One of the pronounced themes about the book of Philippians is this whole idea of joy and rejoicing.
But why? I think this is a book, if you will, about having the mind of Christ. Thinking about real life circumstances in light of the thinking of Christ. I need to live with a gospel transformed mind. My perspective on the circumstances of life must be shaped by the gospel.
We are living in a day where we are blitzed with information all the time. And our brain is designed that in one way, shape, or form, it does process that information. And when it does, it informs or it transforms our perspective.
And I am here to challenge us today that there are things in life that we need to at least understand whether my perspective on those things is informed or transformed. And so I believe in this book as we study it together. What is God saying should be my perspective on that.
And if I make the change from one to the other, will it result in me living a life that is marked by a peaceful, settled joy in God. Welcome to The Daily Platform, a radio program featuring chapel messages from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. Today, Dr. Alan Benson is continuing the study series called The Mind of Christ from the book of Philippians. Take your Bibles and turn with me to Philippians chapter three. Philippians chapter three, to put things in perspective for you this morning is the last designated chapel for me to preach in the book of Philippians. Our chapter begins in chapter three with the word finally, maybe that's fitting. But like with Paul, since there's two more chapters, I want you to know that this finally isn't finally either. I'm going to take the other opportunities that I have to preach and we're going to stay in the book of Philippians. So I have two Thursday chapels and we're going to stay in the book of Philippians and whatever other chances the Lord gives me and we'll work our way as much as we can through at least the mountain peaks of these last two chapters. All along as I read, Paul writes, finally my brethren rejoice in the Lord.
To write the same things to you to me and indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision for we are the circumcision which worship God in the spirit and rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I might also have confidence in the flesh if any other man thinketh that he hath whereof he might trust in the flesh I more.
Circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, the tribe of Benjamin and Hebrew of the Hebrews as touching the law of Pharisee concerning zeal, persecuting the church, touching the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gained to me, those I counted loss for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but done that I may win Christ and be found in him. Not having my own righteousness which is of the law but that which is through the faith of Christ. The righteousness which is of God by faith that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable unto his death if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead. Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect but I follow after.
If that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Humor me for a minute. Would you hold your finger up? It's been a little while. Put your finger between me and you, right?
Last month of the school year, closing sagas of Philippians. Let's remind ourselves, right? Remember my little joke? Put your finger between you and me and stare at your finger and how do I look? The best I have ever looked, right?
That's right. I find whenever you can somehow make me foggy I look better. I'm one of those people that looks better from a distance. Now keep your finger there and focus on me.
How does your finger look? Remember change in perspective. That's what we're looking at as we are learning the mind of Christ and today I want us to learn an incredible lesson. And it's really as close to living real life with an altered perspective as we get in this whole book. In fact, I believe unlike some authors who somehow find something awkward and disjointed about chapter 3 and verse 1 questioning whether or not it even belongs here, I think they actually are struggling with the whole principle of inspiration. But just in the text and how it flows, their understanding of how it works in this portion of the Scripture, I want us to see that I actually think this is at the heart of the book. Not just because it starts the third of four chapters, but it is the heart of the content and I believe he's intentionally connecting where we have been in chapter 2 to the rest of life and how we ought to live. So if you remember the last time we were in Philippians 2 14 to 16, which has these familiar words, do all things without murmurings and disputings.
It is the parents life verse for their children. In our house we used to have it this way. Our rule was no whining.
Anybody else have that rule in your house? No whining. Well we've seen I hope as we looked at that it means so much more than that. It has to do with the heart as well as the expression and then there's an impact from that. There's a call here to a mindset that frames the heart that enables righteous living because he says in verse 16, so that or as a result of this kind of framework in your thinking that you may be blameless and harmless as sons of God without rebuke in the midst of a crooked and perverse nation among whom you shine as lights in the world. Holding forth the word of life that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I've not run in vain neither labored in vain. That the gospel work that I did among you actually is bearing the fruit that it's supposed to bear as exemplified by the way you live.
Do you ever leave a passage like that and say or more importantly think? That sounds so great but it's impossible. I want to live that way. I want to be blameless and harmless in my broken world. I want to shine as a light in my dark world. I want to hold forth the word of life in my world that is filled with error and confusion.
But I don't know how to do it and somehow it doesn't seem to work. I try for a while but then I find myself broken, blameworthy, blind in the darkness and bewildered with the confusion that seems to be all around me in my world. I believe that Paul's command, caution and then case study presented in Philippians 3, 1 through 12 is the key to living the life that he calls us to in Philippians 2, 14 to 16. As we come to the beginning of this third chapter there's a tone change. Paul is going to say, beware, beware, beware.
Very different than the tone we find in the opening of chapter one. But it's the same Paul writing to the same people and he has this same love. He's no less loving. You see sometimes we think that love is best expressed in soft tones and compassionate words and there are times that that is true.
However, when danger is present love is best expressed in serious tones and careful words. And so we find Paul continuing to love these believers as he presents to them what I believe is an incredible, a marvelous, a life-shaping, mind-altering text. In a phrase that unfortunately is so familiar to us that we tend to blow right past it in this book. You finish this for me, right? Rejoice in the Lord always and we all know that, don't we?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Paul is going to start this by saying, finally my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. What is he actually saying? Well, I want you to see first of all that this is a command worth repeating.
A command worth repeating and he says, to write the same things to you to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe. And he uses this word that is translated finally, loipon, from loipos. It does mean last, occurring at or forming an end or a termination. It is often translated as a temporal adverb, thus the sense I am bringing this to an end. However, the focus is not so much on the fact that I am ending as it is to pay attention to what remains. I want to capture your attention particularly so you hear what I have to say next. I'm focusing on what is left, what is remaining. And so this word finally grabs our attention and calls us to priority.
So what's the proper understanding of the command? He says to rejoice. I think we have to understand this. We have to understand this concept throughout the book. We have to understand why over and over again he says this word joy or rejoicing.
Because I believe for Paul it actually is formulaic. It's about a mindset. It's not just suck it up and be happy.
It's not fake it till you make it. This is actually a call to evaluation that considers something of great value in light of my circumstances and makes a choice to live in light of those priorities. It's a choice to view life in its circumstances differently. A change in mind, an attitude toward the affairs of life. It's taking cognitive inventory of life and coming to a conclusion about how to live. It's a command to choose, here's our word, a worldview. How do you view your world or in particular, do you view your circumstances in light of who God is?
Or do you allow your circumstances to blur your view of God? You see he moves from an exhortation to conduct ourselves in a manner that is consistent with the gospel at the end of chapter 2 to then this sense of a warning or if you will a caution and in between he gives a command, an injunction. So let's look at it then. The practical use of this command or this instruction. And I believe there's teaching here. He's commanding us yes to rejoice. One author said it means go on rejoicing. We are to produce a pattern or a lifestyle of rejoicing but I believe actually in light of what he says later in this section, he's actually not just calling us to do it over and over and over again as much as he's calling us to the fact that this is not a practice, it's a process. A kind of soul centering mental reset that Paul is calling us to is something that we need to do over and over as a corrective process as we encounter life. You see life wants to make us grumble and complain. Our fleshliness, our brokenness, our temporalness wants us in a temple broken fallen world to interact with our circumstances as though they're beyond not just our control but anybody's control. Life wants to make us practical atheists who live as though our lives are the futile product of luck, fate, and chance. And when we find ourselves shifting our focus from the eternal to the immediate, we're to stop and engage in a resetting process that looks like rejoice in the Lord.
It isn't imperative. This isn't optional for the believer. We are to reset our mind in light of the truth that we claim. We are to reset our mind in light of the gospel truth that we lay claim to. We are to reset our thinking in God's world in light of the fact that it is God's world. And so not just the teaching, this is a process, but look at the terms. We are literally to continually or to go on practicing rejoicing. And it's given to who?
Notice these are not just words that happen to get injected into the text. My brethren, he's going to describe people who are religious but are not brethren. And so I want you to understand that the ability, the capacity to live this way in this world is contingent upon the fact that you are one of the brethren or that you are actually a believer. Listen to me, if you are sitting here today and you don't know Jesus Christ as your savior, the promise that Paul is making about the ability to live with real joy in a broken and fallen world isn't to you. You cannot live in God's world in its brokenness without Christ. And so try as you may to work and find all kinds of things, people, pleasure, positions, prestige, power, whatever it may be, to satisfy the long and Christ-shaped hole in your heart.
Everything you try will make the hole bigger. See, I think Paul is driving at a Christ-saturated contentment in our circumstances. And so notice then the technique, if you will, in this command. Paul is repeating himself and he is saying this is necessary for you and I think as he is doing it for them, what ultimately he wants them to do is learn this practice and to go through this process every time they find life robbing them of this perspective. Every time they find themselves disheartened and they analyze their heart and they realize that my circumstances are clear and my God is blurry. Or if you will, life has come close and God feels different.
I should go through this process. This is teaching about a technique and thus I want you to see that his repetition is purposeful because there's truth in this command. And he says that rejoicing is a safeguard for those who practice it. And I believe that is the connection to what he is going to say next. Why is he going to warn them? In fact, he's not just going to give them this command that's worth repeating.
He actually is going to give them something else that's worth repeating and I think it's directly connected to this because a lack of contentment leaves them vulnerable to what it is he's going to warn them about. You see, I think that the path of disobedience begins with a heart filled with discontentment. And I think you can find that throughout the Scriptures.
I think you can find it all the way back in the Garden of Eden. I think there was discontentment with what God had given in light of the fact that there was one thing God hadn't given. And thus, if you will, theologically, I think a heart that is content with who God is and what God does is the key to the believers persevering in the faith. We see this, don't we, in Psalm 73? The psalmist writes, truly God is good to Israel. Truly.
Verifying truth, even to such are of a clean heart. And then he says this, but as for me, my feet were almost gone. My steps had well nigh slipped.
Why? For I was envious at the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. And his heart doesn't get reset. Until he says in verse 17, until I went into the sanctuary of God, then understood I their end. And at the end of the Psalm, he says this, for lo, they that are far from thee shall perish. Thou hast destroyed all them that go whoring from thee, but it is good for me to draw near to God. I have put my trust in the Lord God that I may declare all thy work.
You see, he's going through this process, isn't he? I think we see this actually may be most pronounced for us when you consider Romans 1. Paul's description of depravity gripping the lives of God's image bearers. And he starts there with their abandonment of God that is sourced in the fact that they were no longer thankful.
They became discontent. You see, grumbling is a dangerous evil, not just because of its social impact, but because of its spiritual impact on my own heart. As I look at my circumstances and I allow God to become blurry, very quickly my circumstances begin to inform my view of God. And I start with, well, God's not interested. God's too far away.
This is too small for God. And I end up with a conclusion that says God isn't good. You see, Paul's words to us here ought to cause us to reflect on our own values, to see whether ours match his. And if not, our values are wrong and they're inconsistent with the gospel we claim. Our values significantly shape our contentment or our sense of joy.
So Paul is actually leading them. He's leading them to right thinking because of the dangers that are around them that they are prey to in wrong thinking. So if you're sitting here today and you look at your heart and you're grumbling, you're complaining, you're not content. Paul is giving an authoritative command to theologically reset our thinking in such a way that we refocus our values and see everything in life through a theological grid that enables us to find peace in the providence of God and joy in the sovereignty of God, because we find him to be a loving heavenly father who graciously dispenses mercy and generously distributes grace.
So what happens whenever we don't? So notice then, a caution worth repeating. And I say that because in verse 2 he says, beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision. He's using repetitive language. He's getting their attention. And he speaks very very strongly, though he is not any less lovingly pleading with them, because he wants them to understand this danger. How do people end up in that kind of self-made, self-gratifying, self-satisfying religion?
Because they've turned to themselves and their own means and their own ends to bring about their own contentment. Paul uses incredibly strong language. It's pungent language to describe the Judaizers who I don't believe have yet come to Philippi.
They're just coming, but Philippi, remember, doesn't have the large gathering of Jews. They've come to other places and Paul's experienced the suffering that they have brought to him in other churches. And so he here is warning them. He calls them dogs and evil workers and those that mutilate the flesh, terms that would infuriate them.
Why? Because Paul doesn't want these believers to think that he is in any way connected with them. This isn't the kind of religion that Christ intends for you to have. But then he describes the believer, and notice he describes the believer with an identification. He says, we are the circumcision. And he's not just writing to those who may be Jews in this church. He is writing to believers and he says that you actually have identity in Christ.
You belong. And that is marked by an indwelling. You worship by the Spirit of God rather than by your own efforts. You've lifted your eyes above the temporal and you're looking to God and what he does in your life and the implications of that are potent. And that's why Paul is going to describe his own life. And in describing his own life, he is going to repeat a case study.
Paul's testimony is actually found three times in the book of Acts. He recounts it again here and it's not because he wants everybody to think he's so great, but this is a case study that's worth repeating because it's what God did in a self-religious man's life to bring him to a place where he could experience joy in the circumstances of life, which for him were terrible. And he says it was a process of values reorientation because what I considered a debit to my spiritual bank account I realized wasn't not just a debit, it was a liability and I counted it as trash, as dung, as worthless. And he says I had to do that so that I would find my satisfaction in Christ alone and the transforming work of Christ through my circumstances in my own life. Young people, this is the pathway to living this life with what Paul would mark as a contentedness no matter what my circumstances look like.
You see Paul is going to tout his pedigree and his purity and his passion and his practice. We may not look at those things that way, but you know what we do? We substitute them in our social setting with our privilege and our position and our possessions and our prominence. Here's the things that give me value.
Here's the places I find worth. Here are the things that give me satisfaction and I find that when I have privilege it gives me nothing. When I have position it gains me nothing. When I have possessions they're all going to be lost and when I have prominence people's opinions change. And all they do is further my discontentment and make my circumstances bigger and my God more distant. And so he says when you find yourself disconnected from God and struggling in your circumstances, remember the rest. Rejoice in the Lord, brethren.
Let's pray. Father, thank you for your word. Lord, this is life. These are our circumstances. And Lord, this is the theological key, the process to being transformed in our thinking that enables us to live the life of Philippians 2, 12 through 16. God shape our hearts as Paul begged of you that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering being made conformable to his death. That we might live glorifying you in our God-given contentment, seeing you clearly, blurring our circumstances. Help us to live this way. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. You've been listening to a sermon preached by Dr. Alan Benson from the study series in the book of Philippians called The Mind of Christ. Thanks for listening and join us again tomorrow as we continue the study preached from the Bob Jones University Chapel platform.
