter how good their parents live, no matter how righteous they live, no matter how good a Christian and believer they were, the parents were kids. It doesn't matter how your parents live, it's up to you. What do you do with Jesus? So Paul is giving these different things about who he was as a person. If anybody should have been acceptable to God on a human basis, in a moral basis, it would have been Paul. But let's see what Paul says. Verse seven, but what things were gained to me These I have counted lost for Christ. When he says, but what things were gained to me? He's talking about these seven things. Those things that would have been gained to him. He says, I count them as lost. Now what he's using is he's using a term that's used for bookkeepers. It means to have a balance sheet where you have the positives, the plus over here, and the minuses over here. And so, as you know, bookkeepers will put all of the, let's say the profits or all the, somebody give me a word I'm looking for. The deposits, the advantages, the profits or the assets. That's the word I'm looking for. Thank you, assets. All the assets are in this column over here. And Paul's saying all of these things by the human standard would have been assets. Then the plus column. But he says, in reality, compared to Christ, those things are really a loss. They're really a loss. They're not an asset. They can really be a detriment. And it's not like they're just wiped away. They actually cause you to go in the hole. Have any of you ever been in the hole financially? Come on, get your hands up. Okay, now he's talking honestly. My wife and I, I remember we were, there was a time when we were so far in the hole, we couldn't even see daylight. I mean, it was so deep. And then, thank God, Dorothy, her mom, taught us about stewardship. Taught us about how to be good stewards. And we learned about giving, we learned about tithing, we learned about giving God the first part, not because He'll get us if we don't, but because He's worthy of it. And we began to tithe. And the Lord's always met our need. He's always blessed us. And we were so deep in the hole, as I said at one point, we thought we'd never get out. And we didn't change anything except for we stewarded our money differently. We gave and we watched what we were spending on. And we set a budget. So how that goes into all of this, I don't know. But what he's saying, what Paul is saying is all the stuff that he thought was good was really a detriment to him compared to knowing Christ. Now look at the next verse. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus My Lord. Now there's a little two-word letter word there that sometimes we read over real quick. The excellency of Christ Jesus, my Lord. He's not somebody else's Lord, he's my Lord. He says, everything that I've had, all this stuff, all these things, I count them as loss for this surpassing value of Christ who is my Lord. As I read in Philippians and as I read through the other epistles that Paul writes, and as I read of the account in the book of Acts of his life and his conversion, I see a man who was so religious that it blinded him. I mean, Paul's own accounts of his life and Luke's account of his life in the book of Acts You see a man who is trying to do the right thing, but he doesn't understand that God's not going to accept anything that he does. Nothing that he does in his own strength, if he does not yield his life to Christ. If he does not yield his life to Jesus Christ, all of his good works, all of his doings are of no value. And when Paul finally comes to a place on the Damascus road where he really comes to faith in Christ, everything changes from that point on, everything changes. He begins to change, change the way he thinks, change the way he acts, changes everything, but it's not him doing it. Well, it is him doing it, but it's not him doing it. Now, what do I mean? That is the normal Christian life. The normal Christian life is you have to participate with God in what he's doing in your life to walk in obedience. God changes us by his grace and it's through faith in Christ. But then we live in cooperation with God as we daily live making choices, making decisions. Decisions to do and not to do certain things as we yield our life to him The Holy Spirit works in us and Paul's gonna get into this where it's the power of the resurrection So let's let's just read down a little bit further. We'll get to know Yet indeed. I count all things laws for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my lord now also stop again knowledge, knowledge of Christ Jesus. He is not talking about something he intellectually knows. He's talking about experiential knowledge. It's the difference between if a person knows another person because they've read about them. For instance, I always use the illustration of Abraham Lincoln. I know a lot about Abraham Lincoln. I know Abraham Lincoln, you could say. Other people may never have heard his name don't know anything about him. I can honestly say I know Abraham Lincoln And I don't know Abraham Lincoln Right I know him as far as knowledge by what's been written about him, but I don't know him Experientially because I never met him. I never shook his hand. I never had a conversation with him I never had him speak into my life. I never spoke to him and I never had his opinions on things, one-on-one, personal, where I've actually heard him. You know, I can read about him and there's a lot of things that people would say about him that some are true, some are false, but I've never had his words spoken by him to me. Well, that's the same thing it is with Christians. A Christian knows Christ because they've had a relationship with him, they've been introduced to him. The Spirit of God has introduced that individual to Christ. I know him by experience. I know him because he himself has made a change in my life. I've experienced his grace. I've experienced his kindness. I've experienced his goodness, his knowledge. I know that he knows me more than anybody else knows me. I know that he has love for me because he expressed it in his own death and resurrection. He's expressed it. But I know that by the power of His Spirit who lives within me. Every believer, every Christian knows Christ experientially, not just by knowledge, external knowledge, but by experiencing Him within. And why am I stressing this so much? Because I think it's important for us to know what a real Christian is. You may know, I'm sure most of you in here know. But you realize how many people really are religious people that don't know him? They will say, Jesus is Lord. But they can't say, Jesus is my Lord. Personally, I've experienced a relationship with him that I value. You know, there are some things you can even have a relationship with another person. You may know them, experientially in terms of knowing them, you've met them, talked with them. But you don't really, you really don't care what they think. Well, maybe you do in one sense, you don't want them to know certain things about you, so you care what they think in that sense. But you really don't care what their opinion is in terms of what they would say you ought to do. This is important. There'll be people that will speak into your life and you'll say, why should I listen to you? Why should I care what your opinion is? Why should I follow your advice? But you see, a genuine Christian follows the advice of Jesus because it's not just advice, it's life. His words to us are life. What He says to us brings life by His Spirit. It brings life into our daily living, spiritual life, spiritual depth. And a real believer cares deeply what Jesus says. When Jesus says do, they want to do. When Jesus says don't, they don't want to do what Jesus says don't do. No, that doesn't work. They do wanna say, they do wanna do what Jesus says don't do. How's that? Is that better? I had a, what is that called? A double negative or something in there? I'm not all that great in English, but I know what I was thinking. So the question is, how much do you care about what Jesus says about you? How much, I mean, how much does it affect you as a person? Does it affect the decisions that you make? Where you go, who you go with, what you say, what you think, how you behave? Does it alter your very lifestyle? That's what real Christianity does. It alters the lifestyle, not from an external law that says do or don't, but from the internal law of grace. the internal law of the spirit of God, where the spirit that raised Jesus from the dead works in us to accomplish his purpose. Now let's go down a little bit further. Paul says, for whom in the middle of verse eight, let's read the whole verse again. Yet indeed I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ. I count them as rubbish. Now there's another word that's used for that. That word can be used as dung. How many of you know what dung is? Okay. But it's also the word that's used for garbage. It's the word that's used for what you throw out that's of no value. You throw it out on the street and it's like garbage. It's refuge in that sense. Remember earlier when Paul was talking about the Judaizers and he was talking about beware of what? He said, beware of. dogs. He was talking about those religious hypocrites. He was calling them dogs. They were vicious. They were street mongrels. And they ate the garbage that was thrown out. And what Paul's saying is all the things that should have been of value to me, I count them all like garbage. Just throw it out. Get rid of it. What part of your old life do you want to keep? That's just a, that's one of those kinds of questions that you bring up at times. You know, when we talk about the scriptures, observing the scriptures, what we do when we observe it, and then what does it say? What does it mean? How does it apply? How does this apply? What part of your life do you still want to hold on to from your old life? What habits, what behaviors, what friendships? There's some things that we need to learn how to cut off. Simply because it honors Christ to get rid of it. It doesn't make us more saved, but it might make us more sanctified. So that he may gain Christ. In other words, I want to have every relationship with Jesus clean and pure. that I might, and when he says gain Christ, he already has Christ. He already has salvation. Paul's not saying that I can gain salvation. I wanna gain more intimacy with Jesus. I want more of him. And guess what? Your life can only be filled with so much. My life can only be filled with so much. I can only fill my life with so much activity, with so many friends, with so much, stuff. And sometimes I need to look and you need to look at what are you putting in place of Jesus? Paul saying, I want to gain him. I want to gain a deeper understanding of him, a deeper love for him, a deeper understanding of how he cares for me. a deeper relationship with Him so that I know what I'm supposed to do on this earth, so I know how to follow Him, so I know what kind of decisions to make, to where I am walking in the will of God, just like Jesus did, because He gets into this a little bit later. And He says in verse nine, and be found in him. When he says be found in him, he's not talking about God finding him, he's talking about people recognizing that he's a man in Christ. When he says to be found in him, it's almost like people are looking around and all of a sudden they find this guy, Paul. He knows Jesus. Paul knows what it's like to walk with Christ, knows what it's like to hear Christ, knows what it's like to be directed by Christ, knows what it's like to suffer for Christ and to suffer like Christ, to know what it means to live a life that pleases the Father, so that when people see him, so when he's found, when people find him as an individual, as a human being, they find a man fully sold out to God. That's what he's wanting, to be found Look at it again, to be found in him, not having mine own righteousness. He doesn't want people to see that he has some kind of self-righteousness. It's my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith. Righteousness, and here's the thing we always have to remember. Righteousness, being right with God, being made legally right with God, is a gift that God gives. It's a gift that's given, and it's given according to faith, by faith. In other words, I trust God that I will be right with Him through Jesus, and Jesus alone, not on my own works, not on my own accomplishments, not on my, how should I say it? Well, not on my own merit, but not on my performance. It's not my performance. You see, if righteousness is based upon my performance, then it's not by grace, and it's not by faith, it's by my own works. If I can get righteousness by doing something or by not doing something, then it's an accomplishment that I've made. And that's not the gospel. That's in opposition to the gospel. The gospel is, it's righteousness, and it's not just a righteousness, it's the righteousness of God. The righteousness that comes from God, that only God, the only kind of righteousness that He will accept. He will not accept human righteousness in the sense of I will do something and therefore God will accept me because I've done something or I have not done certain things. That is humanistic to the core. Anybody that believes that God will accept me because of what I've done or what I haven't done is completely false and alien to the gospel of Jesus. The gospel of Jesus is very simple. It's you got a need. I went off, but I'm back on. You have a need. You can't meet that need and neither can anybody else on this planet. Only Christ. And he met that need at the cross when he died in your place for your sin. And he rose victorious over Hell, over everything that Satan would have for the human being's life, he rose victorious over it. And he ascended to the Father. And he's seated at the right hand of God the Father. And at this very moment, he's just waiting for the Father to say, son, time to go. Get your bride. Now, if you're not familiar with what that's talking about, it's talking about Jesus, His love for His people who are called the church, His bride. So, how'd I get off on that? I was just going down through here. Righteousness, right. Which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ Jesus, the righteousness which is from God and by faith. So it comes from God, it's received by faith, that I may know Him. No, wait a minute, Paul. You just said that you knew him, and now that you may know him. What he's talking about is deeper intimacy. That I might, you know, my wife and I have been married for 56 years. I know her pretty well. She knows me pretty well. When we first got married, we didn't know each other as well as we do now. I mean, she can look at me and I know what she's thinking. You know? How many of you have been married for more than five years, 10 years? You know what I'm talking about. You know, all it takes is just a glance, a look. One of those things. And you know exactly, yeah, you know exactly what that person is thinking about. You can read them like you're reading a book. The reason is because you've come to know them better and better and better. And so when Paul talks about that I may know him, I just want to know him better. I want to know Him better and better, and not only that I may know Him, this intimate knowing of Him, and knowing Him, not just knowing about Him, but knowing Him, and the power of His resurrection. What Paul's saying is, I want to know Jesus, and I want to experience and live in constantly the power of His resurrection. the power that raised Jesus from the dead, he says, I want that to be fully expressed and experienced in my life. So that everywhere I go, everything I do, it's all by the direction of the Spirit of God, the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. And so then he says this, look at what he says, and the fellowship of his sufferings. How many of you, Jesus, I just wanna know the fellowship of your sufferings. Yeah, not. How many of us pray that? I want to know what Jesus went through. I want to know how to live when somebody slaps me upside that face. I don't have a beard to pull up, but I want to know what it's like when excruciating pain comes to me and how I should respond in order to honor my father in heaven. I want to know how to do that. I want to live that out. I want to experience when the whole world comes against me so I can stand in one thing alone, in the power of Jesus and His resurrection. And that people can be amazed. That's not human. That's not normal. That's not the way people are supposed to live on this earth. And that's right. It's not the way people are supposed to live on this earth. It's the way Jesus lived on this earth. And the way he says, I will give you that kind of strength inside of you to where you can live my life. And actually we don't live his life. He lives his life in us. Worked out through our life, through our decisions, through the things that come at us, that you can't handle on your own. What Paul is saying is I just want people to see Jesus and not me. How many of us want that? You'll find out how much you want it when people do those things to you. When people do the irrational things, things that don't make any sense, when it's stupid, when people say things about you that are hurtful, when people malign you, say things falsely about you, when they take from you, when they're unfair with you, when they do all the things that sinful people do. So it shouldn't surprise us when people do sinful things, because that's the way sinners are supposed to live, because it's natural to them. When I say it's the way they're supposed to live, I mean by the laws of nature, that's the way they naturally live. So it shouldn't surprise us when people do cruel things to people. I'm always amazed when I hear how amazed people are that people do cruel things. I really am. It's like, what did you expect? What did you expect from a world that would crucify the son of God Do you expect them to treat you daintily? Or do you expect them to just pat you on the back and say, oh, I'm so glad you're a believer in Jesus. They hate him. Jesus said, if they hated me, they will hate you. So when people hate you because you named the name of Christ and you want to live for Christ and you want to honor him day by day, Don't get, I can't use that expression. Don't get all upset. Don't, how dare we get upset? Seriously, how dare we get upset when people treat us badly, when we name the name of Christ? Is it fun? No, it's not fun. Do you want it? No, you don't want it. Should you delight in it? There's something mentally wrong with you if you enjoy pain. They got a name for it. But to live for Christ means that you want to experience His life, every part of it. And when you experience His life in that way, you will make a difference in the world because it won't be you doing it. It'll be Him. The beauty of the Son of God. Oh, I love Him. And I know you love Him too. That I might know Him, the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His suffering, being conformed to His death. Being conformed to His death. You know what Jesus' death was like? It was like this, Father, I don't want to experience all the things I'm going to experience, but because you want to save humanity, and because I want to do your will, I will experience it. I will die. for Harley and I'll die for Rob and I'll die for Tim and Tom and everybody else that will yield their life to me, I'll die for them. If that will bring you honor and glory and if that will bring freedom to those that are in bondage to sin, I will die for them. That's why Paul could live his life and be willing to go, go through what he went through because that was his heart. That was the heart of Jesus. He wanted to experience that. Not because it would be fun, but because it would give honor to the son of God and it would give honor to God. So, when we talk about the Christian life, that's what it's all about. It's not me, it's Christ. And so we wrap it up down there. If by any means I might attain to the resurrection from the dead. Paul didn't have any doubt that he was going to be raised from the dead. He wasn't sure whether he would be alive when Jesus came or whether he would be in the grave and his body would have to be raised or his spirit would be with Christ. So he's not wrestling with whether he's going to have a resurrection life. He knows he will. He just doesn't know which way it will be. All right. Lord, I want to thank you for your incredible, merciful goodness. Lord, I just would ask that you would help all of us in this room to appreciate more and more just what you went through, not so we get under some kind of a guilt trip, but Lord, that we can truly be appreciative and rightly worship you and give to you the honor, the tribute that you deserve because you are great. And as we know, Lord, you are truly great and greatly to be praised. So Father, I pray that as we share in communion now, that we'll do it in a way where there's a seriousness, a real seriousness that we are partaking in something that multitudes through generation after generation have done. And they've done it, Most by faith, some Lord, have seen this as a tradition. Father, I pray that as we partake in communion today, we'll see it not as just a tradition, but an intimacy with you, Jesus. That it truly is your body that's represented. It is your blood. that is represented, and that you are here with us as you promised to do. You said that you are with us always, even to the end of this age. And so as we participate in communion today, Jesus, I pray that you would be delighted to minister into our hearts. Touch us, Lord, where we need to be touched individually. Point out anything that's in us that needs to be dealt with. Help us, Lord, to have pure hearts, clean hands. Our conscience is cleared because we have done as your word says. We've confessed our sin. We've forsaken our sin. And we've applied your grace to our lives through faith. In Jesus' name, amen. Amen. Pastor Bill, you're in here? The kids coming in? Okay. Pastor Bill is going to share and lead us in communion today. Good morning once again.