Thank you, John. The reading tonight is Paul's epistle to the Philippians, and it's chapter 3, verses 1 to 21, and the first verse of chapter 4. And if you've got the church Bible, the page number is 1,180. And the first part of this discourse is entitled, No Confidence in the Flesh. Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again. and it is a safeguard for you. Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh, for it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh. I myself have reasons for such confidence. If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put 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 the Hebrews, in regard to the law, a Pharisee. As for zeal, persecuting the church, as for legalistic righteousness, faultless. But whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ. and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Now the next section is called pressing on towards the goal. Not that I have already obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead. I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you Only let us live up to what we have already attained. Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For as I have often told you before and now say again, even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends. Amen. May God have a blessing. Now let's turn back to the passage that John Fraser has read for us this evening from Philippians chapter 3. Particularly I want to focus our attention on Paul's very striking statement in which he says essentially, apparently summarizing his life ambition, that verse 10, he wants to know Christ. One of the amazing things about the Apostle Paul is the number of occasions in his letters where his greatest teaching emerges from one or other of the most difficult circumstances in the life of the church. The passages that we know and love best from the Apostle Paul don't, as it were, fall immediately out of heaven, but are drawn out of his soul under the inspiration of the Spirit by particular circumstances. All of us here, I imagine, know perhaps by heart the wonderful hymn of love in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. But 1 Corinthians chapter 13 is a passage that was drawn out of Paul's soul by the divisions and difficulties and the splits and indeed the pride in the situation in the church in Corinth. And earlier on in Philippians, in Philippians chapter 2, verses 5 through 11, one of the truly great passages exalting Christ in the New Testament is drawn from his soul because he's concerned about the possibility of divisions and squabbles in the church. And this confession, Philippians 3 verse 10, is drawn from Paul's soul in a situation where he is clearly concerned that there are going to be, if there are not already, people who are troubling the church. Judging by the way he describes them as dogs, which of course in his culture was not a compliment. and the way he describes them in a sense as mutilators of the flesh, he's thinking about that group of people that seemed, forgive the pun, who seemed to dog his heels almost everywhere he went in the midsection of the Acts of the Apostles. From city to city, they pursued him and sought to destroy his influence by insisting that anyone who became a disciple of Jesus Christ, if they were really going to belong to God, would need to be circumcised, would need in all likelihood to keep the Old Testament food laws and observe the Old Testament calendar in its fullness. And from time to time in the New Testament, these people keep on appearing and keep on troubling the church. and keep on distorting the message of the gospel. And one of the things Paul is especially concerned about with these people is their ambition, what drives them. And the way in which he describes them is they are driven by confidence in the flesh. And then he does something rather unusual. What he does in order to deal with these people and to teach the Philippians how they are to live for Jesus Christ is to give what essentially in the New Testament letters is the longest and most intimate version of his own Christian testimony. Now, Paul's story is told in several different places, three times in the Acts of the Apostles. Paul refers to it from time to time in several of his letters. But what makes this chapter stand out in the New Testament is that in order to deal with this situation, Paul uses himself as a kind of personal illustration. And in order to bring these Philippians to a clearer and fuller understanding of the gospel and what it means to be a Christian, he uses his own storyline as an illustration. So it's rather a unique passage. The whole of the gospel is, of course, a story. And this letter is set within the context of the development of that story. There are people sitting in the congregation when Philippians is read who are able to look across whatever they're sitting in, eye one another, maybe in the house of Lydia, which was capacious enough to hold the church. And they're able to just say without words, we remember when he came. We remember what he was like. We remember what he told us. We know we can trust him. And as they know his story, he now opens up for them probably an element of this story with which they were not familiar. There is nowhere else in the New Testament where he tells the story in this particular way. Where he is eventually going to take us to the epicenter of the drive of his Christian life. I want to know Christ. And he is by implication saying, that is the problem with the drivers and the ambitions of those who want you to be circumcised. They do not want to know Christ. And since these Philippians must have known something about Him, it must have been a thing of great fascination to them to actually hear read out to them a description of Paul's own spiritual experience that perhaps, I think in all likelihood, he had never shared with another church. It was drawn out of him because of the situation in which he found himself ministering to the Philippians. And one of the ways we can work our way through this passage is by focusing attention on this great central statement, I want to know Christ. Because what Paul does in the course of these verses is tell us, first of all, what he was before he came to know Christ. And then he gives us some hints as to how it was he came to know Christ. And then what he discovered when he came to know Christ. And then how he was transformed when he came to know Christ. So he begins with giving us some indication of what he was before he came to know Christ. He's comparing and contrasting himself with these Judaizers. And he is saying they boast in the flesh. I suppose the nearest thing we know to that socially is people who, within a few minutes of meeting us, they are either dropping names or they are telling us that anything we can do, they can do better. You may meet somebody and you're a fifth generation Aberdonian, but they are a tenth generation Aberdonian. And this is the kind of thing Paul is dealing with. And he is saying, if you want to talk trusting in the flesh, that is to say trusting in your accomplishments, your possessions, and your religious position, bring it on. Because it doesn't matter to me who you are, I know I stand head and shoulders above you with respect to the life I lived before I came to know Jesus Christ. And so you see how he puts it. He gives us an entire litany. He says, if anyone thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, in verse 4, then I myself have better reasons for such confidence. I was circumcised on the eighth day. I belong to the people of Israel. I come from the tribe of Benjamin, which of course was the tribe from which the first king had come, Saul. I am a Hebrew speaker of Hebrew speaking parents. In regard to the law, now you see he comes to his own choice and he says, in regard to the law, I chose to be a Pharisee. That is, in the language of the New Testament, he came to enter into the strictest sect of Jews. Not all was conscious, but Jews had denominations the way Presbyterians had denominations. And they didn't have quite so many, but they had a good number of denominations. And they varied from left wing and liberals to center and right of center and extreme right of center. Give that the Presbyterian label you want to give. But if you want to talk strictness of life, The Apostle Paul chose the denomination of Judaism that would furnish the strictest regulations. And as though that were not enough for him, he says, as for zeal, I persecuted the church. And as for righteousness according to the law, People regarded me and I regarded self as absolutely blameless. Actually, he says in the first chapter of Galatians, where he also reflects on his past, he says that he had advanced beyond many of his generation. I think that's actually a polite way of saying, I had advanced beyond everyone in my generation. And he is saying, I had all of that, I did all of that, I chose all of that, and at the end of the day, it comes to absolutely nothing in real spiritual terms. None of that brought me what the knowledge of Jesus Christ brought me. It's very interesting he uses the word blameless, isn't it? Because it is conscious, it is possible for an individual to feel that they are blameless. About 125 years ago, there were people who believed that the Apostle Paul was actually the rich, young ruler from the Gospels. He certainly had the same problem, didn't he? Says Jesus, if you want to inherit eternal life, he says, what do you need to do? Well, I need to keep the law. Well, keep the law. But I've kept the law from my youth upwards. What more do I need to do? Blameless in the perspective of others and in his own estimation. And isn't it interesting that when the Lord came to deal with Saul of Tarsus, as we'll see in a moment, he seemed to deal with Saul of Tarsus in a very similar way to the way in which the Holy Spirit began to deal with the rich young ruler. Blameless in his own estimation according to the law. but turns his back on Jesus and goes away with an infinite sadness in his soul. And this is one of the reasons why Paul feels he can speak out of personal experience to guard these Philippians. And of course, the young Christian And these people sound so superior. And the interesting thing is they sound in some respects so demanding, so disciplined. Circumcision soar. There are higher standards, they're saying. Yes, as the Apostle Paul, I know all about those higher standards. I rose as high, if not higher than any of them in those higher standards, but they never brought me to Jesus Christ. And now that I've come to know Jesus Christ, He says, it's almost as though I've come to know what everything that was good in the Old Testament was really pointing to, but could never in itself deliver. And these believers are saying to you, just read the first half of the book. And I'm saying to you, you need to read the second half of the book. Oh, you'll never understand where the first half of the book was going. And so, in a very personal way that probably was made easier because of his wonderful relationship with these Philippians, he's confessing to them what he was before he came to know Christ. And later on, he's going to say it counts for absolutely nothing in the presence of God. It's shattering, actually. It really is shattering. In the course of Christian experience and ministry, you come across people who have been shattered by the discovery of the gospel, because they've been brought to the place where they realize all their possessions, all their pedigree, all their accomplishments. It doesn't actually count for anything at all before the Lord. It's worthless. That raises a question. If that's what Paul was before he came to know Christ, how did he come to know Christ? Well, of course, we say, well, read the Acts of the Apostles. Three times in the Acts of the Apostles we are told how he came to know Christ. That's only partially true, isn't it? The Acts of the Apostles actually tell us almost nothing about what happened inside Saul of Tarsus. It's a story told from the outside by Luke. He's saying, look at it through my camera lens. He was seeking to destroy the church. He was going to Damascus to destroy the church. He was already well-talented in destroying the church, and suddenly he was floored by a light from heaven. He heard the voice of Christ. He was taken into Damascus. A man came, spoke the gospel fully to him, baptized him, and that's what happened. What I want to know, Paul, is what happened inside. And I think the clue here, actually, is the way in which he tells us, as he does on one or two occasions, that his zeal was so characterized that he was a Pharisee who persecuted the church. Now, we boo at Pharisees, don't we? Nasty bunch. And sometimes because we do that, we don't always notice not every Pharisee persecuted the church. Not every Pharisee persecuted the church. How do I know? Paul, Saul's professor in Jerusalem, Professor Gamaliel. We are told, when it came to the issue, should we persecute the church, his answer was, leave them alone. If this is of God, it will flourish. If this isn't of God, it will capsize. But leave it alone. In other words, it's not part of the definition of being a Pharisee, that by definition, Pharisees persecute the church, seek to destroy Christians. So my question is, why did this Pharisee do it? Why did this Pharisee have such an angry heart? The answer to that, I think, lies in his companion, his traveling companion, Dr. Luke's account of what happened before Saul was converted. Remember the story of the early church, the problem there was in the church in Jerusalem over the division of the mercy ministry. There were Hebrew speakers, there were Greek speakers. They kind of fell out with one another, and the apostles had the wisdom to appoint, interestingly, what looks like a bunch of Greek speakers. people with Greek names, to take care of the distribution of the mercy ministry so that it would be done in an equitable way. One of these men was a young man called Stephen. He appears, first of all, right there at the beginning of Acts chapter 6. Now the interesting thing about Stephen is that Stephen emerges, along with Philip, as a powerful preacher of the gospel. Incidentally, I don't think this is the first appointment of deacons in the church. Deacons are not supposed to be powerful preachers of the gospel. This is the first appointment of evangelists in the church. And Stephen is a passionate evangelist. He's not only a passionate evangelist, he has a fabulous grasp of Scripture. He's not only got a fabulous grasp of Scripture, but there's something about him. There is a wisdom and there is anointing of the Holy Spirit on this presumably younger man's life. And something very interesting happens. We are told that he was preaching with great grace and power, and then in Acts chapter 6 verse 9, we're given this little, rather boring note. Opposition arose to Stephen from members of the synagogue of the freed men, as it was called, Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria, as well as the provinces of Cilicia and Asia. These men began to argue with Stephen, but they could not stand up against his wisdom of the Spirit by whom he spoke. Maybe you're really interested in geography and in where people come from in the church and in the synagogue. But this is written for Gentiles. Why would Luke bother with this information? I think there's a very simple reason. Cilicia that's mentioned here, that's where Tarsus was. That's where Saul came from. This was an ethnic synagogue. Go to big cities, as may be true here. Is there a Korean church in Aberdeen? Is there a Chinese church in Aberdeen? Is there a Cilician synagogue in Jerusalem? Of course, that's where they go. Now, why is that so significant? I think it's significant because this is the first time in his life Saul of Tarsus, who is head and shoulders above all of his contemporaries, discovers that he's got to look up to somebody. in the handling of Scripture. They couldn't withstand his use of Scripture. They couldn't cope with the sense of God's presence in his life and in his teaching. And don't you think in that context it's significant? And this is one of the reasons why people used to think that Saul actually was the rich young ruler. I'm sure they're wrong. When Paul speaks about his own conversion again in Romans chapter 7, he tells us how there was a time in his life when he felt he was alive with respect to the law. Same thing he says in Philippians 3, blameless according to the law. And then he says, the law came, something happened in my soul, and sin revived, and I died, and I saw my need. And at the end of the chapter he's saying, so I'm crying out, who can deliver me? Jesus Christ can. But I wonder if you remember what particular commandment it was that God saw. The law came, he says. He doesn't mean the law came at Sinai. He means the law came into my conscience and smoked my conscience, and for the first time I realized I was not blameless according to the law. What was that commandment? You shall not covet. Very same commandment that came, didn't it, through Jesus' lips to the rich young ruler? If you really want to be blameless according to the law, let go of everything you have." Why would this be so significant for Saul? I think probably because the man was so gifted, the man was so committed, the man was so zealous, he looked round his contemporaries and there was nothing in them that he would covet, nothing in them he would covet. And then, as it were, out of this synagogue appears this young man, and he sees, that man has something I lack. Not only do I lack it, but I've never seen it in a contemporary the way I see it in him. Actually, that still happens, doesn't it? People who aren't Christians meet people who are Christians, and may have thought they were doing fine in life, and they meet a Christian, and there is a something about them. There's a grace about them. There's a power in their lives. And at that point, there are really only two things you can do. You either sign up and trust, or you do something to destroy. Incidentally, it's worth noting that that's how it works so often. You're in a situation and you feel, haven't you seen this, you feel there is someone or there are some people and it feels as though they're trying to destroy your faith. Why is that the case? It may well be the case because they've seen something they know they don't have, and either they must turn and trust and follow the Lord Jesus, or they must silence what troubles their conscience. And that was the route that Saul of Tarsus chose. And so we see him, the end of the saga of Stephen's death, the way in which he speaks, the very way the Lord Jesus spoke. If Saul of Tarsus knew anything about Jesus, that must have been like a dagger in his soul, that this man in his last breath was speaking words of forgiveness. How he must have resisted. as he watched it and as he held the jackets, and then we're told he went off flaming mad to destroy the church. That's the reason why when the Lord Jesus appeared to him, He didn't say, Saul, why are you trying to destroy the church? He said, it is so hard. I understand it's hard for you, Saul. But you need to know you're trying to destroy me by this persecution." And he finds himself on his face before the Lord. Lord, what do you want me to do? Who are you? And then there's this Christian, and you can understand this man who, when the Lord says, go to Straight Street, Saul's there. Not Saul, Lord. He's the man who sought to destroy us. He hasn't quite grasped. Either you seek to destroy, or you are brought to your knees before the Lord, and you seek to enter and to join and to trust and to know and to follow. And that was the story of Saul of Tarsus. It's actually a very wonderful encouragement, isn't it? I don't suppose anyone in the early church saw this the way we're able to see it because we've got the whole of the New Testament. But Stephen's death was actually after the death of the Lord Jesus and the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost, the single best thing Jesus ever did for the church. I didn't say the single best thing Stephen did for the church. It was the single best thing Jesus did for the church, because it was the means by which He brought the man who quite literally was the greatest of sinners, because it was in His grasp, humanly speaking, to destroy the infant church. And the Lord brought him home through Stephen's death. And what did he discover? Well, he tells us here what he discovered in coming to know Christ. Look at the way he describes it, for example, in verse 8. You sense the sheer enjoyment of the language he's using here, that he wants to put this in slow motion. when he speaks about the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. The surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. Actually, when Paul uses the Greek word kurios in connection with Jesus, he isn't usually speaking about his personal devotion. He's usually speaking about Jesus' divine identity. Kurios is the word, Lord, that was used in Paul's new international version of the Bible, the Septuagint. It was the word that was used about 6,000 times in the Old Testament to translate the divine name Yahweh or Jehovah. So when he says, Jesus is Lord, he's not speaking about his personal piety, he's speaking about Jesus' divine identity. But here he's also speaking about his personal devotion, isn't he? The surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord. It had said everything really, must have said everything to these Philippians. And look at the way in which he begins to unpack what that means. He says, this means that I can be found in Christ, not having a righteousness of my own that is dependent on the law, but a righteousness that comes from God and is received through faith. That's the same thing as the justification we saw in Romans 5 this morning. And he's at it again. He wants us to understand that the righteousness we receive in Jesus Christ is as indestructible as Jesus Christ's own righteousness. Because it is Jesus Christ's own righteousness. And you see all this business that they've been talking about here, this series of accomplishments. The point Paul is making is, as long as my righteousness depends on a series of my accomplishments, I can never be sure I've enough righteousness. Because I can never be sure that I've got to the end of the line, that I've finished the course. But this righteousness, this justification, this is given to me right at the very beginning of the Christian life. It can't get better. It can't get stronger. It cannot increase. It can't. Because it's His. And His righteousness cannot get better, cannot increase. cannot ever fail. And so here is what I've discovered in knowing Christ, that I'm now found in Christ. What an interesting expression, isn't it? Someone's saying, I was lost without Christ, but now I'm found in Christ, not having a righteousness of my own. I'm found in Christ, and any righteousness of my own is out there. It's in the garbage tip. the righteousness that is mine in Jesus Christ lasts forever." What a blessed relief for sinners. I mean, what a relief this must have been for a man who had actually destroyed the very lives of those who loved the Lord Jesus Christ, who had been implicated in their murder and their destruction and the breaching of their families, men and women and young people. Well, if it depended on Saul of Tarsus' blamelessness, it was in shatters. But it doesn't. He must have known these big things because he needed these big things so much. so that his guilty conscience and those voices that may have haunted him all through his life could be silenced by the justification that was his in Jesus Christ. And it's not only that, he says, there's something else I found in Christ. I found a righteousness in order that I might be justified before God. And I discovered a union with Christ. to transform my life into the likeness of Christ. And so, he says, I want to know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Now, if you just focus on that verse for a moment, verse 10 and 11, where he speaks about this, it's interesting, isn't it? He says, I want to know Christ in the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death and then like Him in His resurrection. Why does he put it this way? No Christ in the power of His resurrection, and then in the fellowship of His sufferings, in His death, and then in His resurrection, because that's the way He came to it. He came to discover the blessing of our union with Christ by meeting the risen Christ. But then, of course, He knew that the risen Christ was the dying Christ, that the exalted Christ was the humiliated Christ. And if he was going to know Christ and be found in Christ, that would mean he would share in the fellowship not only of Christ's resurrection power, but he would know something of the taste of the suffering of the cross in his life. And he wants to know this. Now put it this way, he so wants to know Jesus Christ that he really wants to be like Jesus Christ, even if indeed because that means sharing in Christ's sufferings in order that he may share in his resurrection, sharing in Christ's afflictions in order that he may share in Christ's fruitfulness. Now, when did that strike Paul? I think it must have struck Paul just as soon as he began to reflect on how his coming to faith in the Lord Jesus was the fruit of Stephen sharing in the sufferings of Christ and then sharing in the glory. I think that's where he learned this, and it's all over his letters. It was the lenses through which he viewed what it means to be a Christian. It means to know Jesus Christ, and it means the whole pattern of my life is so providentially governed by God that it's going to be shaped as an individual Christian, as a family, as a Fellowship of Christ people. There's going to be this cross-like shape in my life. That's why in the ancient days they built churches on the ground plan of a cross. because they understood that this was the divine plan in shaping and molding the lives of Christian believers. And God had given the teaching in the apostolic letters, He had given the illustration in the death of Stephen, and He had given the principle in the Lord Jesus Himself. And it's such an important thing to learn, isn't it? that I can't embrace half a Christ. I can't have a Christ who's given to me for my justification without embracing a Christ who's given to me for my transformation and for my union and communion with Him in His death and in His resurrection. And this, for Paul, is what it means to say that, I want to know Christ Jesus as my Lord, my Lord. It's breathtaking, really. I thought I became a Christian because I needed the forgiveness of my sins. And it's vastly larger than this. Paul is saying. And you see, the more he goes on, the more trivial and immature and superficial seems the teaching that's threatening these Philippians. He's saying, if anyone's in Christ, it's like a new creation altogether. The old is gone, the new has come, and it's enormously transforming in our lives. So, he tells us what he was before he came to know Christ. He gives us some hints as to how it was he came to know Christ. He tells us what he discovered once he did know Christ. And then he gives us some indication of how he was changed through knowing Christ. And this comes really in the second half of the chapter. Let me just give you the headings. What practical difference does this make? I mean, this is mind-stretching, soul-inflaming teaching from Paul. But does it really make any day-to-day practical difference? Well, here are three ways he says it does. The first is this, it produces in our souls a deeply satisfied dissatisfaction. It produces a deeply satisfied dissatisfaction. Now, that's a paradox if ever there was one, but the Christian life is that paradox, deeply satisfied in Christ. That's all I want to know. I just want to know Christ as my Lord and the sheer surpassing greatness of it. But then he goes on to say, I'm not fully there yet, and I press on until I am there. I'm not satisfied. You see, he was self-satisfied before, but actually not satisfied. Now he is gloriously satisfied and yet, yes, properly dissatisfied. You think of a young man who's fallen in love with a young woman. And he feels in a totally new way satisfied with this girl and what she is and what he's discovering about her and what he's discovering about himself in discovering her and how he has discovered himself in her. Does he say, it's been very nice to know you these last three weeks? Bye-bye. No, he is dissatisfied with the satisfaction until he can enter more fully into that satisfaction. My dear friends, if that's true of our loveliest human relationships, how much more is it going to be true of this relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ? And especially if you are a younger Christian, you must just watch out for people who tell you there is a way for you to be fully satisfied. No, you can never be fully satisfied. until this dissatisfaction that you do not yet see Him face to face and you are not finally made like Him, until that is satisfied, you will live in a gloriously dissatisfied satisfaction and a beautifully satisfied dissatisfaction. And that touches everything in my life. There's another way in which it changes us. He tells us in verse 13, it produced in him a single-minded simplicity. He says, I haven't already obtained all this or already been perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I don't consider myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind, I press on to what is ahead." Now, there's one statement in that sentence that I might have a difficulty with. It's this, Paul the Apostle saying, I'm just doing one thing. You know, he tells us at the beginning of the letter, doesn't he, that his friend Timothy was with him. Timothy's a much younger man, maybe a bit cautious, but if I were Timothy, I'd be tapping Paul on the shoulders and, come on, Paul, you know, less of the exaggeration. I've never been a day with you when you have been just doing one thing. And look at your own letters. You're in shipwrecks one day, you're coming out of Damascus in a basket, You've been given the thirty-nine lashes five times. You've been stoned. You're always writing letters. You've told these people you're always praying for them. You're making tents. You're running around the ancient world. You're bringing the gospel to the people. You're finding it necessary to leave one city and go to another city. There's not a day passed since you became a Christian that you did only one thing. And of course, Paul would turn round to me, wouldn't he, and say, you're not getting it yet, Sinclair. I'm not doing a thousand different things every day. I'm doing one thing in a thousand different ways every day. And there's a real difference. So that's a huge lesson to learn, particularly if you're younger. in a world that is so full of choices and decisions and demands and uncertainties, how are you going to be able to cope with all of these things? Well, here's the answer by doing just one thing. When Christ fills your horizon, then everything on the horizon fits in to your pursuit of Jesus Christ. So, it doesn't matter what you do, what your calling is. You're doing it in Christ, with Christ, for Christ. Whether you're a mother at home, or you work in a factory, or in a hospital, or whether you're a teacher, or a doctor, or a businessman, or a lawyer, whatever you do, you're doing a thousand things every day. At least that's what your colleagues may think. But no, no, you're doing only one thing every day. You are wanting to enjoy and pursue and make known the surpassing greatness of Jesus Christ because He has become your Lord. So, it teaches us in this amazing way a satisfied dissatisfaction. It produces a great simplicity. And the third thing it does is it teaches us a genuine spiritual accountancy, doesn't it? You notice the way in verses 7 and 8 particularly, he keeps on using the language of loss. Whatever was to my profit is actually the language of an accountant. Whatever was in the profit column, I now move over to the loss column for the sake of Christ. So he says, actually, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things, probably referring to the fact he was disinherited. all things in order that I may gain Christ. Indeed," he says, by comparison with the riches of knowing Jesus Christ, I consider them," verse 8, rubbish, that I may gain Christ. I wasn't very far away from here. I was sitting in the old library at the quadrangle at King's as a young student. Philippians was a text that we were supposed to be studying in Greek. I came to this point. I was reading the Greek text. I reached out for my blue portable Greek lexicon. to try to discover what the scholars call the semantic range of the word that Paul uses here and is translated by the New International Version as rubbish. And you know what dictionaries do. They give you a range of meanings. All language dictionaries do that. And those meanings stretch, don't they? They do in English and they do in other languages. The meaning can stretch depending on the context. And I don't think I'll ever forget, as I read to the end of this little entry on the word scoubalon, which is used here by Paul, translated as rubbish, this very distinguished Greek scholar, English, upper middle class, if not just upper class English scholar, ended the entry. as he gave us the semantic range of this word with these simple words, usually translated dumb, usually translated dumb. Does that mean that Paul despised the world and things? No, he's not saying that, is he? He's not despising the world God made and the wonderful things God made in it and the good things that it's possible to do in it, but he's saying by comparison with knowing Jesus Christ, comparatively speaking, it's like comparing dung to glory, because Jesus Christ really is that wonderful. And he's concerned, you see, he's concerned about false teaching, of course he's concerned about false teaching. But the thing he's most concerned about, think of the Philippian jailer, what must I do to be saved? Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you'll be saved. What about that rather able businesswoman, Lydia, the riverside in Philippi, the one he met first of all, Paul, tell us how we get beyond the teaching. Where is the teaching of the Old Testament going? It's going to the Lord Jesus Christ. And the Lord opened her heart, and she believed. Or that poor girl, abused and misused by wicked men, possessed by some strange spirit, to whom Paul had said in the name of Jesus Christ, leave this girl. And she's sitting there, think of them sitting there, just the three of them among the others, such different stories of life, such different stories of coming to faith in Jesus Christ. And there they are. And he's saying, don't let anything in all the world from smart people, from people who offer you more, don't let them shortchange you with this kind of stuff, he says. Because like me, you know something of the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus Christ as your Lord. That's it, isn't it? That's the place to put the punctuation sentence at the end. I used to say to our congregation in Columbia, you know that when I don't know how best to finish a sermon, I'll finish it with these words. Isn't it the most glorious thing in the world to be a Christian? Well, are you a Christian? Are you a Christian? Is Christ everything to you, in everything that you have? And if not, then yes, there is a cost. In a way, it costs everything. But it's not, at the end of the day, a loss. Because at the end of the day, everything that you lose seems like trash by comparison with the Christ that you gain. Well, may we all go on to know Him better and better, love Him more and more. Our Heavenly Father, thank you again for your Word. It is such a help to us that you have not only sent your Son to us and given your Spirit to us, but you've given us your Word, each of us now in our own hands that we're able to read and meditate on and help one another through. Most of all, we thank you that this is the Word that speaks about our glorious Savior. We want to tell you that if ever we loved you, our Jesus, tis now, and we pray for grace to love you more, and we ask it in your name.