Free From Me

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0:00Morning, church. My name is Jacob Jackson. I'm the pastoral assistant. If I haven't met you, I'm so glad that you're here. Isn't it great to see all the kids running out to their classes? It's a blessing. Well, speaking of kids, whenever we were kids, me and my brothers, we watched a lot of action movies. And after the movies were over, I would always pretend to do the crazy things that we saw the hero do. But my brother, Stuart, would actually try to do the things. All right. Can you guess which one of us had more scars? One movie we watched had bungee jumping in it. And my brother decided that he was going to bungee jump from the second story of our tree house. Here's the most important part about bungee jumping. The rope has to be bungee. Okay.

0:59A regular rope does not work as we find out. My brother, he put a lot of confidence in his expertly crafted bungee jump apparatus that he made himself. All right. Which consisted of a rope tied to a tree and then the other end tied around his waist. Now in his mind, he was going to jump and the rope would save him. But in reality, the rope was really the most dangerous part of the whole ordeal. So I'm standing at the bottom. My brother leaps. Gravity does its thing. And the non bungee rope slips up his body and tightens, thankfully, under his armpit and his neck. And he's hanging there like this. Okay. Uh, and trying to scream. So I ran to get dad. He was okay. He was just a little bruised up. See, my brother put his confidence in the wrong place. And in our passage today, Paul warns us against making the same mistake. Let's read the passage together. This is Philippians three, one through 11. This is the, the holy word of God. It's the matchless word of God. It's the living and active word of God. Read with me. Finally, my brothers rejoice in the Lord to write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. Look out for the dogs, look out for the evil doers. Look out for those who mutilate the flesh. 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,

3:04a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law of 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 I 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 in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I might attain the resurrection from the dead. See, Paul is giving a warning to the Philippians. And by extension, he's giving that warning to us that we need to hear because the real temptation in this text is something you and I certainly struggle with. And the word begins by giving us our application. The main thing we're supposed to do in response to the word in this passage, we are to rejoice in the Lord. Why?

4:28Well, verse three tells us why. Paul says rejoice in the Lord because we're the circumcision who worship by the spirit of God. We glory in Christ Jesus. And he says, we put no confidence in the flesh. We're to put no confidence in our flesh. And in verse two, he says, look out for the dogs. Okay. So he says, rejoice in the Lord. Look out for these things, the dogs, the evildoers, those who mutilate the flesh. And then he tells us why we're looking out. Verse three is interpreting verse two for us. We're not talking about literal dogs. Okay. We're not talking about evil people or people who might want to cut you. I mean, look out, look out for those things too. Okay. But what Paul has in mind is more dangerous than the literal meaning of these things, because the danger that we're being warned about is putting our confidence for salvation in our own flesh. We're being warned about rejoicing in our own ability to be righteous, our own ability to be morally acceptable to God.

5:31Paul is warning the Philippian believers against the false teaching of the Judaizers. That's what he's mentioning in verse two, when he says, look out for these people. These were Jewish Christians who said that Jesus is necessary for salvation, but you also need to follow the law of Moses and you need to be circumcised. Friends, let me tell you, Jesus plus anything else equals a false gospel. And a false gospel is not good news because a false gospel cannot save us. Jesus plus anything, even something as important as circumcision was, is a blending of Jesus's efforts and our own. Circumcision was required under the law of Moses. It was an act of worship that God required of man, but the significance of circumcision was who it pointed to. Circumcision pointed to Jesus. And when Jesus, the sign, when Jesus came, the sign of circumcision was no longer needed because the substance of the sign had come. Circumcision was a, it was a bloody sign and it pointed to the need for, for sin and humanity to be separated in order for humanity to be in relationship with God. But when Christ redeemed his people on the cross by his own perfect blood, by his, his own righteousness, the Mosaic law passed away because Jesus fulfilled it on our behalf by keeping it for us. This is the good news of the gospel that you and I won't be judged for our sin because Jesus traded his keeping of the law for our breaking of the law. And he died in our place and he didn't stay dead. Did he church? Three days later, he rose from the dead, defeating the condemnation of

7:28death for all those who look to his righteousness to save them. That's why this passage is so important to us. What we're being warned against here in this text is our temptation to turn away from the free grace of the gospel and instead to turn toward an inadequate righteousness that's built on our own strength in our own flesh. It's, it's a temptation to misplace our confidence. And there's two people this morning who need to heed this warning. Those who have never put their faith in Christ.

8:06Those who try to build up a life of being a good person in hopes that you'll be acceptable to God. That's number one. And also this is a warning for those who have placed their faith in Christ. But maybe you're drifting in where they place their confidence. Maybe their actions and the way they're living their life proves that their confidence is really in their own strength more than the Lord's. The danger here is for a believer to have a disordered heart.

8:37A disordered heart always produces a disordered life and disordered worship. And so it's a warning for those who believe and trust in Jesus as well. Don't put your confidence in the flesh. Putting confidence in our own strength though, even as I'm saying this, we know church, it doesn't provide any real security, does it? It doesn't provide any real peace. Doesn't not lasting peace, but I have good news for you. There is a much better person for you to put your confidence in than yourself. You, you can be free from you. Okay. Friends rejoice because Jesus has given us his own righteousness. So in the rest of this passage, I want us to see two major truths that, that I hope will dissuade us from putting our confidence for salvation and the strength of our own flesh. One, I want us to be aware of temptations for false confidence. And two, I want us to see that Jesus is our true confidence. Amen. Pray with me real quick. Lord, this is your word. And as we've already said, it is holy. It's living and active. And Lord, we come to you seeking that you would work in our hearts. Show us glorious things about you, Lord. Show us our own hearts. Grant us conviction and repentance, Lord. Do a mighty work in us, Father. We come to you seeking for you to do work in us. We love you. It's in your name we pray. Amen. So when we think of false teachers and looking out for false teachers, I think we naturally think about looking for this danger outside of ourselves.

10:22But Paul here in verses four through six, what he does instead is he, he turns the lens inward and he inspects his own heart and he reveals what he found confidence in outside of Jesus. And here in these verses, Paul makes you and I aware of three places. I think we're tempted to have false confidence. Paul says, if anyone has reason to feel confident in the flesh, I did. And it was in these things that I placed my confidence. Number one, we're tempted to have confidence in our identity. Look at Philippians three, five. He says, I was circumcised on the eighth day. I was of the people of Israel. I was of the tribe of Benjamin. I was a Hebrew of Hebrews.

11:06That's who I was. See, God chose that the Messiah would come through the Jewish people and he set them apart from all other people in the world. And Paul belonged to that group of people. And not only that, but he belonged to the tribe of Benjamin. And in Israel's history, when the kingdom of Israel split, the tribe of Benjamin stayed loyal to King Rehoboam and the kingly lion of Judah. They were considered a faithful tribe. It was a point of pride for Paul. It's why he mentions it. And for Paul and the other Jews, just simply being Jewish was a source of false confidence. In the Gospels, Jesus regularly rebukes the Jewish people who are breaking God's law. And their response is almost always, we're sons of Abraham. We belong to the right people. Who are you talking to, Jesus? We're not Gentiles.

12:01And you and I are tempted to do the same sort of thing, to put a false confidence in belonging. Now, we probably don't appeal to our ancestry, but maybe we appeal to where we went to school. Maybe we point at where we work and what kind of position we hold. Maybe we take pride in where we can send our kids to school versus other people or what clubs we belong to or how nice our hobby equipment is. Like if I show up on the pickleball court with my knockoff paddle, will you judge me?

12:42Will you feel more superior? I'm pretty sure Deer for Me is not an actual brand of pickleball equipment. It was cheap though. Listen, maybe it's our clothes, the right kind of shoes, the right kind of shirts, the clothes that the right kind of person wears. Maybe it's who we voted for or what we choose to eat or not eat or drink or not drink. And I could go on and on and on because the options are endless. They're just different versions of the same false confidence. I'm this kind of person, which is the right kind of person. Surely God will accept me. So Paul says, be careful not to put your confidence in your identity. He continues, says, be careful not to put your confidence in your beliefs.

13:39So not only is he circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, but just to top it off a little more, he says, as to the law, I was a Pharisee. See, Paul was a Pharisee. That's opposed to being a Sadducee. Pharisees and Sadducees were religious political parties with different beliefs about the same scriptures. For instance, the Pharisees believed in a resurrection and the Sadducees didn't. That's why they were sad. You see, I know that joke is proof of sin. Okay. Paul says, I was a Pharisee. I believe the right things.

14:26I was a Pharisee. I had the right beliefs. And here too is a temptation that you and I face to be on the right side of belief because the right kind of people, they have the right kind of beliefs. And the span of this temptation is just as vast. It's just as hollow as well as the first. The scope of this can be as benign as what sports teams we support to as serious a topic as the sanctity of human life. There's one thing that's for sure though. We all have opinions and we're all tempted to define whether a person is good or bad depending on what they believe.

15:09And oddly enough, usually the good people believe what we believe. We can very easily, friends, base our righteousness on what we believe or don't believe, what we support or don't support. We can very easily get a moral sense of superiority over others and place our confidence there. We see examples of this all throughout Scripture. In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells a story about two men praying in the temple. One is a tax collector and one is a Pharisee. And he says the Pharisee standing by himself prayed like this to God. God, I thank you that I am not like other men. Extortioners, unjust, adulterers, even like this tax collector over here. Friends, you and I are lying to ourselves if we say we don't ever look at others with beliefs they have and think, I'm better than that person.

16:11At least I'm not like them. See, the temptation behind it is the same that Paul's highlighting here. To have confidence not based on Christ, but instead in our flesh. In this instance, by having the right beliefs. See, the heart that gives into this temptation says, I'm a righteous person because I believe the right things. I have the right knowledge. Listen, I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to understand our Bibles. Don't hear me saying this and go, I don't need to read my Bible.

16:48I'm not saying we don't need to have a right understanding of the word or that we we shouldn't have conversations about theology. What I'm saying is that getting it right doesn't make you righteous. Right beliefs do not make you acceptable to God. Correct beliefs matter, but they're not a source of our confidence when we stand before a holy God. So we're tempted to place our confidence in our identity. We're tempted to place our confidence in our beliefs.

17:20Thirdly, Paul says we're also tempted to place our confidence in our actions. He continues in Philippians verse six. He says, as to zeal, I was a persecutor of the church. As to righteousness under the law, get what he says here, blameless. You remember the Pharisee from Luke that I was just mentioned? The next thing he says after thanking God for not being like the tax collector is that he appeals to the things that he does. He says, I'm not like that man.

17:56I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get. In short, I do the right things. You can tell I'm a righteous person because I do the right things. And here again, church, you and I are tempted to base our righteousness on our own strength to do the right things. I follow the law. I'm respectful to people. I work hard to provide for my family. I don't bother anybody. I take care of my parents. I don't even curse. I'm nice to dogs.

18:36And here too, the list could just go on and on and on. But hear me, there is no righteousness outside of the righteousness of Jesus Christ. All of those found in Christ are truly righteous, but it's not a righteousness of our own. It's Jesus's righteousness applied to us. Our ledgers were full of debt and he paid it all. Paul says, I thought I was righteous because of my actions. I was zealous. I thought I was persecuting the enemies of God. I worked hard to be blameless under the law to do the right things.

19:16I took confidence in the fact that I did the right things. And you and I are tempted too. To think that we're good people that deserve the acceptance of God because we do the right things. Friends, we can do all the right things. We can have all the right beliefs. We can belong in all the right places and be the right kind of people. But if that is all that we have, then we should have no confidence to stand before God. Please hear me. If you've never placed your faith in Jesus, you have no confidence before God.

20:00You can only expect judgment. See, all three of these false confidences are our attempts to say the same thing. God, you should accept me because I'm a good person. Confidence in the flesh is the foundation for a righteousness that we can earn. It's why we like it so much because we want to earn it. And the indignant cry of the heart of those who want to approach God with their own righteousness, with the work of their own hands is I'm a good person.

20:35But scripture is very clear, friends. Romans 3.23 says, For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All means everybody. And then Romans 6.23 tells us what the wages of sin is and it's death.

20:53There are no good people. Not truly. See, the thing about human goodness, the thing about human righteousness is it's a moving target. And we all define it differently. See, Paul's culture said these things, these things we've been talking about, these things would make a good person. But Paul wrote this letter to the believers in Philippi and they had their own culture and their own boundaries for what a good person looks like. And so do we. And our version, just like theirs of a good person, falls short of God's definition.

21:29And his definition is the one that actually matters. We have no true confidence as long as that confidence to approach God is built on our righteousness.

21:46And perhaps right now, this sounds terrible to you. I'm discouraging you. Maybe it's because you've never placed your faith in Jesus and your confidence is all you've got. But Paul wants to show us a better way. Moving on to our second major point. It's that Jesus is our true confidence, friends. Philippians 3, 7 and 8 says, 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.

22:28He says, all that stuff I had confidence in didn't compare. Number one, Jesus is worth more than our works, friends. See, Paul looks at the life he built outside of Christ and he compares all of it to actually knowing Jesus. And he says, everything I held dear, everything that defined me, everything that made me feel secure before God, I realized it was all loss when I put my faith in Jesus. He says, I counted it as loss for the sake of Christ. In order to grasp Jesus, Paul had to let go of his confidence in all those other things.

23:08And so do we. But Paul says it wasn't even a struggle because seeing Jesus and his surpassing worth revealed how worthless his confidence in those former things was. Seeing Jesus and who he really is shows us the reality of a confidence in our own righteousness by our own works.

23:33Here's something you might not know about me. I like to paint miniatures. Sometimes I admit things like this and Vickery's like, why are you doing that in front of people? It's a bit nerdy. It's okay. I'm already married. All right. God uses, I didn't do that before we got married, so. Listen, God uses all kinds. I usually think I'm pretty good at painting. Do you know when I think I'm the best? I paint these miniatures. I put a lot of work into making them look as realistic as I can.

24:09And I think I'm the best when I look at my work compared to my work. Or compared to my kids' painted work. You know, if I'm looking, I'm like, well, it's not that great. I just look at one of theirs. I'm like, this is excellent, you know? But when I compare my work to someone who's really, really good, it sheds light in all the areas where my work is insufficient.

24:36The righteousness of Christ is like that. We think we're doing pretty good until we compare our righteousness to Jesus'. Jesus is perfect. He's flawless. He has a body just like ours. He lived in this world just like we do. He faced our temptations, but He never sinned once. Seeing His perfect righteousness highlights just how insufficient our very best efforts are. Listen, most of us don't even compare to Paul, much less Jesus. Isaiah tells us that all of our righteous acts, they're like filthy rags.

25:20It'd be like owing a great debt to the bank and it comes time to pay and you bring a briefcase of what you think is crisp $100 bills and you open it and it's full of dirty napkins folded neatly. Will this work? Is this sufficient? No. No. No. Dirty rags can't pay a debt. And Isaiah says all the things that we would look at in our life that we would think would impress God are like those dirty rags. Hear me. I'm not saying that you are the very worst.

25:54Please don't hear that. I'm not saying God takes no joy in you. That He doesn't look at your efforts to follow Jesus and says it's not good enough. He doesn't do that. What I'm saying is very specific is that when it comes to the debt of your sin, our work is insufficient. But Jesus isn't. When we come to see that our own righteousness is insufficient to save us, we might be tempted to be depressed about that. But instead, friends, we should rejoice.

26:27We should rejoice because Jesus, listen to me, Jesus is not an example of righteousness meant to grind you into the dirt. To make you feel bad. He's our Savior. If you need a rescuer, He's it. And if you need a rescuer, you want your rescuer to be better equipped than you are. If I'm drowning, I don't want someone who has the same swimming skills as me to come save me. We're just going to both drown. When we come to the end of our own righteousness, friends, we shouldn't despair.

27:02Because God has provided for us His own righteousness. And it will never, never fail to rescue those who come to Him in faith. Breathe a sigh of relief. When you come to the end of your own strength, breathe a sigh of relief. You can be free from the burden of being good enough. By turning to Jesus who is good enough for you. Friends, let us let go of putting our confidence in our own flesh. And instead, let us put our confidence in Jesus.

27:41Here's the second truth that Paul wants us to see in the rest of our passage. Jesus is better than all of our works. But all of our hope, all of it, must be put in Jesus. Jesus, Paul continues, he says, For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things. I count them as rubbish. All those things are trash. 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.

28:11It's the righteousness, he says, that depends on God and faith. That I might know Him and the power of His resurrection and share in His sufferings. That I could become like Him in His death. He says by any means possible. That's what it's worth. That I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Paul says, I give it all up for Jesus. All of it. I give it all away for Jesus. I'm not going to hold on to any of it. Remember, friends, Jesus plus anything isn't trust in Jesus.

28:40All of our hope must be in Him. We can be a lot like the Judaizers. We can put our confidence in Jesus plus these other things. It's probably not circumcision, but maybe it's these other things we've been talking about. The call of our passage today is to be resolute, to turn away from putting any confidence in our own flesh. The top of the passage, verse 3, Paul says, we are the ones who worship by the Spirit of God. We glory in Christ, not ourselves.

29:15In Christ Jesus. And we put no confidence in our flesh. It's all in Him. I hope you pick up one of those Magenic standees. And you pray for our youth and our leaders while we're there.

29:33I asked them for prayer requests. And one of them said, pray for me that I would let go and let God. What about you? Will you let go? Will you let God? If you've never placed your faith in Christ, I'm asking you, put it all down.

30:04If you know this morning that all of your confidence is in your own work, aren't you tired? I know you are. God knows. He desires that you would come and you would let the righteousness of Jesus cover all your sins. He desires that you would come and find rest in Him. Salvation comes, friends, when we come to Christ with nothing in our hands, but a need for a Savior. Give it all to Jesus. Come to Him today. Listen, and if you've placed your faith in Christ, if He really is your Savior, but you know this morning that your heart has drifted to trusting in your own strength more than God's, you just know the Holy Spirit's talking to you.

30:51You look at what you put your time and energy and money into. You know where your priorities are. You know, I've stopped trusting the Lord along the way. I'm more trustful in myself. I'm inviting you to do the very same thing. Abandon putting trust in yourself. Put it all in Christ.

31:16Paul looks at his life before Christ, and he knows that everything that defined his righteousness before Jesus was worthless to save him. And this morning, my prayer is that you and I would come to the same conclusion, friends. That we would put no confidence in the flesh for our salvation, but instead we would put all of our confidence in the work that Jesus has done on our behalf. Friends, this morning, let us rejoice. Because Jesus has given you and I his own righteousness.

31:48Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.