The Greatest Loss One Can Achieve

We live in a society that loves trophies and one that hands out trophies for just about everything. You have championship trophies, you have individual trophies, you have completion trophies, and you have everyone’s favorite: participation trophies. There’s a time and place for participation trophies, like whenever a young child tries something new for the very first time. But one of the great things about competition at any age is that you learn how to win and lose with grace and character. It’s been said that we are a participation trophy society and we love making everyone feel good so we say that everyone is equal and a winner - again, there is a time and place for this, but think of the idea that this gives to people. You have person A who works hard at practice to improve, they train late at night at their home to get better, they constantly are wanting to be the best that they can be and their dedication and improvement shows as they play. Contrast this with person B who has only showed up 1 time and had a bad attitude and decided to never come again. In our participation trophy society, person A and B are equal - they’ll receive the same award and trophy at the end of the year even though you couldn’t find 2 more different attitudes and outlooks. We all love to win and this fuels the desire to make everyone feel like a winner.

We often talk about our greatest victories in life… games, awards, etc… And the Bible talks a lot about victories. But it’s been said that you are only a winner if you’ve lost enough and learned from those losses. In our lives, even as Christians, we know that we fail and fall short. We are all sinners! Before we can talk about the greatest news in human history, we must die to ourselves and follow Jesus. Paul desperately wants other people to know Christ… But before you can truly come to an understanding of how great Jesus is, you have to understand how sinful you and I are. We must experience the greatest loss we can achieve - that we are not good enough on our own! Our works cannot save us!

While some believe and teach that everyone wins and that everyone will win in the end and spend eternity in heaven - the Bible tells us a different story. Our trophies and personal victories aren’t good enough. We can’t win enough - we have understand that we lose by ourselves and that we need help in order to win. This is the situation that Paul finds himself in in Philippians 3:1-11 as he talks about his past achievements and trophy list. He has a lot to boast in… But in the end, the only thing that truly matters and will actually save isn’t anything that he has done or anything that he can even do for himself. The only hope Paul has is coming to understand that he must lose in order to win. That his best is not enough. Let’s read from God’s Word this morning

Philippians 3:1–11 CSB

1 In addition, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write to you again about this is no trouble for me and is a safeguard for you. 2 Watch out for the dogs, watch out for the evil workers, watch out for those who mutilate the flesh. 3 For we are the circumcision, the ones who worship by the Spirit of God, boast in Christ Jesus, and do not put confidence in the flesh— 4 although I have reasons for confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5 circumcised the eighth day; of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews; regarding the law, a Pharisee; 6 regarding zeal, persecuting the church; regarding the righteousness that is in the law, blameless. 7 But everything that was a gain to me, I have considered to be a loss because of Christ. 8 More than that, I also consider everything to be a loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Because of him I have suffered the loss of all things and consider them as dung, so that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but one that is through faith in Christ—the righteousness from God based on faith. 10 My goal is to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, 11 assuming that I will somehow reach the resurrection from among the dead.

Our Desire: Boasting in our Accomplishments (1-6)

In these opening verses, Paul is highlighting a contrast between true believers with another group of people called Judaizers. The Judaizers were Gentiles or non-Jews, who became Christians and adopted Jewish customs such as circumcision and following the Jewish social practices as a basis for their salvation. In other words, you had people who claimed to be followers of Jesus, but they added to what Jesus said. It was faith in Jesus plus my personal works and then I’ll be saved. Paul calls these people “dogs” and evil workers because they are preaching and teaching a false Gospel.

Think of some people today who teach and preach a false Gospel. You have some who teach a message of moral improvement where you and I can do these 10 things and after we do them, we’ll finally be good enough on our own to deserve salvation. You have others who teach a message of prosperity where if you give them $1,000 or sow a seed then you’ll be financially and physically blessed by God. You have others who teach a message of power as they claim that you can do all the miracles that Jesus did if you just have enough faith and do enough good things. All of these contemporary garbage messages are the same false messages taught 2000 years ago but with a different logo. The reason that these old beliefs don’t die out is because they prey on something near and dear to us: our pride and confidence in ourselves.

In the 1st century world and in our world today, people desperately want to boast in their actions and what they do… Yet, Paul says that the true followers of Jesus Christ aren’t those who boast in the flesh but instead are those who worship in the Spirit, boast in Christ, and do not put confidence in the flesh. This is a completely different group with a completely different confidence. This morning think about the things that you put your confidence in - what do you boast in?

Many people in our world boast in the following 4 things:

Good works

Money

Popularity

Security

How do we know that people boast in these things? If you were to go onto your favorite social media platform right now (maybe you’re already scrolling on it!) and look at your feed on Twitter, Tik Tok, Facebook, Instagram, or Snapchat, you’re probably going to find people posting about these things. We find people posting about something nice that they did for someone else, we find people posting about a fun time that they had, we find people posting about how many friends they have or about a possession that they own that gives them comfort or satisfaction. What you post about, you boast in. We love to post about and boast in ourselves! We love to put our confidence in who we are and what we do and what we know! Yet for the Christian, Paul says that we cannot put our confidence in the flesh - we can’t boast in what we do or who we are by ourselves. This is the opposite of our culture, though… How can we trust Paul as he says this?

Look at the list of Paul’s accomplishments in verses 4-6 and stack them up with the best that we can come up with.

Circumcised on the 8th day, an Israelite, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews - look at his past. 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. Paul had 2 PhD degrees in his early 20s. When the doors of the church were open, he was there. When there was a Bible contest, he won. Whenever the law was looked at, he stood out. He did what he was supposed to do. He was a Roman citizen who was highly educated with good character and he did good things… If anyone had reason to boast in their accomplishments, it would be this man!

Yet, he will go on to say that all of these things he now counts as a loss. Why? Because Salvation isn’t about becoming a better person or doing another thing… Salvation is about becoming a new creation and following Christ each and every day. What would you say that your confidence is placed in today? Is it in your good works or is it in the One who did for you what you could never do for yourself? I pray that your reality has been changed by Jesus so that, second, you view losing as gain.

Our Reality: Losing is Gain (7-9)

Because our society likes to hand out trophies so that no one feels like they have lost, we have a fundamental problem with the notion of losing. We often don’t know how to handle it. I’ll always remember that whenever I was in 5th grade I played on my first traveling basketball team after having played on some teams in Ozark before. Because our team was young and new to travel ball, we weren’t very good. In fact, in our first game we got blown out by an older and better team. I had never lost a game that bad and I wasn’t even upset, I was completely embarrassed because of how poorly I had played. Whenever we got to our next practice our team was scattered and all over the place. We were upset, embarrassed, and frustrated with how things had went at our last game. We didn’t know how to lose as a team and as individuals. We didn’t know how to build on the positives and address the negatives so that we’d improve in the next game. We just saw the final score and felt bad. See, if you go to any champion and ask them how they got to be as good as they did and they’ll tell you that it was because they lost and they learned through lessons through losing that they could never learn through victory.

See, in the life of a Christian, losing isn’t bad. Suffering isn’t the end. Coming to grips with your weaknesses and shortcomings is good because it’s whenever you lose that you win. Alistar Begg shares that, “The ground of a person’s salvation is in what Christ has achieved upon the cross.” Our salvation is not based on what we have achieved ourselves but in what has been achieved for us by Christ! Therefore we cannot boast in what we’ve done - we can only boast in what Christ has done for us! This means that losing is gain because whenever you come to the point in your life that your works are not good enough by themselves, you have finally gotten low enough and can you gain Christ and His righteousness as 2 Cor 5:21 says

2 Corinthians 5:21 CSB

21 He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

What truly matters is not the external or the works we do… What truly matters is a change of heart. What matters is Jesus Christ changing us from the inside out. Jesus does this as we come to understand Who He is and who we are. Whenever you come to Jesus Christ you cannot help but be changed because of His holiness and our sinfulness. Romans 3:29 tells us of this truth as we must be changed internally, not only externally.

Galatians 2:20 CSB

20 I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Following Jesus Christ always results in change - Paul talks about how he views his old accomplishments as loss or dung compared to knowing Jesus. He says in Galatians 2 that this is because he has been crucified with Christ. Whenever you come to know Christ, you see things clearly for the first time and your reality changes. Your purpose changes. This doesn’t make sense in the eyes of our world - after all, how can death be a good thing?! This is why the cross is considered a stumbling block and foolishness to people in our world… Yet, to Christians, the cross is the power and wisdom of God. The cross truly changes everything!

This week in Guatemala we did a lot of work in Barrio La Cruz as we worked with a local pastor and Salt and Light Ministries and we’ll talk a whole lot more about this trip tonight. But one of the things that we quickly came to understand about this village is that getting around would be very difficult! The roads were extremely steep and they were also very narrow - so narrow in fact that our vans couldn’t get through some of the alleyways. This meant that our team had to walk several blocks up and downhill everyday just to get from the van to the church and then from the church to our ministry sites. Some of us worked on a construction team and we would build houses all over the village. We’d be at one job site and finish the house only to walk a couple hundred feet uphill with our construction tools and do it all over again! Whenever we’d get started at a new site there were just a few times where we’d realize that this new site would require something that we didn’t currently have. We’d look at each other and begin to talk out loud about if that piece of equipment was necessary for the job. If it wasn’t, we weren’t going to walk all the way down the hill to the church only to have to walk all the way back up that steep hill! But there were other times that we truly needed something and one of us, normally me or Josh, would run back and get whatever it was that we needed.

Because the hill was steep and the sun was intense, we didn’t want to have to walk more than necessary… But there were times where we simply had to do it because the consequence of not doing what we needed to do was immense.

For Paul, whenever he met Christ on the Damascus Road, he came face to face with a serious problem. He thought that he had it all figured out. He thought that he had all that he needed. He had the right last name. He had the right training. He had confidence in who he was. He was a Hebrew of Hebrews and he followed the law to a tee… But whenever he met Jesus he knew that something wasn’t right. He knew that all that he had worked on in the past wasn’t good enough. He was left with 2 options: Trust in himself or trust in Christ. This is the reality of our situation as well, church.

Today you can either trust in your trophies or you can trust in Jesus’ teachings. You can think that your good works will be enough or you can trust that Jesus’ work on the cross IS enough! Today you don’t have to live in limbo and hopelessly wondering if you’ll be good enough… Philippians 3:9 gives you the hope that because of Jesus, if you’re a Christian, you’ve been justified and given a righteousness that is not the one that you deserve because of your works… But one that has been given to you because of Christ. You can be justified today and your reality can be changed forevermore because of what Christ has done for sinners on the cross. Not only does Jesus change your final destination but He changes your outlook on life today. The best that this world has to offer and the best that we can come up with is dung compared to Christ - He wants you to come to Him as you are but He will never leave you as you are… He has a perfect plan for your life and part of that plan is growing to be more like Him and this is how Paul concludes this passage of Scripture as His hope is to grow to know Christ more.

Our Hope: Knowing Christ More (10-11)

As we grow older in our life, things change. We get bigger and taller. We grow wiser and smarter. We make friends and lifelong relationships. In our life, things change. Our Christian life is no different! Just as Jesus changes our heart and saves us from the punishment of our sin, He continues to change everything about us as we grow in our relationship with Him and as He continues to live inside of us. For Paul, his hope was that he would grow to know Christ more.

Think about how everything changed for Paul in his life. Previously, he thought that he was doing what was right as he persecuted Christians and boasted in his accomplishments. Now, he is boasting exclusively in Christ and following Christ’s leading as he plants and preaches to churches. Jesus not only changed Paul’s heart but he changed his day to day living - this is what Jesus does to those who genuinely follow after Him. In Guatemala this week we had the opportunity to tour a Capachina in Antigua where Catholic priests did all sorts of crazy and downright wrong things in the 18th century. We asked our guide why people simply let these evil things happen and he shared a shocking truth: In that culture, people couldn’t read the Bible for themselves to know what it said. They simply had to take the words of someone else.

Today so many people simply take the words of someone else about Jesus rather than simply opening up Scripture to find the true Biblical Jesus. If you want to live for Jesus, you first have to know Jesus. It’s impossible to know Jesus outside of knowing His Word! Our hope in this life and for eternity comes from abiding in the Word of God and knowing who stands in the middle of Scripture - it’s not you or me… it’s King Jesus! For Paul, and I pray for you and I, our goal for the rest of our lives as Christians should be to know Jesus more and to live how He lived. This means that we dive into Scripture and we learn more about Jesus and about His power - the same power that lives in us. We read about God’s love and mercy and grace and these are beautiful things that we cling to and hold on to… But Paul doesn’t stop with simply learning about Christ’s power… He also wants to know the fellowship of Christ’s suffering.

We look around our community and we don’t see much suffering or persecution for being a follower of Jesus… But if we take our blinders off a bit we quickly see Christians in our country and all around the world suffering willingly for their faith in Jesus Christ. Yet, in our country we view suffering as a terrible tragedy. We pray for the persecuted church that they would stop suffering… Yet the persecuted church prays for American to experience some suffering so that we’d wake up.

Suffering goes in line with following Jesus. To paraphrase from a podcast that Tim Keller was in a couple of months ago, “A Christian isn’t ready to be a leader until he or she has suffered.” If you look throughout the pages of Scripture, you see Christians suffering. Losing their jobs. Losing their families. Even losing their lives. They lose left and right… But they don’t complain… They rejoice. Job rejoiced in his suffering. Stephen rejoiced and asked God to forgive the men stoning him. Peter said that if you suffer for Christ, you are blessed. Paul says that he will boast in his weaknesses in 2 Corinthians 12. Here in our text he says that his goal in life is to be conformed to Christ, even to His death. This is sanctification, being conformed to look like Jesus, one day, hour, minute, action at a time.

The hope that we have as we grow to be more like Jesus is in verse 11. We have justification in verse 9, sanctification in verse 10, and glorification in verse 11. If you have been saved from your sin and if you have placed your faith in Christ as Lord and if the Holy Spirit is working in your life today, you have been justified and declared innocent before God and you are experiencing sanctification today as the Spirit makes you more like Jesus. This is good news… But how does it give us eternal hope? Glorification. If you are a Christian today, you experience a taste of God’s glory each day. Whenever you wake up and take your first breath each morning, that’s a taste. Whenever you share the love and hope of Jesus with someone, that’s a taste. Whenever someone who is lost becomes found by Christ, that’s a taste. We experience tastes each and every day as Christians, but it’s not the fullness of what’s coming.

For our anniversary, Lindsey and I went to a restaurant called Re Rico’s in Springfield and if you’re a meat fan, you need to go as they bring around 15 different types of meat and cut right in front of you every 2-3 minutes. It’s a beautiful thing! But whenever you first get there the waiter comes by and gives you your salad bowl and they begin to bring some sides around. You don’t go to Re Rico for salad, fries, and cretans… You go there for the sirloin steak. Those things give you a taste of what’s coming but it’s not the main course! This is how this life is, friends. We’re not just here for the appetizer… We’re awaiting the main dish. We eagerly await our resurrection as we know that we will spend our eternity with Jesus Christ in glory. Paul isn’t saying that he’s uncertain about his own resurrection or that it’s something that isn’t finalized… If you’re in Christ, you will spend eternity with Christ as Romans 8:1 tells us. What Paul is saying in Philippians 3:11 is that he doesn’t know when his resurrection will be and he doesn’t know what the circumstances of his resurrection will be. Perhaps Christ would come in his lifetime - like many in the 1st century believed - and he wouldn’t have to die. Perhaps Christ would call him home at the age of 45 or 75. He didn’t know… But he did know Who he belonged to and that was enough. He wants to do everything in his power to know Christ more and to make Christ known today because he knows where he’s headed tomorrow.

Conclusion

Paul had it all. He was the guy that other people looked up to. He had all the knowledge in the world. He had the right background. He had the right last name. He knew the Bible inside and outside. Yet, he says here that he considers all of those things in his past as dung compared to knowing Christ.

Think of your testimony today, Christian. Do you consider your past as dung compared to Christ or do you hold tightly to your past and simply add Jesus to it? It’s your good works plus Jesus’s sacrifice? If that is you then today I pray that you’d leave knowing that our good works could never be enough to make us deserving of our salvation. If anyone had reason to boast in their accomplishments and status, it would be Paul but he said that not even he can do it. The only thing that will save you is having faith in Christ. Not simply knowing about Jesus but having faith that He is who He said that He was. You and I demonstrate that saving faith by producing fruit that is visible to others. As we think about knowing Christ more, let’s ask ourselves a couple of questions in closing.

Are you tempted to place your confidence in yourself? If so, look to the cross.

We’re all equal before the cross of Jesus Christ! We can’t boast in ourselves or what we bring to the table. At the cross the only thing that we can boast in is Christ and His sacrifice in our place.

Are you tempted to stay in your comfort zone? If so, look to the empty tomb and get to work.

Jesus isn’t calling us to come to the edge of the pool and get our big toe a tiny bit wet and to go home and tell everyone that we went swimming… He calls on us to dive in and trust in His perfect plan. His plan for your life will likely make you uncomfortable and it’ll look different than anything you could’ve imagined for yourself… But trusting in Jesus’ plan is worth it. Jesus wants to blow up your comfort zone and your confidence in yourself so that you will trust fully and wholly in Him and His perfect power. After all, His power is made perfect in weakness.

Wherever you’re at today, trust in Jesus Christ! Don’t lean on your own understanding or giftedness. Because of Christ, losing is winning and death is gain - rejoice in His love and grace today.

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