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God Is The Source Of Our Happiness – Not Our Circumstances; Focusing On Messiah Is The Essence Of True Religion – Not Human Efforts And Religious Activities

Life is a battle. We are in the middle of a war raging in the universe and beyond, between good and evil, between Heaven and Hell; between the Three-In-One God and the good angels and Satan and the fallen angels. In this battle, the destiny of human beings is at stake. Much of this battle takes place in our thoughts. If our minds are focused on the right things, we will be victorious. If our thoughts take us in wrong directions, we will suffer defeat after defeat.

Paul is a model of good thinking. He was in prison, awaiting a trial that could result in his death. Other men in these very difficult circumstances become fearful, immobilized, depressed, unhappy, angry, resentful. Not Paul. He was happy and confident and active! He was praying. He was declaring the Good News about the Messiah who can save human beings from the forces of Satan, sin and death to anyone who would listen. He was writing a great letter like this that has inspired billions of people over the centuries.

The Lord’s Representative starts chapter three with this advice: Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! Be happy because of God Himself! Let God be the source of your happiness. Derive your satisfaction because you know Him, because you understand that you are reconciled to Him, loved by Him, will live forever with Him! Don’t let your happiness be dependant on how well things are going at the moment. Circumstances can suddenly change. Nations rise and fall. Stock markets crash, bond and currency markets implode. You can lose your money, your job, your health, your life. Relationships can change. Friends and family can disappoint.

If we can learn how to focus our minds so that we get our greatest happiness from God Himself, and all He has done, is doing and will do for us – and not from our circumstances, we will be happier and so much better off. What makes you happy? Where are you getting your deepest satisfaction from? Better is one day in Your courts than a thousand elsewhere; I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

Because he understood that we are prone to forget the most basic truths, the Lord’s representative didn’t mind repeating these precious truths that he had written to them previously. And, and these truths, although not new to them, would protect them. It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you. And because we have a tendency to forget truth, we need to discipline ourselves to read the Bible on a regular basis – even if we have read it before; hear the Word of God being taught on a regular basis – even if we have heard it before.

Next, Paul addresses a very serious error in Messiah’s Community in this part of the first century, and that is the problem of “legalism” or “Judaizing.” There were people who were demanding that the new Christians live according to all the commandments of the Sinai Covenant. Faith in Messiah was necessary, they argued, but insufficient. Everyone had to live according to all of the laws of the Sinai Covenant. They were wrong – very seriously wrong. We know they were wrong from the giving of the Holy Spirit to the Roman Centurion Cornelius and other the first Gentiles while they were Gentiles. We know they were in very serious error from the book of Galatians, which was written to address this problem in detail. And we know they were teaching heresy from the authoritative decision of the First Jerusalem Council, recorded in Acts 15, that it was not the will of God for Gentile Christians to be required to live like the Chosen People under the laws of the Sinai Covenant. But the legalists, the Judaizers disagreed with that Holy Spirit inspired and authoritative ruling and insisted that Christians keep all the commandments that had been directed to the Jewish people under the Sinai Covenant.

Some things never change. We have the very same heresy in the Messianic Jewish movement today. There are many who insist on “Torah-Observance.” By that they mean that Christians must keep all the laws of the Sinai Covenant that can be kept. This was a heresy in Paul’s day, and it’s a heresy now. Paul warned the Philippian Community to avoid these false teachers. Watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh. Dogs were not regarded then with the same affection as we regard them today. Today dogs are our pets, sometimes more like members of the family. They live in our homes, sometimes eat our food and sleep in our beds. In our culture today we love our dogs. In that culture, dogs were considered to be unclean, wild, dangerous creatures. That’s what these false teachers were like.

Paul calls the Judaizers evildoers. Their very serious error was evil. It was a violation of God’s will and was harming people.

He calls the legalists mutilators of the flesh because they insisted on circumcision when that was not what God requires of Gentiles under Messiah’s New Covenant.

In contrast to the heretical legalists were the genuine Christians and Messianic Jews who remained within God-ordained theological boundaries. For it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by His Spirit, who boast in Messiah Yeshua, and who put no confidence in the flesh –  though I myself have reasons for such confidence.

Here we have a contrast between two ways of trying to get right with God: Those whose have a faith-based approach to God, whose confidence is in what Messiah has done versus a human effort-based approach to God, who are confident in what they have done; those who truly serve God, guided and empowered by God’s Spirit, versus those who are not led by God’s Spirit, and follow their own directions; the true circumcision versus the false circumcision. One way of approaching God is right and the other way is wrong. One is the way of Cain – man-made religion based on human effort that won’t please God; the other is the way of Abel – God ordained religion that pleases God because it comes to God on His terms and accepts what God has said. One is based on faith, and one is based on works, human effort, law-keeping. One emphasizes religious rituals and activities and one emphasizes a personal relationship with God.

Here’s the problem. The world is fallen. Human beings are fallen. Most people sense that something is seriously wrong with the world. The various religions and philosophies offer their solutions. One thing they all have in common, except for the Faith of the Bible, is that they all are based on self-directed human effort. Fallen human beings are attracted to religions and philosophies based on works, on human effort, on religious ceremonies and rituals and activities. Why? Because religious ceremonies, rituals and activities are things we can do, and doing something appeals to us. If we go to a religious service, light a candle, prayer a certain prayer in a certain way at a certain time, keep a commandment, give some money, abstain from a food for a time, we are doing something that the religious authorities tell us is good. Do enough of those good things, and avoid enough bad things, and your religion or philosophical system tells you you’re in good shape. You are doing what is required to solve the problem. And so, human-effort based religion and philosophy – doing things, religious ceremonies and activities are attractive to many people.

But true religion is not about human efforts, or activities, or external things, but about internal things – things of faith: Really knowing the Three-In-One God at the core of who you are; ending your rebellion against Him; simply accepting what God has said; understanding that God did the work that alone makes your salvation possible; you just need to accept the gift of salvation that is graciously being offered to you; being directed by God’s Spirit. We need to understand these things and accept what God has done for us. These things are the essence of true religion.

In contrast to the Judaisers who were demanding human efforts like Mount Sinai law-keeping and circumcision, were Paul and those Gentile Christians and Messianic Jews who were truly faithful. Paul declares that they are the ones who are the true circumcision, which is not a physical circumcision but a spiritual circumcision – a cutting of human hearts that have been hard toward God, making their innermost beings tender toward God; making them part of Messiah’s Wonderful New Covenant. They were the true sons and daughters of God, because they were genuinely reconciled to God. They had come to God on His terms, not their terms. They were the ones who understood that salvation and the power to live a genuinely God-pleasing life comes from getting close to the Risen Messiah, by simply accepting what Yeshua has done to make our salvation possible – not by external things like human effort or religious activities and rituals and ceremonies and law-keeping. Paul and the Philippian Christians and Messianic Jews had ended their part in the great rebellion against God. They were yielded to God and being directed and empowered by the Spirit.

Which one describes you and your religious understanding? Be very careful you answer honestly – your relationship to God, or lack of relationship to God; your eternal life, or lack of eternal life, depends on it. The way of the legalists – man-made religion, human effort, law-keeping, an emphasis on rituals and ceremonies, self-direction? Or the way of Faith – God ordained religion, humbling yourself and simply believing God, accepting what God has declared to be true and coming to Him on His terms?

If a law-keeping, human effort and religious activities approach to God could really benefit a human being, Paul would have been hugely benefitted. He had been profoundly religious. If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh (the flesh means human effort, religious activity, good lineage), I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the Law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the Community; as for righteousness based on the Law, faultless. If a person could please God by external things like human effort and law-keeping and religious activities, it would have been the Rabbi from Tarsus. He was a model of religious activity and law-keeping. From the beginning of his life, his religious life started the right way. He was circumcised on the eighth day.

In some religions your family ancestry is important. Paul had an outstanding ancestry. He came from the right people. He was a member of the Chosen People, the holy nation of Israel. He came from a special tribe – the tribe of Benjamin, from which came Saul, the first king of Israel. Paul was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, a Jew of Jews, a special person among God’s Special People, a true Jew.

When it came to the religion of the Chosen Nation, the Rabbi was very religious. In regard to his practice of Judaism, he was a Pharisee – a small, elite sect known for their intense religious devotion; as for his level of commitment about defending his understanding of Judaism, he was willing to go on the attack. His passion for his religion motivated him to persecute the Messianic Jewish Community; as for righteousness based on the Law, he did everything his religion asked of him. He was a good man in the way the Jewish law called a man good.

What did all this religious effort do for Paul? How was he benefitted? Was he reconciled to His Creator, redeemed, saved from the forces of Satan, sin and death? No. Was he close to God? No. He was far from God. Was he an encouragement to the true sons and daughters of God? No. He opposed and persecuted them. Could he expect a great reward in Heaven for his service to God? No. All his religious activity had led him in the wrong direction.

Paul tried that human-effort based way of pleasing God, and it didn’t work. Instead of benefitting him, it harmed him and others. The very things the Judaizers were holding up as the ideal way to please God, Paul was throwing out with the trash – along with everything else he used to take credit for. But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Messiah. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Messiah Yeshua my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Messiah and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but that which is through faith in Messiah – the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. All the things the Rabbi from Tarsus once thought were so important, he now understood were useless. Compared to the great value of having Messiah Yeshua as his Master, everything he once thought he had going for him he now considered worthless trash. What he realized was really worth pursuing was belonging to Messiah and being in a genuine relationship with Him.

Paul didn’t want an inferior brand of righteousness that comes from human effort and keeping a list of rules, a kind of man-made righteousness which is no real righteousness; a false, deceiving righteousness that did not result in a right relationship with God – when he could get the real kind of righteousness – really being in a right relationship with God – that comes from faith, from knowing the Three-In-One God, and trusting God, and coming to God on God’s terms, and simply accepting everything God has to say – especially about this wonderful Messiah – that God the Father had sent His Son to be the Savior of the world – to restore a right relationship to our Creator, to reconcile us to God, to reverse the catastrophe that took place in Eden; that Messiah Yeshua is the eternal Son of God who became a human being; that He resisted every temptation, lived a perfect life, then died an agonizing, atoning death to make our salvation possible. Then, He rose from the dead, overcoming our great enemy, death! That Messiah is alive now, raised from the dead, resurrected, ascended, seated at the right hand of God, interceding for us, helping us! From there, this mighty Lord is powerfully ruling over all things, for the benefit of those who follow Him – with all-power in Heaven and Earth at His command. He is the Most Amazing Person Who Does The Most Amazing Things For Us. He is worth knowing. He is worth pursuing more than anyone or anything else. Wouldn’t you agree? Paul did.

I want to know Messiah – yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. Knowing the Messiah is the way to get close to God, to be reconciled to God, to please God, to serve God, to overcome sin, to live forever with God. Knowing the Messiah, getting close to the Messiah, serving the Messiah, becoming like the Messiah, telling others about the Messiah, building up the Community of the Messiah, and if necessary, suffering for the Messiah, is what God wants us to focus on. Knowing this and accepting this is the one and only way of getting right with God. That is the way of righteousness, of pleasing God, of serving God, of holy living. That is the way to experience powerful, God-honoring living now, in this life, and the way to experience resurrection and everlasting life.

I want to know Messiah – yes, to know the power of His resurrection. You want spiritual power? Not to cast mountains into the sea, but to live powerfully for God? To powerfully resist temptation? To powerfully lead a holy life? To powerfully witness to others and serve the Lord? Get close to the resurrected, ascended, living, powerful Messiah! Get close to Him and He will give you some of His power.

But, you need to understand that He gives more power to those who work with Him, who dedicate themselves to carry on His mission of evangelism and building up His Community. And they might have to experience the same kind of rejection Messiah did, and they may have to suffer a lot – like Messiah did. Paul came to the point where that was fine with him. He no longer cared about a comfortable life or the praise of people. What he wanted was to get close to the Son of God and be a powerful force for Him, and endure rejection and persecution like Messiah did, and go all the way to death itself, if necessary – just like Messiah did. He wanted to get rid of all distractions in order to fully serve God and complete his mission. He wanted to die to sin; die to self; die to the allures of the flesh; die to the seductions of the world – like Messiah did.

This is the kind of thinking and living that pleases God – not the human effort based religion of the Judaizers. This is the kind of thinking and living that honors God and results in the resurrection from the dead. This is the kind of thinking and living that we need to imitate. Amen? Much of the battle of life is in our thoughts. In our minds, God must be the source of our happiness – not our circumstances. We must focus our minds on Messiah, who is the essence of true religion – not human efforts and religious activities. If we know this, we must communicate to others who are deceived by getting their satisfaction from a dying world, and those who are deceived by human effort based religions and philosophies. Amen?