I have done 3 funerals in the last month. I’m getting tired of doing them, so all of you knock it off. I don’t want to do any more funerals for a while. Two of the funerals I did I didn’t know the people personally, so their families had to give me something to talk about at the funeral. It is a little surreal to listen to family members describe someone to me, trying to sum up their loved one’s life; what they were interested in, what good things they did, how they touched people. And all of what they tell me is completely true. The folks I have done the funerals for were amazing people. They were generous with their time and possessions. They treated others well, they were loving people. But it is still an odd exercise, or an odd task to try to summarize a person, their hopes and dreams, their passions and interests in such a way to help mourners remember them well.
For me at least, it has helped me focus on what really matters in this life. I mourn for people who’s claim to fame was that they had a great model train set, or had an interesting collection of WW1 memorabilia or whatever. Not that that sort of stuff is bad or wrong, but it shouldn’t define us. Having a spectacular Star Trek collection is interesting, I guess, but Heaven help us if that is what people remember about us after we’re gone. Heaven help us if that is on our gravestones: Dave Moore, enjoyed playing volleyball.
We want our lives to mean more than that. We want to focus in this life on the things that really matter. Stuff is nice, I suppose it is nice to have stuff, but if stuff is our all-consuming quest, then we are miles from where we should be. This life is about getting to know God, it is about preparing for the next life. St. Paul discusses this in Philippians chapter 3, verses 1-11.
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.
2 Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. 3 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— 4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence.
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 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 9 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. 10 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, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
Let’s pray.
We are still heading through Philippians. Philippians is Paul’s letter of joy, but occasionally he will digress and a little of his passion shows through. Paul loves the Philippians, they are headed in the right direction, but there are possible distractions looming on the horizon for the Philippian church. As Paul sits in jail, writing this letter, he knows of the other churches fighting against legalism, against the Jewish Christians who are telling the non-Jewish converts how to become a Christian.
Essentially, the Judaizers as they are called, are traveling from church to church, churches Paul himself has planted, and have begun telling all these Gentile converts, all these Greek people who have started attending this new church, that they are required to become Jews before they can become Christians. Paul thinks this is bad; for several reasons. First, Jesus never required anyone to become a Jew before they could follow him. Jesus in Luke 7 encounters a Roman centurian, whose faith is stronger than any of the Jews Jesus had met. Jesus says this, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” So Paul knows converts don’t have to become Jews before becoming Christians. Second, in order to become a Jew, the males had to be circumcised. Ask any guy these days, they’ll tell you that is a bit of a deterrent. Christians have never been in the business of keeping people away from Christ, rather it is our joy and job to bring people to Christ, and let Him change them, let Him deal with them rather than flawed us.
So the first part of this section in the letter Paul is saying to the Philippians, don’t let others tell you what is important, what really matters in life. These specific people, Paul is saying, have got it wrong. The most important thing in life is not being a Jew and then becoming a Christian. That isn’t the most important thing. Trust me, I was that, says Paul, and it didn’t work for me either. Jesus had to come and save me too says Paul. Listen again:
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.
2 Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh. 3 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— 4 though I myself have reasons for such confidence.
If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
You can see Paul gets pretty heated about this. He doesn’t want the Philippians to be distracted from following God by these sidetracks, these aspects of Christianity that are of less importance than following God. Paul has seen the division and the confusion these people have caused in new churches, especially the church he planted in Galatia. Paul is so fed up with these people that he calls them “dogs”. Today we have dogs as pets, and so the impact of this insult is lost on us. Being called a dog was a huge insult to the Jews. Dogs were dirty animals, scrounging for food at the outskirts of humanity. To be called a dog was not a compliment by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, many Jews used the term “dogs” to refer to non-Jews. It was one of the worst things to be called, a dog. So when Paul calls them dogs, you can see the irony of using a derogatory term generally directed at the lost, the non-Jews, for the Jews themselves who were trying to convert the converted.
Paul wants the Philippians to know what really matters in this life. Whether someone is circumcised or not really doesn’t matter. If a man wanted to get circumcised, I pretty sure Paul would have said, feel free. It isn’t important, but if you want to go ahead. But don’t distract other followers of Jesus by giving them another hoop to jump through. They don’t need another hoop to jump through, especially one that doesn’t matter, and will certainly be distracted from following Jesus. Think of the tragedy if a person walked away from faith, away from following God because they were not wanting to get circumcised. It is tragedy to send people away from Jesus because they don’t follow the rules humans have set up. This is part of the problem the Jews had; regulating all access to God, in effect, the rules kept people away from God. Christianity, I’ve said before and I’ll say again, is not about following rules initiated by humans but rather about a relationship with God. Lead people to God, don’t keep them away. If their lives are a little messed up, then we just say, join the club. Jesus came to clean us up, to clean up others just like what we used to be.
Paul says, look, if anyone has a reason to boast in the things they do, and the things they had going for them, so that they might reasonably expect God’s good favor, I was the guy. I was the perfect Jew, says Paul. Even his life started off being the perfect Jew, circumcised on the eighth day. This is an interesting little fact. Guess which day in our lives our blood clots the best. In your whole life, your blood clots the best, for some reason, on the eighth day. God had told his people to circumcise their boy children on the exact day when the body was best able to handle it. But I digress.
Born into the tribe of Benjamin. Of the twelve tribes of Israel, there were only two tribes, the two tribes in southern Israel that remained true in purity of their own tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was of pure Israelite stock. So Paul is more pure racially than most other Jews. Even more, Paul had been a Pharisee. The Pharisees were a sect of Judaism concerned with purity, concerned with keeping the Law. The Pharisees were well trained in the ways of God, these were the brightest and best young men Israel had, they were the religious leadership of Israel. Paul was not a fisherman like the other disciples, this was a man of learning, a man of study, a man of passion.
Paul even persecuted the early church as a Pharisee. He had people beaten in order to preserve the ways of God. He had attempted to stamp out this new religion, and Paul could stamp hard. Paul, above almost everyone else in the whole world, had reason to boast, reason to hope that God would view him as righteous and faithful. Paul had all the best external hopes; lineage, upbringing, training. And yet, as we’ll see in a moment, his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus had led him to the place where all that stuff, all those reasons for bragging and boasting, amounted to nothing.
Essentially Paul is saying, all the Judaizers that are telling you to be circumcised before you can be a Christian, they are wrong. They are depending on outward works for their salvation. Paul says, I had all those outward works. And they mean nothing. They count for nothing at all.
7 But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8 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 9 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.
All that stuff, all his previous hopes in his birthrights, his training, all of that was now worthless to Paul. All the stuff we brag about, having the greatest model train set up, having the greatest baseball card collection, all of that stuff is essentially worthless. In the long run, if we define ourselves by what we collect, what we have, the job that we do or did, all that is worthless.
All the stuff that our society tells us makes us valuable doesn’t. Having a great car doesn’t make you valuable, it doesn’t make you righteous in God’s eyes. Having the guitar played by Paul McCartney when he and the Beatles recorded St Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band doesn’t bring meaning to someone’s life, or worth. Owning something doesn’t bring meaning or worth. Being a direct descendent of the King of England doesn’t mean anything in the long run, in the eternal run. Everything external, and let’s be real, this is a society that focuses almost exclusively on the external trappings, is worthless in the long run. All the things that define us, if we aren’t followers of Jesus, are essentially a diversion from the really important parts of life.
Gaining Christ, knowing Christ, and being found in Christ is what is important in this life. Life is a temporary gift. Life can be taken away at a moment’s notice. We need to know this absolutely, that this life is temporary. In the light of eternity, this time we spend on earth is no time at all, the blink of an eye, a watch in the night. What is important in this life is knowing Christ. The reason why is this: if we allow Christ to do so, He will give us His righteousness. Inviting Him into our hearts set us on a new path and we are offered forgiveness. God cannot and will not tolerate anyone in His presence who is not perfect, not completely blameless. So if we are interested in being with God for eternity, we have to do something about our sinful lives. The only thing that can be done is to accept Christ as our Lord and Savior.
When we do that, when we are in Christ, and our sins are forgiven, the new can come before the throne of God blameless and clean, washed of all our unrighteousness. This is the righteousness that comes through faith, the righteousness we have to have for our salvation. Being a good person in life is nice. Being an important person in life is nice. Being a good important person is rare, but nice too. But in the long run, it is inconsequential. Unfortunately. We have to be perfect to be acceptable in God’s kingdom. And since we cannot hope to be perfect due to our past and present and future sins, we have to depend on Christ’s perfection. His perfection becomes ours when we accept what He did on the cross as being done on our behalf. This is our faith, that our belief in Jesus, and that He died for us, this is the forgiveness and grace we have been shown by All-Mighty God. Everything else is worthless. Everything else is rubbish, is valueless. We take nothing into eternity except our sins. Nothing from this temporary world goes with us into eternity. Just our sins, and we have to hand those over to Christ to let Him right them, to bring His righteousness to bear on our lives.
Paul ends this thought like this:
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, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
At the end of his life Paul knew that knowing Christ is everything. Paul wants to know Jesus more and more, Paul wants to share in the sufferings of Jesus. Paul wants to know Jesus completely, because Paul loves Jesus. There is a reward for knowing and loving Jesus, his presence in our lives both here and on into eternity. The ultimate hope of the Christian is that our lives matter, that God knows us and loves us. We believe this life is not all there is, but there is something better beyond this temporary time of testing our faith.
There is no resurrection from the dead for people who try to earn their salvation. Our sins still cling to us, and God cannot tolerate them. There is no balancing our the good and the bad, and hoping that we come out on the good side, and thus are let into Heaven. There is only Jesus, and Him crucified, waiting for us to ask Him into our hearts, to take away our sins, to clean us up and make us new. There is no boasting before God about all the great things we did. There is only perfection or imperfection. There is only righteousness or unrighteousness. We cannot do anything to make us perfect, other than asking Jesus to perfect us. That’s the only way.
People have tried since the beginning of time to be perfect, when it is really so simple. I was watching a show on the history channel about a man in England who fashioned a building in a complete circle. He knew that he had not been perfect, and that the devil was coming for his soul. His solution was to build a round building so he could keep running, for centuries, away from the demons that would try and take him to hell. What a waste of time, energy and effort. All he had to do was believe in Christ, and ask him into his heart. But he never did. The good news and the bad news is that it is very simple. Believing in Christ is what it is all about. Everything else is nice, but ultimately unimportant.
Don’t depend on your own rubbish, your own good deeds. Know Christ. And that will prioritize your whole life.
Let’s pray.
