Fighting for Joy, Growing in Humility, Knowing Christ and the Peace that Passes Understanding: A Study of Philippians (34): Rejoice in the Lord, Put No Confidence in the Flesh, Count Gain as Loss to Gain Christ


Sermon by J. Ligon Duncan on March 30, 2008 Philippians 3:1-11

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The Lord’s Day Morning

March 30, 2008



Philippians 3:1-11


Fighting for Joy,
Growing in Humility, Knowing Christ and the Peace that


Passes
Understanding
:
A Study of Philippians


“Rejoice in the Lord,
Put No Confidence in the Flesh, Count Gain as Loss to Gain Christ”


Dr. J. Ligon Duncan III

Amen. If you
have your Bibles, I’d invite you to turn with me to Philippians 3, and we’re
going to look again at the first eleven verses. Now we have been in the book of
Philippians, this little letter of Philippians, for many, many weeks and months
together, and Philippians 3 is a unique section of this word.

Let me
direct your attention to verse 1 in Philippians 3, because I want you to note
something that New Testament scholars and others who study this book in detail
have noted. They have noted that Paul begins Philippians 3:1 with the word
finally
…and then there are two more chapters to the book. Now you say, “I
recognize that. I’ve seen that in preachers before!” And so you have. But they
wonder why Paul would start this chapter off with the word finally and
then do something a little bit different than he does for other books that he’s
written. For instance, in the book of Romans, he gives you eleven glorious
chapters of doctrine and exhortation about doctrine, followed by chapters 12,
13, and 14, where that doctrine is applied to the Christian life. And then he
gets to chapter 15, and he gives you a missionary report, and then he gives you
a report [in which] he commends to you certain Christians in Rome that he’s been
working with, and then he follows and concludes the book with some sort of
practical exhortations in the Christian life. And they look at Philippians, and
they see him do all of that doctrine and all of that teaching of the Christian
life based on that doctrine, and then in Philippians 2:18-30, he commends
Epaphroditus and Timothy, and then he comes to this practical exhortation:
Rejoice in the Lord.

And
you’re expecting him at that point to do what? To conclude the letter. And then
suddenly, from the second half of verse 1 down to at least verse 11, he is back
into mind-bendingly, heart-filling theology. He’s back into a doctrinal
exhortation again. What? What happened, Paul? We were expecting you to wrap this
thing up. And I just wonder…reverently, I wonder whether that was perhaps Paul’s
original plan. You know, he was perhaps dictating this to his secretary, to his
amanuensis who was writing down every word. Under the inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, Paul is giving this letter and putting it in form, and he’s thinking
that he’s going to end with this exhortation on rejoicing. And then the Holy
Spirit burdens him that there is yet another word that he needs to say to God’s
people, and it’s a word about truth, and it’s a word about doctrine that’s
directly relevant to this practical exhortation about rejoicing because Paul is
concerned that those who teach false doctrine may come in and ruin the very joy
that he is exhorting the people of God in Philippi to have. If those people of
God aren’t on the lookout for this false teaching, if the people of God have not
adequately apprehended this principle that he’s going to set forth especially in
verses 1-6…and then, if they don’t adequately understand the glorious theology
of verses 7-11…if they don’t understand these things, the very joy he is
exhorting them to may be robbed from them. And so Paul perhaps, under the
inspiration of the Holy Spirit, was intending to end in verse 1, but continues
on. Praise God that he did! Because you know, you come to these passages and
some of the most glorious passages in all of the New Testament are found in
chapters 3 and 4 of the book of Philippians. How impoverished we would have been
without them. And so, though Paul begins with a finally, and thank God he
continues on with this doctrinal exhortation. And then he comes back again to
practical exhortations in chapter 4.

Well,
let’s look to God’s word and see what He has for us in this great passage. But
before we do, let’s pray and ask for His help and blessing.


Heavenly Father, this is Your word. Every single word of it is Your word
.
And not a single one of these words is empty and not one of these words will
fall or fail. You mean this truth for our edification. You are not simply
wanting to fill up our heads with facts: You are wanting to fill up our hearts
with truth, so that our faith is strengthened and our lives are changed forever.
For that to happen it will take the work of Your Holy Spirit, because this word
— Your word — does not fall or fail. But because our hearts are fickle and our
faith is weak, we need Your Spirit to open our eyes and behold wonderful truth
in Your word. So, God, grant us to taste and see the goodness of the Lord as
Your word is ministered to us this day. We pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Hear the
word of God:

“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 evildoers, 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, 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.”

Amen. And thus
ends this reading of God’s holy, inspired, and inerrant word. May He write its
eternal truth upon our hearts.

Have you
ever heard preachers who say something like, “And finally…” or, “In conclusion…”
and then there are three more points? And twenty more minutes? I have a preacher
friend in the PCA — pretty good preacher, at that — who I once heard say to his
congregation…he paused in the middle of the message, right after he had said,
“In conclusion.” He just paused and he said, “Now you know what it means when I
say “in conclusion.” And he paused for a moment and he said, “Not much!”

Well, I
think that’s actually what Paul is doing here. He’s getting ready to conclude
this letter, and then, by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, God burdens him to
give yet another word of truth to the people of God so that precisely they will
understand more fully and live out more really the exhortation that he was about
to end this letter with. If you’ll remember from Philippians 1:27 all the way to
chapter 2:18, the Apostle Paul has been exhorting the Philippians to live out
the Christian life in a manner worthy of the gospel, to have this mind in
themselves which was also in Christ Jesus. It’s been an exhortation for them to
grow in grace and to truly live out the Christian life for all it’s worth.

But
throughout that whole section, you remember he has been deeply concerned not
only for their holiness, but for their happiness. He has been concerned not only
for their godliness, but for their joy. That shouldn’t surprise us because,
remember, all the way back to Philippians 1 where the Apostle Paul is wrestling
with this dilemma: ‘Would I rather be in glory with Jesus, or would I rather be
here with the Philippians?’ Now, that’s a no-brainer! You know, to be there in
glory with Jesus or to be here…even with all the glories of friendship and
kinship and marriage…in the best that this life can give, it is a fallen world
filled with sorrows and heartaches and heartbreaks. For the Apostle Paul, there
is no contest. And he tells you there in Philippians 1 it would be far better to
be with Christ. Yet what does he say? ‘I am not only willing, but desirous to
stay here. Why? Because you need my ministry. I’m willing to stay here on planet
Earth rather than to go to glory to be with Jesus for your well-being as a
congregation.’ But Paul doesn’t quite put it that way. He tells them that he’s
willing to stay here to work for their — what? To work for their joy.

Now, you
better believe that joy is serious business to the Apostle Paul when he says
that he is willing to forego the immediate enjoyment of fellowship with Christ
in the heavenly glories, so that he can stay here and work for the Philippians
and “for your joy.” So it is really no surprise that when he begins to give a
practical exhortation at the end of this book, that it’s going to be “Rejoice in
the Lord,” because the Apostle Paul is serious about joy!

But even
as he’s about to end the letter, he thinks, ‘You know, there are false teachers
out there who, if they come to Philippi and teach their false teaching, it will
rob the Philippians of joy. Because their hope will be placed in the wrong
place, and thus their joy will be diminished. And so I’m going to bring to bear
this glorious truth about salvation in Christ and about putting no confidence in
the flesh, and about seeking more than anything else to gain Christ, and finding
greater satisfaction than anything in fellowship with Christ, precisely so that
I can inoculate these Philippians against a teaching that will kill their joy.’
And so he says — look at the second half of verse 1 — “To write the same things
to you is no trouble to me and safe for you.”

In other
words, Paul’s saying, ‘I’ve talked to you about this before. This is nothing new
that I’m about to say to you.’ Does it mean that he’s written another letter to
them that we don’t have? Maybe. Does it mean that he’s talked to them, he’s
preached to them, about this subject before? Surely. But the Apostle Paul says,
‘I don’t mind repeating myself. Why? Because what I’m about to say is essential
for your joy. And my final exhortation to you is going to be to rejoice in the
Lord.’

Now I
want to camp on that today. And I’ll point, towards the end of the message, to
one of the reasons why he’s going to give this glorious doctrinal exhortation in
relation to this exhortation to rejoice in the Lord. But I want you to fully
appreciate and understand what he is saying in verse 1. Paul says here that he
wants us as believers to rejoice in the Lord. He is preparing to conclude his
letter with a final exhortation to these hard-pressed, impoverished, persecuted
Philippian Christians. Now what would you say to a group of Christians who are
hard-pressed, impoverished, persecuted? Here’s what Paul says to them:
“Rejoice!” But that’s not all he says, is it? He says, “Rejoice in the Lord.”
Paul is calling the Philippians, and he is calling you and me, to the delightful
duty of joy in the Christian life. But you understand that he is calling us to a
very, very realistic thing.

The
Apostle Paul is not calling us to fake joy, where we smile our plastic smiles
and pretend like our lives are not falling apart. Paul is not calling on us to
rejoice because we’re living in denial. Paul is not saying, ‘Look, Philippians,
you can rejoice because you’ve got no problems.’ Oh, my friends, they had
problems aplenty! And Paul’s not calling you to rejoice because you’ve got no
problems. Paul’s not calling you to rejoice by pretending that you don’t have
problems. That is a favorite Southern way of doing things: “How are you?”
“Fine!” Which one of my Scottish friends says is the acronym for “Frustrated,
Insecure, Neurotic, and Exhausted” – FINE! Paul’s not saying ‘I want you to
rejoice because everything’s fine,’ because it’s not! He knows it’s not. He
knows the poverty of the Philippians. He knows the persecution that they’re
facing and are about to face. He knows the marginalization and the loneliness
and, very frankly, the deep, deep anxiety that they have because their
missionary — the one who preached to them the gospel — is in jail and in danger
of execution. They are deeply insecure. They are filled with anxiety. Neurotic
is their home address! He is not saying ‘Rejoice, because none of that is real.’
That’s not what he’s saying. He’s not saying that to you.

You know,
there are a lot of people who want to give you the message “Rejoice,” by doing
one of two things. Either they want you to pretend like your problems aren’t
there, or they want you to rejoice because your problems aren’t that big. And
God never asks us to have that kind of unrealistic joy, because He knows
personally what this world is like and He doesn’t want His people to have a fake
joy that is based upon pretending like their problems are not there. (You know —
that 900 pound gorilla in the room isn’t really there.) That’s not what he’s
asking us to do. That’s not what Paul is asking the Philippians to do. It’s not
what he’s asking you to do. He’s saying rejoice — not because you don’t have
problems. He’s not saying rejoice because your problems really aren’t that bad
after all. He’s saying rejoice even in the midst of your problems. Even in the
midst of your really big problems. Because there is a bigger reason for joy than
the size of y our problems.

You know,
as I looked out (and it especially hit me in the early service) as we came to
the third stanza of Jesus,What a Friend for Sinners, and we sang, “Even
when my heart is breaking…” and my eyes caught two or three people in the
congregation that are going through things in their family life that boggle my
mind, that I’ve never gone through, that I don’t have the faintest idea of what
their hearts must feel like. And that was it. I couldn’t sing the rest of the
song. And I’m so glad that the Apostle Paul is not looking out at this
congregation of Philippians and saying, ‘Be happy! Nothing’s wrong. Rejoice!
Everything’s fine.’ It’s not what he’s saying. He’s saying, ‘As real as your
problems are, as deep as your heartbreaks are, as justified as your fears are,
rejoice in the Lord because you are the recipient of a bigger truth than the
truth of your problems, and you are the recipients of promises that are greater
than the sum total of all your fears and all of your heartaches, and all of your
heartbreaks. His message is “Rejoice in the Lord.”

And do
you notice how Jesus and Paul just do this continually? They do not ask
believers to have comfort in this world because things are hunky-dory and fine
and dandy. They ask us to rejoice because there is bigger truth in God’s
promises to us in the gospel than there are in the sufferings and sorrows and
anxieties of this world.

I love
what John Calvin says about this passage. He pauses to meditate on this little
verse. It’s interesting. Many commentators just skip right over the first part
of verse 1, and they move right on into the doctrinal section. Not John Calvin!
He knows there’s something there for us. He says this: “Satan never ceases to
try to dishearten us by daily rumors.” In other words, Calvin is drawing to our
attention the fact that these problems that we face in the world that are real
and are big. What happens? First of all, those problems tempt us to think that
either God is not real or He is not good, because those problems are real, and
they hurt. And they make us doubt whether God is real, and if He cares about our
hurts. And do you know what Satan does with t those problems? He takes them and
he comes to us and he says, ‘Either God is not there for you, or He doesn’t care
about you. Either He’s not real, or He doesn’t love you.’ And Calvin’s drawing
attention precisely to that. Satan never ceases to dishearten us with his daily
rumors, and so Calvin says Paul exhorts the Philippians to constancy in the
exercise of holy joy. And he says,

“It is a rare virtue [this holy
joy]…it is a rare virtue that when Satan endeavors to irritate us by the
bitterness of the cross so as to make God’s name unpleasant to us. We rest in
the taste of God’s grace alone so that all annoyances, sorrows, anxieties and
griefs are sweetened.”

You see what
he’s telling you: how you go about fighting for joy in the Christian life.

And I
want to say two things. This is one reason why part of this sermon series is
called “Fighting for Joy”, because you just don’t fall over on your sofa and
have joy in the Christian life. It’s a fight for joy in the Christian life. And
so the Apostle Paul is saying, ‘I am so serious about your joy that I want to
give you weapons whereby to fight for joy, so that when those losses and crosses
and real anxieties and sorrows and griefs and trials come into your life, here’s
how you fight them. You don’t fight them by saying, ‘Oh, they’re not so bad,’
or, ‘Oh, that’s not happening to me. I won’t think about it.’ You don’t sing Que
sera, sera
and think about it tomorrow like Scarlett. That’s not how you
fight for joy. What do you do? You stack all your troubles up right at the foot
of the cross, and you see a bigger truth that is a cause for joy than the
greatest of your problems are cause for discouragement. It is not joy through
denial, it is a joy through a greater truth, and that’s going to be Paul’s big
argument in this whole section. He wants us to behold that big truth and not
just see it with our eyes, but believe it with our hearts. Or otherwise we are
unarmed in this combat fight for joy.

Now you
see why I said we were going to get through one point today! Now, look. Here’s
how the rest of this relates to this.

Paul is
going to describe, in the next verses, teachers that are going to come to the
Philippians and tell them, ‘Here’s how you live life with God. Here’s how you
get joy. Do stuff and trust in what you do.’ And the Apostle Paul is saying, ‘If
you fight for joy that way, let me tell you what’s going to happen. You’re going
to have no joy!’ And so what’s his big motto? Put no confidence in the flesh!
If a teacher comes along to you and says, ‘You want to have joy in this life?
Here’s how you have joy. Become a better you. That’s how you’re going to have
joy,’ what is he telling you to do? He’s saying, ‘Put your confidence in the
flesh. Here’s how you have joy: become a better you.’ ‘No!’ Paul says. ‘Put no
confidence in the flesh!’ Put all your confidence in Jesus Christ. That’s the
way you fight for joy, because confidence in the flesh will let you down,
because your flesh cannot hold up the burdens of this world. Only the atlas
shoulders of Jesus Christ and His free justification can hold you up under the
burdens of this world filled with sin and misery.

And so,
my friends, if you are here looking for joy today by putting your confidence in
yourself, I’ve got some really bad news for you: (a) You’re not going to find
that joy that way; (b) On the Judgment Day, you’re going to be in the line of
people who are lining up to tell God that Jesus didn’t need to die for you, that
you can handle this on your own. And I don’t want to be in that line on Judgment
Day because, you see, to say that your joy in this life is gained by you doing
things and working to be a good person, and that that will get you accepted with
God…you’re saying that you don’t need the shed blood of Jesus Christ for you,
that you can handle this on your own. I don’t want to be in that line on
Judgment Day.

But, my
friends, this morning there are even perhaps more of you who are trusting in
Jesus Christ for salvation and you’re not putting confidence in the flesh for
your salvation, but…but…you have not yet experienced and expressed in your life
the joy that the Apostle Paul knows Jesus shed His blood for you to experience
here just as much as He did shed His blood that your sins would be forgiven.
What did the Lord Jesus say to His disciples? “I came so that your joy would be
complete.” And the Apostle Paul is saying to the Philippians and he’s saying to
you that I am not going to let off of pursuing you until by God’s grace you are
experiencing in some measure that joy. And by God’s grace, this preacher is not
going to let off of pursuing you until you, Presbyterian [known around the world
for our joy]…until you, Presbyterian, in the midst of all your very real
heartaches and heartbreaks and sins and griefs in this fallen world, know
something of this joy which was so important to Jesus that you have, and which
the Apostle Paul said ‘I am ready to stay on planet Earth to work for your joy,
rather than to go to be in glory with Jesus.’

Do you
see how serious Paul is about your joy? By God’s grace, we’ll pursue it in the
gospel.

Let’s
pray.


Heavenly Father, we have found a friend in Christ who not only saves us by grace
and forgives us our sins — not for anything we do, but for what He has done —
and accepts us only for His righteousness, not for any of our own. We’ve found a
friend who wants us to know joy. And I want to confess, Lord God, that I’ve
lived so much of my Christian life knowing of salvation by grace and not living
out the joy that ought to be there. And I wonder…I just wonder if there are some
believers here today that are in the same situation. And I wonder…I just wonder
if there are others here today who are trying to find joy in all the wrong
places, and they’re putting their confidence in the flesh. And consequently
they’re not only not finding joy, they’re storing up eternal condemnation for
themselves. Lord God, teach us what it is to put no confidence in the flesh but
to rejoice in the Lord, and to count everything as loss for the privilege of
knowing Christ Jesus our Lord, and the power of His resurrection. This we ask in
Jesus’ name. Amen.

Would you
take your hymnals in hand and turn with me to No. 517, I’ve Found a Friend, O
Such a Friend
.

[Congregation
sings.]

The
grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

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