What a joy to be with you this morning and to hear that good news that after 21, 22 years as a Church of Christ you were able to look forward to moving into your own building. What a joyful thing. God's Word this morning we're going to be considering is Philippians chapter 3 beginning in verse 1. Philippians 3 verses 1 through 11. Hear this part of God's Word. Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. For me to write the same things to you is not tedious, but for you it is safe. Beware of dogs. Beware of evil workers. Beware of the mutilation. For we are the circumcision, who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I also might have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so circumcise the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, concerning the law, a Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless, But what things were gained to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed, I also count all things loss 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 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Let's pray. O Lord our God, we thank you that you have given to us your word, a lamp to our feet, a light upon our way, that truth by which you renew our minds and our hearts. Send your Spirit upon us today, we ask, that he might lead us into your truth, that he might point us again to Christ, that our hope and confidence would be more solidly anchored in Christ alone. Amen. You are the people of God. I, as a Christian minister, say that to you as a Christian people. But it's very possible that last Friday evening, Rabbi Jacob Cohen, as he spoke to the congregation Mishkan Israel, said the same thing. You are the people of God. It's possible that earlier on Friday, Imam Muhammad Assad said that to those gathered at the mosque for prayer. So who are the people of God? Christians? Jews? Muslims? Some particular branch of Christianity? How do we know who are the people of God? That's the question that the Apostle Paul addresses as he writes to the Philippian church. It's verse 3 that is our text in particular for this morning's sermon. And that verse begins, for we are the circumcision. What does Paul mean? Circumcision was the badge for the Jews. That was what marked them. And so is he speaking of Jews? When he says we are the circumcision? After all, Paul is Saul the Jew. He tells us of his heritage of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews. Circumcised the eighth day. So is he speaking to those like him who have that mark in their body? in obedience to God's command to Abraham? Is he speaking to some portion of this Christian church, the Jewish portion of it? It's rather unthinkable that he would be doing that. Because he's just spoken in the previous chapter about unity in the church. And so I highly doubt that Paul wants to carve out a portion of the body and somehow elevate them above the rest. and say that we, we who are Jews, who are by nature sons of Abraham, we are the circumcision, we are the people of God. So perhaps Paul is not speaking literally here of circumcision. After all, if we simply think grammatically You know, that we has an antecedent, you know, every pronoun points us back, you know, to something that came before it. And it points us back to verse one in the chapter when he says, finally, my brethren, my fellow Christians, that's who he's speaking to. He introduced this letter as to those, you know, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi. to all the saints in Christ Jesus. To those who have been set apart for God's service and worship in Christ. Through the work and ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. So he's not speaking to just some little niche group in the Philippi church, this leading Roman city. But he's speaking to the whole of that congregation mixed as it was. Those who were ethnic Jews, those who were ethnic Greeks, those who were Romans. He's speaking to them all. And he says, we together are the circumcision. So he's speaking figuratively there about circumcision. He must be. Think what circumcision is. If you go back to Genesis 17, where circumcision is introduced by God to Abraham as a sign and seal of the covenant with Abraham, we understand what circumcision spoke of, what it represented. Verses 7-10 of Genesis 17 read, And I will establish My covenant between Me and you and your descendants after you in their generations for an everlasting covenant to be God to you and your descendants after you and I give you and your descendants after you the land in which you are a stranger all the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession and I will be their God and God said to Abraham as for you you shall keep my covenant you and your descendants after you throughout all their generations this is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you, every male child among you shall be circumcised." What does circumcision represent? What was it a mark of? It was a mark that Abraham and his descendants were gods. That out of all the earth, out of all the nations and peoples on this planet, God had selected Abraham. and his promised seed, you know, not all of his natural children, for not Ishmael was a child of the covenant, but Isaac was, that Abraham and all of his promised seed were gods. They were his special possession. His people, those who had been called out of the world to know God, and to serve Him, and to be blessed by Him, and to love him in response to his love for them. And so when Paul says to the church of Jesus Christ in the city of Philippi, we are the circumcision, he is saying we are God's people, not the Jews. They have forfeited that by rejecting the Christ whom God had sent. It's we, we who are set apart for God in Jesus Christ, who are His, who are the recipients of His blessings, who are the ones who are called to love Him and to serve Him in this world of sin and evil. We are His, marked out as His. And Paul goes on in that third verse. He doesn't simply say that. He doesn't simply make that affirmation about us and then move on to something else. He tells us in the remaining part of that verse what it is that characterizes you as God's people. Two things in particular mark God's people. They are a people who worship God in the Spirit. And you are a people who have a salvation which is anchored in Jesus Christ alone. Look with me at those two aspects of what it is that characterizes you as God's people. You worship God in the Spirit. You live in a world alive with God. That's the thrust of what Paul tells us in Romans chapter 1. When he tells us there in verse 20 that everything in this world bears God's imprint. And we see in it his power and his deity. God's imprint is everywhere you look. It's there in those vast and powerful ocean vistas that you see. It's there as you look to the mountains and the majesty and The seemingly eternal endurance of those mountains. It's there as you look at those little things. The glory of those flowers in the backyard. The wonder of your children. The marvel at how we are fearfully and wonderfully made. Everywhere you look, you see God's handiwork. And the world senses that as well. There are those occasions when it becomes somewhat obvious. There on Mallory Square in Key West, Florida, as Bill Welzien is part of the sunset celebration and preaching the gospel amid that carnival atmosphere, people are having a good time. Those who've come off the cruise ships and have looked around Key West for the day are now gathering back at the pier again, and the locals have found a way to make a living. you know, those who've run away from other things. And so there at the sunset celebration, you can see the man with his trained cats, house cats, you know, jumping through fiery hoops. And you can see the modern day Houdini who gets wrapped up in chains and locked up and hung upside down on a big tripod. And as he's regaling you with his humor, you know, he is escaping from his chains. But amid all of that, As the sun just sort of melts into the Gulf of Mexico, the crowd comes to a hush. Nobody orchestrates that. This is kind of a free-for-all sort of thing. This is not some organized celebration. But the crowd invariably gets quiet and pauses and watches. And you see that sense of awe and wonder on their faces. The marvel of this world, because it bears God's imprint on it. Worship. Not true worship, but worship in some sense is what's going on at that moment. Some unknown deity, the very forces of the world itself perhaps are the object of that awe. But it's there because God created this world with His imprint on it. Those people and the people around you here in your communities who don't know God through Christ are like all people apart from God's truth. They have exchanged the glories of the incorruptible God for man-made things or other parts of the creation And so they worship and serve the creature rather than the creator. They're unthankful to the true and living God. But there's some sense of worship that's still there. And so even in our scientifically sophisticated 21st century, with all of its advancements, there is this sense of spirituality, perverted and warped and twisted and very individualized. But it's there because that's how God made us. His imprint is on even fallen humanity. So people worship. And that's why it is that the Apostle Paul doesn't simply stop with, for we are the circumcision who worship God. You know, that wouldn't have been enough, would it? How would that set God's people apart from everybody else out there who worships Some way, somehow, something. Paul says, we are the circumcision. We are God's people who worship God in the spirit. In the spirit. So you're here to worship the true and living God in the spirit. You're in the place where worship happens. And for most of you, maybe for all of you, it's not the first time that you're here. Not the first time you're a part of this worship service in this place or some other place. I see some children out there who look like they're five or six years old and think about it. How many times have you been at church already in your life? If you can count that high, and I know you can, probably 300, 400, if you're here at morning and evening worship, maybe it's 600 times already in your life. Some of you grandmas and grandpas in the faith, it's not in the hundreds, it's in the thousands, 7,000, 8,000. I'm 61. I've done a rough calculation for myself. My best guesstimate is that I've been at church close to 6,000 times for worship, not counting all the other things that I do in a church building, but for worship. We do it a lot. But is it enough to be in the right place at the right time when the worship service is happening? When Jesus met the woman at the well in Samaria, she began to squirm a little bit because Jesus was beginning to zero in on some of the heart issues in her life. She had five husbands already, and now she's living with a guy she's not married to. That made her pretty uncomfortable that somehow Jesus knew that. So she wants to divert attention. I see that you're a prophet. You know, our fathers, our spiritual leaders tell us that Mount Gerizim here in Samaria is the place to worship. You Jews say it's Mount Zion in Jerusalem. Who's right? Well, Jesus gives her an answer. The time has come. It's now here. When true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father is seeking such worshipers. These are the worshipers God wants, those who worship Him in spirit and in truth. In truth, it's hard enough. In this day when Christian worship is marked by all kinds of stuff, marked by the electronic age in so many ways and so many things pass for worship It's hard to hold to that principle that we believe the Bible teaches as reformed Christians. That the worship which is acceptable to God is the worship which he has prescribed in his word. Not those things that make us feel good or that we think are creative and new and will attract people. But the reading of his word. Prayer. the preaching of his word, the singing of his praise. These are the things that God and some others that God has prescribed for us. And so it's hard to worship in truth, to stand against that great flood of stuff that passes for worship today in Christian circles. But it's even harder to worship in spirit. It's so easy for us to focus on the externals. When you first got acquainted with the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, you probably found this hymnal or its predecessor to be rather different. Hymns you had never sung in your life before, even if you had grown up in the church. Tunes that were so strange. So maybe you carry the hymnal home between Sundays and you spend some time getting familiar with the hymns. A good thing to do. You hear what the confession says. That you're to order your affairs in preparation for the Lord's Day. And so you lay out the kids clothes. You bathe them Saturday night rather than Sunday morning. You do some of your advanced meal preparation on Saturday so that you don't have an overwhelming number of things to do Sunday morning before you got to rush out the door and get in the car and drive to church. See, all good things. But the confession also talks about a due preparing of our heart. And that has to do with in the spirit. And that's harder because it's intangible. It might include such things as regularly reading the Bible throughout the week so that your thoughts are directed regularly toward God. And you think about, you sort of mull over in your mind, you know, what it is God has said in his word and what it is he's doing in your life and in the lives of your family and your acquaintances. And it might involve prayer. Prayer for the pastor as he prepares to lead worship and preach. Prayer for yourself that you'll come with an eagerness to meet with God. A readiness to hear what he has to say even when it's hard stuff to take. That's a part of what it means to worship in the Spirit. But then when you get here, it's a worship that doesn't depend on the externals. It's great to have a lively accompanist. You know, Emily did a marvelous job today in helping us to worship with her piano accompaniment. But even with lively accompaniment, your words could just bounce off the ceiling. It's only as the Spirit comes and enables us to have an audience with God that we are really worshipping Him and offering Him the praise of our heart. An intangible thing. But it's not just spirit in the sense of intangible. It's worship in spirit in the sense that it is enabled and empowered and directed by God Himself, His own Holy Spirit, enabling us individually and corporately as a body to truly praise and adore and bow in obedience before the One who loved us, who called us to be His, who gave us the Redeemer, the Lord Jesus. And so the first thing that marks you as God's people is that you worship Him in spirit. But then secondly, the people of God have a salvation which is anchored in Christ alone. Paul says two things here in verse 3 that tell us that. One positively, one negatively. Now he says on the positive side, who rejoice in Christ Jesus. Rejoice. It might be hard to define that word precisely if you had to do so right at this moment, but you know what it means. To glory in something, to boast in something, to exalt in something. You're a long way from New York, but maybe there's a New York Giants fan in the congregation. You knew what it was to rejoice when the Giants won the Super Bowl. But it's not in the giants that we're rejoicing in as God's people. We rejoice in our great hero, the Lord Jesus Christ. God sent him to do what David was a type of. To take on the enemies of God's people and to defeat them. And so Jesus faces sin. The temptations come, not feeble and weak, not play acting. The scriptures tell us that Jesus was tempted in every way that we are. Not just the kinds of temptations, but the intensity of them as well, I'm sure is what the scripture means there. And so Jesus felt the weight of that draw towards sin. And yet he stood against it firm and sure without wavering. The urge may have been there more than once in his frustration with the blindness of his disciples to just want to lash out and cut them apart with his words and his anger and frustration. But he never does. He speaks straight to them. And He says hard things to them. But He does it to build them up. Not to tear them down. And women seem to throw themselves at Him. They're there. They're present. And they're not somehow neutered. And Jesus is a man. and yet he doesn't yield to those temptations. He stands against sin as the second Adam and he doesn't cave in, but he stands strong in the Lord and he resists that he might indeed be that spotless Lamb of God who would then be able to go to the cross and bear the sins of his people and have the wrath of God poured out upon him. And we see his strength, we see the hero that he is on the cross as well as that wrath of God is poured out on him for your sins and for mine and the sins of all of his people throughout the ages. He remains strong. He doesn't curse God and die. He feels the weight of God's abandonment, of God's wrath. And yet he commits his soul to that one with whom he is one. He remains strong even to death on the cross. And then he faces the grave. Death itself, that great avenger, who ever since the fall has reaped his harvest among humanity. And he's under the power of death for three days. But on that third day, he's raised again. He overcomes death and the grave, not just for himself. He's the first fruits, the first of all of his people. who will be raised again to life, eternal life, life with God. And in all of this, he's facing that great enemy, the deceiver, Satan himself. And he does what God said he would do when God spoke to Adam and Eve. He smashes his head. He defeats him utterly and completely. that you might be safe. That he would keep you secure in his fold as one of his sheep. See what a hero we have. What a champion. God sent him to be our Savior and he saves us. He has redeemed you from sin and death and hell. And he has brought you into the life of God, into God's joyful family, into adoption as sons and daughters, upon whom God smiles with joy and acceptance. You have a salvation anchored in Jesus Christ, and it's anchored in Jesus Christ alone. That's the negative thing that Paul says here. The people of God have no confidence in the flesh. Paul says, if you're tempted to have confidence in what you can do for God, look at me. I have the premier credentials. a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee. When it comes to the law, which speaks to his public life and his private life and his spiritual life, Paul could say, blameless. And he's not throwing a lot of balarney at us at that point. He's being serious. Paul was one serious man. about God's law. It's not bad to obey. It's not bad to be that serious about keeping God's law. The problem that Paul says is what he was doing and what all of our tendency is to do is to somehow begin to think that it's that obedience that somehow earns God's favor. that somehow that contributes in some way not in a big way maybe but in some little way to where I am in God's sight and Paul says that's deadly you can't do it that's what Paul's concerned about he began this third chapter by saying finally my brethren rejoice in the Lord I'm going to write some stuff to you that I've said before. I don't mind doing that. Because for you, it's safe if I say it again. Because you need to hear it. Because there are those who are outside, those who are not God's people, who are dangerous. They're dogs. They want to drag you down. They want to take you away from Christ. And you can't give in. You can't buy it. They're holding on to their own adherence and keeping them out of God's kingdom. And they want to confuse you and take away your hope in Christ alone. And so you cannot have any confidence in what you do. And yet, that's where our hearts go. Sports fans understand that. You know, there's your team on the court. And they're winning. And that's great. You can cheer for them. But somehow in your heart, you want to see yourself on that court. You don't necessarily want to do one of those three pointers from way far away. All you want to do is be able to stand at the foul line and plunk one in for your team. Paul says no. If you do that, you've abandoned Christ. He's the Savior. He's the only one who can bring you to God. He's the only one who can make you and keep you among the number of those who are God's people. He's the champion that God sent. You don't have to take the field. He took the field. He won the victory. and you rejoice in Him. You praise His name. You glory in what He has done. You thank Him for what He continues to do as He upholds you and keeps you. You rejoice in Him instead of wanting to somehow add to it. You are the people of God, who worship God in the Spirit, who rejoice in Christ Jesus, who have no confidence in the flesh. What a joy to be among that company. May your praise of your Savior and the Father who loved you to send you that hero be on your lips and in your hearts, not just when you're gathered here to worship him publicly together, but as you live obediently day after day. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, you are the one we praise. You are our champion You did what none of us throughout the history of the world has been able to do. You stood against sin without giving into it. Not just now and then, not just for a time, but for your whole life. And you did what none of us could do because we're already guilty before God. You bore the penalty for our sins. You redeemed us. And in you we have forgiveness and cleansing and renewal. And Lord Jesus, you smashed Satan's head You didn't just clink him in the arm and slow him down. You stomped him out. And how grateful we are. And you burst the grave. And life and light have been shed abroad among the people of the world. And we thank you that you have called us to share in your life and in your truth. You are our champion. And we give you our joyful praise. Amen.