Alright, if you will please go ahead and turn your Bibles to the Epistle to the Philippians. So Philippians chapter 3, and we are looking at verses 4 through 11. So Philippians chapter 3, beginning at verse 4, and I'll give you a moment to get there. And actually I will kind of start with verse three just to kind of help set it up a little bit better for you again, okay? So Philippians three, beginning at verse three. For we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to Zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had I counted as loss for the sake of Christ, Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the Word of our God endures forever and ever. And Father, we do thank you, Lord, this morning. We thank you for thy holy word. We pray, grant us understanding and illumination by your spirit. Father, we might hear and heed and walk in accordance with your word. Father, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Now, it can be amazing, of course, if you ever have an opportunity to hear of unbelievers who are boasting in their own way of life. I've heard, you've probably heard that many times in your life. But they have a life without God and Christ. They have a life full of sin and death. They can't even conceive of a life filled with anything else, because that is their way. In fact, they put their trust and they put their confidence and their ability to make good and bad or to do good and bad thinking that they can freely choose to do the ultimate good completely on their own. And ultimately they think that they can save themselves even from the wrath of God. As you'll hear later on sometime how they try to call out for the rocks and the hills to fall upon them to hide them from the wrath of the Lamb of God. But they think they can hide from that as long as they try to include a little dab of good works here and there once in a while, maybe give to the church or maybe give to a charity of some kind, perhaps even attend a local church at Christmas or Easter, you know, the CEOs that we talk about. But these do believe that they can look forward to eternal life in heaven no matter what. They still think, and the average American probably thinks, that they're going to go to heaven no matter what. After all, they've always heard God loves everyone the same and would never send anybody to hell. I've heard that. Or that they've heard that God unconditionally loves everyone, and if that is true, then God would never judge anyone or send them to hell. So they embrace that unconditional aspect of God's love and meaning that They have nothing to fear, then, in this world. So long as they aren't like the Boston Strangler, right, or one of those other murderers, and they think that they will go to heaven, their own hope is completely tied up to who they are and what they have personally achieved or done in this life. Now, remember the great scales of life people always talk about, you know, about the scales weighing out one side or the other. But a lot of times they still think that they are going to have enough good works or good deeds when that scale will basically tilt their good side. So they'll be able to enter heaven. So those great scales have a problem though. God will weigh that out. But the problem is the scale is already against the center. Why? The scales are against humanity because they are dead in sins and trespasses. The scales are against them and they need something beyond themselves if those scales are to tilt the other way. The scale says the sinner must die, right? And yet we know that in Christ we have life. But the sinner is spiritually dead, even where he stands, okay, wherever they might be, you'll find out that that everything that he ever did in his life was actually a loss to them. It was a loss. He doesn't know Christ, he doesn't have Christ, therefore he has no hope. And so the sinner's confidence is always in his own abilities and always in his own performance. Performance-based faith or Christianity today is quite popular, but his hope was never actually in Christ. And it's only in Christ where we find true hope. And that is where we find the true gain or the greatest gain in our lives. That is exactly where we find it in a person. Now, last time we saw that Paul was warning the church against the Judaizers, and these were the false teachers there at Philippi who were deceiving the people, okay, misleading them, leading them astray, and he warned them against these evildoers who put their confidence completely in the flesh, in other words, our own pedigree, and the glory in themselves and not in Christ. But we were called to glory only in Christ Jesus. We are called not to put confidence in the flesh as Christians, as believers. because the flesh will always let you down. And so now Paul will pit himself against these Judaizers who are teaching that, okay, you can be a Christian, but you must obey the Jewish law. You must be circumcised. You must do this, that, and the other, or you cannot go to heaven. so Judaizers who boast in their fleshly confidences and will present his own fleshly confidence against theirs. Paul's going to make a comparison, if you will, but we will see that Paul's hope is not in that at all. It's not in the confidence of the flesh. All of those things fall into the great ledger book. If you ever had accounting, you know, you put your losses on one side, your gains upon the other. And so all of those things fall into the ledger book of loss, okay? While those others on their side of the ledger is gain, a true gain. Paul has it. And so must we. And so we consider our subject this morning under these headings. First of all, Paul's past confidence in the flesh. And then secondly, Paul's greatest confidence and gain declared for us. And I do pray that the Holy Spirit, of course, touch your hearts, touch your hearts and open our hearts and minds to really see exactly what the Christian's greatest gain is and embrace it. So let's consider our first heading, which comes out of verses four through six. This is Paul's past confidence in the flesh. His background, his pre-conversion status, if you will, his confidence in the flesh. So I start with verse three again, for we are of the circumcision who worship by the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh, now verse four, Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also, if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. This is the course Paul's contra the Judaizers or Paul against the false teachers. Because these false teachers, these false teachers here, they are braggarts, they are boasters, if you will. They had a worldly confidence in themselves and they tried to boast of their own Jewish backgrounds, okay, the things that they have done, as if they were truly somebody, okay, as the old shows might say, that you're truly somebody, as if they were perhaps super apostles, but they were not at all. And so Paul here takes the time to address them. And if these braggers think that they have something to boast about with their backgrounds, Paul has a whole lot more than they do. because they would badmouth Paul to the church. They would badmouth them and try to condemn him some way or the other. Paul has a whole lot more to brag about than they do if he has to, and here he does for their sake. So Paul does as he has had to do in the past, and that is to do what? Resort to a little foolishness, if you will, for the sake of the church. Paul doesn't like to brag, he doesn't like to boast or talk about his previous life, but he does when he has to. He doesn't like to refer to his previous life back before when he did not know the Lord Jesus Christ because he was a sinner like everyone else. But for their sakes, he does this to correct these ungodly men and for the Philippian church and also for us, the body of Christ 2,000 years later. Does Paul then put his confidence in the flesh? Of course not. He does not do that. But before his conversion, he did. And he did so in a fleshly way. He had a lot of reasons to have this kind of worldly confidence, if you will. If anyone thinks they have reason for such a fleshly confidence, as he said, Paul has a whole lot more. Now, have you ever resorted to personal bragging? How is that received by people around you? They just kind of point that out. You got a lot to talk about, don't you? A lot of bragging. Have you known people who like to boast of their own achievements? Okay, they do. How about people who boast in their family heritage, perhaps, or heritage, or maybe they're born in the wealth, or maybe they're married into it. Maybe, of course, we pray we boast only in our Lord Jesus Christ, okay, as body of Christ. Paul then states the reasons that he had this confidence in the flesh from his past when he was zealous zealous as a fiery Jew could be back in that time. All this to refute the fleshly confidence of the Judaizers. He's doing this to refute them and to prove them false, really. He gives us a list of his advantages that he had in his previous life for this confidence. He was not, of course, he did not have a saving confidence, but the privileges that he enjoyed, okay? Rather, he lists these things to demonstrate that he had more to boast of than these ungodly Judaizers did. And he breaks these things down into two categories. Two categories, first of all, he breaks it down, the first one, the things that he had due to his birth. So how much he had to contribute to it? Nothing, right? Except being born, okay? So the things that he had due to his birth, and the secondly, this thing is the things that he had to do for his by his own efforts. The things that he did by his own efforts. What did he have from birth or from his pedigree, if you will, in verse five, he was circumcised on the eighth day. He was of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, okay? His parents had him circumcised. He was only eight days old. He had nothing to do with it, but it was done to him. So he was circumcised as a good Jew would be. And why would that be a big deal? Well, likely the Judaizers were trying to push circumcision onto the Christians at Philippi. Okay, that's exactly what they're doing. So not only was Paul circumcised, he is what we would call, he was like an eighth dayer. Okay, I'm an eighth dayer. I was circumcised on the eighth day according to the law of Moses. So he's an eighth dayer. He was circumcised in a very strict and complete compliance to the Jewish law. And by the way, Jesus was too. But it was something not likely said of these Judaizers. Some of these were likely to be Gentile proselytes, and so they were likely circumcised as adults there in Philippi. Now Paul excelled these men because he was circumcised on the eighth day as a child according to the scriptures, not as an adult, but that's some kind of distinction that these Judaizers would be making. Paul was born of the Israelite people, born into the tribe of Benjamin. And so he was a, what you would call a pure blood Jew. Put it this way. I was born in Houston, Texas and lived in Texas all my life. I am a pure blood Texan, all right? I got a cowboy hat and everything. I haven't had boots in a long time, but I'm a pure blood Texan, okay? So just throw that out there. Yes, I have ridden horses, but anyway, we'll talk about that some other time. But here, Paul was a pure blood Jew. He was not a proselyte, all right? He was born into this. He was a descendant of Abraham, and he was part of the chosen people of God way before the Judaizers were. Likewise, being born into the tribe of Benjamin, he was part of Israel's elite, if you will. He was part of the elite. He was part of their own aristocracy as a Jew. He was even named after King Saul, and the tribe of Benjamin was loyal to the Davidic dynasty. So it was a noble tribe. Having said that, they weren't always also noble, but in general, they were understood to be the elite and a noble tribe. So yeah, Paul is a very Jewish elite. background, that's what he has, okay? Very much so. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews. He was a purist of the pure among the Jews, right? Even in contrast to these false teachers, because they cannot boast and say that, and they don't, and they haven't. He then goes on to list the advantages that he attained in verses five and six. The advantages that he attained himself. He says, as to the law, a Pharisee. Why? He wasn't born a Pharisee. Okay, he became a Pharisee. As to zeal, he was a persecutor of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he's not boasting of that either, by the way, but for the zeal that he had. As to righteousness under the law, he says, He was blameless. These are things that he accomplished before his conversion as part of his testimony, if you will. And so Paul was a Pharisee, which by the way, was the strictest religious sect of the day. Okay, very, very strict Jewish practices, the pure ones, this kind of thing. These were of course, all of this was applied And let me say this, the pure ones as the Pharisees, they applied all the purity laws of life to themselves. They were this all the time, not just in the temple. And when they were out there on the streets, you knew they were because they made sure that everybody knew who they were when they were out there. Not only that, but Paul was a Pharisee and he was a zealous persecutor of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. zealous and even there to be present and give his amen to the death of Stephen. But he thought that this would commend him to God, okay? He did not know, he was not converted at the time, but he thought this would be a good thing that God would commend him in one way or the other, all right? So he thought this was his, essentially his straw in the hat. He said, I've got it nailed down. This is my straw in the hat. And as to his practice of righteousness under the law, He said he was blameless. He thought that he was living an exemplary life based upon the law of Moses. He thought he was all that before Christ. And yet he was blind to his own sin at the time. He was really trying to live according to God's law. And that is kind of an admirable thing that he's doing. He was trying to live according to the word of God. And so he thought he was really doing a good job at it. And then he'll be disappointed, all right, from that, but he won't really be disappointed. Well, something happened to Paul that radically changed this man, changed his life completely, because his eyes were suddenly opened about all of this. All that he thought was good, everything that he thought was gain, everything that he had in his life and done, he now considered to be one big fat loss. It was all a waste. It didn't mean anything. because of what he needed, okay? All they thought was good and gain he thought was a really a great big loss. Verse seven, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. This is that bold fiery Jew who is now a bold gospel preaching Christian. Okay, yes, he was a Jewish Christian, you wanna call him Mishanic Jew, whatever, but he was a gospel preaching Christian. He was converted on the road to Damascus, if you remember, he was there on his way to arrest the unfaithful Israelites, the heretics, they said, those who were followers of the way, followers of the Lord Jesus Christ. And so what he thought was gain was nothing now, is nothing now, just a big waste called a dung, dung hill, if you will. just a big pile of dung, and yet he now knew what his greatest confidence is. Before he had his confidence, all of his life, his flesh, his birth, his pedigree, his work, his education, everything that was there, he thought that was what made a man. And then he comes, he discovers, eyes are open, he sees Jesus, and he said, this really goes on the lost side of my ledger of life. because I just need this one thing on my ledger and that's Christ. Okay, Christ. Leading to our second heading. Look at verses eight through 11. Here Paul's greatest confidence and gain is declared for us. Now these verses also form one long sentence in the Greek and Paul does this quite a bit. The long sentences in this manner. And so Paul has already stated his superior advantages that he had. from his pure Hebrew noble birth and calling as a Pharisee. And through all of that, Paul was striving to draw nearer to God, but he failed over and over and over again because his confidence was on his own performance. His confidence was in the flesh, his confidence in his pedigree, his background, who I am. And all of that changed. He was relying on his Hebrew birth, able to say Abraham was his father, that he was a descendant of Abraham. But now, after his conversion, he says, it's all a loss. Look at verse eight. Indeed, I count everything as lost because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. Why? Because now his eyes are open to the Redeemer, his eyes are open to the Messiah, his eyes are open and he sees the Lord Jesus Christ, okay? And he believes in him, he has faith in him and he trusts in him and he's changed forever. His whole life is completely turned around, radical change of life. And that's why when he goes before the Jews later on and Herod and others as well, they're all like, what happened to you? Let me tell you what happened to me, and he does. Forever he shall dwell and know his God. For all time, forever and ever, he will sit before and know the Lord Jesus Christ. Now his sins have been washed away. Now he's clean. Things he could not accomplish before, now he's clean and pure in Christ. Because Christ is the one who washes away sin. Christ is the one who declares us pure and holy. And now he knows all that. He knows His gain. He says everything else doesn't matter. I have Christ and He is all I need. I have Christ. Compared to Christ and the knowledge of Christ, all those things meant diddly-squat and meant nothing. Look at verse eight, second part, through verse nine. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish. Now you may have dung, okay, that's the idea that's there. In order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, because that's what they thought as a Pharisee, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, a faith in the living Lord Jesus Christ. All those privileges, all those advantages that Paul had as a Jew's Jew are now emptied into the trash can because they're all rubbish now. That's quite a life changer. Quite a life changer. Why? that he may have the greatest gain, who is Christ Jesus. He desires to gain Christ and to be found in him. And yes, he is. What more can one need? What more can one desire? Only Christ, for all your needs are found in him. Your spiritual salvation, all this is found in Christ Jesus. He is your life and he is your hope. He is the Christian's greatest gain, absolutely. He is our great confidence, not the flesh, not the world, which always fails. We stand complete in Christ Jesus and in no one else and in nothing else. Now, what does that mean to be found in Christ? Good definition here from Meyer. He said, to be found in Christ conveys the language of trusting and taking refuge in something to save. Some will say, and some will one day face judgment and try to hide from the lamb. We will not hide. Why? Because we will be hidden in Christ. We are hidden in Christ who bore all of our sins away upon himself. To gain Christ is also to gain the righteousness of Christ. What Paul sought for before he knew the Lord, he sought to be righteous, but it was a worldly righteousness. And yet now, by faith, it is called to his. He has righteousness that belongs to Christ, given to him by faith. Before that, no one could have a righteousness of their own. No one was able to do so yet in Christ. We are declared righteous. Paul says, in essence, I now rely on another righteousness, which is, of course, Christ's righteousness. It is a righteousness that is ours, which is appropriate. We lay hold of it by faith in Christ. Without righteousness, no one will see God. We have the righteousness of Christ given to us, counted to us by faith and God's son, our Lord Jesus Christ. But to gain Christ also surpasses everything else. Look at verse 10, 11. I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share in his suffering, may share his sufferings becoming like him and his death. that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. And so the greatest joy is knowing Jesus, which includes the power of the resurrection, which also means sharing in his sufferings. We know him in his death and resurrection. And so the power of his death, his resurrection, the power of his resurrection is experienced in sharing in his sufferings, even his suffering and death. will give way to joy in the resurrection on that day when Jesus comes. All the sufferings of life you may have gone through, even the very death that you may have, everything will give way to joy on that day when Jesus raises us up from the dead. And Paul longs for that day. He longs for that day, even as we should too. And so the question boils down all this. Have you yourself, have you received the greatest gain in all of humanity, in all of history? Have you received the greatest gain? Have you received Christ by faith, trusting in him alone, not your performance. Performance always fails. Christ has succeeded where we failed. Do you have the righteousness of Christ that's been counted to you by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ? Because you can know Christ and the power of his resurrection. How? By faith in Christ alone. Then and only then you will have the greatest gain, who is Christ. Only then can you say, I have the righteousness of Christ, because of who Jesus is, not because of who I am, but who Christ is. The greatest gain in all of your life is attained and appropriated to you by faith in God's son, who died on the cross to save sinners just like us, so that his perfect righteous life It counted as mine and yours, a life we could not live because he was the sinless one, the pure one, God and man. And of course, we have life and forgiveness through him. Father, we do thank you, Lord, for thy holy word. And Father, we do thank you for the greatest gain that we may have in our whole lives, which is Christ and him crucified, buried, and resurrected. Father, we thank you, O Lord, for sending your son. Father, we thank you for the loving kindnesses, O Lord, that you did in doing this for our sakes. Lord, even putting him to death, O Lord, on our behalf, and yet he went voluntarily to the cross, Lord. Father, we thank you for Jesus. And Father, we pray, Lord, that we might realize our greatest gain is nothing else in this life. but your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, because through Christ we gain you, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And Father, we long and we look for that day when Jesus comes, oh Lord, the great day of the resurrection. And Father, we do pray, stir our hearts, Lord, by your Holy Spirit. Enable us, our Lord, to see and to believe. Stir our hearts, oh Lord, that we might truly walk by faith and not by sight. Father, we do ask, And we do thank you in Jesus' holy name. Amen.