Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

What are many people tempted to place their confidence in?

Good Works

Money

Popularity

Other things?

For so many of us, we’re tempted to place our confidence in ourselves.

In our actions, in our successes, in our achievements, in our past.

While it’s not a bad thing by any stretch to be successful or to have done some awesome things in the past, we all know that success comes and it goes.

Our circumstances in life change and they change often.

One minute you can be on the top of the world and the next you can hit rock bottom, kind of like a roller coaster, you go up and then you go down.

You have people praising you one minute and then you have people protesting you the next.

Humans change.

Attitudes change.

And even happiness changes.

Think for a moment this afternoon on a moment in your life recently when you were genuinely happy.

What was going on in the moment?

What were you feeling?

What had led you to that point?

For many of us, the moments in which we are happy are times where our circumstances are good.

Times where things are going our way.

Times where we can look back on our hard work or something we’ve done and relax just a little bit.

What happens whenever our circumstances change a little bit, though?

You’re relaxing with your family at a baseball game and you’re happy, and then a storm pops up and cancels the game.

Further, you get a flat tire on the drive back home and when you finally get home you realize that you left the windows open and a skunk has sprayed all of its juicy goodness inside your home.

Are you still happy?

Absolutely not because your circumstances have changed!

For so many of us we have this inner battle, this inner struggle, and it stems from wanting to satisfy ourselves with things.

We try to satisfy ourselves with things that make us happy.

We try to satisfy ourselves with money or popularity or any of these other things and they never work!

In fact, they leave us feeling even more empty than before.

Paul knew all about this.

Paul did all the right things.

He knew the right people.

He said the right words.

Yet, he wasn’t satisfied.

We read in the book of Philippians, though, that something changed in Paul’s life.

He went from having no joy to being full of joy even while in prison.

He went from persecuting the church to planting the church.

He went from hating Christ to following Christ.

What changed in Paul’s life?

What has to change in our lives today?

As you break out into small groups, spend some time this afternoon reading the text and discuss things that stand out to you.

What changed in Paul’s life?

What does it mean to know Jesus?

What is the difference between happiness and joy?

What is the only thing that saves?

Paul was focused on the wrong thing during his pre-Christ years.

It wasn’t that he was doing a lot of bad things or that he didn’t know anything about the Scriptures… We read the exact opposite.

This is true for many people in the United States and within churches today as well.

People seem to know Bible stories and they know the Hobby Lobby Bible verses - you know what those are, don’t you?

The Philippians 4:13’s and John 3:16’s of the world.

Not that there’s anything wrong with those verses - they’re great truths to hold on to!

Yet, if we’re not careful, we can think that everyone who knows a Bible verse is a Christian or that everyone who grew up going to church is a Christian, or worse yet, that if we know the right “church” answers, that we’re a Christian.

We too can be tempted to focus on the wrong things - just like Paul.

False Knowledge (1-6)

Paul begins in Philippians 3 by talking about the temptation to place confidence in our flesh.

What Paul is truly addressing is the problem of legalism and the temptation to think that our works earn our righteousness before God.

Paul talks so much in this letter about joy and the joy that comes from belonging to Jesus Christ.

Joy, he shares can be a safeguard of sorts as it gets the focus off of ourselves and onto Christ.

Joy is our greatest threat against the cancer of legalism.

Have you ever heard someone use the word legalism?

That word gets thrown out an awful lot these days but it is a legitimate danger.

In Jesus’ day the Pharisees were very legalistic as they tempted to prove their rightness and justification based on their religious works.

We think that we can save ourselves.

We think that salvation is based on Jesus + my awesome works.

Jesus + anything = nothing, according to the Bible.

Paul begins to call out these “dogs” known as the Judaizers who accepted Jesus as the Messiah but they held on to their religious works as proof of their righteousness.

We find their existence back in Acts 15:1

They argued that in order to become a Christian, you first had to become a Jew and become circumcised and follow the Mosaic law.

There were rules and regulations that you had to do before you could become a Christian.

You had to do the right things and if you did that then you might be good enough for Jesus to actually save you.

The idea was on gaining confidence in the flesh.

Why do you think there’s a temptation to add things to Jesus?

In studying my own heart and talking with others, it comes down to our sinful nature, doesn’t it?

We desperately crave credit for our salvation.

If my salvation is Jesus + me then I can play a part and claim credit.

This demonstrates that I don’t truly know Jesus, though.

This demonstrates that my focus is more on legalism than denying myself and following Jesus

Notice what Paul says about his resume/track record: He has the most confidence in the flesh of anyone!

Circumcised on the 8th day, an Israelite, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews - look at his past.

In 2022 people would say that Paul was privileged because he was born to a home with parents who took seriously their responsibility as Jewish parents.

He had all of this stuff going for him and he had reason to be confident and the reasons continue on: he was a Pharisee who was educated by one of the greatest teachers in all of Judaism, Gamileal.

He was zealous for the law and proved this by persecuting the church.

He kept all of the laws and was blameless before them.

This isn’t saying that he was perfect - but think of the religious check list.

When the doors of the church were open, Saul was there.

When there was a Bible contest, Saul won.

Whenever the law was looked at, Saul stood out.

He did what he was supposed to do.

Now, at this point do you see how Paul could have confidence in his works and actions?

He did all the right stuff and came from the right place.

Yet, his works and knowledge weren’t good enough.

Think about this for a moment.

What if you were raised by someone who taught you that 2 + 2 = 5.

You’re insulated in a bubble of sorts and for years this is all that you’ve known before one day you run into someone who says that they have $2 and need to find $3 in order to pay for something that is $5 total.

You’d be a little confused because you were taught that 2 + 2 = 5, so how much money does this stranger really need?

Not $3 but $2.

You go and give the person $2 so that they’d have all that they need to pay for their item but they give you the craziest look you’ve ever seen and you can’t figure it out.

What have you done?