This sermon delves into the profound message from Philippians chapter 3, emphasizing the need to prioritize knowing Christ above all else. Paul's example of counting everything as loss compared to the excellence of knowing Jesus challenges listeners to evaluate their values and willingness to sacrifice for a deeper relationship with Christ. The sermon highlights the danger of valuing worldly things over knowing Jesus intimately, urging a shift in priorities towards a genuine, experiential knowledge of Christ that transforms lives.

Let's turn to the book of Philippians again, Philippians chapter 3 and I'm going to begin to speak from verse 8, but I'm going to read from verse 1. So Philippians chapter 3, reading from verse 1, speaking from verse 8. Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord, for me to write the same things to you is not tedious, but for you it is safe. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation. We are the circumcision, who worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I also may have confidence in the flesh, if anyone else thinks that he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so. Circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, concerning the law of Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law, blameless. But what things were gained to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ. And be found in him not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death. If by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. And so if we go back, Paul has been speaking about his credentials, the things that he may be able to lay claim on to righteousness, and so he speaks about his circumcision, he speaks about the fact that he is a Jew, he speaks about the fact that not only is he a Jew, but he comes from the best tribe, that he has the best education, that he is zealous to the point of having persecuted the church, and yet he says all of these things I count them as rubbish. I count them as nothing. I count them as loss literally, and he's using those bookkeeping terms, those things that I thought was profitable or profit in terms of my accounts with God. And so if God was to keep a set of accounts concerning my righteousness, what I thought was profit as far as God is concerned, I now understand not only are they not profit, not only do I need to remove them from the profit side, from the credit side, but I need to put them in the loss side. So they are not just not profit, they are actually negative. So in what sense then can these things be negative in our relationship with God? We say well isn't it good then to be religious, because that's really what he is saying, and of course our form of being religious may be a little different to his form of being religious, because he was a Jew and we may be something else, but so is it possible that being religious is a negative thing? That it is not just something that does not help me, but in fact it is a loss thing, it's a debit thing, it's a something on the on the negative side. Yes it is, because it gives us a false sense of security. We believe that because we are religious, and that's really what Paul believed, and we've seen that as we've been going through the Acts, how that Paul relied on his religious pedigree, and on his deeds, and his keeping of the law. He relied on those things, and those were the very things that kept him from believing on the Lord Jesus Christ. It's easier for a non-religious person to come to faith, than for a religious person to come to faith. You say well that doesn't make any sense. Yes it does, because the religious person puts his confidence in his religion, and doesn't think he needs the Lord. But the irreligious person understands that he has no hope, that he has no God, and that he needs the Lord. And so it's a very real problem for those people, and those young people who grow up in Christian homes, because they so easily rely on their Christian heritage for their salvation. They say well my parents and my grandparents maybe were Christians. I've grown up in church. I went to Sunday school. I know the Bible, or I know about the Bible, and so it can become something that prevents me from becoming a true Christian. We speak about being inoculated against the gospel. Now as you know, we get shots to prevent us from getting certain diseases, and we call those inoculations. And what they do is that they really just give us a little bit of that disease. So if it is measles, then we get a little bit of the measles. So when measles wants to develop within our bodies, they don't develop because there's already signs that it is there. And so we just get enough of the disease, we get enough measles, or mumps, or whatever else it may be, so that we don't get the real thing. That's the whole basis, and I know my explanation of the medicine is maybe a little lacking, but that's the principle. And it's the same principle that we can get just enough religion that we don't get the real thing, and that's the problem. Now Paul didn't have just a little bit of religion. He had a lot of religion, and it was a lot of inoculation against the reality. And so when he heard about the Lord Jesus, when he heard about the gospel, he turned against it, because he said, I have the true religion. And so he says, I've counted these things as loss. I've counted them as negative. Then verse 8 is where we are this morning. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. So in the previous verse, in verse 7, he says, I counted those things, my heritage and my religious deeds, I counted that as loss. But now he says, I count all things. So he is now going beyond his heritage and beyond his religious deeds, and he's saying everything. And remember, we've had these profound studies on this very complicated word, all. And of course all means all. It's really very simple. You don't need to understand Greek or Hebrew to understand all. All means everything. And so everything in Paul's life, his material possessions, his relationships, his education, his religious stuff which we've spoken about, whatever Paul had, he says, I counted everything loss. Not just my religious activities, not just my heritage, but everything loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. Now I think that that's a very profound statement, and in fact Paul says, I don't just think that way, but I have done that. If you look a little bit further down, if we jump down to the end of verse 8, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. So he's not just saying, I reckon everything that I have as loss. He says, I have suffered the loss of those things. In other words, everything that I had. And we don't know much about Paul's background other than his religious background. We don't know whether he had an inheritance coming to him, because it seems that he comes from an important family. We don't know, and there's a possibility that he may have been married, and that his wife turned against him because he became a Christian. There are signs, there's a little bit of evidence here and there, that Paul may indeed have been married. And of course we're guessing, we can't say that for sure, but it's possible that he was married and that his wife left him because he became a Christian. But whatever it was, Paul says, everything I have, I've lost it, that I may gain Jesus Christ. Now here's exactly the problem with modern Christianity in the West, is we want Jesus Christ plus everything else. Isn't that the basis on which the gospel is preached today? That you don't have to change anything about your life, just add Jesus to your existing mix. And so you can have your riches, you can have your entertainment, you can have your worldly pleasures, you can have your sin. All you need is you need to just add Jesus to all of that, and your life will be complete. And Paul says, no sir, it doesn't work that way. You can't have everything plus Jesus. And remember we spoke a little bit earlier about the Word of God. You cannot have the Word of God plus anything else. You can only have the Word of God. And you say, well there's other stuff that's very helpful. There's the teachings of the church fathers, there are the creeds, there are the teachings of this guru or that teacher, and so we're just helping the Word of God. We're just putting a little bit more clarity. No, no, no, the moment you go beyond the Word of God, you have negated the power of the Word of God. It's as simple as that. And the same way you cannot have Jesus and your life. Paul says, I've suffered the loss of all things. And when Paul says, I've suffered the loss of all things, he is not just talking about things in the sense of material things or relationships. And remember Paul lost all of his relationships with his former colleagues. Having been, he says, I really was at the forefront of my faith. So people respected Paul for his zeal and for his knowledge and for his education. He lost all of those people. Not only did they, did he lose them as friends, but they became his enemies. But it goes beyond that. Paul had lost his life. Paul had lost his life, not just in a theoretical sense or in an abstract sense, but he had lost his life in a physical sense. He says, I carry daily in my body the death of the Lord Jesus. He says, I die daily. And Paul nearly died many, many times. And remember where he gives us another list where he speaks about the things that he has suffered, that he had been stoned and left for dead. He had been beaten near to death countless times. He'd been shipwrecked. All of these things, every one of those things was a death sentence. And so Paul says, I am willing and I've given up my life. And we know that that would be the way he would die in the end. And so he says, I've counted everything rubbish for the excellence of Christ. Now folks, here's the thing. Unless Jesus becomes excellent, unless he becomes the most wonderful and the most precious thing to us, we will not be willing to sacrifice everything for him. You see, it's just a matter of, you're willing to pay whatever price you think, or whatever value you attach to a thing. And so if I, if I had a useless piece of wood here, and I said, how much would you pay for it? Well, I won't pay very much for it. Why? Because what I'm getting is not worth very much. But if I had a diamond that was a hundred carats diamond, would you pay more for that? Of course, because that's worth getting. So the price we're willing to pay, the sacrifice we're willing to make, is commensurate with the value of that which we seek to gain. And so what we seek to gain, Paul says, is Jesus. Now we understand that we, I'm not speaking about how we get saved, we understand that he paid the price, we just, we don't pay anything to get saved, and to gain him in that sense. But Paul is saying there's more to it than that, and Henry's been speaking to us about sanctification, and that's what he's speaking about here. It's more than just coming and inviting Jesus into your heart, as we speak sometimes. But he says, I need to know him, and I need to know him in a very real sense. And you'll see that he uses that word, know or knowledge, twice in that passage. So I count all things lost, verse 8, for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, whom I've suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, so my gain in Christ be found in him. Verse 9, not having my own righteousness, but that which is through faith in Christ. Verse 10, that I may know him, that I may know him. Now remember at this point, and we heard this morning in Sunday School, that Paul had met Jesus on that road to Damascus, and that beyond that he had been taught by the Lord Jesus Christ. He says, I know a man, and he's speaking of himself, who was caught up into the third heaven, received things and heard things that are unutterable. And he's very specific, we saw this morning from the book of Galatians, that I wasn't taught these things by man, I was taught them by the Lord Jesus Christ. And even to today, we marvel at the depth of Paul's teachings. I have spent 45 years studying the Bible, and particularly studying Paul's teachings, and I don't understand half of what Paul says. So you can begin to understand what Paul understood, when we don't even get half of what he got. And yet Paul is near the end of his experience, at the end of his life, and he still says, I want to know him. And here's the wonderful thing, is that there is no point at which you can say, well I've got it. I know Jesus, because there is so much about him, there is so much breadth and depth and height in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, that you can spend your lifetime and only have scratched the surface. And that's what Paul is saying. He says, even though, and he's not saying that, but I'm saying, that even though Paul probably had the clearest understanding about who Jesus is, had the greatest revelation of who Jesus is, greater even than the Apostles, because remember the Apostles don't see him in the same way as Paul sees him, the other twelve. But in spite of all of that, he says, I counted everything rubbish, that I may know him, that I may really know Jesus. Now this word know here, is not just, the way that it is used here, is not just an intellectual knowledge. It is an experiential knowledge. In other words, that I know him through experience. Now I want you to listen very carefully, because this is where we get into all sorts of heresy. People speak, some people say, well all I need to know is, I need to know what the Bible says about him. That's all there is to it. So you need to study the Scriptures, and if you study the Scriptures, you'll get to know him, because he's revealed through the Word, and that's true. But you can know whatever, what all of the Scriptures say, and remember it's not just the New Testament, because Jesus himself said, you search the Scriptures, meaning the Old Testament, because in them you think you have life, but it is they that speak of me. So don't think that if you know the New Testament, you know all there is about Jesus, because a lot of, about the Lord Jesus is revealed in the Old Testament, or it's hidden in the Old Testament. Once we get the key of the New Testament, we can go back to the Old Testament, unlock the Old Testament, and understand more about Jesus. But it's more than that. It's knowing him experientially. But here's the problem. So on the one side, there are those who say, well you just need to study. You just need to know the Bible, and understand that, and you'll know Jesus. On the other hand, there are those who are promoting some kind of mystical experience, some kind of emotional experience, where you say, well I know Jesus. You say, how do you know Jesus? Well, again, I feel him. No, I don't believe that that's where it's at either, and I don't believe that it is a combination of those two either. You see, because the one is knowledge about him, and Paul is not speaking here about knowledge about him. It's about knowing him. I think we all have our opinions about the President Obama, and the, what is he called, the President-elect Trump. I think we all have some ideas as to where they come from, and there's some ideas as to who they are, and what they are, and what they believe. But can any of us here say that we know them, either of them? No. Who can say that they know President Obama? Who's the most likely person? His wife. His wife. And maybe she doesn't even know, but she's the best bet. Does that knowledge go beyond knowing his history, where he was born, when he was born, where he went to school, what he did, how he got elected, what he did? What she knows about him, does it go beyond that? It goes beyond that. And how does she know that? Because she went to university and did a course on Obama, or read his book, whatever, I can't remember what it was, but read. No. It comes from living with him. And living with him, she's come to understand how he acts, how he thinks, how he reacts, what his values are. And that's what Paul is speaking about here. You see, and that kind of knowledge cannot come just by observation. I suppose that if anybody is under scrutiny, it's the President of the United States, who lives in a fishbowl, as it were, the whole world looking at him, every move he takes. And you probably may have become aware recently that there have been all sorts of photographs that they're showing, and that there is a full-time photographer, the White House photographer, whose job it is to photograph almost every minute of the man's life. But you can look at every one of those pictures, you can listen to every one of these speeches, and you can still not know the man. The only way you will know him is if you live with him. And you can study about the Lord Jesus Christ, and you can hear sermons about him, and you can hear testimonies about him, but unless you live with him, and as Paul says, in him we live and move and have our being. And unless you are intimately related to the Lord Jesus Christ, and you begin to understand what the Scripture means about his love, what the Scripture really means about his holiness, and the list goes on and on and on, all the attributes about the Lord Jesus Christ, unless you've come to see that in reality, as you live your life in him, in relationship with him, in fellowship with him, you're never going to know him. There are theologians, we've spoken about that many times, there are theologians who've written entire books about Jesus Christ. One of those theologians is a man called Karl Barth, Karl Barth or Barth, depending how you want to pronounce it, a German theologian. You have to read books that explain what Barth says, because he's so complicated. But I can tell you one thing, that while he has written countless books, incredible depth and knowledge, I can tell you with absolute assurance that he does not know Jesus Christ, because he has never met him. He has never had a relationship with him. He has studied him, but he does not know him. And yet when you look at Paul's life, you see a man who walks with Jesus, whose every moment he's in communion with the Lord Jesus. And we see this in Jesus' relationship with his father. And so as we as we walk in communion, as we walk in relationship and in obedience, and as we look at the Word of God, and as we deal with our issues in life, and we see Jesus ministering to us in those things, teaching us various lessons, we begin to get to know him. How did Paul know that Jesus is faithful? Because he read that in the Bible. Well, I suppose that that gives you a level of understanding that he is faithful, and you can hear sermons and preach sermons and say, well, he is faithful. But you see, until that truth becomes real, until it becomes more than an intellectual knowledge, it has very little value. So how did Jesus know, how did Paul know that he is faithful? Because he had never failed him. And Paul says, when everything else had failed, and when everyone else had turned away from me, remember the book of Timothy, as we're going through Timothy, all have forsaken me. But he says, one stood with me. Who is that one? The Lord Jesus. And so he says, I know from experience that he is faithful. In fact, I just wrote this on Friday to a couple of brothers, and it was just something that had become very real to me on Friday. Many years ago I wrote my statement of faith, which you'll find on my website, and we use the same statement of faith for the church's statement of faith. You go there, you'll find what we believe. One of the things that I said at that time, and when I say many years ago, I'm talking 20 years ago maybe. 20 years ago I said that the Word of God is the thing by which, and I had a whole lot of other things there, but amongst other things, all creeds must be measured. In other words, the creeds of the church, that they are subject to the Word of God. The only way we can evaluate those creeds is not on their own basis, but as we compare them to the Word of God, that becomes the basis of our faith. And so the degree to which the creeds match the Word of God, we agree with them. The degree to which the creeds do not marry to or match the Word of God, we do not agree with them. Now that's fine in theory, and I'm not going to go through the whole detail, but through these last few months as I have contended for the faith and come to understand in practical reality that there are aspects and elements of the creeds. In fact, I'm not talking about the Trinity. I'm not talking about denying any of the essences or the essentials of the faith. But there are details in the creeds which are established by Arians at the time, and don't worry about that now. But in these last three months I've had to come to a decision for myself in real reality. Am I willing to subject the creeds? You see, because the creeds become holy. We say you can't question the creeds. The creeds are above question. Yet 20 years ago I wrote that the creeds are not above question, they are subject to the Word of God. Now having gone through various experiences over these last few months, I've come to a place where I've had to subject the creeds to the Word of God, and I've had to stand on that truth and say that I do not hold to the creeds, I hold to the Word of God. And where the creeds deviate from the Word of God, we will reject those aspects of the creeds. And I know that you may be concerned about what I'm saying now. Let me assure you that I've not gone beyond the Word of God. I've not gone outside of the Word of God. But now I know that which I wrote 20 years ago was theory. Now it is reality, that the Word supersedes all man-made creeds. The Word of God supersedes all traditions of man. That I do not know by theory anymore. I know that by reality and by experience. And so Paul is speaking about Jesus. We can know him by theory, or we can know him in reality. And he says, I want to know him in a real way. Not just the theory about the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, let me just jump outside of the text here a little bit, for a brief moment. And say, well, you know, here's the thing, that there are so many people, so-called Christians, in the world today. And every second person on the street, if you ask them, they'll tell you, I'm a Christian. In fact, Henry told us this morning about someone that he had breakfast with the other day, and who said that they were a Christian. But do they really know Jesus? Have they met Jesus the way that Paul met him on the road to Damascus? And obviously, we don't get that same kind of experience that Paul had. And I'm not talking about some kind of out-of-body experience. But a relationship where you know that he is real. That you know who he is. And where that which is theory in the Word of God has been translated into practical experience. And we can say, I know his love. I know his faithfulness. I know his gentleness. I know his holiness. I know his righteousness. I know these things, not just because I've learned them from the Word of God, but because he's demonstrated them to me through my experience. And here's the bottom line. That is a life-changing experience. You cannot have met Jesus, and you cannot know Jesus, and remain unchanged in that process. And as you'll see as we go through the book of Acts, as Henry goes through the book of Acts, you'll see how that there were many Christians who were still afraid of Paul. And they said, we don't know who this man is, because he was formerly a persecutor of the church. And yet Paul's life changed like that, after he met Jesus Christ. We saw this morning that he began to preach in the synagogue, Jesus Christ. Jesus as the Christ. The very thing for which he was persecuting people three days before that. Three days later, he's in the synagogue, where the Jews are, where his former friends are, and he's preaching Jesus as the Christ. That kind of change does not come from just saying, well, I'm going to change my view on this. That change came because he had met Jesus Christ, and Jesus had become real to him. And yet here is Paul many years later, and he says, I count everything rubbish that I may, for the excellency of the knowledge. The excellency of the knowledge. And look at the comparison of those two words, rubbish and excellency. There is no excellency in rubbish. I suppose there's some people who collect junk, who may think that rubbish is excellent, but in the normal line of thinking, there is no excellency in rubbish. Rubbish is just that. It is rubbish. It's to be discarded. It's to be thrown away. And so he says that everything that I had before, and everything that this life has to offer, is rubbish. But on the other side, there is the excellency. And the excellency, excellent, means above, beyond the greatness of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. Now here's exactly the problem. Why do we want to hold on to rubbish, when we have on the other hand the offer of the excellency of the knowledge, the excellency of knowing Jesus? And yet that's exactly the problem that we have. There are people right now, not just in this church, but in every other church where the gospel is being preached today, there are people who have chosen their pleasures, their sins, their whatever it is, over the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, and being in His presence, and being in His house. In fact, this is not about church attendance. This is about where my heart is, where my values are. How do I keep account of things? And so there are people who are esteeming rubbish as worth having. And folks, let me just be plain. Anything this world has to offer, the greatest pleasures, the greatest riches, the most wonderful friends, the fame, the fortune, the whatever this world has to offer, Paul says it is rubbish. In fact, you'll go further and you'll say, I count these things done. That's a very politically correct word for the word that Paul used. He says it's to be thrown out. It's to be looked on with content for Jesus Christ. In fact, here's really the question this morning. What are you willing to give up that you may gain Christ? You see, you can't have Jesus and everything else you want. Now remember, we're not buying Him. I'm not suggesting for one moment that the more you give up, the more you'll get Him. It doesn't work that way around. There are many religions that teach that, but the question, and let me come back to where we began, and I'm going to close on this. Unless Jesus has become the most precious and the most valuable thing to you, you will not be able to turn away from those other things. And so it's really not a matter of saying, well let me just somehow just find it in my heart to give up on this. When Jesus has become who He is to you, when you've come to understand how precious He really is, it won't be a question. It won't be hard, because you'll understand that what I'm gaining exceeds a billion times what I'm losing. But it's what we put our values, what value you put on Jesus. Is He everything to me? Is He everything to you? Are you willing, like Paul to say, I'm willing to suffer the loss of everything? But this is real. Are you willing to lose your friends for Jesus? Are you willing to lose your hobbies, your money, your job, your family? Remember Jesus said that if you're not willing to lose father and mother for my sake, you're not worthy of me. And so we've looked at the, we're writing our letters to the missionaries this morning. Those people have turned their backs on everything literally, given up their families, given up their homes, given up their comfortable lifestyle, given up their friends. They've lost everything for the sake of Christ. That's very real for them. He's not asking you to do that, but He is asking you to put a higher value on the Lord Jesus than on whatever else it is that gets you excited. Whatever else it is that has your attention. And so here's the question. Is He, and knowing Him, the most important thing in your life? Can you say that for the truth? And folks, I join with Paul in saying that there is nothing worth more than knowing Jesus. And I am really willing, and I think I've demonstrated that to some degree, maybe not to the degree that Paul has, but to some degree I'm willing to suffer the loss of everything that I may grab hold of Jesus Christ. And even to this day I'm willing to lose my ministry, I'm willing to lose this church, I'm willing to lose my health, if that's what it takes to get to know Him in a deeper, and in a richer, and in a more wonderful way. Is that the thing that drives you? And we're going to be on this theme for a while, because Paul is going into this in much more detail, so if you think you've heard the end of this, this is not the end, so you better stay away the next few weeks then if you didn't like this. But here's the reality, Paul is saying here is where the rubber meets the road. What is it that you love? Now this is not a new thing. Remember the law right at the very beginning, the law said you will love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your strength. This is the first and the greatest commandment. The Bible almost opens with those words, and it closes almost with those words that you remember in the letter to the Ephesians in Revelation chapter 2, you have left your first love. Now folks, the problem is that for many folk, they haven't just left their first love, because he never became their first love. He always was second, or third, or fourth, to other more important things in their lives. Father we pray that you'd help us, help us Lord to be honest with ourselves, help us to be real, and Lord to evaluate our lives and say what is the most important thing? Is knowing Jesus more important than everything else? Lord forgive us for our self-sufficiency Lord, because we so easily come to a place where we say, well we're fine, we know something about the Bible, we know about Jesus, we know the gospel. But Lord we pray that you'd create within each one of us an insatiable desire and a hunger and a thirst of saying we need more of Jesus. Not just in knowing him in theory, but knowing him as he lives himself through our lives, and as we know him as that friend that sticks closer than a brother. And so Lord we pray that you'd help us today. Help us Lord to be honest about our bankruptcy, help us to be honest Lord about our deficiency in knowledge, help us Lord to be honest about our need for you. And Lord more than that I pray that you would help us to put action to our thoughts and our words, and Lord to maybe scale down or maybe even get rid of things in our lives that are interfering with our relationship with you. We pray that you'd help us Lord, because this is the first and the greatest command. This is the thing that that you're looking for from us above everything else, that we love you. Lord we can never love you in the way you loved us. And Lord you demonstrated your love for us in Christ dying for us on the cross. But Lord we pray that you'd help us to love you just a little bit in the way that you loved us. And we're willing to give up the glories in heaven, give up your position, humble yourself to the death of the cross. And so Lord we pray that you we may respond to that love, and that we may love you in return. Help us we pray in Jesus name. We pray that you'd go with us Lord, keep us, protect us, bring us together again safely on Thursday. In Jesus name we pray, amen.