We'll invite you this morning to turn to the book of Philippians chapter 3. Philippians chapter 3. And we are going to read the first eight verses. Hear now the word of the Lord. Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me, and it's safe for you. Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the real circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. 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 counted 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 I count them as rubbish in order that I might gain Christ. And declare this truth with me, the grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God will stand forever. Let's pray. Father, we are so grateful that the God of the universe, who is not bound by human language, has spoken to us in his word. But Father, these are words on a paper without your spirit. So we pray that your spirit would come. And we pray that your spirit would teach us through these words, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. The 18th century philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau is often remembered for his famous phrase, man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains. See, Rousseau believed that it was the state and the church that were the cause of man's misery and slavery. And that freedom was found in the casting off of social and religious norms and living for self and for pleasure. Well, we know Rousseau was wrong about many things, but he was right about one thing. Man is certainly in chains. But the scriptures testify that we are in fact not born free, but dead in our trespasses and sins, dead in the darkness of our hearts. And the answer is not salvation from within ourselves, but the rescue from our bondage is found only in Jesus Christ and his righteousness. That comes not from our own works, but as Luther would say, a foreign righteousness, a righteousness not our own. True freedom from our chains is only found in the righteousness of Christ offered in the gospel. Now, as we continue through Paul's letter to the Philippians this morning, the Apostle Paul turns away for a brief moment from his joy-filled letter of encouragement to provide an ominous warning about those who would preach a false gospel of salvation by works, a warning that he has likely given to them before, because Paul was passionate about the true gospel of Jesus Christ, and he was passionate about protecting the church from false teachers. And the warning to the church in Philippi and the warning to us this morning is to guard our hearts against any false teaching that would lead us away from the true gospel. As MacArthur says, there are really only two religions in the world, the religion of divine accomplishment, that God in Christ accomplished salvation apart from any human effort, or the religion of human achievement, that man can attain salvation by something he does. Now if we place our faith in our own righteousness, it will lead only to our destruction. Self-righteousness in many ways is more deadly than unrighteousness because it can leave us with a false sense of security in our own merits. So this morning we are going to look at these first eight verses in chapter three and we're going to break them down into three sections. The warning of self-righteous people. the futility of self-righteous confidence, and the freedom in the righteousness of Christ. But first, let's look how he opens this section. Look at verse 1. He says, Now, we might think this might be an odd way to issue a warning. First, he says, finally. But when we see that word finally, we might think that Paul is wrapping up his letter, although we know we have two more chapters to go. So finally is not really the best way to render this. Instead, it is better translated as furthermore, or now then, or if in the verbal, if I was saying it, I would say, as I was saying. So Paul is returning to his previous thought, probably in verse 18. A pastor friend of mine said this once, a father and a son were sitting in church and the son asked the father, dad, what does it mean when the pastor says finally? And the father said, nothing, son. Absolutely nothing. So before Paul issues his warning, it also might seem out of place for Paul first to say, rejoice in the Lord. Paul issues an imperative, a command, rejoice in the Lord. Paul is still concerned that the Philippian church share his joy. because true joy finds its ultimate source in Jesus Christ. Remember, Paul has been arrested, he has suffered for the gospel, and he was in prison as he writes this letter. Paul's command to rejoice in the Lord is certainly not rooted in some emotional experience based on his feelings or circumstances. Our own feelings and circumstances do not provide a reliable anchor for our joy because they constantly change. We have good days and bad. We experience triumphs and trials. We suffer. We have sorrows. But our joy in the Lord roots us deeper than our own constantly shifting circumstances. Jesus reminded his disciples before his death in John 15, and they would suffer much after his resurrection, that if his joy was in them, that their joy would be full. And Paul knew and experienced that fullness of joy in Christ Jesus. And he wants the Philippians to share that joy regardless of what difficulties and what suffering may lie ahead for them. And specifically concerning this warning that he's about to give, Paul knew that salvation by self-righteousness will always rob us of joy. Second, he says, to repeat the same things to you is of no trouble for me and is safe for you. And the two ideas that Paul is conveying here is that like the Philippians, we need to see two things. We need to continually hear sound doctrine, and we need to continually be warned of false teaching. Just like the Philippian church, we are not as mature as we think. And just like the Philippian church, false teaching is ever present in our culture. Biblical illiteracy is destroying the church from within because we don't know the foundations of Christian doctrine. And when we don't know the truth, we can be deceived into false teaching. So Paul, before he issues this warning, he says, I know you've heard this before, but you need to hear it again, and maybe again as well. And after his reminder to rejoice and his encouragement to listen to something that they've probably heard before, his tone changes dramatically as he now turns to the warning. Look at verse two and three. 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. Now, if Paul could wave his arms around or pound on the pulpit, this is the equivalent of what he is doing at this point in the letter. And he repeats the same word three times. Watch out, watch out, watch out. And when we see the same word repeated in scripture, we need to pay attention. When Jesus says truly, truly to Nicodemus in John 3, he is about to tell him something that is a matter of eternal life and death. This is how important this doctrine is to Paul. In the strongest way possible, in a letter, Paul says, please hear this carefully. Evil people will try to convince you that you are saved by faith plus works. Now briefly, it's helpful to understand the first century context of who Paul is speaking about. In the early church, those who taught a combination of God's grace and human effort were called the Judaizers. And these Jews opposed Paul and the apostles at every opportunity, and they would go into the Gentile churches and they would plague the Gentile churches with their teaching that in order to be truly saved, they must adhere to some measure of the law of Moses, being circumcised. keeping dietary laws or some other requirement from the law that would help complete their salvation. But these shadows had passed away with the coming of Christ. And the reason Paul issues the warning here and in all his other letters is because he knew that to add anything to the work of Christ is not to enhance the gospel, it is to destroy it. Faith plus works is anathema to the gospel of grace. No one ever was or will be saved by their own works. Even Abraham, our father, was saved by faith, as Paul says in Romans. And so Paul insults these enemies of the gospel by calling them dogs. Now, we have two dogs in our home, and we just think they're amazing. And they sit on the couch and go wherever they want, and we love those dogs. But these dogs that Paul is referring to here are not the kind that Reebok would be drawing in a Christmas card. The dogs that Paul is referring to here is an unclean, worthless curse of an animal feeding on garbage and filth. If you've traveled to any other part of the world, you've probably seen these stray and sickly dogs living on trash. They're almost pitiful, but they are considered unclean and they are considered worthless animals. Now make no mistake, this is an offensive slur to these people. Paul is not being nice and Paul is not being winsome. William Barclay says, in their proud self-righteousness, they call other men dogs, but it is they who are the dogs because they pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it might be difficult for us to comprehend such strong language that Paul uses here. And we might be uncomfortable with this strong language if we heard it used today. Largely because, as Vody Bauckham says, because we have the 11th commandment, thou shalt be nice. and anything confrontational in the Bible, anything that might seem mean-spirited, anything that might be offensive to others, we need to find a way to soften that message. But that's not what we see in Paul's words here, nor in his other letters, nor in the words of Jesus Christ himself when dealing with those that would twist and pervert the gospel and lead people astray. Brood of vipers, children of the devil. Paul says these people are evil, they are engaging in the very work of Satan. So what is so evil about these troublemakers? Why is Paul so harsh with them? Well, to paraphrase Sinclair Ferguson, he says, the men Paul are speaking of here insisted on legal observations as a qualification for the grace of God. But as we saw in our declaration of truth from Romans 3, by the works of the law, no human being will be justified. And all of this condemning language reveals to us that those that insist on any types of works-based salvation are not friends of the gospel, they are enemies of Christ. So Paul gives three descriptions of these false teachers. Dogs, evildoers, and flesh cutters. He doesn't use the word circumcision here. He's talking about them cutting their flesh. But we see in verse 3 a contrast. So we have three descriptions and now we see three characteristics of true righteousness. What the gospel produces in the life of the believer. But first, notice what he says. We are the true circumcision. We are the circumcision. And he's speaking of circumcision of the heart. This is a spiritual condition, an internal working of the Holy Spirit. Paul was a circumcised Jew, and yet he says we. He has been connected in Christ to uncircumcised Gentile believers in Philippi. Their common ground was not in the physical or in the ethnic. Their common ground was that they both had been regenerated inwardly, and their unity was now in the Holy Spirit. There is no Jew or Gentile. There are only those in Christ and those perishing without him. The Holy Spirit creates commonality among every disparate group of people. Paul now has more in common with uncircumcised Christian Gentiles than his own Jewish, ethnic, and cultural heritage. So what are the characteristics here? The first characteristics of righteousness in Christ is that he says we worship by the Spirit. This is the opposite of worship by outward ritual and ceremony, John 4. But the hour is coming and is now here when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father is seeking such people to worship Him. God is spirit and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. Believers in Christ, we should worship on Sunday morning. The fourth commandment is a perpetually binding command rooted in creation. And so it is good to be with the people of God on Sunday morning. But your attendance record is not the cause of your salvation. Going to church every Sunday does not make us Christian. True believers indwelt with the Holy Spirit desire, though, to offer worship of God because of the Holy Spirit within them. We want to be with the body of Christ. True worship in the Spirit means our hearts are engaged in biblical worship, freely offering to God our praise, not out of duty, not out of obligation so that God will accept us. This is the problem Israel made. The mistake Israel made was thinking that because they were born of the physical seed of Abraham and went to the temple out of obligation, that God was going to bless them. But their hearts, he says, were far from him. God wants our hearts, not merely our outward compliance. And in the spirit, it becomes what we want to do, not what we have to do. So Paul says, true believers worship by the spirit. Next he says, true believers, glory in Christ. The word Paul uses here is actually boasting. The Christian can boast, but not in his own merits, but rather in the work of Jesus Christ. 2 Corinthians 10, let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord. Ephesians 2, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not of yourselves, not of works, so that no one can boast. So true believers, worship in the spirit, They glory in Christ. And thirdly, Paul says, true believers place no confidence in their flesh. Now, as much as we might think there are no Judaizers around today to mislead us, our challenge today is that we desperately want to believe that we are good people. And most of us are when we look around at others. We can always find a reason to place confidence in our own abilities when we compare ourselves to others. According to a Barna study in 2020, 52% of confessing Christians believe they can merit salvation by being good. Over half of people that confess to be Christians say God will save them because of their works. The biblical reality and the tragic truth is that there are no good people and there are no innocent people. Brothers and sisters, Satan will take the unrighteous and the self-righteous. It does not matter one way or the other. Our wicked deeds and our self-righteous deeds will both condemn us. But Paul says true believers place no confidence. True believers have no boasting in their flesh because we know that our debt to God can never be paid by us. When the younger brother returns to his father in the parable of the prodigal son, he recognizes that he has sinned, and he has squandered his father's fortune, or at least a large portion of it. But his solution is to earn it back. Let me be like a hired servant. Let me work off my debt, father. But the father in his love says, son, you will never work long enough to pay off this debt. but you're my son and I've taken the loss. The debt is paid and your good credit is now in my name. That's grace. That's the gospel. That's a picture of our debt paid by the blood of Jesus Christ. That is the source of our joy. Or we can think of Martin Luther, he was grieved over his own self-righteousness. He knew he could never do enough. He knew he could never confess enough. He knew he couldn't attend worship enough. And he would say that he would write later that he would come to hate the righteousness of God because the righteousness of God was a mirror that showed him how far he was from attaining God's perfect standard. And the law of God is the same for us. It reveals our inability, our lack of goodness, and should eliminate any confidence that we have in our own flesh. But now Paul begins to boast a little, and he does it to show us the futility of self-righteous confidence. The futility of self-righteous confidence. Look at verses 4 through 6. Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more, 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." You ever know anybody that has to one-up you with everything that you say? How's work? Oh, man, I'm really tired. I've been working late. Oh, let me tell you something. That's nothing. I didn't sleep for three days one time working on a project. If you don't know anybody like that, maybe it's you. But Paul shows here by his own experience that if anyone had a reason to have confidence in the flesh, he had a better one. Their confidence in the flesh was nothing compared to Paul's. And Paul's confidence in the flesh came in two categories, things that he was born with and things that he earned. He was circumcised on the eighth day according to the law. He was of the self-appointed, morally superior people, the Jews, and particularly the tribe of Benjamin, out of which came the first king of Israel, Saul. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews. So Paul is born into a family that most of these other Judaizers could not boast of, but he goes on. Not only did I inherit a reason for confidence in my flesh, I was trained by the best of the Pharisees. And oh, did I mention how zealous I was for God. In his zeal to please God, he became a persecutor of the church. And we need to understand this carefully. Those that he perceived to be enemies of God, Paul essentially says, I was willing to kill the enemies of God. I rejoiced in their death. If God was going to be pleased with anyone, it would have to be me. No one can match my resume. Perhaps you've experienced this. Moral people are actually some of the hardest people to reach for the gospel. Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are generally nice people who are zealous about what they believe, but they believe a false gospel and they believe in a false Jesus Christ, but they're very moral people. We must also be careful not to place our confidence in some of these things today. Born into a Christian family, baptized as a covenant child, honor graduate from children's church, youth group, mission trips, tithing, and don't misunderstand, these things are great blessings. They are evidences of fruit in our life. And there is no greater testimony to hear than a young person that says, I never knew a day when I wasn't trusting Jesus Christ. But if we have placed any confidence that God has saved us through any of those works, or we are saved because someone in our family is a Christian, then we have believed a different gospel. We have strayed and moved into the futility of a works-based salvation. We must tread a narrow path here because we can fall off on the other side into antinomianism. It doesn't matter what I do because I'm under grace. I can live in sin because I'm under grace. But Paul is not saying that any of those good things that he had or attained were evil or that wickedness was a better alternative. But Paul's attitude toward his good works became evil. They became the source of his confidence that God accepted him based on his righteous works, that God was pleased to save such a wonderful person like Paul because of what he was or what he had done. It is important to understand it is a great blessing to be born into a covenant household. It is a great blessing to be raised in a church that faithfully preaches the gospel. It is a great blessing to participate in a church that has a heart for the nations. Our desire to please God is not evil. In fact, it is confirmation of God working in us. And in the previous verses that we just looked at, Paul describes what true believers look like. But Paul, like Paul, we must recognize that none of these things add anything to our salvation. It is critical for the Christian to understand the difference between justification and sanctification. The roots of justification being declared righteous by the works of God, which we don't plant, produces the fruit of sanctification, which is our response to God and his grace in our lives. Sanctification is not earning our salvation. It is the outworking of the Holy Spirit in our lives to die to sin and to live for righteousness. Not unto our salvation, but out of our salvation. So Paul gives us the warning of self-righteous people. He shows us the futility of self-righteous confidence. And now he points us to a freedom in the righteousness of Christ. Look at verse 7 and 8. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as lost 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 might gain Christ." What happened to Paul's boasting? What happened to Paul's confidence? All the things that Paul had put into his gains column, everything he had considered a positive toward his standing with God, he now sees them for what they really were. His own attempts to please God by his own works made him proud and self-righteous, the very thing that God despises. Imagine making deposits for years into a bank account only to find out they were being calculated as withdrawals. That instead of a credit balance, you have accrued nothing but a massive debt. This is what Paul confesses. The man who was willing to kill to please God is now willing to suffer the loss of everything, including his own life. That is the radical transformation that the gospel produces. In Christ, we can lose nothing of earthly value that compares to the treasure of gaining Christ. we can lose nothing of earthly value that compares to the eternal treasure of gaining Christ. We desperately want to believe that we have something to put in our credit column. We are hardwired for works-based salvation. We want a list to check off. We want some measure of assurance in our efforts. But Paul says this is garbage, the word he uses here, compared to gaining Christ and having his righteousness credited to our account. And we can think of what Isaiah calls our own righteous works, filthy rags. And Paul realized, and we need to realize, we can't buy God's favor with filthy rags. We need the righteousness of Christ. When Paul and his companions were in danger of being shipwrecked, the crew began to throw everything overboard to keep the ship from sinking to save their lives. Isn't it funny how everything of value on that ship became of no value compared to their lives? To know Christ as Lord and Savior, we must abandon our own self-righteousness like our life depended on it because it does. Are we willing to suffer the loss of everything that we hold dear to gain Christ? Is there something we are unwilling to part with to gain Christ? The rich young ruler could not part from his riches to gain Christ. It was the source of his confidence. And it kept him from the kingdom. What is our source of confidence? Only in Jesus Christ can we have confidence that our sins are forgiven and we are in right standing with God. And the righteousness of Christ, given to us by grace alone, through faith alone, does not produce pride in our own works. It doesn't produce misery that we haven't done enough The righteousness of Christ in us produces joy and gratitude and humility. That's the source of our joy. The cause of our freedom is the righteousness of Christ. If you are here this morning and you are depending on nothing but the blood of Christ to cover your sins, and you are depending on nothing but the righteousness of Christ for your salvation, then this morning be hopeful and boast and rejoice in the Lord that your sins are forgiven. If you are here this morning, you have placed any confidence, any confidence in your own righteousness, or if you are miserable because you have no assurance that you have done enough to please God, then as Paul says here, turn from those vain things. Count them as loss in order to gain Christ. Let's pray. Father, this is a great truth. Father, you have saved us out of your great mercy. And Father, though our response is to worship you and to love you, Father, we pray that it would not bring us, Father, pride and self-righteousness. And Father, we pray for those that may be here, Father, depending on their own righteousness, Father, to have the words, your words, by your Spirit penetrate into their hearts and know that by the works of the flesh, no person will be justified. So Father, thank you for the promises that you give us in the gospel. Write them on our hearts and encourage them, we pray. In Jesus' name, amen.