06-02-13 To Be Found In Him

Phil. 3:7 But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Phil. 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ,

Phil. 3:9 and may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith,

Phil. 3:10 that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

Phil. 3:11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

We are going to return to our study of Philippians this morning,

and return, too, to one of those passages in which Paul

reveals the heart and soul

of the true Christian message

in just a few brief,

powerful statements.

I mentioned to you several weeks ago

that Philippians 3:8-14

is one of those passages

that many Christians during the past 2000 years have chosen to memorize

because their spirits

have responded so powerfully

to what Paul has said.

Do you know what Christian growth really is?

It is simply the process

of learning and relearning and relearning again

that which we already know.

Or maybe it would make more sense

if I described it as the process of

learning with our minds and emotions

what our spirits already know.

When we first come to Christ

and enter his family,

when we recognize our need for His forgiveness

and trust Christ’s death

as payment for our sins personally,

at that point

God’s Spirit

tells our spirit a whole bunch of truth.

He tells our spirit that we are now and forever

His saints, His HOLY ONES.

He tells our spirit that nothing

will ever again be able to separate us

from our God or His Love.

He tells us at the spirit level that we have been freed forever

from the wrath of God

and that we now have peace

with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

He tells our spirit that we have great worth

and great significance to Him.

A number of years before his death

Dr. Francis Schaeffer wrote a book entitled No Little People.

In it he was talking about the people of God,

about Christians.

It’s been years since I read it,

and though I have forgotten the details of his writing,

that title, “No Little People”

and the message it communicates

has stayed with me ever since.

No Little People!!

The world in which we live

has its own way of determining

who’s big,

who’s important,

who matters,

and who doesn’t.

It is a system based on wealth

and fame

and power

and physical appearance and abilities

and influence.

In that system

there are a few people at the very top -

the privileged,

the powerful,

the beautiful ones.

And then there’s you and me -

the little people by society’s standards who matter very little.

But when we come to Christ

He tells our spirits the truth.

He tells us that with Him

there are no little people,

and no little places.

And our spirit knows

we have great value, great significance,

because we have great value to Him.

When we come to Him

His Spirit also tells us what our God is really like -

He is kind,

He never gets ticked,

never gets grumpy,

never plays relationship games with us.

His mercy and grace toward us never end,

and He remains absolutely faithful to us

forever.

All of that

and much more our God says to our spirits

when we enter His family.

The problem is that

our minds and emotions

don’t believe a word of it.

Our minds and emotions have their own carefully crafted concept

of what this new God of ours is like.

In our minds

He’s a lot like dad,

and a little like Santa Clause

with some dictator

and grandfather

and policeman

and distracted executive thrown in.

And the heart of all true Christian growth

is that process in which

we close the gap between

what our spirits know

and what our minds and emotions believe.

That, of course, is exactly the process

Paul is referring to in Rom. 12:2

when he says,

Rom. 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

He says that real transformation takes place in our lives

as our minds, our thinking processes are renewed.

And then he gives us that remarkable little test

that enables us to know

when that renewal process

has actually been accomplished

in some area of our thinking.

He tells us that

when we are thinking correctly

we will see God’s will

and God’s involvement in our life

as something that is absolutely good,

and acceptable,

and perfect.

And let me say it again... when we are thinking correctly

we will see God’s will

and God’s involvement in our life

as something that is absolutely good,

and acceptable,

and perfect.

Now, with that statement

we are getting perilously close to sermonizing -

you know, that process in which

I say nice things about God

that seem to have nothing to do with real life,

and you politely listen

and pretend you have heard

and understood every word

and found it to be perfectly reasonable

and logical

and true.

So let me see if I can desermonize it a bit.

You see,

this mental renewal process

is just exactly that - A PROCESS.

It is not a one-time event,

it is a rethinking and relearning process

that we are involved in one day

and one event

and one issue

and one challenge at a time.

The truth is that I go through this process at some level

everyday of my life.

I begin my days once again with the mind of the flesh -

with all of my learned life assumptions

and remembered emotional responses firmly in place.

And because all of that learning took place initially

under the jurisdiction of a spirit separated from my Lord

and intensely resistant to Him,

all of that learning is deeply flawed.

From there I must then, one day, one event at a time,

drag my flesh responses

into grudging submission to those truths

that my King has revealed to me at the spirit level.

And sometimes I find that looking back at things my Lord has done in the past

can be very helpful in this process.

I remember an event that took place in late Spring of 1997.

Up to that point in our lives,

for nearly 21 years Sandee and I

had supplemented our income

by managing apartments

here in Soldotna.

Then, without any warning at all,

I went home and noticed a phone message

from the owners of the apartments asking me to call.

When I returned their call

they told me that their son had expressed an interest in getting involved in the business

and that as of that day

the entire operation had been turned over to him

and we were no longer needed.

Now I didn’t enjoy managing apartments.

Truth is, I didn’t like it at all.

But I couldn’t imagine how we were going to survive the loss of the income.

Our daughter was just getting ready to start

a very expensive 4 years in college.

I remember one year when she was there

she gave me a T shirt with the school’s logo on the front

and I told her that they should sell a special edition of the shirt targeted at the dad market

that said on the back, “This T shirt cost me $60,000.00"

When we got that news about the loss of that job,

in my spirit I knew that my God’s timing is always flawless.

In my spirit I knew that my God is all powerful

with endless, limitless resources.

In my spirit I knew that He loves me eternally

and holds me tight in the palm of His hand.

But I have to tell you

when I got that news

my mind and emotions did NOT say,

“Lord, this is truly good,

and acceptable,

and perfect!

You are so good to me.

Thank you.”

You see,

once again that gap between

what my spirit knows

and what my mind and emotions believe

just hit me square in the face.

And for some considerable time

Sandee and I were forced to actively process and reprocess what happened,

seeking to bringing our minds

in line with what our spirits already knew.

Now, 16 years later,

looking back on it

the whole thing was indeed another great act of kindness from our God.

I never had to clean another apartment toilet,

all of those college bills were somehow paid in full,

and with my added available time each week

I began writing some fun stuff

about what it must have felt like to have been Simon Peter

in the few years he spent with this man called Jesus.

My point is this -

there is a built-in test

that will tell us when we have seen correctly

what God has chosen to do in our lives.

And that test is this -

when our minds and emotions finally see

what our spirits have known since the day we first met our Lord,

then everything within us will say,

‟YES!!

This is what I have hungered for

and longed for all the time.

This is good! Thank you, Lord.”

Now, I brought all of this up

because I think it helps explain

why so many Christians

throughout the past 2000 years

have fallen in love with Paul’s words

here in Philippians 3:8-11.

You see, this is one of those passages that has the ability

to cause our spirits to soar

because it allows our minds

to see so clearly

some of the things our Lord

has already said to us at the spirit level.

And in the past several weeks

we have looked at verse 3:8 where Paul says:

We saw how Paul takes all that he has

and all that he is

and all that he has accomplished

through his human efforts

and goals

and motivations

and places all of that on one side,

and then he takes the Person of Christ

and places Him on the other side,

and then says, “No contest! I choose my Lord Jesus Christ.”

In fact,

he says by comparison

all the rest of it is just rubbish.”

And we talked a little bit about

what Paul meant by “gaining Christ”,

but we didn’t have time

to follow through with all that Paul lists under that concept.

He says that he considers everything else in his life to be rubbish,

“in order that I may gain Christ,...”

Then he takes the concept of “gaining Christ”

and breaks it down into 7 pieces

so that we can understand exactly

what he’s talking about.

And the first one on the list

is that I..., “may be found in Him...”

And we’re going to have to take a few minutes here

to understand what Paul is saying.

When God took upon Himself

the challenge of putting into words

a description of His relationship with us through Christ,

explaining to us what we have as a result of what Christ had done,

it was necessary for Him to use words

in ways that we do not normally use them.

This phrase “in Christ” is an excellent example.

In normal language usage it is absurdity

for one person to talk about being “IN” another person.

It sounds like some sort of cannibal ritual

in which one person kills and consumes the other.

We talk about being “very close to” another person,

or being involved in their life,

or being their right-hand man,

or highly valuing their friendship.

Things like that we understand.

But when God set about describing

His relationship with us as Christians,

He selected this word “IN”

and used it in two unique ways

to try to communicate to us

the kind of union that exists

between us and our God.

He tells us both that Christ is “in us”

and that we are “in Christ”.

We do a little better with the first of those two.

The idea of Christ being “in us”

seems to make a little more sense.

When Paul says in Rom. 8:10,

And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness...

the concept seems to make sense,

especially when he goes on to say,

But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.

And the fact that it is impossible to live the Christian life

for any length of time at all

without our becoming aware of changes taking place in us,

changes that we know we are not making,

and things being accomplished through us

that we never even dreamed of doing before Christ entered our life

helps us to come to grips

with the idea of Christ being IN US.

Miraculously,

our God is actually, literally dwelling in us

and expressing Himself through us

in a way that blends perfectly

with our own unique personalities.

But God does not just tell us

that Christ is in us,

He also tells us

that we are IN CHRIST.

Right here in Philippians

Paul says the first great goal of his life

is that he might be found IN CHRIST.

When he writes to the Roman Christians

he says,

Rom. 8:1 There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

When he writes to the Ephesians he says,

Eph. 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

Eph. 2:5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

Eph. 2:6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus,

Eph. 2:7 in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Repeatedly throughout the New Testament

the Christian is described as being, “IN CHRIST”.

And when Paul begins to explain

what it is he gained

when he gained Christ

the first thing on his list is

that now and forever more

he will be found IN CHRIST.

But what does it mean?

This phrase, IN CHRIST

was selected by God to communicate to us the depth and breadth and scope

of the transformation Christ has brought into our lives.

You see,

when we first come to Christ

we come with a poverty mentality

in our concept of what has happened.

With many of us

we are focused on one single issue in our life - our burden of sin

and guilt

and fear of the wrath of God.

We recognize Christ’s payment for our sins

with His blood, His death,

and see our faith in Him

as the means by which that sin can be removed forever.

And we’re right.

But we are woefully short of a true perspective

on what has really taken place.

We are a little like a Texas farmer

who goes out into his field

and finds a little pool of oil on the ground

and bottles it up thinking how nice it will be

to have free lubricant for his machinery.

He never realizes that

just below the surface of that little pool

is a massive underground reservoir of oil.

God selected this term, “IN CHRIST”

because He wanted some way of enabling us to realize

that when we receive Christ

we do not just receive FROM Him,

we receive HIM,

we become immersed in Him,

united with Him,

identified with Him

in such a way that from then on

whatever Christ has

we have,

whatever Christ is

we are,

wherever Christ is,

we are too.

Christ is absolute righteousness - no sin whatsoever,

complete and total purity.

But because we are IN CHRIST

2 Cor. 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Did you see that?

We have not just had our sins forgiven,

we have become the righteousness of God in Him.

His righteousness has become OUR righteousness as well.

Christ is totally and eternally victorious over death,

but because we are in Christ

we too have total victory over death.

Christ is risen from the dead

and now is seated in heavenly places,

but because we are IN CHRIST

we, too, are seated with Him in heavenly places.

The time will come

when Christ will rule victorious on this earth,

but because we are IN CHRIST

what HE has WE have as well,

and we, too, will one day

Rom. 8:17 become... heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, ...

Christ is the Son of God,

but because we are IN CHRIST

we, too, now live forever

... having received a spirit of adoption as children by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"

Rom. 8:16 The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God,...

We now live each day

not just with Christ

but IN Christ.

What Christ has

we have.

What Christ is

we also are.

Where Christ is

so are we.

Because we do not believe it

we do not experience the reality of it in our lives,

just as the farmer with his pool of oil

does not experience his true wealth.

But that does not change the reality

of what is.

And when Paul tells us that

he gladly exchanged his little pile of rubbish

for the privilege of gaining Christ

he was not telling us that his great devotion to God

had caused him to give it all up

so that he could become a missionary.

He was telling us the simple, literal truth.

What he had possessed before he came to Christ

was absolute rubbish

compared to what he had gained through being IN CHRIST.