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Today we're continuing in our series through the book of Philippians, a book that emphasizes joy and rejoicing. More than a dozen times, Paul has given us five reasons to rejoice. We've dug out from the first two chapters. Here are those five things. That God will finish what he started concerning us. Number two. That God will use our chains for his divine purposes. Number three. To live as Christ to die is gain. Heaven will be so much better than here. Number four. Unity comes through humility, and humility comes from following the example of Jesus. Number five. Our witness impacts our world. We're going to see a sixth reason to rejoice from chapter three. I'm going to read from chapter three, first 11 verses, if you'll follow along. In your Bibles, Paul writes this 3:1. Finally, my brethren, rejoice and in the Lord. For me to write the same things to you is not tedious. 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, of the tribe of Benjamin, the Hebrew of Hebrews, concerning the law of Pharisee, concerning zeal persecuting the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gain to me? These I have counted loss for Christ, yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God, by faith that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death. If by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Let's pray once again. Heavenly Father, we just come to you now and we just open up your word and ask that you'd speak to us, that you would use this passage. Help us understand, Lord. Salvation by faith. Thank you for what Paul wrote. We know it's relevant for us as much as it was in the first century. So speak to us now. Lord, thank you for this time in your house we give you praise in Jesus name. And everyone said Amen. Well, you notice the first word Paul starts here in verse one. Finally. I like the way that Paul opens up this third chapter with the word finally because he's only halfway through his letter. He hasn't even begun to land the plane, but he uses the word finally. And I like it as a pastor, because when you hear a pastor say finally, it means that he's really only halfway through his message. Now, actually, the Greek word here in the original text is loyapon, and loyapon means furthermore. When he says finally, he means furthermore. And it was a word that was used to transition from something that was said to something important that's about to be said. It's a word that announces something critical, something very important is about to be said. So listen up, he says finally. He says, I have something to tell you. And he says, I've said this before, but it's not tedious for me to repeat it. And it's not tedious for me to repeat it, because it is for your safety. He says at the end of verse one and is referring to this erroneous heretical doctrine that is creeping into the church. And he says, the reason why it's not tedious for me to repeat this warning is because I want you to be kept safe from this doctrinal error. So there's a theological error that was potentially coming into the church at Philippi. And so Paul wants to warn them. And that's what verse two is about. When he says beware three times, he says, beware. Beware of dogs. Beware of evil workers. Beware of the mutilation. So he uses these terms, dogs, evil workers, mutilation, to describe the same group of people. He's using disparaging terms there to describe the same group of people that he's warning the Church of Philippi about. Now, dogs, evil workers, mutilators. We don't typically in our culture, think of dogs as a disparaging term unless you say to somebody, oh, what a dog you are. Yeah, but I mean, normally in American culture, our dogs. I mean, you all know I've said this enough. I'm a dog lover. Any other dog lovers here? Okay, dog lovers in the room? You have to remember, though, that dogs of today, not the same as dogs of the first century, okay? Dogs in the first century didn't get dinners of salmon and chicken and vegetables served out of a pouch from the refrigerator. Give me a break, okay? They didn't get that. They didn't go to obedience school in the first Century, they didn't go to grooming salons. They didn't have little cushioned beds to sleep on. All right, Dogs in the first century, they were scavengers. They traveled in packs. They lived outside. They were all scruffy and dirty, and they bit people. Nobody in the first century named their dog Fifi or Coco. They had names probably like Maximus and Caesar, all right? And they were considered unclean in the first century, and that's why Paul is using these terms here. He says about this group of people, they act like animals. They're dogs. They're evil workers. They're mutilators. Now, who in the world was he talking about? Well, he's talking about a group of Christians actually, called Judaizers. The Judaizers in the first century were Jews who did believe that Jesus is the Messiah. They did believe that Jesus is the Messiah, but they believed that in order to be a Christian, you had to believe that Jesus is Messiah, and you had to continue to fulfill all the customs, ordinances, rights, rituals, rules, regulations and laws of Moses. So the Judaizers were about Jesus, plus you had to believe in Jesus, but you still had to keep all the Mosaic customs, rules, and rituals. Now, this is particularly important for the Church of Philippi to understand what they were up against, because the Church of Philippi was pretty much exclusively made up of Gentiles. Philippi, Greece in the first century was a Roman outpost. It was a Roman colony, and it was even called Little Rome because it was a very influential city. But it was a pagan city. It was a Gentile city. When Paul started this church 10 years earlier, this church was comprised really entirely of Gentiles. There was no Jewish presence in Philippi. So these Judaizers are telling the Gentiles, hey, you gotta follow through with all the Mosaic customs in addition to believing in Jesus as your Lord and Savior. And one of the things they particularly were about was circumcision. You guys have to be circumcised. I know you trust in Jesus, but you got to obey all the customs of Moses and you got to be circumcised. Now, what the Judaizers were doing is making it about Jesus plus Jesus plus the feasts and festivals, Jesus plus the ordinances, like keeping kosher, make sure you eat the right food, you don't eat the wrong food. And Jesus plus circumcision, among other things. Now, circumcision wasn't new to the Jews. They were very familiar with it all the way back in Genesis 17, God had established circumcision as a rite of the covenant that he made with Abraham in Genesis 17. And some of you might wonder, like kind of an odd, peculiar thing, you know, why such a delicate cutting of the flesh to signify this covenant that God made with Abraham and Abraham's descendants? It was to be a perpetual practice. And the answer is because God wanted an indelible mark placed at the source of reproduction to always remind the Jewish people that they no longer belonged to the flesh, but they belonged to God, and that they should reproduce children in like manner to perpetuate that legacy, that these were a people who belonged to God were cutting away the flesh. We do not belong to ourselves. We do not belong to the flesh. We belong to God. That became a distinguishing mark for the Jewish people, and again, it was common for them, and still is. Every Jewish male was to be circumcised, specifically in the Mosaic Law, on the eighth day. You know what's so marvelous about that, is now we know that through medical research that a newborn's natural clotting ability, including the release of vitamin K, happens on the eighth day after a baby is born. And so Jews customarily did this. That was a part of their heritage. That was a part of their legacy. That was what they did. That was a sign of the covenant. But that was a completely unfamiliar thing to a bunch of Gentiles. So now think about the Church of Philippi. You gotta have a bunch of adult Gentile men, uncircumcised, who are now being told, like, yeah, you're gonna have to be circumcised in order to be saved. That's like saying to them, like, you're gonna have to have all your fingernails pulled out with pliers in order to be a Christian. All the guys get that, all right? And so Paul comes along and he says, no, no, no, cut it out. That's a pun. I don't know if you caught that. Did he just make a joke about this? Yeah, now you know how to pray for me. But anyway, but he's saying, don't believe them. He's saying, don't believe them. And that's why he refers to their false teaching as mutilation. Because if you require people to be circumcised in order to be saved, you're doing nothing more than mutilating the body for religious purposes, because it has no bearing on salvation. And neither do the feasts, and neither do the festivals. Neither do the sacrifices. Neither does keeping kosher. Listen, Jesus plus, anything ruins everything. You add anything on to the simple message that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus. It's grace alone through faith alone, in Christ alone. You add anything to that, you've just now made the whole thing a works based religion instead of a faith based relationship with Jesus. And so it's important to understand this. This is what Paul's writing about now. Now look, obviously you can still get circumcised for any other reason. You can still observe Jewish traditions as a matter of remembering Jewish customs and seeing Christ in all the feasts and festivals which all the Jewish feasts and festivals point to Christ, okay? You can even decide to be kosher. You don't have to eat pork and shrimp. You'll just, you'll miss out on a lot. But you don't have to, you don't have to eat the stuff, okay? But, but there is nothing, nada, zilch, lashai kushnahin. There's nothing else that you need to do in order to be saved except trust Jesus by faith. That's the whole message here. And he's trying to warn the church at Philippi. He goes, there's going to be some people coming in telling you it's Jesus plus. He goes, I just want you to know it's Jesus alone. It's by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. So he says, don't be believing them. Now this is not just a theological threat to the church at Philippi. You see Paul writing about this in other letters. He writes extensively about this in his letter to the church of Galatia. In chapter one of Galatians, verse seven, Paul warns them that there are some who trouble you. The NIV Version says, some who are throwing you into confusion. And Paul writes, and they are perverting the gospel of Christ. And he's referring to the Judaizers there in Galatians 1:7, because they were perverting the Gospel. Whenever you add anything to the simple message of faith alone in Christ alone. And so this is why Paul here in our passage in Philippians 3:2, this is why he says, beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilators. And he adds in verse three, if you look in verse three, he says, for we, we are the real believers. We are the circumcision who worship God in the Spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh. Paul says their true believers are those who have been circumcised, but circumcised in the heart. Circumcised in the heart. And he writes about it in Romans 2:29. And he's not the only one in Jeremiah, Jeremiah the prophet. In Jeremiah 4:4, he wrote, circumcise yourselves to the Lord and take away the foreskins of your heart. This is all metaphorical language. It's the idea that we need to be wholeheartedly devoted to God. This is a call to moral purity. It's the idea of cut away the things of our flesh. Not literally. It's this metaphorical thing of no longer be under the control of your body appetites, but surrender your life to the control of the Lord. So cut away the flesh. Like, deal with those things in your life that try to dominate you, that are fleshly sinful things, and instead surrender to. To the lordship of God to surrender to Jesus. And so there's the circumcision of the heart that all of us need to be about. And so Paul says there, this is the real circumcision. He says, it's not of the flesh because it's of the heart. And Paul goes on to say that if salvation, and this is still making his case against the Judaizers, he said, if salvation was based on Jesus, plus your accomplishments or your achievements or all the ways that you adhered to and observed Jewish laws, rules and rituals, he says, then I would take the cake because I've done all this. Look here in your Bibles, verses 4, 5 and 6. He says, though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I. More so verse 5. He says, I was circumcised on the eighth day, meaning he obeyed the law from birth, thanks to his parents. He says, I'm of the stock of Israel, meaning he's not a proselyte to Judaism. He was born a Jew. He says, I'm of the tribe of Benjamin, Benjamin. Of the twelve sons of Jacob, Benjamin was the youngest. He became the favored son after Joseph was taken away to Egypt. And remember too, first king of Israel, Saul came from the tribe of Benjamin, was Paul himself was named after the first king of Israel. His original name was Saul Shaul. So he says, look, I belong to the tribe of Benjamin. He says there in verse five, I'm a Hebrew of the Hebrews, meaning both my parents were Hebrew. It's a, it's a superlative description. And by the way, the Bible says he was educated under a guy named Gamaliel, which was a scholarly rabbi of the day. He also adds there, I was a Pharisee, which is the sect that had the Strictest adherence to the law. And he said, when it comes to zeal, man, I persecuted the church before he was a believer in Jesus. I mean, he went around persecuting Christians, killing them, because he saw Christianity as a threat to Judaism. And then in the end, he goes, and concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless, he goes, man, I practiced all the rules of the rabbis. And so he says, if credentials got you into heaven, he says, I'm good to go. He says, but the fact of the matter is all the stuff I've ever done and anything about who I am is nothing compared to who Christ is and what he's done for me. Nothing. It's nothing. That's why he says in verse seven, but what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. And he uses the word gain and loss a couple more times. Verse 8. Yet indeed I also count all things loss, all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ. I like that word, rubbish. Apparently, Paul is British and it's like, rubbish. It's all rubbish. Well, it's actually the Greek word skubalon. It's the only time used in the New Testament, and it means dung. In fact, the King James Bible, maybe even ESV and other translations use actually word dung. Okay? We're talking horse hockey, mule muffins, barn biscuits, okay, whatever you want to call it. He says, everything I've ever accomplished doesn't measure up to knowing Christ. And he opens, almost as if he opens up a ledger here because he talks about gain and loss, gain and loss. It's like he opens up a ledger or an Excel spreadsheet and he shows the P and L statement about his faith. He's like, there's a profit column and there's a loss column. And he says, you know, in the prophet column, I put everything about who I am circumcised on the eighth day, a Hebrew of Hebrews of the tribe of Benjamin. And you know, all this stuff I have going for me, and you'd think that'd be good enough to get to heaven. He goes, except when I had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. And then I moved everything from the profit column into the lost column, because nothing, nothing and no one compares to knowing Jesus. What Christ has done for us, gang, is incomparable. It doesn't matter what you've done. This side of heaven matters. Who you know, this side of heaven you have to know Jesus when you get to heaven. If you know Jesus as your savior, nobody's gonna ask you. God is not gonna ask you, well, how much money did you make in your lifetime? How many promotions did you get? How many awards did you win? How many products did you sell? How many degrees did you earn? How many ranks did you achieve? How many likes or follows did you get? There's only going to be one question, and the question is going to be Jesus looking at you, saying, do you know me? Do you know me? So for those of you taking notes, this is the sixth one on our list. What brings us joy? Because nothing in life compares to knowing Christ and receiving his righteousness by faith. This is what will bring us real joy, is knowing Christ. Now, when I say knowing Him, I mean it the way Paul means it here experientially, not just theoretically. A lot of people theoretically know about Jesus. They know about him, but they don't necessarily know him, know him experientially. This is why Paul would write here in verses 10 and 11, these closing verses. He says, I want to 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. What he's saying here to us Church is he says, I want to know that Jesus, who suffered for me on that cross and rose from the dead, so that I might also experience life after death, so that I might also go to be with the Lord who rose from the dead. He will raise me up in the last day because I've trusted Him as my Lord and Savior and I know him. So I know whom I have believed, and I trust him for my salvation and my future and my eternal reward. You have to know Him. And look, it's not Jesus plus anybody. And there's a modern version of the Judaizers today where they will want you to think it's Jesus plus, you gotta do some other things. And let me just take a moment in our closing few minutes to just really address a deep concern I have right now. As I've noticed, particularly among young men gravitating towards Catholicism, there's a gravitation of a lot of young men towards Catholicism these days because it provides. Catholicism provides a sense of some structure, it provides a sense of some safety. It checks all the boxes, well, I've done this, and then I have to do that, and then I have to do the other. And it presents to people this false sense of a security in Your salvation that because you're checking the boxes, went to mass, did confession, penance, all this stuff. Let me just tell you something. You need to hear this. That's a modern judaizer approach to Christianity. Listen, it is not Jesus plus penance. It is not Jesus plus confession. It is not Jesus plus Mass. It is not Jesus plus baptism. It is not Jesus plus give all your money. It is just Jesus. It's just Jesus. Receiving him by faith, trusting in what he did on that cross for your sins. This is not a performance oriented thing. The moment you make it, performance works. Oriented? You've nullified the cross. This is about knowing the One who did it all for you. This is not about what you must do. It's what he already did. And we need to get this. It seems too good to be true, doesn't it? You mean all I have to do is just accept what he did on that cross by faith that he died for my sins? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved. Yeah, that's what the Bible says. We should not overcomplicate it, corrupt it, or pollute it, or dilute it. It's a simple message that salvation is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, anything. In addition to that, you've corrupted the message of the Gospel. Trust him as your Lord and Savior, but don't make it more than that. Jesus did all the work for you. Let's close with a word of prayer. Father, I thank you for this time in your word and the message that Paul is communicating to us. And I think right now, Lord, about people who don't know you in a personal way. Some who are here right now, some who are watching online, some who will listen to this or watch it later, they know about you, but they just don't know you. And today can be the day that they surrender their life to you. I pray, Lord, you'd move among men and women and young people right now and help them to come to the place of humility. While they will simply surrender their life to the lordship of Jesus, trusting you by faith as their Lord and Savior. Come right now, Lord. Reveal yourself to those who need you. And I'm gonna pause in my prayer right now and I just wanna invite you. If you don't know Christ as your Savior, if you don't know him in a personal way, maybe know about Him. But today you can know him if you open your heart and trust him as your Lord. I'm gonna lead in a simple prayer and you're welcome to pray this Prayer with me. Just right where you're seated. You can pray it quietly. And you can invite Christ into your heart and make him Lord of your life. Today, just simply pray a prayer like this. Say, lord Jesus, I thank you that you love me so much. You came to Earth to die for sinners like me. Forgive me of my sins, Lord. Come into my heart. I receive you by faith as my Lord and Savior. I surrender my life to you, Jesus. No more do I want to live for myself. I want to live for you. So I trust you by faith that you died on that cross for my sins. Forgive me, Lord. Take over my life. I commit my life to you. I surrender to your lordship. And I trust you, Jesus, as my Lord and Savior. Today, by faith. There's nothing more I have to do. You've done it all for me. So I receive the free gift of salvation. And I trust you, Jesus. It's in your name that I pray. Amen. Now listen, before we're dismissed, if you prayed that prayer with me, I invite you to come up after the service. There'll be a pastor down front to give you a Bible to remember today's decision. We want nothing from you. We just want to give you a Bible if you want it. If you prayed that prayer online, we'll send you a Bible anywhere. Just text the church. I have decided it's 703-844-9969. Remember, everybody. Jesus plus anything ruins everything. But Jesus plus nothing is everything because he's all we need. God bless y'. All. Have a great day.