It's good to be with you guys. As Pastor Ben said, I'm Travis. I'm the pastor to students here. It's great to be with y'all up here. Today we're going to continue our study of Philippians by looking at chapter 3 verse 9, only one verse. But in a second we'll read verses one through nine just to give us a little bit of context. So because it's just one verse and because the context is important, I want to remind you of what Jason Cunningham preached so well last week. He's solidly Presbyterian, so you know he wore the bow tie. He only had three points. He was doing great, right? So today we could make this almost as like a part two, so he didn't have to add more points. His three main points last week were that Paul gives a warning to self-righteous people, that there is futility in self-righteousness, or sorry, futility in self-righteous confidence. And then thirdly, though, that there is freedom in the righteousness of Christ. So let's keep those three things in mind as we read Philippians chapter 3, verses 1 through 9. Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord, to write, the same things to you is no trouble to me, and is 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 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 else 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 of 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 count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ." Now verse 9, "...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 from God that depends on faith. Now, if you'll join with me, the grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God will stand forever. Let's pray. Father, we come to you humbly today, worn down from last week and all the stresses that came with it. But we know that this day is set apart for worship and for rest. And so we pray that even through our worship, we would rest or our souls would rest in you. Father, we believe in the Holy Spirit. And so we believe that your word preached even by unworthy servants is powerful to convict and to encourage Lord. And so we pray that that would happen this morning. And I pray this all in your son's name. Amen. So as we get started, I want you all to think about a time that you felt like you had to prove yourself to somebody or to a group of people. And now when we think about proving ourselves, a lot of times this is two sides of the same coin. So if you think about it, maybe like a boxing match, the champion feels like he has to prove that he's a worthy champion. He has to prove that he's there for a reason. And the challenger has to prove that he actually belongs. So when we try to prove ourselves, usually it's one of these two ways. So as a way of an example, I felt this very prominently my first year in seminary. So I graduated from the University of Tennessee, and I studied journalism, and I worked for a year, and then I went to seminary. And I started with a class full of men who had gone to all these great Bible colleges and studied the Bible and they already knew Greek, for instance. So when I was around them, I had this huge chip on my shoulder. I was like, man, I really have to prove that I actually belong here. But then, flip it around, when I went home and I saw my little sister, she's five years younger than me, her and her friends would ask me questions. And I was like, man, I really need to make sure I have these answers. Otherwise, they'll know that I'm a fraud, right? I have to prove that I actually belong. So in both cases, I had to prove myself. And we all do this to some extent. Maybe you feel like you have to prove that you belong in the neighborhood, so you have to have the perfect lawn. Or your kids have to act a certain way for you to belong. Or you have to look like you have yourself all put together before you come to church on Sunday. We all try to prove ourselves in one way. Or another. Or it might be the opposite way. It might be, you think, people really look up to me. I'm a leader here. If they knew that I went three days without reading my Bible, people would really judge me. Or if people knew how often I got mad at my wife, or I got mad at my kids, they would judge me. I would be unfit for leadership. I need to prove myself to them. And see, Paul wrote this because we all look at our deeds for justification. We all look at our own works and our own self-righteousness for justification. But he also gives three responses to this. Again, I'm also solidly Presbyterian, so three responses to this. And these will be our three points, all from verse nine this morning. So we want to focus on ourself, but Paul wants us to be found in Christ. We want to rely on our own righteousness, but this is a false righteousness. And our third point will be that we want to earn righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ comes through faith. So let's start then with that first one. We want to focus on ourselves, but Paul wants to be found in Christ. And the implication then is that we also should want to be found in Christ. So verse 9, if you look at it, it starts in the very middle of a sentence and it comes right after a long list of Paul's accomplishments in verses 4 through 7. So if you took that clump of verses that's just Paul and listing his accomplishments and you showed it to somebody that it maybe never read the Bible, they would probably think, what's this guy's deal? He's like those guys that brings up that he went to Harvard all the time, or vegetarians, they always bring it up. So Paul is bringing up this list of accomplishments. What's the deal? We don't like people like that. But we all do that. We all have a list of accomplishments in our back pocket. If your boss came to you tomorrow and said, why don't you tell me why you deserve a raise, you'd be ready. You'd say, man, I worked so hard. I put up with so much. You'd be ready. Or if somebody asks you why you deserve a vacation. If your house was anything like my house growing up, moms, you will say, let me tell you the list of things I do every day to keep the house from burning down, and that is why I deserve a vacation. We all like to present ourselves in light of our accomplishments. But Paul says he doesn't want to be found like that anymore. He wants to be found in Christ. So let's unpack that. What does that mean, to be found in Christ? So when I first looked at this and I was making my notes, I thought that if you look at the end of verse 8, and then there's the word and, and then he says be found in Christ, that should mean two different things. So verse 8, in order that I may gain Christ, that's one thing. And then verse 9, and be found in Him. So two different things, two separate ideas. I was wrong, that's not what it is. So to be found in Christ actually deepens the meaning of gaining Christ. And Paul does this several times where he says clause 1 and then the second clause and it deepens it. So if you look at Philippians chapter 2 verse 9, we see a great example of this. I see, I hear you guys turning. All right, so chapter two, verse nine, Paul says, therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name. So therefore God has highly exalted him, Jesus, and what does that mean? It means that he bestowed on him the name above all names. So back to our passage, Paul wants to gain Christ. And what does that mean? To gain Christ means to be found in him, to be found in Christ. And Paul does something really subtle with this phrase. So he had just laid out all of his accomplishments, right? He had said, look how great of a Jew, look how great of a Hebrew I was. And so it's all on him, but then he uses a passive verb. It's not, look what I've done. I haven't finded myself, right? That's not a word. So he takes the focus off of himself and he puts it back onto Christ. See, a passive verb, so found, right? You cannot found something. You can only be found. You have to receive it. So if a kid tells you that they want to find a toy, they do the searching, not the toy. But if a kid tells you that they want to be found, several questions come up. Where do you want to be found? By whom do you want to be found? Why do you want to be found? Paul answers these all with the next few words. He wants to be found by God in Christ. And to be found somewhere, it necessitates a certain level of permanence. For me to be found in a place, let's see, I've always wanted to go to Switzerland, so let's say for me to be found in Switzerland, I have to go there. I have to go there, and then I have to stay there until I'm found. So it requires a level of permanence. So for Paul, And all Christians, all of us, there are, in time, eschatological, in heaven, implications for us, right? In heavens, in the new heavens and new earth, we'll be found in Christ perfectly. But right now, there's also implications for us. in the present. So if we are to be found in Christ in the future, then we must certainly currently be found in Christ as well. And if we're currently in Christ, this is the good news of the gospel, then it's possible for us to please God right now. That doesn't mean that we earn our salvation. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But it does mean that in Christ, God is pleased with our efforts. He's pleased when we fight sin. He's pleased when we come to Him in prayer. He's pleased when we display the fruits of the Spirit in Christ. God the Father is pleased with us. So Paul wants to be found, that's good news, but he also doesn't want to be found anywhere. He wants to be found in Christ. Paul uses that phrase, in Christ or in him, 160 times in his letters. It's very important. But why in Christ? Why not with Christ or under Christ or beside Christ? Why in Christ? Well that word in I think can be used in a couple different ways. If we lay out three different ways it can be used. First, in it establishes that something is bigger than you. So if I brought you a container, if you gained a container, you're thinking it's probably like those little Pyrex dishes, my leftovers go in. It's a small container. But if I said I was in a container, it's much larger than I initially thought. It's big. If you're in it, it's bigger than you. Secondly, Ian describes a complete devotion to an ideal or to a virtue. So I'm the youth pastor here. I talk to teenagers all the time, and they can kind of like somebody. They can kind of be talking to somebody. But when they're in love with somebody, It's totally different. It's like the Pepe Le Pew floating after the cat. There's a big difference when you're in love. And thirdly, it denotes complete enclosure by something else. So think of like you're on the edge of the pool versus you're in the pool. That's a very big difference. In the pool, you're surrounded by water completely. All right, so how does that apply to being in Christ? The first use then is Christ is big. Christ is not a small, fragile thing that we've gained. Christ isn't gonna fall out of the hole in our pocket. We're not gonna scare him away. or ruin Him with our sin, we are in Christ, and Christ is taking those hits for us. Secondly, then, our life is built around Him, so He influences everything that we do. So, for example, one of my, or the professor that I was a teaching assistant for in seminary, he taught for like a hundred years, I mean, seriously, he's taught for a long time. Sorry, hopefully he didn't hear that. So he wrote, and then he retired, and people wrote a book in his honor. So he had influenced a generation of pastors and scholars, and then from that, what he had poured into them, they produced this book. So in his honor. So in honor of Dr. Kelly, he produced this book. And thirdly, Christ shines forth from our life if we're in him. So just like if your dog has been in the mud and you see the evidence all over the house, people see the righteousness of God because we're in Christ. They see that radiating off of us. So one author I read during my study, he put it this way, he said, to be in Christ first of all means that we have a saving relationship with Christ and are brought into union and communion with Him in such a way that As we are in Christ, what is true of Christ becomes true of us. What is true of Christ becomes true of us. His grace and His resources become our experience and possession. So think about the implications of what is true of Christ being true of us. Being in Christ changes everything. So I looked up every time the phrase, in Christ, was used in Paul's letters. It's on the back of your handout. Not every single one. That would be too big, too many. But I tied it to some of the blessings that are found from being in Christ. And that was probably the most encouraging part of getting ready for the sermon, so you guys should look at those in your devotions this week. So think about what it means to be in Christ, but then also, if you're not in Christ, what the implications are. So if we just look at the top three. So Romans 3.24, you're redeemed in Christ. So if you're not in Christ, you're not redeemed. You're enslaved to sin. Romans 6, in Christ you're alive to God. So if you're not in Christ, then you are dead to God. And then Romans 8, there's no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. That means if you're not in Christ Jesus, there is condemnation. And that's the place we don't want to be. So we see the good that comes from that. So being in Christ, is the key to every spiritual blessing that God pours out. Every single one. And every blessing that we experience, Christ experienced first, and we were brought into it. So I heard a story. I keep bringing up my time in seminary, but he was one of my professors. He was an archaeologist before he started teaching. And so he told us a story about an excavation in Pompeii. You guys know that. Pompeii is a city. It's right around the volcanic Mount Vesuvius. It's about 150 miles away from Rome. On August 24th of the year 79, Mount Vesuvius erupted and it killed 16,000 people in the area. And it covered the entire area in volcanic debris. So if you survived, like the big rocks shooting out of the volcano, there was a heat wave, an extreme heat wave that spread out and it killed everybody in the area instantly. So they died and then the volcanic ash from the volcano fell on them and covered them and then hardened. All right, so you fast forward 1,800 years and scientists came up with a way to inject a casting agent where the bodies had been that was surrounded by the ash. And so you can see a replica of the positions of the people where they laid when they died. And so there's a cast of children laying down or couples holding hands. It's interesting, but one body confused scientists for a really long time. So he was found with an ornate dagger and a leather belt, decorated with the images of a lion and a cherub. That was the mark of the Praetorian Guard. That was an elite military force whose duties included guarding the Roman Emperor. It was 150 miles away. So it's impossible to know this soldier's motivation, but it seems like he was acting on behalf of the emperor. He's acting in service or in honor of the emperor. And because of that, he ran towards an erupting volcano in an attempt to rescue as many citizens as he could. And so long after the emperor died, this man laid there in service to his king. having been strengthened and emboldened to love others with a sacrificial love because he was in service. But church, our king is not dead, right? With Paul, our hope is to be found in Christ, not just in the future, but every day. See, we naturally want to focus on ourselves, but Paul wants to be found in Christ. Alright, so our second point then is that we want to rely on our own righteousness, that's where we are, relying on our own righteousness, but this is a false righteousness. You might have noticed a shift in the letter of Philippians starting in chapter 3, so Paul's been very encouraging to them up until this point. In chapter 1, in his introduction, he says that he thanks God in all of his remembrance of the Philippians, always in every prayer, for the Philippians make his prayer joyous. He loves them and spends two chapters telling them that they're doing a great job, that they're doing great, but then In chapter 3, there's a warning. A warning is a warning of self-righteousness. Paul wants them to be on the lookout for self-righteousness because that's our natural tendency. It's like we look for any opportunity to look inward onto ourselves. So when things are hard, it's because we're not good enough. We focus on ourselves. When things are good, it's also because of ourselves. I think about, when do you pray the least? Probably when things are going so well, because we're looking in on ourselves. So Paul's statement is completely backwards from the world. Today, what's the solution for everything? Find yourself. Be true to yourself. Self-care. Self-oriented. But what's Paul's goal? That's not self-anything. His goal is to be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of his own that comes from the law. So he had obviously taken great pride in being of the tribe of Benjamin, of being a Hebrew of Hebrews, of persecuting the church, but now he counts all of that as rubbish. And that's a very mild translation of the Greek word skubalon, which can also mean animal excrement. He doesn't care about that at all. What happened? What caused that radical shift? So Paul didn't make a trade with God, right? One for one, he didn't barter with God. He received God's righteousness. Christ loved Paul, and that new love, that great love, forced out his old love. It's like when Reebok and I went to visit our three-year-old nephew over the summer, I was playing with him, his name is Isaac, before his mom came home. He would stand up on the couch, I'm a good uncle. I'll hit him with a pillow and he would fall over. And we did that probably for 45 minutes. I mean, we did it forever. As soon as the door turned, the handle turned and his mom walked in, that little man was off the couch running to his mom. I don't think he looked at me the rest of the night. So a greater love had come in and replaced me. And that's what happened to Paul. He had given up his lesser loves for a greater one, a false righteousness for a perfect righteousness. But that doesn't mean that he gave up good works, right? Paul did more good after he was saved than before he was saved. After he relied on Christ's righteousness rather than his own, it's because the new righteousness went deeper. When we rely on self-righteousness, it's all performative. It's only the results that matter. But now, instead of being performative, good works flow from the love of God that has permeated Paul's heart because he's in Christ. So when we focus on our own works outside of Christ, we are focusing on actions that are drenched in our own sin. Our own sin-stained works are antithetical to the righteousness of Christ. You can't mix both of those things together. But what about, you might be asking, what about good works from non-believers? Surely that counts for something. One of Paul's good works that he lists, one of the reasons he boasts, was that he persecuted a group of people for their faith. But what about the atheist that helps in the food bank? That seems a lot better than persecuting the church. That does show something. It shows that God restrains sin, but even good actions done by sinners still have sin on them. So it's like if you stick your hand, this is an illustration I use in youth all the time, if you stick your hand in a bucket of red paint and you run through the house touching all the walls, some of those walls will be dripping with paint and some of those walls will have little pink smudges on them. but everything you touch will still have paint on it. Everything we do outside of Christ still has sin on it. So when we put these two things together, the new love replaced the old love, and that righteousness and unrighteousness can't mix, we see that having much of Christ means having much of Christ alone. So one commentary put it this way. He said, for Paul, it is a theological truism that grace and self-confidence are in radical antithesis. This is the important part. Grace plus anything cancels out grace. Grace plus anything cancels out grace. There is a myth of a Norse hero named Sigfrid. He was born a common man, I think in Sweden, and his bravery led him to the cave of a great dragon that had tormented his village for years. With great cunning, Siegfried was able to slay the dragon. And then, afterwards, Siegfried, he bathed in the blood of the dragon, and the blood got on his skin, and it made his skin hard like dragon scales. So it made him essentially invincible. But while he was bathing, a leaf from a linden tree fell on his back. They said it was like the size of his hand. And so there's one spot on his back that didn't get bathed. One spot that was still susceptible to attack. Now Siegfried turned out to be pretty awful. He made a lot of enemies, one of which deceived everybody and got into his inner circle and invited him out on a hunt. So on the hunt, Siegfried bent over and he drank the water from a fresh mountain spring. And while he was bent over, his enemy put a spear in that one spot where the leaf had covered him. His one vulnerable spot, his enemy struck and it killed the Norse hero. We have a source of righteousness that is far beyond anything we can produce in ourselves. We are in Christ completely covered by His righteousness, but when we trust ourselves or our own works, it's like we're covering ourselves in leaves, just like He did. Or if you look at Isaiah 61, it says that we are clothed in the garments of salvation, but then when we rely on our own works, we're putting dirty patches, patching together this glorious robe. We're replacing the righteousness of God with our own sin-stoked righteousness that is of no use. We want to rely on our own righteousness, but this is a false righteousness. Alright, our first two points, and then our last one. So, we want to focus on ourselves, but Paul wants to be found in Christ. We want to rely on our own righteousness, but this is a false righteousness. Now our final point, we want to earn righteousness, but the righteousness of Christ comes through faith. Our own righteousness is rubbish, scuba alone, right? And God's grace alone allows us to see it as it really is. But we all have this innate desire to be seen in a positive light. We all want to be seen as righteous. So how do we get there? Our righteousness won't cut it, so we needed righteousness from God, and that comes through faith. So how do we tie all this together? So insofar as that we are in Christ, we have righteousness from God. We have the righteousness of Christ because we are in Him. And we didn't force our way into Christ because of our good works, but now in everything that we do in Christ, God looks on kindly. And so this is Reformation Sunday. We're celebrating the 95 Theses, right? You've probably all heard of total depravity. But sometimes we take that too far. We think that even after we've been saved that we can never love God. We can never obey God. We can never love God. That's simply not true. So in Christ, with the righteousness of Christ, we can please God the Father. Now we can't do it perfectly, and if we start thinking that we're the ones that are doing it, then we have a huge problem. But how many of us need to hear that? That God is proud of our efforts to fight sin and to do good because we are in Christ. I've seen what they do in the nursery and at VBS and there's a lot of art and none of that art is going to make its way into an art museum. But you parents like the art because it was made by your child. You don't like your child because of the art that they made. Hopefully. So God delights God delights in our work because we are in Christ. We are His children. He doesn't count us as His children because of our works. So how do we get it then? We get it through faith, right? And what is faith? Westminster Shorter Catechism says this, it says that faith in Jesus Christ is a saving grace whereby we receive and rest upon him alone for salvation as he is offered to us in the gospel. Not to put myself on the level of the Westminster Assembly, but in youth I explain it this way. I say that faith is believing that God is who he says he is. We try to make faith a thing that we do, but even faith is a gracious gift from God. If we think of faith as simply believing without evidence and we have to do our own mental gymnastics, then it is a work of our own, but that's not what biblical faith is. Biblical faith isn't irrational. It's trusting that the Bible is true. Same way that a child has faith that his mom will pick him up from school because his mom has picked him up over and over and over again, we believe that God buys sinners back from eternal death by the blood of Jesus Christ, the God-man, because scripture tells us over and over and over that God saves sinners. And the sneakiest thing that Satan does is convince us of our own righteousness. Because if we're not sinners, if we don't think we're sinners, then we don't need God's love. That's why one of the most incredible things we can do as Christians is to confess our sins to each other and to God, because as we confess our sins to God and each other, we are tacitly confessing that we are not enough. We're reminding ourselves that our own self-righteousness isn't righteousness at all. We're reminding ourselves that we desperately need Jesus. And so consider, this is the last paragraph, think about the freedom that comes with that. We don't have to carry the burden of being perfect if Jesus saves sinners. We don't have to carry the burden of being the perfect spouse because Jesus died for sinful spouses. We don't have to be the perfect son or daughter because Jesus died for sinful sons and daughters. We don't have to bear the burden of being perfectly put together on Sunday mornings or having the best lawn in the neighborhood or being the perfect friend or even the perfect youth pastor because Jesus died for sinners and will never be perfect. We just have to believe that God is who he says he is. We just have to be found in Christ and receive the righteousness that is from God. Amen. Let's pray. Lord, with Paul, our great hope is that we would be found in Christ. Lord, if anybody is not currently in Christ, I pray that you would work on their hearts, that you would draw them with a new love, a love that would continually force out our old loves. Lord, help us all not to find our identity in things we've done or anything like that. God, help our identity to be in Christ, as sons and daughters of the Most High King. So Lord, I pray that you would bless us now, and I pray this all in your Son's name. Amen.