Sermon Tone Analysis

2-3

Last week we concentrated upon verse 1. Rejoice in the Lord.

We found that the main reason for this is that it takes the focus off ourselves and upon the One who is Lord over all, is our Saviour, Redeemer, Friend and Brother.

This rejoicing in Christ also stops us from the kind of things Paul criticises in this letter such as complaining and murmuring.

We cannot both rejoice in the Lord and be angry.

We cannot both be thankful to Him and be moaning and grumpy.

We learned too that we can have no confidence in others let alone ourselves because we will be let down by others or by ourselves and that all our confidence is instead in Christ who never fails.

As it says in:

It is upon this foundation that we now build.

And Paul does not mince his words: beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation!

Paul is not being subtle at all.

Beware of dogs?

Why beware of dogs?

What has Ethan done?!

But we are talking of the 1st Century world here where dogs were not pets but were on the street, scavengers and wild and going round in packs.

In fact it was the Jews who called the Gentiles dogs.

They thought themselves superior to the rest because they were chosen by God.

Whilst it is true that they were chosen by God it was so that that would be light to the Gentiles.

But instead Paul is saying that it is these same Jews, who are now outside of the chosen ones of God, who are the dogs nipping at the legs of people of faith.

This would be antisemitism if it were not for the fact that Paul is also a Jew and proud of it as we’ll see next week.

Why beware of evil workers?

Truly these people, these Jews, were doing everything right, they viewed themselves as good workers.

So why did Paul call them evil workers?

“not because they do what is morally wrong, nor because they act out of malice, but … because their reliance on ‘works’ is in the end harmful both to themselves and to others” (Caird, 133).

It is harmful in that such reliance is ultimately self-reliance and tends to obscure the need for God, who alone is the source of true life and goodness.

Not many people enjoy going to the doctor, but according to Reuters, in 1994, one London accountant took that to an extreme.

The sixty-three-year-old man knew he needed bladder surgery but he could not overcome his fear of doctors and hospitals.

So he self-reliantly did what had to be done: He tried to perform the surgery on himself.

Tragically he got an infection from the self-surgery and later died.

The coroner said, “Unfortunately, [his] drastic remedy went wrong.

A simple operation would have solved the problem.”

Just as this man didn’t trust doctors or hospitals, many people don’t trust God.

In their self-reliance, they destroy themselves.

And these people were going around like evangelists proclaiming that they need to fulfil the law and be like them – so not only destroying themselves but the faith of others.

I also feel this way about Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses who also are like these legalistic Jews for Jesus Himself says:

And therefore they were not true Gospel preachers but false ones and hence they were evil workers.

This cannot be overstated.

They had not understood that the law and their keeping of it did not put them right in the sight of God but as it says in:

The law and trying to keep it did not make people right with God.

The law existed to prove that they couldn’t keep God’s standards completely.

It proved instead that we are sinners:

And Paul then says beware of the mutilation which has to do with circumcision that is performed to this day on 8 day old baby boys in Judaism.

Circumcision was the proof that they were of the people of God; it was their pride and joy and badge of honour but Paul calls it mutilation because they were not the people of God at all. for they did not mix with faith in the living God.

They were relying upon their heritage that they were God’s people.

This is similar today where people think that they are Christians because they were born into Roman Catholicism or Anglicanism or born in the UK and have been christened.

But to the Jews they were surprised when John the Baptist preached:

And in

It would have sounded incredible to the Jews to hear but there had been a reversal in roles:

Jews are the new Gentiles, while Christian believers have become true Jews.

Hughes, R. K. (2007).

Philippians: the fellowship of the gospel (p.

124).

Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

How is this the case?

Well we have been grafted in whilst, for a time, the physical people of Israel are spiritually blinded.

They still do not realise that the law, nor circumcision, nor heritage does not save them but faith alone.

In verse 3 Paul goes on to say that

 we are the circumcision

 for we worship God in the Spirit,

 rejoice in Christ Jesus,

 and have no confidence in the flesh.

So who are the real circumcised?

The truly circumcised are those who worship God in the Spirit.

Remember the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well: She said:

Unlike the days when the Jews would have to visit the temple or synagogue to worship we can worship everywhere.

Our whole lives become worship.

This is not possible for someone who has not come to Jesus in faith.

John Donne so well said:

Wilt thou love God as he thee?

then digest,

My soul, this wholesome meditation,

How God the Spirit, by angels waited on

In heaven, doth make his temple in thy breast.

And what happens when the Spirit lives in us?

We become true worshippers.

This leads into the next part which says rejoice in Christ Jesus.

The word rejoice is boasting.

So this is about glorying or boasting in Christ Jesus.

We boast because it is not our hold on Christ that saves us—it is Christ.

We boast because it is not our joy in Christ that saves us—it is Christ.

We boast because it is not even our faith that saves us—it is Christ.

Hughes, R. K. (2007).

Philippians: the fellowship of the gospel (p.

125).

Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books.

Christ is the one who takes our focus.

It is the refrain that runs through this letter: To me to live is Christ.

We have a one-track mind – not as the world understands this but as we, His people, understand it.

Christ is all.

In Irena’s favourite hymn ‘Jesus, lover of my soul’ Charles Wesley wrote the words:

Thou, O Christ, art all I want;

More than all in Thee I find.

Paul echoes this in

We boast in the cross not in what we can do.

Christ becomes our obsession.

This is the measure of how much we are affected by His Spirit in our lives.

Is Christ our all in all or has something or someone taken His place?

The Church in Ephesus lost their way and it seems possible for us to lose ours too.

Repent.

Remember Christ is everything.

This life is too short to spend on anything else.

Why spend time on the world when the world hates us?

We are crucified with Christ.