Philippians chapter 3. Philippians 3 is where we're at again. Philippians chapter number 3. And I want to back up to bring us back into the flow. Paul has such a connected thought here, which may take me much more time to really fully grasp spiritually and a lifetime to apply. But there's such a connected thought here that I want to lay the foundation of what we talked about last time in Philippians chapter three. Remember, of course, he begins with rejoicing and says then a caution in verse number two to beware of someone that he was saying was as a dog, was an enemy, was an evil worker, and if you will, was a mutilator. And then he says, for we are the circumcision, speaking to the fact that we're the ones truly worshiping God and in right relationship with him. And we have no confidence in the flesh. I mean, not saying that, oh, be careful because your flesh is tempting you to sin, but rather, I don't have confidence in any rights that pertain to my flesh or in any fleshly thing that I can do as far as my relationship to the Lord, but instead, we rejoice in Christ Jesus. We plant ourselves in him, we rejoice in what he provides, as far as spiritually. We don't rely upon any fleshly ritual. Then he says, if anyone could have confidence in the flesh, it would be me. And then he goes through who he was. and what he could have leaned on as a Jewish man, at least in the eyes of his society. He says he was circumcised the eighth day, verse 5, of the stock of Israel. He was born and raised of the stock of Israel. He was one of them. More specifically, he was of the tribe of Benjamin. If you were to amassed them all together. He stood out among them all as a Hebrew of the Hebrews. Touching the law, he was a Pharisee. He was a very devoted and focused person. Concerning zeal, he persecuted the church. He's a very zealous person. But in all those things, what could have been counted gain to him, he said he counted loss. So again, to go back to the context of rejoicing in Christ as our spiritual foundation for what we have and anticipate and are is in the person of Christ. So to say, to go back to that text in verse 7, but what things were gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Our confidence for so many things is in Christ. What might those things be? Well, our purpose. Our very purpose is in Christ, our righteousness, our direction, our joy, our peace, our enabling and power for life, our conformity to Christ. All of that is brought about by our union, our relationship with Christ, not by some carving of the flesh or some adherence to a law. So there's so much that we have in Christ, that's where we rejoice, that's where we learn. And so he says, what things were gained to me? My heritage that he laid out there in verse five, my conformity to the law, my zeal, none of that, what would have been a gain to me, I counted a loss as it pertains to my union with God and blessings in his favor. They're not brought about by those things. Some still sought for favor with God through adherence to rules of the Mosaic Covenant. But we're under a new covenant, and the mediator is Christ. We're brought by the law to depend wholly upon Christ for justification. And resting in him, we have the blessings and the privileges of sonship." So this is the the context here. Remember, I think he's arguing against, he's working against the influence of Judaizers who in the worst case scenario, would pervert the gospel and would divert people's paths back to works and cause them to rest on something physical, something external, something, could I say, mosaic for their salvation. Hence, they would not be saved. because they're not relying upon Christ alone. But understand that a Judaistic influence cannot simply affect people who are unsaved, but can have an influence on people who are saved, so that maybe not their salvation, because once they are saved, they are saved, but the sense of sanctification. and grace and pleasing God can still be diverted to the idea of resting in the flesh. And so it's good for us to consider that in this. context, that we're dealing with the way of grace, if you will, the way of blessing, the way of union with Christ, and we rejoice in Him and what we have in Him and don't have confidence in or lean upon some external ritual of the flesh. Now, verse number eight, he goes on to explain a little bit more because he said, I count I count those things loss for Christ. What's he talking about? Well, verse 8, he says, yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. And do count them but dung that I may win Christ and be found in him. not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended. of Christ Jesus. Going back to verse 8, Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss. Now he doesn't just say for Christ, but he says for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. First of all, that word count. We're talking in this verse, and we're going to see a comparison here in just a minute, but this is a mindset. This is a perspective. I consider mentally, spiritually, the way I perceive it, I consider these things to be a loss, if you will. And then he says, for the excellency, I could say the surpassing value of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, the full knowledge of my Savior, Jesus Christ, is so much more excellent that I count all these other things but loss. But then he says, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. Now on the one hand he said, I count them but loss. I would consider them mentally, remember we talked about the ledger, they're moved to the other side of the ledger for me. But then he says, I have suffered the loss of all things. That's not just a perspective, that's a reality. He's saying that he's actually lost things for Christ. Now, we have to ask the question, what did Paul lose? What's he talking about here? What did he lose? On the one hand, if we go with the earlier context, we could be speaking in terms of his confidence. The thing that he used to have confidence in as a zealous, ritualistic, Jewish man. If he's talking about that, then when he says, I've lost all things, he's essentially saying, I lost my identity. I counted who I was and all that I thought that that was to me, I counted that as loss. How many people don't really want to lose their identity? You know, even in our modern society, ladies don't want to get married and take on a single name, take on another man's name, because they don't want to lose their identity. They don't want their identity to be merged into that of their husband's. They want to be independent and their own person. But you know, a lot of people, outside of speaking in the marriage context, a lot of us, how much do we hang on to our identity in the wrong thing? And so he says, possibly saying, I have counted the loss of all things, that is, I lost who I was. Who Saul of Tarsus was is gone. My identity now as Paul the believer is in Christ Jesus. I'm a different man, I have a different value now, or I see my value a different way. But maybe he's speaking in terms of possessions because if you follow the narrative in Acts, the man traveled the known world. Three times. He was imprisoned at one point, which means he had next to nothing. He was kept under house arrest or in confinement for actually a period of years. He finally appears before Nero and then is released, but what did he actually have? What physical objects did he have to his name? Not very much. We know along the way he made some tents. What do you need to make tents? Maybe a few tools. But you almost wonder if Paul really had lost just about everything, physically. He'd given everything. He wasn't into having a secure, settled house and a nice living and a lot of nice possessions. He was about traveling and preaching and seeing churches planted. In some way, though, Paul lost, if you will. I don't mean he lost spiritually, but he said, I've counted those things, but lost. You'll find that word if you look in the book of Acts, and you see them on their ship ride toward Rome, and they come into a storm, Eurycleidon. And what happens in a ship when they're very concerned that the ship is going to sink in a storm? They begin to throw things overboard. And in that story, the word used is lost. Damage and loss. Now you can imagine the damage to the ship, but also loss from the ship. Those things that they were willing to offload because they were the lowest value given the circumstances. We don't want to lose anybody's life. We don't want this ship to break apart. So we're going to get rid of everything we can to try to spare ourselves and get to harbor. Paul says, I'm willing to lay my former identity, anything that I own, I'm willing to throw it overboard that I might make it to the harbor to which I'm driving. That I might make it to where God is taking me. He said, verse eight. For whom, that is, for Jesus Christ, I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung that I may win Christ. Dung, refuse. No one considers excrement a high-dollar commodity. Is it on the stock trade? You know, trailer fulls of manure. Now there was maybe one exception to this. There was a dear Polish friend of my mother's years ago who liked rabbit poo and apparently that was really good for her plants and so she called it gold dirt. So to her that was a valuable commodity. Now, other than her, bless her heart, she was a sweet lady, it's not a super valuable commodity. I understand we use it in gardens and things like that. But imagine if Steve Oiler or if David Addy called me one day and I'm sitting in the office and I'm doing something. I pick up the phone and boy, they can barely speak. I mean, they're just so broken up. And I could tell they're very moved, unlike them to be this shaken and this rattled. And, Pastor, I can't believe it. I gotta come in and talk to you. I don't know what to do. They're taking it all. Come on in, please, come in. I'd love to talk with you, pray with you, comfort, encourage you if I could. And so, boy, I'm kind of pacing the hallway a little bit, I'm watching by the door, and finally they drive up and they just walk in. They're hunched over, you can see they've been weeping, they're half exhausted. I can tell, but I've never seen them like this. These men are strong men, these are man's men. And yet they're broken. They're so sad. And they come into the office and they just have a hard time verbalizing something. They've lost something so precious. I say, Steve, David, what have you lost? What's going on? Please tell me. Pastor, I can't. They took it all. They just came in and they hauled it all away, and what am I gonna do? What did they do? Did the house burn down? Did they take the kids? Did somebody empty out your grain bins? What was it? Oh no, I was saving all this manure. I had like 40 truckloads of manure, and somebody took it all! Now, probably you would sit with me like, maybe I'm missing something. But I don't think it's that valuable, right? Why is he that distraught? Why are they so torn up about losing the dung? So Paul used a good word, didn't he? To describe that, because shouldn't we be just as confused when a Christian wants to hold on to his things, or worse yet, his identity? Shouldn't we be as confused as someone wanting to hold on to dung? He's unwilling to leave behind what he thought about himself and the things in which he had confidence before knowing Christ. And now, having been redeemed by the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, he wants to retain his identity as a corrupt, dying prisoner to sin. That should be weird. It shouldn't be normal. as trying to protect and weep over lost dung would be strange and odd. So Paul gives us a good picture. He says those things, the things from the past, the knowledge of Christ so far surpasses the value of those things. It's like they're dung. It's not only that I count them lost and you go, oh Paul, you poor thing, you're really sacrificing a lot for the Lord. I tell you, boy, that was a tough thing to get rid of. No, Paul says, I count them but refuse. They don't even have a value to me anymore. It's easy to get rid of them in light of the comparison. Why? That I may win Christ. That I may win Christ. Now, that's the goal here. It's not saying, he's not saying that I might give away enough stuff to earn my salvation. That's not what he's saying. But when he says to win Christ, it's the idea of making a very wise, profitable investment. By winning Christ, he means the gaining of an ever-deepening knowledge of the person of the self-existent one, his master, his savior, that I might grab a hold of that opportunity, that I may win that, not that I could win his favor or earn his pleasure, It's not what he's saying, that I may win Christ. You have to keep the context and the concept of what he's saying, this idea that I could give up who I was and I could know Jesus Christ was such a big thing to Paul, and it ought to be to us. We ought to try to digest this and wrap our minds around it. Look at verse nine. So he's saying, I count all things but loss for the surpassing value of the knowledge of Christ. And I've suffered the loss of all things and I don't really care about him because I want to win Christ, verse nine, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law. You think about that, mine own righteousness. Huh, so there's Christ's righteousness, and then there's my own righteousness. It's like in scripture when we read that there actually is more than one wisdom. There's the world's wisdom, and there's God's wisdom. So when I think about my own righteousness, I think about a currency change. Paisley, I am gonna call you up here for a minute. Today is Paisley's birthday, okay? And if I said to you, Paisley, at 12, I mean, it's a big birthday. It's very exciting. I couldn't be more excited for you, and you're so special as a daughter. I mean, I've just really gone all out this year, and I just, I mean, I've worked really, really hard, and I've got you all kinds of money here. I've got you a, man, there's gotta be, I don't know how many thousands of dollars right here. Monopoly, 100, Statue of Liberty, okay. This is a pink $5. How many pink $5 bills are you gonna have? I worked really hard to make all this money for you. I mean, literally make it. I drew it out on pieces of paper. Yeah, and that's a lot of money right there. So happy birthday. I hope your siblings don't expect that much money every time. It took me a lot of time to make that money. Yeah, you're welcome. She's not really excited, I don't think. She's humoring me. She's giving me the, yeah, you're kind of strange. Okay, you can go take a seat. And you know immediately, you say. There's no money, nothing she can do with that. What kind of birthday present is that? What kind of crazy guy would make money? But I'll tell you, it kind of looks like the real thing. Some of it was green, and it was rectangular, and it had kind of the oval in the middle. Yeah, and it had a number on it, like our money does, like real money does. And so it kind of looked like the same thing. And so I made my own money, and yeah, we're rich now. except that we're not because it's not worth anything. It's in the wrong economy. Nobody cares. And so when he says, I don't want to be found one day to have my currency of righteousness, the thing that I thought was good and the thing that made me worthy of the grace of God because I had been circumcised. and I had followed a code and according to the law I was blameless and I was a zealous man and I don't want to be found in that righteousness one day because it's the wrong economy. It's worth nothing. He says, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, because I borrowed from the revelation that God had given, the law, and I took that law, and instead of understanding the meaning of it, I sort of copied it into my own law, and into my own value for that law, and I ascribed value to the things that I did, so that if I didn't violate the Sabbath, and I didn't do this, and I did this, and I did this, then I was valuable, and I had some capital to spend, if you will. But he says, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith. This is really neat. So notice how you get the real righteousness, through faith and by faith. So what is faith? When I rest upon God, when I rest on his word, when I accept him for who he is and I do what he wants me to do, okay, when I, by faith, except Jesus Christ. And when I pursue him by God's design, then out of God, comes righteousness. Look at what the text says. Which is of God, the idea is out of God. When I exercise faith, out of God comes the righteousness that's valuable. Not out of me, and not out of my interpretation of a law and manufacturing a currency, but out of God, who is the righteous one, comes righteousness to me. 2 Corinthians 5 and verse 21, turn over there. A few pages to your left, 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21. Good verse to learn in understanding the gospel, 2 Corinthians 5, verse 21. For He, that is God the Father, hath made Him, that is God the Son, to be sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. So it's God's righteousness, and we're made into that righteousness when we are in Christ, not because we manufactured some system of self-worth through physical rituals, but because We came to God God's way and because we rested in him. Romans chapter 3 verse 21 and following. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested being witnessed by the law and the prophets. Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe. For there is no difference, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God, being justified, that is, made righteous freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a satisfaction through faith in his blood to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are passed through the forbearance of God. To declare, I say at this time, his righteousness, that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. He can stand just, and through the sacrifice of Christ, when I exercise my faith in him, he gives me the righteousness of God, and I'm made into the righteousness of God. I'm made righteous, that is justified by faith in Christ. Not having mine own righteousness, Remember what he said about the Jewish people, Romans chapter 10 verse 1, brethren, my heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved for I bear them record. that they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge. For they, being ignorant of God's righteousness and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God." And I don't want to be there anymore. That's where I was for years, Paul's saying. I want to lose that identity. I want to lose that value system. I'm now rejoicing in the person of Christ and what he is to me. and be found not having my righteousness, how bankrupt I would be, but having the righteousness which is of God by faith. Now back to our text in verse number 10, that I may know him. This actually goes back in the outline, if you will, of the passage, it goes back to the initial clause, modifying the initial clause, I count all things but loss to the knowing of him. Why do I count all things but loss? Why do I move everything over to the other side of the ledger? Why am I willing to offload those things? I want to know Him. The end result is to know Him. And not just to know Him, but to be more specific, the power of His resurrection. Well, the Bible talks about how he demonstrated himself to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead. The power of that resurrection. I mean, we can't really hardly fathom it, can we, that a man can lay down his life and take it back up again. But the same power of that resurrection, I want to know it in my life personally, and can. The same powerful God that raised Jesus from the dead can work in us to live the life of Christ, to walk in newness of life, to know the power of his resurrection. And I think it would be, to the relatively spiritually mature person, that would be kind of a given, right? Oh, yes, yeah, I would like power. I would like that enablement. But he goes on to say, and the fellowship of his sufferings. I suffer the loss of all things that I might be a partner of his sufferings. Paul understood something here. He's looking deeper now into the intended life for us in Christ. that I might understand, that I might know the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death. Now as one commentator writes, what is the death of Christ but the death to sin, at least as it relates to us. As he died, so when we are saved and baptized by the Holy Spirit into him, were baptized into his death, that like as Christ was raised from the dead, so we should walk in newness of life. And so to be made conformable to his death may speak to that, that the power, I have victory over the power of sin in my life. But he's talking about the power of the resurrection, I wanna know that. And yet, I wanna know his sufferings. There you can tell that Paul's being legitimate here. It's not just, I want stuff from Christ, and I want peace, and I want feel good, and I want energy. But when Paul's ready to say, I really wanna live the life of Christ, and my Savior suffered, and if the leader, if the master suffered, the disciples are gonna suffer too. and I wanna know, I wanna be a partner of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death. We won't spend more time on that right now. If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. We may address that more next week, but remember the context here. I think it's gonna enlighten us here in a verse or two about what he's saying there. Verse number 12 as we come to a close. not as though I had already attained. I haven't grasped everything, either we're already perfect, not that I've been entirely perfected here, but I follow after, I pursue, there's an intensity, there's a direction, there's an intentionality, I follow after, if that, I love this phrase, I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Now think about it, he's drawing this whole thought now to verse 12 that I've suffered the loss of things, I've given them up, the superior value of the knowledge of Christ that I may grab a hold of that for which Christ grabbed a hold of me. Paul understood that God has a design for us. God has a desire, he has an end, he has a goal. And what would we say that is? Well, we'd say, well, Christ liked us, right? Not just heaven, not just peace and joy. He grabbed us for something and that something was to know him and to be like his son and to show his glory Paul didn't say, I've given up all these things and I'm suffering and I'm willing to sacrifice that I might win more souls. Did he say that? No. That's not involved. That I might do more things. The primary focus of this passage is that I may know him. And somehow that was integrally tied to what Christ grabbed him for. Jesus wants you to know him. That's very, very, very important to him. It's not just enough that you get saved and get busy and start doing and get out there and work, work, work, work, work, work, work. Know him, pursue him, ask questions, dive in and say, who is he? I want to know him. We're moving out of the phase of the exterior ritual and the conforming to certain standards. And we're coming over here to saying there's a relationship. There's a person of my Savior, the ever-living God that I can know. And I so desperately want to know that I'll throw everything else overboard. And in knowing and in pursuing him, I trust to reach that end, which is the design for me, which God grabbed me for. I want to become what God wanted me to become. And that's where we're gonna close for this evening. What a... Touching passage in the context of what Paul is saying. We saw it back at the beginning of the study. For to me to live is Christ. Paul is giving us a huge, a monumental vision of life in Christianity. And we do so well to really take heed. Say, Paul, what are you saying? How does this affect my perspective, my pursuit, my... my efforts. I pray that we would, I hope that we will come to understand better what it is to have our identity and our fulfillment.