Latest / The Daily Word / June 13 – Nothing but Christ
Transcript
- Cory: Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good we hours of the night. Whenever you are joining us, welcome to the Daily Word Podcast from Lakeshore Christian Fellowship. My name is Corey Barnes, and it's my privilege to pastor our Kitapa campus. And I'm excited to be sitting down with you for another Daily Word episode. We're going to be doing a devotion from today's New Testament portion of our Bible reading plan that we're linked in together on as a church. And today is Beautiful June the 13th, lovely Saturday. And our reading comes from Philippians chapter 3. Now, Paul starts off this chapter by once again telling the believers to rejoice in the Lord. And honestly, at this point of the letter, that's kind of getting repetitive. Like he has said that in different ways over and over and over again in this short letter to the Philippians. But Paul acknowledges that he's saying it over and over again. And he says that he's not even tired of saying it. And that it's actually something that if the believers take this to heart, it's going to protect the faith of the believers if they will honestly rejoice in the Lord. He then goes on to address ⁓ apparently there's more opposition. He's bumping up again. It's probably coming from the same group of folks from Galatians and 2 Corinthians that Paul addressed. Remember the super apostles? Now, this may not be the exact same folks that that Paul was dealing with in those other cities, but it's probably the same group or or they probably know each other, right? And Paul is dealing with some things that they're saying against him. And it seems to be possible that they're saying they're better than Paul. Now, we don't know exactly what line of reasoning they're using. Maybe it's the fact that Paul wants persecuted a Christian, or s or it could be any of the other myriad of Insults and and ways that they attacked him in the other letters that where Paul has addressed them. We don't know exactly what they're saying, but we do know that how Paul responds to what they're saying. We can see him starting that in verse three, where he says, Re we rely on what Christ has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort. Now, from there, Paul's line of reasoning kind of goes on that we can't rely on our efforts. But if anyone ever could, it would be yours truly. And he kinda lists his resume and all the things that would have attained him righteousness before Jesus. Righteousness in the eyes of the Jewish people. See, this is just a rhetorical strategy Paul is using to disprove the logic of his enemies, because he goes on in verse seven. To then take, he's just painted his resume here, and then in verse seven seven, he kind of dismisses the whole thing. I'm gonna read you verses seven through nine in the NIV. But where but whatever were gains to me, I now consider a loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them. Garbage that I might gain Christ 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 on the basis of faith. See what Paul is saying here is that all of his past accolades, all of his deeds, his entire pedigree that he has already lined out. All of them are garbage. In fact, that Greek word that Paul uses there for garbage in verse 8 actually speaks to like dung is what he's saying, that they are as valuable as all the things he's ever done, they are like dung compared to what Jesus has done for him. No, instead of relying on the righteousness that is based on our efforts, we as Christians have righteousness. That God gives us based on our faith in Jesus' finished work. Now, if you've been following along with this, you'll notice that here we are again talking about righteousness. And that's because that's a big theme that Paul hits on time and time and time again throughout his writings. We we saw him spend a lot of time talking about it in the book of Romans. And what that means is Is beyond it just being a theme that Paul hit on time and time again, it's actually a theme that the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to write about over and over and over again. After all, it is Jesus who said of the Holy Spirit that he will come to convict the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. And part of the Holy Spirit's job in our lives is to convict us that we live accordingly. according to the righteousness that Christ gave us, not according to the righteousness we can own. It's part of his ministry. It's really, really beautiful. And it's because of our righteousness, our right standing with God based on the work of Jesus, and our right living based on the power of the Holy Spirit, that we have access to something so radically different than what the world has to offer. And the Lord knew that. And just like the Philippians needed Paul to remind them over and over and over again to rejoice in the Lord and You and I need Paul and the Holy Spirit speaking through Paul to remind us over and over and over again that our righteousness comes through Jesus. It's not based on our accolades or our trophies. God is not impressed by our resume. When it comes to our right standing with God, all those things are worth about as much as a pile of dung. What's valuable is our faith, ⁓ our in the finished work of Jesus. So that's our scripture, that's our observation, what's our application today? Well, I think it's that we need to realize that we should stop coming to our relationship with God on the basis of anything ⁓ other the finished work. Of Jesus. We don't come to God on the basis of our parents' relationship. Our family has served the Lord for fourscore and seven years, you know. It's none of those things that that allow us to draw near to Jesus. It's the finished work, what He did for us. We aren't standing before Him and having access. To the throne room to come and bring our petitions to him because we're on a hundred and fifty-seven days of our Bible reading plan and we haven't missed one yet. That's not what does it for us. It's not because we served three days last month in the church. It's because of who Jesus is and what he did and the fact that he gave his life for us, he paid the price. For us to be able to stand before the Lord. Let that sink in while we pray. Father, I just thank you. I thank you, Lord, that at the dawn of creation you already had a plan. You knew that Adam and Eve would fall. You knew the human race would be in a mess. And you planned. From that moment, you recognize that nothing we would ever be able to do would make us right before you. So you took the job into your own hands and you sent your son, Jesus Christ, firstborn, over all creation, to come to earth, to lay down his life so that I and so that everybody listening who has accepted the name of Jesus, all those who have followed you. Could have access to you, could be able to stand before you with our head held high, not trying to earn it, but walking in what has already been paid for. We thank you, Jesus, that you paid the bill for us. You paid every expense that it would take for us to be able to have a relationship with the Father because you are just that good. Holy Spirit, we just invite you that anytime we start trying to rely on ourselves and what we're able to do and and our accolades and our our our good deeds to have access to to the Lord. Anytime we fall and slip into that old familiar trap, I pray that you would come and you would convict us of righteousness so that we can fully enjoy what Jesus paid the price for and bring him all glory for what he has done. We love you, Jesus. We thank you that every time we come to your word, you open it up for us. You start revealing things to us. You are beautiful, and we love you today and forevermore. In the name of Jesus, amen.