We are working our way through Paul’s letter to the Church at Philippi. a
Letter he wrote to thank them for their aid to him while he was in prison. A
letter he wrote to encourage them to stand firm in their faith in the face of
persecution from outside and disruption from within the church. This standing
firm that Paul encourages the church to do, is not grim determination, teeth
grinding, white knuckle holding on for dear life, rather in his letter Paul
uses the word Joy sixteen times. Standing firm for Paul is safeguarding the
full ness of Joy that comes from Knowing and being known by Jesus Christ. A joy
we can know regardless of the circumstances we face. A joy that Paul knows even
though he is in prison facing uncertainty and possible death. Paul’s
encouragement was not just for his readers way back then and there, but is
equally for us here and now, as we stand firm on our joyous journey following
Jesus.
The passage we had read to us this morning is the start of a new section
in his letter, dealing with a new topic. Last week we looked at Paul finishing
writing about the joy of Christian unity by talking about the travel plans of
two of his team, Timothy and Epaphroditus. Men who were prime examples of the
attitudes and actions needed to stand fast in that unity. After that talk of
travel plans Paul moves on.
Once again, he exhorts his brothers and sisters to rejoice. Then the tenure
of his letter changes Paul uses harsh and angry language to warn the church of false
teachers. “wild dogs” he calls them, “evil doers and the mutilators of the
flesh”. You can imagine Paul pounding on the desk three times his fists
clenched in anger as he writes of them. Then he spends the rest of the reading
we had today refuting this false teaching. He shares his testimony, both before
he met Christ and after to illustrate why they are wrong and what is the truth
of the gospel. Then finally he talks of how he joyously lives out that gospel
truth.
First what has got Paul so angry? Who are these dogs, evil doers,
mutilators of the flesh?
This group is known as the Judaizers. They are a group we first meet in
Acts 15:1 who go to Antioch where the first significant Gentile Church is and
teach the gentile believers that to be genuine followers of Jesus they need to
be circumcised and to keep the law of Moses. The kosha dietary demands all of
it. They are a group that we know from Paul’s letter to the Galatians who were
spreading their teaching and Paul is concerned that they will come to Philippi as
well.
Paul finds this so offensive because they are saying that there is a need
to add something to what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ. That we can contribute something to our
salvation. Rather than it being what God has done for us, by grace alone in
Jesus Christ.
Circumcision was a practise in the Old Testament in Genesis 17 as a sign
of God’s covenant with Abraham he and all his male descendants were to be
circumcised. It was to show that they were God’s special people. But the story
of the Old testament is that God’s people were not always faithful to that
covenant, that relationship, that physical outside sign wasn’t enough, God
looked for an internal response, a heart that was turned towards God. The
prophets talked of it as a circumcision of the heart.
Paul tells the church at Philippi that the followers of Jesus are the
true circumcision. We are god’s people because God has put his Holy Spirit
within us and we worship and Glorify Jesus Christ. It is God’s doing and we do
not have any confidence in our own ability to achieve this. It is evident in
our heart attitudes rather than by dropping our pants, to put it bluntly.
Paul shares his own life story before he met Christ to prove his point.
He says he more than anyone else had every right to be confident in his own privileged
position and achievements. Like he’s writing it down in a spread sheet, he
names them. He was born of Jewish parents, Hebrew speaking Jews, of the tribe
of Benjamin, his whakapapa is rock solid. Benjamin was the tribe of Israel that
stayed loyal to David’s sons when the kingdom split after the reign of king
Solomon. He was a Pharisee, that group within the Jewish faith that was most
strict at keeping the law. He was full of zeal for the Jewish faith and the law
of Moses to the point that he persecuted the church. He is not saying he was
not a sinner but he was blameless in terms of keeping the requirements of the
law. But then he says he meet Jesus. We know from Acts that he had a vision of
Jesus on the way to Damascus with a warrant to imprison the Christians there
and it changed his life. On the balance sheet, he says, all these things didn’t
add up says these things add up to the surpassing greatness of Knowing Jesus
Christ. It was only in Jesus Christ that he found himself in a right
relationship with God.
The Image for our service this morning is a great illustration of what
Paul was talking about. It’s a picture of Zugspitze, which is the tallest
mountain in Germany. It sits across the German Austrian border, it’s a popular
destination with hikers who catch a cable car up to its plateau and hike to the
top, and climbers who scale the steeper sides of this 2200 metre mastiff. I
didn’t take the photo by the way, I’ve never been there, and my climbing aspirations
are confined to the two step sets of stairs in our three stories town house.
But on the summit, is a cross, originally put there in 1851 primarily on the
instance of a priest called Christopher Ott.
Paul says, you know it’s like I climbed to the very height of moral and
religious achievement and there I discovered the cross. There I found that it
is only Jesus Christ that can put us right with God. All this other stuff now I
realise adds up to nothing. If I’m going to win God’s approval then it adds up
to a big fat zero. I might as well toss it in the wheelie bin, roll it out to
the curb and let it be dragged off to the land fill. His anger is that these
false teachers are wanting to put all this other stuff back on the gentile
believers, bring it back from the dump. Put it in the positive column, make the
believers climb the mountain.
That is a good point to turn and look at what is Paul’s Joy? what is the
joy that he wants the Church at Philippi to know that will safeguard them
against these false teachers?
In this passage for the first time Paul says that the church should
rejoice in the Lord. He told them to rejoice and have joy, but now he ties the
source of that Joy to the Lord. It’s a phrase that comes from the Old Testament
from the psalms and the prophets. That God’s people were not to find their
ultimate joy in circumstances or prosperity or privilege and their own pious
achievement, but in God, his faithful love for them. That’s what Paul is saying
to his readers and to us. The source of our joy our happiness is ultimately in
Jesus Christ.
It is in what Jesus Christ has done for us that we are justified and put
right with God. if all our moral victory and religious observances and good
deeds and doing what’s right were put into that spread sheet, including circumcision
to say we had deserved God’s love and had earned being right with God. Well it
would come to zero. Rather it is what God has done for us in Jesus Christ that
bridges that gap. It is a righteousness that Comes from God based on faith.
More than that Paul finds joy in his life, meaning and purpose in knowing
and being known by Jesus. It’s not just
a one-off encounter but Paul’s very life is shaped by the life of Christ. He
wants to know the resurrection power of Jesus in his life. As a follower of
Christ, we have the Holy Spirit in our lives, the power that raised Jesus from
the dead is in us, bringing new life enabling and empowering us to live for
Jesus. He wants to participate in his suffering. In 2 Corinthians 11 Paul lists
the hardships he’d been through for the sake of the gospel very much like he
listed his previous religious privileges and attainments, shipwrecks beatings,
being stoned (hit with stones not using mind altering substances), in Philippi
he was whipped, he is imprisoned when he writes chained between to guards. But
he sees these things as aligning his life with Christ’s redemptive suffering.
Being prepared to suffer so that people might know the good news of
reconciliation with God. he even hopes in hi death that he might be like
Christ. That means being prepared to lay
down his life for others out of love, but also in his mind he is aware of the
possibility of death when his appeal to the emperor is heard he will be killed,
his hope is that will enable to him to witness to the forgiveness and new life
he has found in Christ. In all these things Paul’s joy comes from Jesus Christ
and his great love for us. It’s a bit of a spoiler alert perhaps but towards
the end of this letter Paul will talk of facing good times and grim times and
he will say “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. His joy and hope is also that he will share
in the resurrection of the dead, that he will have eternal life with Jesus Christ.
How does Paul live that joy Out? Paul, having looked at his own life as
an example of the joy of knowing Christ and the fruitless way of trusting in
our own religiousness turns to the future and tells the church at Philippi how
their Joy in the Lord, in focusing on Christ’s death and resurrection can
safeguard them.
In the western church, we’ve kind of got this idea that salvation by
grace and faith is something we can simply bank and put in the vault till we
need it at the judgement. Like it’s a get out of jail free card we can slip
under the board till we need. Yes, I said the sinner prayer, I’m Ok. But Paul
does not treat it like that. He sees knowing Christ as a prize, as a goal which
takes central place in his life.
He tells the church that he hasn’t yet arrived at his goal of knowing
Christ totally but that he is prepared to move forward to keep going with his
eyes fixed firmly on the prize. The prize here is nothing else than Jesus
Christ. He’s very honest that he still has a long way to go in his spiritual
growth but his focus is Jesus Christ.
That is the way in which Paul’s exhortation to rejoice in the Lord, will
be a safeguard for the church at Philippi and for us against things that would
try and add things to our faith that take the focus from what God has done to
what we can do. He puts off those former things that were the centre of his
hope and purpose and meaning because he has found something far superior. It is
Christ alone.
Paul’s words and his exhortation to find our joy and purpose in Jesus
Christ are as important for us today as it was for his first listeners. It’s
the 500th anniversary of Martin Luther posting his ninety-five
theses on the door of the Wittenberg Cathedral. Luther had become disillusioned
with the Church, where the focus and practise seemed to focus on our being able
to earn favour and grace and forgiveness from God. Even buy them like with
indulgences. The catch cry of the
reformation was a rediscovery and reemphasis of salvation by grace alone
through faith.
It’s easy for us to get caught up in extra things which we think make up
a Christian. I had a youth group member respond to a crusade in Tauranga run by
another organisation, and I got a phone call from one of the people running it.
Who told me that this young guy needed to be baptised by immersion right away.
Because salvation wasn’t complete until you were baptised. Know I believe
baptism is important but it is an outward sign of the inward reality that you
have come to know Christ and been made new by his death and resurrection. It’s
a public declaration that you identify with that. We do it as an act of
obedience. But you are not made right
with God because of baptism. There are other more mundane things as well. I go
to Church, I’m a good person, I don’t do this or that. I was born into a
Christian family. But in the end our Joy is to be found in knowing Christ and
being made right with God through him. The thing that gives us joy in life is
in fixing our eye on the prize, which is the call heavenward in Jesus Christ.
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