1 Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you, to me indeed is not grievous, but for you it is safe.
2 Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the concision.
3 For we are the circumcision, which worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus, and have no confidence in the flesh.
Introduction
In his book Life Sentence, Chuck Colson tells about trying to win a Jewish lawyer friend to Christ. He had tried again and again to find an opening—a way to introduce the subject of Christ so he could share the Lord with this Jewish lawyer friend. Finally one night at a dinner engagement the opportunity came, and much to his surprise, the lawyer friend by the name of Miron said, “Why Chuck, I already believe in Christ because of my Jewish background. I’ve been reading the Old Testament and I noticed that it stops a few hundred years before Jesus was born. Now, if Jesus weren’t the Messiah, wouldn’t God have gone on revealing himself to us in the present as he did in the past? The way I figure it, the Old Testament stopped because Jesus was the Messiah.”
Colson said he had thought of a dozen different ways to convince him that Jesus was the Messiah, but he had completely missed that. That the Old Testament stopped because Jesus was in fact the Messiah that had been predicted. He had to take his friend beyond believing that Jesus was the Messiah. He assured him that even the demons believed in Jesus.
That has always been God’s simple plan of redemption. Believe in Christ, repent of yours sins, invite Jesus into your heart, and then openly and publicly declare him. In any culture, in any age, in any generation, among any people—that is God’s way to be saved. But people are always trying to complicate it. They try to add to or take away from it. They make it as difficult as possible. Even in the early days of the New Testament there were those who were twisting and perverting God’s simple plan of redemption. Paul is talking about some of those people here in Philippians 3:1-3.
He is talking about the Judaizers. It was a sect of Judaism—sort of a blend of Judaism and Christianity that said that Jesus is the Savior of the Jews only. And so, if you wanted to be saved, you must first become a Jew before you became a Christian. They said that since Judaism is in fact the door to salvation, you must first go through the rites, ceremonies, and the rituals that make you a Jew. Then you could go beyond that to believe in and trust in Jesus as your Savior.
They were trying to hang on to all of the Mosaic laws and the teachings of the Old Testament, and impose them upon Christianity. Some of the greatest struggles the apostle Paul had in his life and ministry was with these Judaizers who were trying to corrupt the simple Gospel: believe in Christ, repent of your sins, invite him into your heart, openly and publicly confess him and you’ll be saved. That’s what he is dealing with as he talks to us about the true people of God in this passage of scripture.
He begins the passage with, “Finally.” You know what it means when a preacher says, “Finally...”? It means absolutely nothing! When Paul uses the word, he is using it in a ministerial sense that means eventually—not immediately. Somebody has defined an optimist as a lady who puts on her shoes when the preacher says, “Finally…” Paul is saying “finally” right in the middle of this book and he goes on for another two chapters. You are accustomed to that kind of thing around here! He’s just shifting gears. What he really means is, “Now for the rest of it…”
“Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord.” He starts out with that note of joy. You know a long-faced Christian is a poor recommendation for Jesus Christ. Yet there are so many people around who think that a long face and a sad countenance is synonymous with spirituality. If you think God doesn’t have a sense of humor, just look around. Look at the person next to you. God is bound to have a sense of humor. God is a happy God. He came into the world to bring joy and happiness into our lives and a predominant message of the New Testament is, “Rejoice, and be happy. I’ve got good news for you.” He is coming to encourage us to rejoice. The world has enough misery without the church adding to it.
But he also wants to warn us. In verse two he uses the word “beware,” and there is a jolt in that word. He means, “Watch out! There is some danger out ahead. Be alert. There are some people around you who would lead you astray.” He identifies these people in three ways. Beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, and beware of the concision. That’s the way he identifies these people, and those three terms are rather descriptive and enlightening concerning who these people are.
The word “dog” was a term of reproach among the Jews and the Romans. Today a dog is a household pet. But in the first century, a dog was a mangy, flea-bitten creature that roamed around in packs. They were scavengers. They were dangerous. To use the term “dog” was a term of reproach. He is speaking rather strongly about these people as he seeks to identify them.
Beware also of evil workers—those people whose lives are characterized by the wrong kinds of activities. The wrong kinds of work. The wrong motives. Evil workers.
And beware of the concision. That word concision literally means “mutilators of the flesh.” That gives us some hint as to who the people really are, because if they were Judaizers, they were saying that before a Gentile converted to Christianity, he must go through the Jewish rites of circumcision. He must mutilate the flesh. He must cut off the flesh. Paul is saying, “Beware of these vicious people that are going around encouraging you to have yourself circumcised.”
“For we are the circumcision,” Paul says. You need to underscore that first part of verse there. With that statement, the apostle Paul is saying that he will tell you who the people of God are today, thanks to the cross and the finished work of redemption by Jesus Christ. The “true circumcision” was often used as a synonym for the Jewish people of the Israelite nation. But those of the real circumcision are not those who have the blood of Abraham coursing through their veins. The real people of God are not necessarily those who can trace their ancestors back through Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Rather, they are those who worship God in the Spirit, those who rejoice in Christ Jesus, and those who have no confidence in the flesh.
The distinguishing marks and identifying characteristics of the genuine people of God, regardless of their nationality, regardless of their background, and regardless of their circumstances are those who worship God in the Spirit. They rejoice in Jesus Christ and they have no confidence in the flesh. Those statements are so far reaching and so profound that they are worth our careful examination if we want to understand who the real people of God are.
1. The real people of God worship God in spirit.
He is contrasting the worship of God through ceremony and ritual with a spiritual kind of worship. Real worship is of the heart and of the spirit of man. It is not a mechanical ceremonial or ritualistic process that a person goes through. God is Spirit, and God has placed his Spirit within us. Real worship takes place when my spirit communes with his Spirit. Real worship does not necessarily take place when I go through some ritual, some ceremony, or some mechanical process. Real worship does not necessarily take place just because I walk in the door, sit down in a pew, pick up a hymnal, open my Bible, or bow my head when they have a prayer. That is no sign that real worship takes place. Real worship is not a matter of being in the right place at the right time and doing the right things in the right way. Real worship is a matter of your heart and spirit being open to the heart, mind, and Spirit of God. The real people of God are those who know and practice that. The real people of God have long since forsaken the emptiness of formality, ritual, mechanics, and religion. They have come to the place where they know that their relationship to God is vital, alive, and heartfelt.
Paul is saying that worship is more a matter of attitude then it is an act. It is an emotion and not just a motion. It is something that I feel down deep inside as I come in contact with the truth and the living God. One of the problems Israel always had was mistaking the idea that if they went through all the forms of worship, that was worship. God had given them some ways to worship, and after a period of time, those mechanics of worship lost their significance because the people kept on doing those same old things in the same old way. They kept coming to the Temple, and they kept putting sacrifices upon the altar. They did all the things that God had said to do, but it had no meaning whatsoever in their lives. It had become a ritual and a mechanical process that didn’t touch them in any way.
There is always the danger that we could be guilty of the same thing. We can just as easily become unwilling to desert the mechanics, ritual, and ceremony of worship. But I want to go beyond that to have a real encounter with God—one where I meet him, talk with him, and experience him in worship.
David talked about it in the 51st Psalm. After he had confessed his greatest sin to God, he said, “For thou desirest not sacrifice; else I would give it: thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”
David was recognizing that God didn’t want him just to bring an animal and lay it upon the altar. God wasn’t satisfied with the simple sacrifice. What God wanted was David’s heart to be broken. He wanted him to have a contrite spirit over the sin that he had committed. A man can bring a sacrifice and lay it on the altar and turn around and walk away, never feeling any guilt, never being changed, and never sensing the presence of God.
That’s why you must always distinguish between worship in the spirit and ritual. Isaiah gives a good example of true worship. He said, “I was in the Lord’s house and I saw the Lord high and lifted up.” As he became aware of the presence of God, and as he saw the greatness and the glory of God, he also became aware of his own sinfulness. His response was, “Lord, I’m a man of unclean lips and I live in the midst of people who have unclean lips.” Then the angel of the Lord came down and reached upon the altar. He took some hot coals and he laid those coals upon the lips and the tongue of Isaiah in a symbolic way, purging him and cleansing his lips and his filthy tongue.
Then Isaiah heard God saying, “Whom shall I send and who will go for me?” Isaiah was thinking, “I have been cleansed and I have been purged, but I am in the midst of people who need to be cleansed. God needs somebody to go out and minister to them.” So he said, “Here am I, Lord, send me.”
That’s worship. I saw him. I heard him. I said to him. Isaiah and God are meeting and doing business together. That’s worship. It’s not enough that you come to church. It’s not enough that you are occupying a pew or that you drop some money in the plate, or that you picked up the hymnbook. What I want to know is, have you met God yet? Has God spoken to your heart? Or will he sometime in the service? And when he speaks, will you be listening? And when he calls, will you say, “Yes, Lord, I’m willing to go”?
Unless somewhere in this service you hear God speak, unless you see God’s presence in some kind of way, and unless you leave here saying, “God, I’m going to follow you. I’m going to obey you,” you haven’t worshipped. Unless something like that happens, you haven’t worshiped. You’ve just been in worship.
You know it is possible to be absent at the very time when you take up the most space. I don’t know how much space it takes for you. Taylor Paul, who helps seat our members and guests in the pews, seems to think it takes about 17 inches for most people. And he gets all of that out of some of you. It takes a little bit more for some of the rest of you, but you know it is possible at the very moment when you are taking the most space in this building to mentally be somewhere else. In your mind, you could be out on the golf course, or out hunting, or painting the house, or doing something exciting—something worthwhile. Genuine worship means that I not only am here in body, but also here in spirit. I am communing with God and something beyond what people can see is taking place. I am seeing God and hearing God and answering God.
That’s worship. And the real people of God are those who worship in spirit. Not those who just come to church every Sunday. Not those who tithe. Not necessarily those who can sing. But it is the people who worship God in spirit.
2. The real people of God rejoice in Christ Jesus.
That means the real source of joy in our life is in him. Where do you find joy in your life? Do you find it in your success, or in your business? Do you find it in your family, or in your recreational life? Where do you find real joy in your life?
God’s people are those who have learned to find their joy in Jesus Christ. That’s an interesting statement. I got to thinking last night about some times when Jesus reminded people that joy was not to be found in other things; joy was in him and in their relationship to him. For example, in the book of Luke, chapter ten, Jesus sent the 70 out to preach. They came back with great joy saying, “Even the devils are subject unto us.” They were so elated and so thrilled. They had gone out on a great missionary effort, had experienced tremendous success, and they came back rejoicing in that success.
But listen to Jesus’ response: “Not withstanding in this rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.” Do you know what Jesus was saying? He was saying, “Don’t rejoice in your success in your work. Rejoice in your relationship to me. Rejoice in the fact that your name is written in the Lamb’s book of life, that your salvation is secure, that you are mine and I am yours.”
Rejoice in your relationship, not in your success. You know why he said that? Because he knew the time would come when he would send those disciples out to preach and they wouldn’t be successful. They would go out there and the demons would not be subject to them. They would go out and preach and people would receive them with deaf ears. They would come back discouraged, defeated, and frustrated saying, “We have failed, and therefore we’ve lost our joy.” Don’t let your joy be in your success. Let your joy be in your relationship to Jesus.
You see, if my joy is in the fact that the church does better this year than it did last year, or better next year than it did this year, then maybe one of these days we might come to the place where this thing levels off and then I would have no more joy. No, no, my joy is not in my success. My joy is in my Lord and my relationship to him.
Even though the programs of the church may be rollercoasting up and down, my relationship with God is as steady as anything can be, and nothing can take that away from me. My joy is in him. The real people of God are the ones who have learned to find their joy in the Lord and not just in their work, not in their success, and not in something else.
There is another passage that speaks about something very similar. In the next chapter of the book of Luke—in chapter 11, verse 27—a woman spoke to Jesus. “And it came to pass as he spake these things, a certain woman of the company lifted up her voice, and said unto him, Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps [the word paps is an old English word for breasts] which thou has sucked. But he said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.”
Here is a lady talking to Jesus, and in all probability, she was a mother herself. She said, “Your mother must be proud of you. You must make her very happy. Blessed is the womb of the woman who bore you and the breast of the woman who has nursed you.” Jesus replied, “Parental pride can’t make you happy. Children alone can’t bring that deep joy that you need in life. Happy is the person who stands in a relationship of obedience to God.”
God is the only one who can give us real happiness. He is simply saying that the source of our joy life cannot be in our children. Sooner or later your children may disappoint you. In fact, sometimes they can greatly disappoint you. What happens then? If the source of my joy is in my children, that means that I am always subject to them for my happiness and my joy. And if they disappoint me, my joy, victory, and happiness are gone in the Christian life. Jesus said, “No, your joy is not in your children. Rejoice that you have a relationship of obedience to the heavenly Father, and God is your joy.”
The older we get, the more we ought to learn that our joy is in Jesus. It is not in our success, because some day we may fail. It’s not in our children, because they may greatly disappoint us.
Friend, if your joy is centered in Jesus Christ, it won’t ever fail. He won’t ever disappoint you, and the true people of God are those who worship God in the Spirit and those who rejoice in Christ Jesus.
3. The real people of God are those who have no confidence in the flesh.
That word flesh means “man in himself.” It means man apart from God. It really describes self-effort. The real people of God are those who have no confidence in what they can do by themselves. They have no confidence in their abilities and achievements apart from God. That’s one of the things that Paul is driving at in this passage of scripture. He keeps saying that all of his life had been a life of self-effort. He had been trying to earn his way into the kingdom of God. He had been trying to earn good standing in the sight of God. He had been trying to merit position with God and he had just discovered that all of his self-efforts and all of the work he had done amounted to nothing. It is all useless, so he no longer trusts in himself—he trusts rather in the Lord.
In fact, continuing on in this passage of scripture, he says in verse 4, “If anybody has any reason to boast of what they have done in the flesh—what they have done by their own efforts and their own works—I certainly would be that man.” Then he begins to list some of his achievements in verse 5: “I was circumcised on the eighth day. I went through the right religious ceremonies. I was of the stock of Israel and the tribe of Benjamin. I have the right ancestors. I was from the right family. I was born on the right side of the tracks. I was a Hebrew of Hebrews. I was a member of the right party. I attended the right clubs. I joined the right church. I was a part of every right organization concerning zeal. I persecuted the church of God. Nobody ever built up a record of achievement like I did in attacking what I believed at that time to be the enemies of God. I was blameless. In my conduct, I was everything a man ought to be.”
Paul simply said that by self-effort and human achievement, he reached the very apex. But he also said, “Since I met Jesus Christ, those things that were gain to me I now count as lost for Christ.”
That word count is a bookkeeping term. It literally means “to make an audit.” It means to try to balance the books. He said, “When I met Jesus Christ, I took a pencil and I began to audit the books of my life. I tried to balance this thing out and I added up all the achievements and put those things up next to Jesus Christ. I discovered that I was spiritually bankrupt. They didn’t measure up.” All he is saying is that you can’t earn your favor with God. You don’t get there by self-effort.
Jesus told us something very similar to that. In Luke 18, Jesus tells the parable of the Pharisee and the publican. He talks about the Pharisee who prayed and began to brag about all of his virtues. It doesn’t take long to see that this guy is really proud of himself. He is proud of all of his efforts and achievements. It’s as if he were saying, “God, look at me. I know you must be disappointed when you look at everybody else, but cheer up God! Look at me, and all I’ve done.”
Then there was another man, the publican, who felt so bad about the sin and failures in his life that he couldn’t even look God in the face. He just ducked his head and he said, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Jesus said that man, the humble man, the one who is aware of his sinfulness and his failure—is the man who went down to his house justified in the sight of God. It was not the proud man who was making a record of all of his achievements, but the man who recognized that he had nothing good to offer God.
We have no confidence in the flesh. What it means very simply is that our hope and our assurance is not in what we have done and what we might do, but it is in Jesus Christ and what he has done for us on the cross.
I walked into a hospital room several years ago and the patient was dying with cancer. He knew it and I knew it. It was obvious when I stepped into the room that he had been crying. He brushed the tears off of his cheek and said, “Come on in, preacher. Let me explain why I am crying. I want you to know that my relationship with God is in good order. Everything is fine. Let me tell you about my experience with God. I’m just depressed today, but everything is all right with God. For years and years, I was a member of a church. I found no joy in it. In fact I looked for every opportunity I could to miss church.”
(Do you ever find yourself doing that? Looking for a chance, an excuse to get out of going to church?)
He continued, “That’s the way I was. When I came, I would sit as far back to the back as possible and I was absolutely miserable all the time. Secretly I believed that I was saved by what I did. I say secretly because I never would have acknowledged that to the preacher. I never would have said that out loud. But down deep inside, I really believed that I was saved or was going to be saved by what I did myself.
“But then, one week we had a revival meeting, and I went to that revival meeting one night at the insistence of my wife. There I heard the preacher preach about the thief on the cross. The thief was a man who in his dying moments realized that he was lost, and he believed that Jesus was the Savior. He knew that eternity was out there and he was going to face God, and in that moment, he cried out to Jesus saying, ‘Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.’ And Jesus replied, ‘Today thou shalt be with me in paradise.’
“I got to thinking about that. That thief on the cross. He was so helpless he couldn’t do anything for himself. He couldn’t go back and erase the past. He was nailed to the cross. He couldn’t make any promises for the future. He didn’t have any future. His only hope was Jesus Christ, and in that moment he trusted Jesus completely, and Jesus said, ‘Today you are going to be with me in Paradise.’
“That lodged in my mind, and that night I went to work. I was out walking around the oil tanks in the refinery, and I got to thinking about that thief—how helpless and how hopeless he was in himself. He could do nothing for himself. His only hope was to trust Jesus, and that’s what he did. I came to realize that night that I needed to do the same. There on my knees, I stopped trusting myself and started trusting Jesus.”
Those are the real people of God—the ones who worship God in the Spirit. Not the ones who go through mechanics and rituals and ceremony, but those who meet God in a real spiritual experience. The real people of God are those who find their joy not in their success, not in their achievements, not in their family, and not in their work. They find it in Jesus and Jesus alone.
The story is told of a woman who said to the evangelist D.L. Moody after he preached on the thief on the cross, “Do you mean I have to be saved like that poor crook?” “No, you can go on to hell if you want to,” Moody replied. “But if you are going to be saved at all, you come like this fellow came.” The real people of God are those who have no confidence in the flesh or anything they’ve done, but instead are trusting totally and completely in Jesus and what he has done—those are the real people of God. That’s the way of salvation.
The Bible says, “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 142:12). If Satan could, he would lead every one of us astray to trust in ourselves, and to try to find our joy in a lot of things that will never satisfy. But what we need to do is to give ourselves wholly and completely to Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Only then will we find joy, meaning, purpose, and security in life.
Are you trusting in Jesus? In Jesus alone? Or are you secretly believing that you’ll get to heaven because you are good? You pay your bills. You tell the truth. You support your family. You love your country and you think that’s enough.
It’s not enough. If that were enough, the Bible is not true. If the Bible is true, you can’t make it that way. Come to Christ. Give him your life, your heart, and your all today.