I get nervous standing up here as well, so I can relate. Our catechism reading for this evening is question and answer 73. My understanding is you've been working your way through the catechism and the exposition of the Ten Commandments. And the question and answer 73 is pretty straightforward this evening. It asks, which is the Eighth Commandment? And the Eighth Commandment is, thou shalt not steal. It's a commandment that God gives to his people in Exodus 20. He reiterates again before they enter the promised land in Deuteronomy 5. And it's also a command that we see God uphold or underline again in the New Testament as we look at the various commands and warnings. You look at 1 Corinthians 6 verse 10 where Paul is talking about a list of particular sins and he says, to these don't belong the kingdom of heaven. And he speaks of drunkards and those who commit adultery and those who practice homosexuality and idolaters and the like. And among that list, he mentions those who are thieves. But then he gives this note of beautiful hope. He says, but such were some of you. And he goes on to speak of the justifying, sanctifying power of God and the saving power of God in the gospel. And so that's what we're going to look at this evening. I'd ask that you please stand as we read from Philippians chapter three, verses one to 11. You see here the very heart of what it means to be a Christian and what's at the heart of the gospel of God. Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh, for we are the circumcision who worship by the spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus. and put no confidence in the flesh, though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him. not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. You may be seated. Let's ask for the Lord's help. God, as we come to these wonderful words which lay out for us so clearly the hope that we have in Christ Jesus, I ask that you would help me. Help me to speak your word clearly, accurately, faithfully. Help us, Lord. Our tendency is to resist in our flesh, to resist you speaking. To operate in unbelief and so we need your spirit again to open our eyes To open our ears to soften our hearts To receive you as you speak to us in your word, and so we ask for your help. It's in Jesus name. We pray amen Sorry, I'm still getting over a little bit of a cold, so I might reach for this once or twice. We were made for acceptance. Psychologists recognize that desires to belong and to be accepted are fundamental needs. Intuitively, I think that we know this to be true. We were made with a hunger to hear words of approval. We love, desire, yearn to hear words like, well done, welcome in, you belong, We're thirsty for those words. And because we're thirsty for them, people give their lives, they give of their time, their resources, their bodies in hopes of hearing them. And we have a habit of attaching our significance and our hope of acceptance upon our performance. and the consequence of this can be crushing. Universities are grappling with mental health challenges as their students embark on the agonizing road to performance, the agonizing journey to gain acceptance of their professors, their peers, future employers. Students at Stanford have coined the phrase duck syndrome to describe this experience. Just as ducks appear to glide effortless, I can't even say that word, with ease. It's very ironic. Across the surface of the water, yet their legs are kicking furiously underneath, right, to propel them forward. So students project this sort of happy-go-lucky attitude, and all the while, out of sight, they're racing furiously to earn acceptance and to justify their existence. I wonder if that describes your experience. Are you a duck frantically kicking to prove to yourself or to others that your existence is worthwhile, all the while you're trying to give the appearance of having it all together? Well, if that's you, I've got good news for you this evening, because our passage this evening gives us the answer to this longing that you and I were made to have. It's an answer maybe you've been searching for without success. You don't know how to find the acceptance that you deeply desire or to free yourself from the crushing weight of its pursuit. Or maybe you know the answer that our passage gives, but you haven't given yourself over to it yet. Or quite likely, I suspect that there are many of us here this evening who know the answer, but we just desperately need to have that answer regain a functional priority in our life. I'm going to admit that it's possible that I will disappoint you with this sermon if you're looking for some new answer or some deep secret or some complex exposition of doctrinal truth that will set you free from this enslavement, this frantic search for acceptance. My heart this evening is not to scratch any itch for something novel, but to bring you again this sweet and simple solution. that the acceptance that we need, the acceptance that we were made for, the acceptance that we are searching for, the one that really matters comes from God as we trust in Christ Jesus alone. And so as we look at the text, my outline's gonna be simple. We're gonna look first at the Christian's identity, verses one through three, then the Christian's accounting, verses four through nine, and then the Christian's life now and forever. So the Christian's identity, the Christian's accounting, and the Christian's life now and forever. Now in the verses preceding our text, Paul has told the Philippians to watch and imitate worthy men like Timothy and Epaphroditus. And he says that so that they might grow up into Christ. That's his point. And now Paul tells the Philippians, he begins by telling them to watch out for certain men who would lead them away from Christ. So he has the positive examples at the end of chapter two, and now watch out, there's some negative examples that he's warning the people about. And he says this, watch out, three times. And if that repetition doesn't catch our attention, the biting words that Paul employs should catch our attention. Because he uses three very strong terms. Each term is leveled against the same group of people. Now we know from context here that Paul is speaking against a group sometimes referred to as the Judaizers. Judaizers were people who believed that true acceptance from God required observing the Old Testament law. including the dietary laws, what you're to eat and not eat, and also the laws concerning circumcision. And though they rightly understood that under the old covenant, God had required his covenant people to be marked by the sign of circumcision, these Judaizers misunderstood the significance of circumcision itself. You see, they made circumcision to be a necessary condition to be in right relationship with God. So, if a non-Israelite, a Gentile became a Christian, these Judaizers would start sharpening their knives, and they'd insist, okay, you need to be circumcised in order to become part of God's covenant community. For these Judaizers, belonging to God's people, it was initiated by grace, but ultimately it was conditioned upon obedience to Jewish laws. Or to put it more simply, a person was saved by grace plus works of the law. It was grace plus circumcision, grace plus obedience to the dietary rules of the Old Testament. The Judaizers believed that there was an intrinsic importance and necessity to the act of circumcision and to the Old Testament ceremonial laws. But Paul is not going to give any quarter or any space to those who held such a view. In Galatians, Paul's adamant that anyone who adds to the gospel is, in effect, subtracting from the gospel. Because by saying we need something in addition to the gospel in order to be saved, we're saying that God's gospel is not sufficient to save. And we're going to look more at Paul's gospel in just a few minutes, but for now, we need to understand that as Paul's writing to the Philippians, Paul senses there's a threat that these people are facing, and he responds forcefully. And the three terms that Paul uses are strategically chosen to have maximum sting. First, he calls the Judaizers dogs. So the Judaizers boasted in their perceived status as being spiritually clean before God. And Paul turns their boast on its head and he calls them dogs. Now, I am not a dog person. I know that's probably a character flaw. Not a dog person. But I think rightly in those days, people understood that dogs were mangy, dirty creatures. They were unclean. They were scavengers. They ate garbage. They picked around in putrid things. They epitomize unclean. And Paul says that the Judaizers, with their reliance upon these ceremonial laws, these laws about cleanliness, they were like unclean beasts. Secondly, the Judaizers claimed to be promoting what was moral and right, but Paul says, actually, you're doers of evil. Though they weren't promoting licentiousness or wild living, they were leading people away from the gospel of God with their false teaching. And to top it all off, Paul says that though the Judaizers thought that they were rightly circumcising the flesh, they were actually mutilators of it. They were more like the idol-worshiping priests in King Ahab's day. You might remember the dramatic story on Mount Carmel, Elijah and the prophets. And there, the prophets of Baal, they are crying out to Baal so that fire will come down on their offering. And they're cutting, they're mutilating their flesh, hoping to please God, trying to win the favor of their God. So according to Paul, the Judaizers were unclean, though they boasted in their cleanness. They were evil, though they boasted in their moral uprightness, and they were mutilators of the flesh, not the circumcision. So they failed on every account that they boasted in. Well, how come? Verse three gives us the answer. Paul says, these Judaizers fundamentally misunderstand what it means to be one of God's people. For we are the circumcision, Paul says. Now this is Paul's way of saying, we are the people who are marked out as belonging to God. Now this, I think we want to pay close attention. What's Paul going to say? This is the Apostle Paul. What's a Christian according to Paul? If you're here this evening and you're not familiar with Christianity, then you want to pay close attention. But even if you're a professing Christian, we want to have as clear a definition as we can as to what it means to be a follower of Jesus. And here's what Paul says it means to be a Christian. Just as Paul's given us three harsh descriptors of those false teachers who are threatening to deceive the Philippians, Paul balances that out with three positive marks of what it means to be a Christian, to be part of God's special people. First, those who belong to God worship by the Spirit of God. Now behind this descriptor is an understanding that even under the Old Testament, physical circumcision appointed beyond itself to a more significant internal reality, or what the Bible calls, even in the Old Testament, the circumcision of the heart. So this circumcision of the heart, it was a cutting away or a replacing of the old sinful nature. And this was accomplished by God's spirit. Paul makes this point in Romans 2 when he says, no one is a Jew who is merely one outwardly, nor is circumcision outward and physical, but a Jew is one inwardly and circumcision is a matter of the heart by the spirit, not by the letter. So a Christian is one who renders a pleasing service to God from a new heart that is filled with faith. So if you're truly a Christian, you've experienced a supernatural work of God in your heart by His Spirit. Now this spiritual transformation is accompanied by a glorying or a boasting in Jesus. Jesus is their confidence. He's their hope. He's their delight So to be a Christian, of course involves a believing certain propositions about Jesus Excuse me Paul would insist on that. I mean Paul's a theologian and We need to believe certain things about God and his world and how he works in it. But these truths are in service of delight. Christianity is about progressively reveling in who Jesus is and what he has done for me. Paul's third descriptor is the corresponding truth. We boast in Christ Jesus, finding all the grounds of our confidence in him because we put no confidence in the flesh. Christians are characterized not only by what we hope in, but what we don't hope in. So though the word flesh is used in various ways in the Bible, here Paul's using it to say, in contrast to the Judaizers who put their trust in their own devices or works, God's people place no confidence in anything in themselves. So Paul's made this point to be a Christian. God has done a spiritual work in us by his spirit. We're trusting in Christ. We're not trusting in ourself. And he moves quickly to bolster this point in verse four, which brings us to our second point, the Christian's accounting. Paul turns to his own story to strengthen his point that a genuine Christian is someone who's boasting in Jesus and not in anything in ourselves or not in anything done by ourselves. So when Paul says that we're not to put our confidence in the flesh, he's not doing so because maybe he's envious or resentful of these Judaizers. He's saying it because he knows from personal experience that if you want a rock solid assurance of being accepted by God, that comes not from looking inward, and it doesn't come from building your own spiritual resume. Paul, of course, had an impressive spiritual resume, both from the perspective of his family and his personal credentials. Think, Paul had the right bloodlines and the right upbringing. His parents had him circumcised on the eighth day, just as God had instructed. He came from the people of Israel, God's chosen nation to whom belonged the covenants, the law, his promises. He was of the tribe of Benjamin. Culturally, Paul says he was a Hebrew of Hebrews. He grew up speaking the language of the scriptures, maintaining Jewish culture. Paul, he's a religious insider. He had the right people, the right family, the right culture. And to add to all these benefits, Paul could point to his own efforts. As to the law of Pharisee, he says in verse five, you might think elsewhere, Paul, when he's speaking to King Agrippa, he told King Agrippa that he conformed to the strictest sect of Judaism, living as a Pharisee. So Paul was, religiously speaking, he was downright proper. He followed the law of Moses, followed the traditions of the Jewish teachers. He was so intent on following these laws, of course, that he threw anyone who he thought transgressed them into prison. He even put to death those who threatened to undermine Judaism in his mind. Now, Paul's religiosity was expressed further by his dedicated keeping of the law's sacrificial system and its provision for sin, such that he could say, as to righteousness under the law, Paul says, I was blameless. So Paul's rehearsing all these facts about himself to show that he had legitimate religious credentials. He would put his resume up against any of them, any of them, except for one reason. He's convinced that none of these things that his opponents put so much stock in were worth anything in the courtroom of heaven. Verses seven and eight, but whatever gain I had, Paul says, from these privileges of heritage or habit, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. So Paul disowns, he disavows any boasting in his upbringing, his bloodlines, his moral or religious character. In fact, he goes on to say in even stronger language, in the end of verse eight, that he counts them as rubbish or dumb, as the King James puts it. Now, Paul's not saying that there's anything intrinsically wrong with being Jewish or being circumcised or being full of religious zeal. But insofar as we're tempted to view anything in us or done by us as being currency that we can purchase, favor with God, Paul says, to that extent, I view these things as odious, as steaming, as grotesque piles of sewage. They have no appeal to me whatsoever anymore, Paul says. I now see them as utterly worthless. Now what could make Paul look upon these things which he prized so highly with such a vehemence now? Well, Paul had an encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus, and that overturned his system of accounting, spiritually speaking. All of the items that he once had in his spiritual credits column, he now slid over to the loss column because of his encounter with Jesus of Nazareth. Paul's let go of any claim of merit in himself because he knows that he can't hold on to his upbringing and his accomplishments and Jesus at the same time. And this is a basic principle of the Bible's teaching about Jesus. This is really important. We must take hold of Jesus with both hands. We can't attempt to hold on to Jesus as our savior, and yet, with the other hand, hold on to our claims of personal merit or deserving. Jesus won't allow it. So if we're to gain Christ, if we're to be found in Christ, as Paul speaks of it, we need to empty our hands of everything else and take hold of him. And this act of forsaking confidence in anything in me or done by me, and instead taking hold of Jesus, this is what the Bible calls faith, saving faith. Faith begins with this shocking look in the mirror. Now, sometimes we look in the mirror and we're shocked, and that's for different reasons, but faith begins with this shocking look in the mirror, recognizing that I am a sinner against God and I'm unable to fix myself or set myself right. And we recognize that the righteousness, the flawless moral character that we would need for a holy God to accept us is entirely absent from us. And faith sees not only that we're morally and spiritually bankrupt, but faith sees that worse yet, we are massive debtors. And that debt, the debt of our sin, is one that we cannot pay off. There's nothing good in us that we could scrape together and then hope to pay God off with and say, here we go, we're squared away now. But then faith sees who we are and then faith looks outward and faith sees sin's solution. God opens our eyes to see Jesus offered to needy sinners like you and me, and faith is our own two-handed, desperate embrace of Jesus as the Savior. And clinging to Jesus, Paul says, we receive a most remarkable gift. Verse nine, being found in Jesus, we find a righteousness that isn't cobbled together by our own patchwork obedience, but we receive the righteousness that comes from God. Joined to Jesus by faith, God gives us his own righteousness, a righteousness that's without spot, without blemish, and he wraps us up in it. He covers our sin, he covers our shame, our disgrace, and he does so with a righteousness that he is completely pleased by. such that when God looks at us, what he sees, he no longer sees us in our sin, but he sees us as those who belong to Jesus being clothed in that wonderful righteousness. So Paul puts no confidence in the flesh, but he puts all of his confidence in Christ, that's his main emphasis in verses three to nine, and he does this so that, here's gonna be our third point, so that he might know Christ in this life and attain to the resurrection from the dead. This is our third point, the Christian's life. Now I want to ask, what will cause us to release our grip on our own righteousness? If we're to take hold of Jesus with two hands and we've got to let go of our own claims, what's going to enable us to do that? What's going to give us the power to say, I don't need to depend anymore on my moral strivings or my religious performance or my own righteousness? Well, the work of God's spirit convincing us that it's the only way that we can know Christ savingly. It's the only way that we can enjoy his resurrection life now, and it's the only way we'll enjoy resurrection life which lasts forever. Now, Paul wants us to know the power of Jesus' resurrection in his life today. Perhaps you notice there's sort of an unusual order that Paul uses in verse 10. It'd be good to look at it. Because he speaks of resurrection, and then he speaks of suffering and death, and then he speaks of resurrection again. So it's a resurrection sandwich. It's a little strange that you'd have resurrection, then suffering and death, and then resurrection again. Well, in verse 10, Paul's not speaking there of being raised from the dead bodily, but he's speaking of experiencing the resurrection power of Jesus at work in him right now, giving him spiritual life. So Paul abandons his own shallow grounds for boasting so that he might have the life of Jesus, the conqueror of sin and death, pulsing through him. By faith, Paul is joined with Jesus in his death, and he's raised to newness of life, and by faith, he's become a new creation. And having been raised with Christ, when we believe we're now dead to sin and we've been made alive to God in Christ Jesus. So it's not, as Paul's opponents may have accused him, that Paul's emphasis on being saved by grace alone through faith alone would lead to a sort of casual life of indulgence or a breeziness towards sin. Not at all. Paul comes alive to the power of God, to live for God in a way that moral effort could never do. This spirit-wrought resurrection life begins to make us want to obey God's law from a heart that's now filled with faith. There's a desire to love God and love our neighbor now. We're raised with Jesus so that we might bear fruit for God and serve in the new way of the Spirit. And in this new life, Paul, you and I, if we're trusting in Jesus alone, we have fellowship with Jesus in his sufferings. knowing that we've been made alive in Christ Jesus, that should fill us with great hope, great confidence for this life. But knowing that this resurrection life is tied to a participation in Jesus' sufferings, that's gonna ground us. Because sin no longer dominates us, death will no longer be able to hold us. But now, in this life, we share in sufferings that Jesus endured. And we share in those as children of God. We still face the painful wrestling match with the remaining sin in us. We're bombarded by the tempting power of the devil. We're hurt and abused by others. We're despised and rejected by the world. We suffer for righteousness sake. And yet remarkably, Paul says he trusts in Jesus alone because he wants to know Jesus in this way, both in his resurrection power and in Jesus' sufferings. He wants this not because he's some masochist who delights in suffering. No, Paul wants to have fellowship with Christ in his sufferings because it's in these sufferings that Jesus' resurrection power is put on display. Paul says as much in 2 Corinthians 4. He's recounting the various sufferings there in a well-known passage. And he says that we carry in our body the sufferings of Jesus. Why? Well, listen to what Paul says there in 2 Corinthians 4. We carry the sufferings of Jesus with us in the body so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, and notice this, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So as Christians, we're given new and eternal life in Christ, but it's a life that's marked, if we're honest, by very real and often very deep suffering. It's a suffering that would threaten to overwhelm us, to undo us, to drown us entirely. Paul, he's writing from a prison cell, he knows this. The Philippians, who are suffering persecution for Jesus' sake, they know it too. And I think if you've lived in the world any length of time, your experience as a Christian would prove that also. We experience the painful death of loved ones, or we're sitting waiting, thinking of someone in our congregation, waiting for the surgeon's report, or we're besieged by a pain that won't leave us, just the difficulty of chronic pain, or we're jeered at for being a Christian who wants to listen to the Bible for what it actually says. How should we understand this suffering? Suffering is complex and there's many things that we could say from the scriptures, but the one thing we can say is that God intends to have the power of Christ's resurrection at work in us to shine through the cracks in those moments. so that others can look at us and they can see the powerful life of Jesus at work in us, a power to sustain us, to transform us, to prepare us for glory. And as the power of Christ's resurrection gives us life, even now in our suffering, we come to look like him. This is why Paul's eager not only to know Christ's resurrection power, but also the fellowship of his sufferings. It's because we won't know one without the other. And if we don't know Christ and his resurrection power and suffering, we won't know Christ at all. Not as we must do if we're to enjoy the glories of the resurrection. And that brings us to verse 11. So let's pause to retrace the logic of the passage for a moment. Christian is someone who glories in Christ Jesus and puts no confidence in the flesh. And we do that so that we might receive the righteousness that comes from God and that we might know Christ, know the power of his resurrection, know fellowship with his sufferings. And this is done so that, Paul says in verse 11, by any means possible, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Paul wants to know Jesus, not just know about him, but know Jesus experientially, so that the resurrection life at work in him now would come to full flower at the final resurrection from the dead. Now, there's no uncertainty in Paul's mind about this happening, and when he says, I want to attain to it by any means possible, he's just saying, he looks forward to it no matter what road God might lead him on to get him there. Maybe it's the sudden martyr's death, maybe it's the death of old age. This is why Paul's abandoned all claims of boasting, and he's looked beyond himself to Jesus. So that on the day when Jesus returns and the trumpet sounds and the dead are raised, Paul will be raised victorious. He'll be raised to enjoy the glorious presence of God fully and forever. And friend, this is why you must abandon all confidence in anything beside Jesus too. Now, I heard that it's the pastor's job to prepare his congregation to die. And I think that's right, and that's a pretty serious calling, right, that we have, Kyle. Now, I'm not your pastor, but as a minister of the gospel, my concern for you is that you would know Jesus. not just as an idea or a doctrinal abstraction or an avatar for whatever political views you might have, but as the person upon whom you can cast all your hopes. I've had more conversations than I'd care to recount where people both inside and outside the church make clear that they are banking, not on circumcision or dietary laws, but on their zeal for pursuing justice, or reclaiming American values, or on their church attendance, or on personal behavior, or on God knowing their heart, perhaps the worst answer I can think of, right? Or on believing the right things, and these are all just confidence in the flesh. Now, if that's you, I would plead with you, let it go. Let it go. We long to prove ourselves. We long to make ourselves acceptable, but this is not the way. Instead, take hold of Jesus with both hands, putting your confidence in him, not in yourself. That's the way to have assurance of acceptance. I want to close with two illustrations. One person might be familiar to you, the other maybe not so much, but we'll see. The first is Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers, America's neighbor, he was emblematic of a good and moral person. His reputation was of someone who was loving, kind, generous. The reports were that he was the same person when the camera was off as when it was on, A great thing, a matter of personal integrity. To add to his resume, he was a minister in the Presbyterian Church. So if we were to sort of paraphrase Paul's words, we'd say, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, Mr. Rogers has more. In a documentary on Fred Rogers' life, Mr. Rogers' widow, Joanne, recounted Rogers' dying days and his dying question. As Mr. Rogers was dying, he asked the question, Am I a sheep? Am I a sheep? Referring, of course, to Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats, it showed an uncertainty, an apprehension about his impending death. Had he done enough? Would God accept Mr. Rogers into his heaven? And America's greatest neighbor didn't know. Now, though Joanne tried to reassure him by telling him if anyone had reason to think that he was one of God's sheep, it was him, Mr. Rogers apparently died in the uncertainty of knowing whether he would be accepted by God. I want to contrast Mr. Rogers with another Presbyterian minister, Robert Murray McShane. McShane pastored in Dundee, Scotland in the 1800s. McShane would pastor a church for only six years before dying at 29 years old of typhoid fever. And when he was 18 years old, God used the premature death of his brother, David, and David's deathbed discovery of joy in Jesus, to awaken in Robert a vision of the unsurpassed worth of knowing Christ by faith. Some months later, McShane would write of his conversion in a poem called Jehovah Sid Canu. The poem's title comes from Jeremiah 23.6 in the Hebrew, which means the Lord, our righteousness. Jehovah Sidkenu, the Lord, our righteousness. I want you to listen to how McShane described his life before his conversion. He said, I once was a stranger to grace and to God. I knew not my danger and felt not my load. Though friends spoke in rapture of Christ on the tree, Jehovah said, came he was nothing to me. But then around the time of his brother's death, God intervened and listened to the confidence that McShane finds in his discovery of Jesus and the righteousness found in him. He writes, when free grace awoke me by light from on high, then legal fear shook me, I trembled to die. No refuge, no safety in self could I see. Jehovah, Sidkenu, my savior must be. My terrors all vanished before the sweet name. My guilty fears banished, with boldness I came to drink at the fountain, life-giving and free. Jehovah, said Cainu, is all things to me. Jehovah Sidkenu, my treasure and boast. Jehovah Sidkenu, I ne'er can be lost. In thee I shall conquer by flood and by field. My cable, my anchor, my breastplate and shield. Even treading the valley, the shadow of death, this watchword shall rally my faltering breath. For while from life's fever, my God sets me free. Jehovah Sidkenu, my death song shall be. McShane in his short life died in the confidence of his acceptance by God because he looked beyond himself with empty hands and he embraced Jesus by faith. He knew the Lord as his righteousness. Friends, I don't want you to die like Mr. Rogers. My prayer for you as I was preparing to come speak here is that you would be able to live and die in the confidence of McShane. But for that to happen, McShane's confession, Jehovah Sid Canu, must be yours. You must know McShane's Jesus, Paul's Jesus, and you must do so as they did, by faith alone. Then God's righteousness shall be your righteousness, and on that day, when the dead shall rise and you're ushered before God's great throne of judgment, and you've gotta give an account of your life as we all must, Your defense will be short, but it will be wholly sufficient because you'll be able to say, Jesus, you are my righteousness. and God will embrace you, he'll receive you, he'll love you forever. It'll be the acceptance that your heart has always longed for, hungered for, satisfied in him as he's satisfied with you on account of the righteousness from God, received by faith in Christ alone. Let's pray. Father in heaven, as we consider that great day that is surely coming, where all of mankind must stand before your righteous throne of judgment, we would be lost except for these words, the Lord our righteousness. And so Lord, I would pray that you would help each person within the hearing of my voice, with both hands to take hold of Jesus, with saving faith, We ask for your spirit to do that because only your spirit can work that in us. And then, Lord, I pray that embracing Jesus with both hands, you would help us weak and faltering people to have that reality pressed down more and more into our lived experience so that when we engage in our relationships, when we engage in our service in the church and our service in our earthly employments, that, Lord, the truth that would ring out and rest in our ears would be that I am accepted because of Christ alone, by faith alone, because of grace alone. Help us, Lord, to get this more and more.