Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

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

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

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.

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.