Sermon Tone Analysis

Knowing Christ Moves You

To recognize the worthlessness of your own attempts at righteousness

To rejoice in the righteousness God has earned for you and gifted to you

To pursue God’s greater goals for you

During different stages in life different things drive you.

When you are in school, things like achievements in academics, athletics, or extra-curricular activities—and yet still being popular—feel like matters of life and death.

Young people out on their own for the first time—especially those starting a family—devote the best of themselves to meeting their financial and family obligations.

They’ll pick up as many extra shifts as they can.

They’ll stay up through the night because their child is sick.

In the next stage, things might become a little more stable.

Life becomes less about survival—making ends meet and making sure there’s food on the table—and more about improving.

With the kids a little more self-sufficient, parents look to position their kids for success while advancing their own careers.

As the days of everyone dwelling under one roof draw to a close, families may splurge on a big vacation or a family reunion trying to savor the closing days of this stage of life.

Then the kids move out.

Ideally.

Retirement goes from dream to reality.

You become your own boss, kind of.

For most folks, retirement—though it’s good—isn’t quite what they imagined.

More doctors visits and less daiquiris than all the commercials depict.

But it’s about this time that the focus of most people begins to shift.

It’s not that you become less hopeful about the future.

Perhaps its just that you begin to appreciate the here and now a little more.

You savor the present.

Maybe it’s a byproduct of the kind of wisdom that comes with age.

Perhaps it’s seeing more than a few of your contemporaries struggle with sickness and death.

When that shift happens, words like legacy take on a fuller meaning.

A person naturally begins to consider what they have done and what they have to pass on.

As they look back to the past, they likely have some regrets.

There are even some things they’d like to totally overhaul.

A few moments they’d like to go back and appreciate more.

They grow nostalgic.

More sentimental.

At first glance, it might seem like that’s what Paul is doing in Philippians chapter 3. Paul is (Php.

1:13) in chains for Christ, probably in Rome where he would be executed.

But Paul isn’t nostalgic.

He doesn’t want to go back and savor the past.

Instead, (Php.

3:13) he forgets what is behind and strains toward what is ahead.

And he encourages us to do the same.

This is our shared legacy as Christians.

Paul wants all of us to have his clarity, his focus, his purpose.

He wants you to have the one thing of (Php.

3:8) surpassing worth—knowing Christ Jesus your Lord.

Knowing Christ Jesus is not merely a mental exercise.

Knowing Christ Jesus moves you to do three things.

#1 It moves you to see past the gimmicky nature of your own righteousness and recognize it as garbage.

#2 Knowing Christ Jesus moves you to rejoice in the righteousness that God has earned for you and gifts to you.

And finally, #3, knowing Christ Jesus provokes you to pursue God’s goals for you.

Paul starts with the gimmicky nature of man-made righteousness.

He warns the Philippians Christians about people that always seemed to swim in his wake—the Judaizers.

This is the same movement that wreaked havoc among the Galatians.

False teachers were telling Christians that in order to really be saved by a Jewish Messiah you had to first become a real part of the Jewish people.

Paul says that’s nonsense.

He has all the credentials they claimed were important.

Some he inherited—his Hebrew heritage was unblemished.

Others he had to put in the work for—living as a zealous Pharisee.

But his summary statement is crucial.

(Php.

3:6) As for righteousness based on the law, I was faultless.

Now he saw them as gimmicky.

Those things that (Php.

3:7) were gains to him, deeds that gained people’s attention, didn’t gain salvation.

When Paul’s fellow Israelites looked at him, they would have been impressed with his pedigree, his moral fiber, and the strength of his will.

But after seeing true righteousness, Paul considered them (Php.

3:7) loss.

Not just worthless, but spiritually destructive.

They couldn’t bear the weight of justifying him before God.

We all fall into the same trap when we look at our lives, don’t we?

Maybe it’s a pedigree and performance thing much like Paul’s past.

Maybe you come from a long line of Christians, or Lutherans, or confessional Lutherans.

Perhaps you were baptized as an infant, confirmed as a youth, and you’ve always been faithful in worship.

You never went through that rebellious stage.

You were always involved at your church.

Always giving.

Always volunteering.

Maybe you raised up kids and made sacrifices so they could go to Lutheran schools.

Perhaps you look at your kids and grandkids sharing your faith and you feel like you’ve done well passing on your spiritual heritage.

God says none of that makes you more worthy of his grace.

These are done to his glory, not yours!

It could even be that your lack of pedigree makes you feel remarkable.

Maybe your whole family is full of unbelievers.

You may have lived that way for a while, too.

And now you look at all the work you put in, all the relationships that you’ve sacrificed, all the sinning you’ve left behind, and there’s a part of you that feels like you’ve contributed something really significant to your salvation.

Jesus did it all, you say, but I put in the work & made it mine!

And it wasn’t easy!

It’s shocking how selective our memories can be.

When we look back, we remember vividly all the good we’ve done.

We think our heavenly Father should be so pleased with our loyalty.

But how many times have we done what is right for all the wrong reasons?

How often have we served while giving those who aren’t serving side-eye?

How many times have we given to the Lord with gritted teeth?

How many times have we resisted temptation mostly because we want to avoid the probable painful consequences?

How many times have we done what God says is good mostly because it makes us look or feel good?

This is what Isaiah was exposing when he says: (Is 64:6) All our righteous acts are like filthy rags.

(Php.

3:8) Garbage, Paul says.

When we know Christ, and what true righteousness looks like and does, we consider everything we’ve done to secure our own salvation a total (Php.

3:7) loss.

Like cargo on a sinking ship, it’s got to be thrown overboard.

But God has gifted us something wonderful—his Son.