Well, continuing in the book of Philippians chapter 3 and reading verses 1 through 11. 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. circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, 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 lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ, 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. Father, we thank you for your word, and I pray that you would enable me to clearly explain this passage to the congregation and for each one of us to grow in our appreciation of the incredible redemption that you have purchased for us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You may be seated. Paul begins this paragraph by saying, finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. And some liberal commentaries have kind of mocked this word finally, because there's so much more material that goes on in this book. And there's another finally in chapter 4, verse 8. And they have also wondered how on earth this command to rejoice can have any bearing whatsoever on the rest of the paragraph, which deals with very severe words against the Judaizers. And so they conclude that this must either be not authentic, very convenient, or it has been misplaced somehow in this book. They ignore the fact that there's no Greek manuscript in existence that does not have this sentence right where it belongs, right here. Now, the fact of the matter is that Paul is going to be listing all kinds of joy suckers in verses 2 through 11, and he does not want these dear Christians to allow their joy to be sucked out of them. So there is a very logical connection between the first sentence and the rest of the paragraph. Well, let's dive in. As I said, it begins, finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. And I guess I should comment on that word, finally. If you read in very much Greek literature of that period of time, the word finally is used over and over again to indicate the end of a topic, but not the end of a book. And so you'll see many finales in Greek literature throughout a book. And Paul is indeed finishing up the topic of leaders what leaders to follow and what leaders to avoid. In chapter 2, he's already shown to us that he wants them to be imitating the leadership of Jesus, of Timothy, and of Epaphroditus. And in this chapter, he's going to be saying, avoid like the plague the kind of leadership that I'm going to be describing in this chapter. And so then comes the other phrase that liberals have puzzled over, rejoice in the Lord. Now, I find incredible comfort in that phrase. And what is so encouraging to me is that Paul never commands something that God does not give the grace to supply, that he doesn't enable us to do. These Philippians were undergoing persecution from without, and they were undergoing the undermining of the faith by the Judaizers from within, and so their environment was not conducive at all to natural joy or happiness. Of course, Paul's not talking about natural joy or happiness. What is he talking about? Well, he's already given us three hints. First, Paul uses an imperative ongoing tense of the Greek verb for rejoice to indicate that this joy must be a constant reality in their lives no matter what their circumstances might be. That's the first hint. This is not a natural joy. It's almost identical to Paul's command in 1 Thessalonians 5.16, which says to rejoice always, okay? So how can God command them to rejoice when all of their circumstances militate against rejoicing. And you might wonder the same thing from time to time. How can I rejoice when my insurance company did not pay out nearly as much as it cost to replace my roof? How can I rejoice when a loved one no longer wants to be around me? How can I rejoice when I'm perpetually in pain, or sick, or poor, or so busy I can't get enough sleep? They're all good questions, and they're probably questions you've at least from time to time silently thought in your head when you have had down times. But it's precisely the difficulty of maintaining joy in difficult circumstances that drives us to the next point in your outline, Paul is calling for a joy that we cannot conjure up in our own strength. This is not a natural joy or happiness that results from circumstances. Notice that Paul commands them to rejoice in the Lord. That's the next hint that this is a supernatural joy. It's only as they're brothers in the Lord, which is another hint, that they can have access to this supernatural joy in the Lord. So the in the Lord indicates both the source of their joy as well as the reason for their joy. And the reason for their joy was not pleasant circumstances. Paul had already told them in chapter two that the Christian life that we are called to is a supernatural life that cannot be lived out in our own strength. The Judaizers denied that, okay? They were good at pretending to be righteous, and they were imposing all kinds of legalistic rules upon the church at Philippi. And by legalistic, I mean they're rules that are not found in the Bible, right? They're adding to the Bible. And yet, despite these joy suckers, Paul insists that they maintain their joy in all circumstances. And out of the carnal mind, that does not make sense. And even we Christians can sometimes find ourselves robbed of joy that we previously had because we've allowed circumstances to dictate our joy or our lack of joy. But this is a joy that is in the Lord, and it is in him alone. And so the second sentence begins, for me to write the same things to you is not tedious. Paul has told them about this before. But he has to remind them again. And the word tedious implies that he's had to remind them of this truth over and over again. And when I'm feeling down, I have to remind myself not to allow people or circumstances or poor health to rob me of my joy. There are constant joy suckers out there and I would encourage you to all remind yourselves of this call to supernatural joy when you begin to complain about your circumstances or maybe you're tempted to get bitter. We need to remind ourselves we are called to fight for this joy in the Lord. I often do so, as I've mentioned before, by thanking God in all circumstances and even for all circumstances that God has brought to me, and worshiping Him and praising Him for His kindness. Somebody told me this past week, we all deserve worse, and His mercies are new every morning, and I say amen, amen to that. When someone has sinned against me, I thank God for God's forgiveness of my sin against Him. It kind of gives perspective. I thank Him for my salvation, that I'm still alive, for a wonderful family, for adequate finances, anything else that I can think of to thank Him for. I even thank Him for trusting me with those difficult circumstances themselves. And we've talked about this before. But just as Paul reminds them, I have to keep reminding you and myself as well. We tend to forget. In any case, when I begin thanking God by faith, I feel God's supernatural joy being poured out into my heart once again. Okay? And it's faith that receives it, and thanksgiving is just one manifestation of joy. Unless the Philippians think, okay, this is just nice sounding pie in the sky, pious words that have no relationship whatsoever to real life, Paul adds, but for you it is safe. This is important. This is for their safety. The whole of verse 1 again. 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. What does he mean, it is safe? Now some think that Paul is only talking about avoiding all of the false doctrines that the Judaizers are giving, that he talks about in the next verses, but it's really the whole package, including being robbed of joy by them. And the Philippians were experiencing many potential joy suckers. We're going to look at those joy suckers in a bit. But I want you to take seriously the fact that your spiritual safety is at stake if you allow yourself to be without the joy of the Lord for days and weeks at a time. In fact, so serious is this loss of spiritual joy, I would advise you to Fight every joy robber as soon as you find the joy departing from your heart. Now, how do we get into these dangerous waters of a joyless Christianity? We'll look at some reasons, but he's already given a couple in chapter two. Pride is one of them. When prideful people don't have others stroking their pride, they lose their joy. And so Paul's already told us, crucify your pride, put on humility. If you're a humble person, those joy robbers, they can't rob joy from you at all. And likewise, Paul talked about faith. Faith receives things from God. In contrast, complaining Feeling devastated, becoming disillusioned, disheartened, wanting to give up, becoming bitter, that can begin to evaporate our faith. And as our faith is evaporated, we begin to lose our joy as well. So it's a constant danger we need to be on guard against. So again, if you've lost your joy, go back to the joy giver. Well, let's move on to Paul's warnings about the joy suckers, or what I've called in the outline, the joy thieves. And your joy suckers might be totally different than the ones that they were experiencing here, but even these ones, I think, have practical applications for our lives. Interestingly, all commentaries agree that the group of people that Paul is talking about are the Talmudic Judaizers. Now, obviously, the written form of the Talmud was not written down yet for another couple decades. In our Revelation series, we saw that Yohanan ben Zakkai, he simply took all of the traditions of the fathers and of the Pharisees and he put them together into a book. That's the Talmud. And so I think it's perfectly legitimate to call these Jews Talmudic Judaizers, even though the Talmud itself had technically not been written. But it was exactly the same demonic religion. And they were undermining the joy of the Philippians in a number of ways. Now most of our modern churches don't have these Judaizers in them. Some do, but most do not. So the question comes, can we ignore the word beware at the beginning of verse 2? And I would say absolutely not. Satan is clever, and he comes up with all kinds of ways of introducing the same joy-sucking compromises into Christianity. Let me just give you three hints, and I could give you a lot more, but Gary told me to keep this sermon real short. Let me give you three hints of ways that we need to beware today. The first is racism. The Judaizers treated Gentiles as second-class citizens, and many of them actually said, you can't be a Christian unless you're a Jew. You can't be saved unless you're a Jew. Well, you can imagine that this racism could have been a potential joy sucker. Is there racism today? Yeah, there is. And any people who have been a minority, who have experienced prejudice against them, they're at an emotional disadvantage if they don't have access to God, the ultimate joy giver. Second, these Talmudists denied the sufficiency of scripture. They insisted that all Christians had to keep the Pharisaic traditions of the fathers. Now, you might think that this problem doesn't exist today, but it actually does. And I'll give you two quite opposite examples of this. And both of them are treating the Bible as not being sufficient. Many Christians treat Greek and Roman classics as being an essential component of Christian education, little realizing that they are pounding pagan presuppositions into their children's minds day after day after day. You know, I don't believe in classical education or in public education. It may be controversial, but I believe if you're not grounding your kids in the Bible first and in biblical education, they won't have the discernment to be able to discern what's truth and what's error in the things that they read. Now, there are some that are exactly like the Philippian church. Some Messianic Judaism churches, many Hebrew roots congregations study the Talmud. And then they read the Bible through the eyes of the Talmud. Well, this undermines a confidence in the sufficiency of scripture, which, as we'll see in a moment, is a major joy sucker. Third, just as Talmudism insisted on faith plus works being needed for justification, federal vision, sometimes called the new perspective on Paul, robs people of the joy of assurance of our salvation by subtly redefining faith as faithfulness. In other words, works done by faith and by pushing justification off into the future, what they call final justification at the end of our lives. Well, that's just a misunderstanding of James, who is talking about the evidence of justification. In contrast, Federal Vision argues that Paul's critique of works in this book and in Galatians was only targeted against Jewish exclusivity, not faith plus works and justification. So it's a much more subtle form of a denial of sola fide, but it does dilute the doctrine of justification being through the imputed righteousness of Christ received in a moment of time by faith alone. And you can understand why that would remove assurance and joy. In fact, I would say that any watering down of the five solas of the Reformation are automatically going to suck that supernatural joy out of the lives of Christians. Those five scriptural solas, they form a foundation on which we can stand, maintain our joy. Let me go through the five solas. Sola Scriptura means Scripture alone. It affirms that Scripture alone can define what is a truly Christian approach to anything. Now, obviously, the Judaizers denied that, but are there similar denials today? Yes, there are. I could show you numerous books on counseling, Christian counseling, that are used in seminaries, that are practiced by pastors in their churches, that are called Christian Skinnerianism, following the pagan Counselor Skinner, or Christian Rogerianism, following the Christian, I mean, the pagan Counselor Rogers, or Christian Freudianism, following the pagan Counselor Freud, or Gestalt therapy, and on and on. What they're basically doing is they're putting the Bible plus a system that has presuppositions not from the Bible. And yet they insist if you do not submit to their system of counseling, you're not going to have wholeness. So they're looking to a different source of joy and different methods for receiving joy. Let me give you another example. In civics, you can read books that claim to be Christian anarcho-capitalism, or Christian libertarianism, or Christian constitutionalism, or Christian socialism, or Christian Marxism. Believe it or not, there's one book out there that claims to be Christian Maoism. I don't know how they can claim that. You know, Mao is such an anti- Christ figure. But anyway, it's the Bible plus an outside system that defines what it means to be a Christian. And most of those systems have produced untold problems in the last two centuries. I won't get into it more, but just as Talmudism was a joy sucker because it added rules to the Bible, all modern forms of legalism are also joy suckers. Sola fide is the second sola of the Reformation. It means that our justification is received by faith alone. Now, the Bible does call us to good works. It does. But we are saved unto good works. It's not the good works themselves that save us. Once we are saved, we work out our salvation that we already have. We work it out by being sanctified. Now, this is obviously compromised by Roman Catholicism, but it is to some degree compromised by federal vision, which emphasizes a conditional covenant that requires the faithfulness, that's different than faith, the faithfulness and the perseverance of the baptized person for its efficacy and for their final justification. Now, sola fide is also denied by five-point Arminians who think you can lose your salvation over and over again. All of these denials of sola fide remove assurance of our salvation, which in turn robs people of joy. And I'm not going to get into it in detail, but the other three solas get into that as well. I'll just skip over some of this material. But sola gratia, if you're taking filling out your blanks there, means grace alone, solus Christus means Christ alone, and soli deo glory means to the glory of God alone. So even though we don't have the same dangerous people that the Philippians had, We've got other manifestations of exactly the same problem. So watch what leaders you read or expose yourself to on the media. I want you to see that even though the Talmudic Judaizers claim to be Christians, call themselves brothers, Paul mints no words when he describes them in verse 2. He says, beware of dogs. Ouch. Beware of evil workers, beware of mutilation. I mean, each of those words showed that Paul had absolutely no patience with these fake brothers who were undermining the faith. The Jews often referred to Gentiles as dogs, and Paul turns it around and uses it of these Talmudic Judaizers. One commentary explains, It says, he envisioned the packs of ravenous dogs which roamed the countryside eating whatever they could. They were scavengers. With this definition, Paul may have implied that they were simply following him, anxious to pick up those who were not theologically grounded after his missionary activity. Obviously, Paul spoke in irony, turning the tables on these false teachers. The next phrase, evil workers, turns upside down their contention that if the Christians in Philippi did not follow all of the Jewish burdensome traditions and laws, which could not be found in the Bible, they could not consider themselves to be righteous. Well, ironically, by contradicting the Bible, they were the ones who were the evildoers. Anytime Christians add rules to the Bible and then insist you have to keep those rules to be a Christian, they are evil workers, ironically. The next deception, the mutilation, is a reference to their insistence that every Christian must be circumcised. Now, this was a requirement that they at least thought that they could find in the Bible. But they were not reading their Old Testament very well when they said this, because Deuteronomy was very clear that both believing Jews and believing uncircumcised Gentiles covenanted together with God. And that demonstrates that circumcision was obviously not a means of salvation in the Old Testament. So it mentions a believing Edomite, believing Egyptian, and other believing foreigners that are called your brother in Deuteronomy 23.7. And those Gentiles entered into covenant with the Lord in Deuteronomy 31.12, side by side with Jews. Ezekiel 47 prophesies that in the new covenant, there will be zero difference between Jews and Gentiles, believing Gentiles, uncircumcised Gentiles who are believers. no difference whatsoever. And so when God made circumcision non-essential to salvation in the Old Testament itself, it was wrong to insist that these Philippians couldn't be saved without getting circumcised. So rather than calling circumcision a sign of the covenant anymore, Paul calls it mutilation. It's mutilation because it was an unnecessary cutting of the flesh. Why was it unnecessary? Well, he's going to go on to explain in verses three through six. But before I give a very quick overview of those verses, I want to point out that not all name calling is a bad thing. Paul calls these teachers dogs, evil workers, and the mutilation. Is that hate speech? And I would say, no, it's the exact opposite. It's the exact opposite. Such identification was essential in order to protect the Philippians from being victimized by them. Because those Judaizers denied the fundamentals of Christianity, Paul refused to call them Christian leaders, even though they no doubt called themselves Christians. And so I would say, in the same way, it's OK to label full preterists as heretics, because they are denying fundamentals of the faith. Some of them recently are becoming Gnostics in their view of God's relationship to the physical reality. It's not unkind at all. It's protecting true Christians from thinking that denying the fundamentals of the faith is OK. It's OK to label Roman Catholics as papists, which they used to do. because the Pope is their highest authority. It's not the Bible. It's okay to label abortionists as murderers because that is exactly what they are. To soft-pedal some abortions as necessary is to undermine the fundamentals of the Bible. So here's the point. So long as your name-calling has the right motive, goal, and is an accurate representation of the situation, it's okay. And people might label that as hate speech, but it's the exact opposite. To soft-pedal grievous rebellion against Christ does not bring repentance to the Judaizers, so it's not loving to them. And it does not protect the victims, so it's not loving to them either. But let's look at Paul's answer to these Talmudic Jews in verses 3 through 6. First, Paul points out that it has always been circumcision of the heart that counted for salvation, not circumcision of the flesh. Paul says, for we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. That last phrase is very important, have no confidence in the flesh. And the Judaizers should have known that this was the case if they had read their Old Testament, especially the passages that talked about circumcision of the heart in the Old Testament. Deuteronomy 10.16 treated Jews in Moses' day who weren't believers as uncircumcised in heart because they denied what their circumcision was supposed to point to. See, their outward circumcision, just like this baptism, was to point them to God, who alone could circumcise or regenerate their hearts. And so in Deuteronomy 36, Moses says, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. It's basically saying, apart from heart circumcision, you can't even claim to love God. Jeremiah 4.4 and other passages indicate it's heart regeneration that counts, not outward circumcision. And so those Judaizers weren't even following the Old Testament. Now in Romans 2.29, Paul says, he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from men, but from God. Now, it's not as if outward circumcision can't ever be done. Paul was circumcised. He circumcised Timothy just so he could be a more effective witness among Jews. But the moment anybody insisted that circumcision was necessary for salvation, which is what they were trying to do with Titus, wow, it was anathema to Paul. It was tantamount to trusting in the flesh for salvation. In any case, the Bible indicates in the new covenant, circumcision was done away with as far as a sign of the covenant, forever done away with. Baptism that previously accompanied circumcision continued, and it replaced circumcision forever. And I think Colossians, it was written, was three years before Philippians was written. There was a whole bunch of New Testament books that were, Philippians would have had access to. And so they would have known these things. One of the reasons why he's so brief in this book is they already had a ton of material that they could know, and he's just referring them to that. Okay, let's see here. In verses four through six, he says that, Basically, lest they think he's just a whining Gentile sympathizer, Paul now proves he knows exactly what he's talking about. He had previously been more Talmudic and Jewish than those Talmudic Judaizers. As a former Pharisee of the Pharisees, Paul had kept the Talmudic rules way better than most of the Pharisees, and yet he knew he was still unsuccessful in achieving salvation by his own efforts. Look at verses four through six. Though I also might have confidence in the flesh, If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so. Circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, concerning the law, Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. In other words, he had been a better Talmudist than them all, and yet he was thoroughly unsaved. He's making a huge point with that. And so in verse seven he says, but what things were gained to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Paul knew that he could not gain Christ through works. He could only gain Christ by grace through faith in the finished merits of Jesus. And when you doubt your salvation, you need to keep returning to the fact that we are justified by trusting Jesus alone. Your feelings are irrelevant. Demons can manipulate your feelings. Keep going back to the promises of scripture, the promises of a God who cannot lie. But that naturally transitions into joy thieves who added to Christ. Paul came to realize anything we add to Christ is rubbish. It counts for nothing. Verse eight says, yet indeed, I also count all things lost for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ. You can't get to heaven by doing even good works like devotions and memorizing scripture, praying, attending church faithfully, et cetera, if those things are a substitute for trusting Jesus completely and 100% for salvation. Now, what are some modern examples of things that have substituted for Christ, sometimes without even realizing it? Well, Roman Catholicism insists that their sacraments of baptism and Eucharist and confession are salvific. In other words, they're necessary for salvation. They also insist that you have to pray to the saints, pray to Mary, pray to other mediators. They also insist that good works are needed alongside of faith for a person to be justified, implying what? That Christ's blood sacrifice was not sufficient. Their sacramentalism makes salvation to be mediated through rituals rather than through Jesus. So there's a lot of ways in which they add to Jesus. I'm going to skip over the next one. Here's another one. Prosperity gospel insists that if you have faith, faith will lead to financial gain, health, and success in life. And what is the focus? It's not on Christ, it's on faith. It's a kind of having faith in your faith. And so faith becomes a transactional means to earn divine favor and shifts the focus from Christ to what faith can gain. Now it's subtle, but I think it's there. I've already mentioned the next one, won't go over that. Fundamentalist legalism, now it doesn't deny sola fide or solus Christus, but it does add all kinds of rules that cannot be found in the Bible. And these rules relate to dress codes, abstaining from makeup, abstaining from wine, which God has blessed, other markers of their so-called righteousness. And these are genuine believers, these fundamentalists, but they have subtly robbed believers of joy and freedom by adding all kinds of man-made rules. So Paul concludes in verses 9 through 11 that anything that takes the focus off of Christ can rob us of joy, and that the true basis of joy is found in Christ alone. In verse 9, he focuses on knowing Jesus in justification, 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. Now justification completely frees us from God's condemnation. We will no longer face the penalty of hell. We are forever freed from condemnation. And we can sing, yes, hallelujah. I'm never going to have to appear before the bench of God's courtroom of heaven. Nothing we can add to Christ's righteousness because it's a perfect righteousness, not a thing we can add. So being declared not guilty is the greatest joy a person can have. Romans 8 verse 1 says, there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. And when you realize that, you have every reason for joy. And I'm going to skip over a little bit, especially a long quote from a commentary that was pretty lovely, but we're going to try to save some time. Now, this is so foundational to maintaining joy in the Lord. It's critical that our children understand justification. It is our sins being legally given to Jesus and Him being punished for them. And that's once and forever. And then His righteousness being given to us and we being freed from punishment because we're now treated legally as righteous. And that's once and forever. And we've been recently going through that in our catechism. That's a solid basis for joy. In verse 10, Paul moves on to sanctification, which refers to the progressive growth we have in holiness. That's quite different from justification, but it immediately follows after justification, and it gives evidence that we are new creatures. Now, here's the point of the logic of this paragraph. If you are secure in justification, you will have the joyful basis for pursuing holiness, even if your sanctification is imperfect, which it always will be, right? So you can still continue to pursue that because you are secure in justification. So our legal righteousness is the joyful foundation for joyfully pursuing holiness. Now, there is added joy in progressively becoming more and more like Jesus. The moment we're justified, God begins to change us by his grace, produce within us a yearning to become more and more like him, and we call that sanctification. Now, Paul emphasizes that even our sanctification is only possible because of God's power working in us by means of Jesus. It's not self-improvement. It's supernatural. Even though our efforts are involved in sanctification, it is an effort that is enabled by grace. So take a look at verse 10. That I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death. Whether we suffer or not, we've looked at that before, we need his resurrection power to work in us day by day. Let me quote from Kent Homer, who I think explains this rather well. He says Paul wants to know experientially the power of Christ's resurrection. He's not thinking only of the divine power that raised Christ from the dead, but the power of the resurrected Christ now operating in the believer's life. This power enables believers to live a new life, Romans 6.4, because they've been raised with Christ, Colossians 3.1, Ephesians 2.5. And I love the way that James Montgomery Boyce connects, tightly connects, joyful sanctification with the earlier joyful justification. He says, the power of Jesus Christ is a great reality. Many have come to know it. That is why Christians sing, he breaks the power of canceled sin. He sets the prisoner free. His blood can make the foulest clean. His blood availed for me. Above all, Paul wanted to experience the resurrection power of Jesus Christ over sin daily as he strived to live a holy life before God. But then Paul moves on to show that even our final glorification in heaven is by grace. Now theologians speak of this as happening at the resurrection when even our bodies are raised into glorified bodies. We no longer sin. We're able to perfectly follow God's plan in our lives. But the same logical progression can be seen in glorification. You cannot separate glorification from the earlier sanctification or from the earlier justification. They're a golden chain that all belongs together. Verse 11 says, if by any means, or as the New American Standard I think more clearly renders it, In order that, I may attain to the resurrection of the dead. The in order that points back to the first two doctrines, justification, sanctification, as the ground for being assured of the third, glorification. So there are three stages to Christ's resurrection power working in us. At conversion, there is a spiritual resurrection to life of our souls, which brings unbelievable peace and joy. As we are united to Jesus by faith, we are justified. In sanctification, Christ's resurrection power is working in us to make us more and more holy, which makes us grow more and more into the joy of the Lord. And then the final stage is Christ's resurrection power will raise our bodies from the dead, glorify us so we no longer sin, we're perfectly conformed to God's plan. And that will be what scripture describes as indescribable joy that is full of glory. As Psalm 1611 words it, in your presence is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Hallelujah. It's a golden chain of... Salvation is a golden chain of joy at every point. It's initial joy, it's growing joy, it's final joy that is indescribable and full of glory. And so this whole section shows us how to avoid the joy thieves that are all around us. Paul wants your joy, he wants your peace, he wants your victory, but you can only have it in Christ. So, brothers and sisters, stick close to Christ, believe his promises. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word, and I pray that you would help us to live faithfully in terms of it. We know we can so easily be inconsistent, to forget your promises, to begin to lack our assurance and lack joy. But Father, I desire your joy to be resident in each one who is in this congregation. So we pray for your blessing to that end. In Jesus' name, amen.