Okay, we've got three announcements. First of all, and I think another email is going to go out with some recommendations from the Houston Area Pastors Council on the HCaT election. So if you want to pay more taxes, don't vote. Okay? But if you want to have a couple of people who are going to try to curb the property taxes, then you need to pay attention. But I think early voting's already started, so this is time for us to pay attention. And so that is what's going on right now. And so you'll get that information and their recommendation on the two men. One is Scott Kyle, who spoke here before when there was a election for the county a couple of years ago. And then I can't remember the name of the woman, but... Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. So anyway, it's it's important because there's some issues they explain that relate to people who are trying to levy some property taxes on on churches and nonprofits. So these kinds of things always pop up every now and then. And we have to make sure we go vote. The other thing is that the men's prayer breakfast is a week from Saturday. So come out and join us for a good breakfast that will be followed by the deacons meeting. And then following the deacons meeting, we have a security team that we met with already that is going to give us more of an assessment on our security. in the building. And when we get everything, all the information we need and things straightened out, then we will include the congregation in what is going on and what these recommendations have been. So those are, that's two announcements. Third announcement is the next Israel tour will be May next year. And we're going to do something a little different. We're not going to handle everybody's airfare. So that means that the tour starts around 11 a.m. on May the 7th in Tel Aviv. Everybody will get meeting information and things like that. And then the tour will end on May the 19th for people who want to leave and come home. So that is in the event that the war is not going on. I've already read three or four reports that the war is going to go on until at least through the winter. So that's the projection, so who knows? Only God knows. But that's the important information. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your request be made known unto God, and the peace of God that surpasses all understanding shall defend your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee. for the grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God shall stand forever." So as we prepare to study the word and reflect upon what Paul says in Philippians for us, we need to make sure we're in right relationship with the Lord, which means a few moments of silent prayer. And if necessary, that is admitting in silent prayer to the Lord sins so that we can be forgiven and cleansed and prepared to study the word this evening. So let's bow our heads together and in a few moments I will open in prayer. Let's pray. Father, we're very thankful that we have this opportunity, the freedom to come together, to freely assemble, to teach Your Word, proclaim the truth of Your Word. And Father, we know that there are forces of evil from high echelons in almost every institution of our nation that seek to destroy this, that their aim is power and money, which are usually the aims of people who are against freedom. And so, Father, we pray that You would restrain those evil forces And we pray that there would be the voice of truth being heard in this land. But we believe that that's already there. And so, Father, we're not real encouraged that the direction of this country will be one that turns back to you. But if they don't, then we know that you will take care of us, provide for us, protect us, and that we will have a tremendous opportunity to shine forth as lights in the midst of a wicked and corrupt generation. So, Father, we pray that you would intervene in this nation and that we would be able to have a voice and the gospel would be responded to positively. Father, we also pray for Israel. We pray for the safety of Raleigh Morris and his family. We pray for others that we know in Israel. We pray that those who are working there who are Messianic Jews would have a great opportunity to give the gospel, explain the gospel, present the fact that Yeshua is the Jewish Messiah. And Father, we pray for them and for their safety and their opportunities for outreach. Father, we also pray for us as a congregation that we can stand fast for you. And we pray for Jim and Phyllis as they come back from Ukraine next week, that they'll be safe. And we pray for our time tonight in your word that we would be responsive to what God the Holy Spirit teaches us. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. All right, since yesterday was a significant day in history, and today is a significant day in history, that I have a couple of videos that I wanted to share with you. The first video that is here is a collage of some different videos that Randy Price uploaded on his, on WhatsApp for me yesterday, or actually on a text message, and Barb put them all together And this is what's going on in the northern part of Israel. There have been many rocket attacks from Hezbollah. And because it's hot, it's June, it's hot, it's dry, there have been a lot of fires. And so you can get an idea of what is going on. And remember, it was just a week or a little more ago that a rocket came down in the street outside of where Raleigh's church meets. and exploded, caused some damage from the shock waves and everything to their building. Nobody was there, nobody was hurt, but pretty much destroyed the building across the street. So this gives you that insight. Why did this happen yesterday? Because it was the anniversary of the unification of Jerusalem in 67. So it's called Jerusalem Day. And so at the end, there's some other video that's been put in there. One of the members of our congregation, Yufey, is in doing an internship in Jerusalem right now and sends me videos every day of things that are going on on the streets in Israel. So I thought I would just share these. It's a couple of minutes long. This is driving along the Sea of Galilee. And this is up north in the Galilee around here at Shmona. So this is the street party in Jerusalem yesterday as everybody comes out and is celebrating Jerusalem Day. So you see the contrast in Israel because the Galilee is not that far away, maybe 50 miles. And here you have in Jerusalem no concerns, no relation to what's happening 50 miles away. And then these are some of the Orthodox praying. I believe that is an entry onto the Temple Mount, so that is where they are praying. Now, I have one other video, if I can get this up there, that Randy sent me yesterday and this was, if I can grab, can I not grab this? Maybe I need to take this over here and then play it here. There. This is the day in 1967 when the IDF took the Temple Mount. Here, code code 89, is Mota speaking? Over. On the house of our forefathers, here is a sign, on the house of our forefathers, over. So these were just a couple of hours there after Israel took the Temple Mount In fact, there were many among the Orthodox that were ready. They thought this was time to tear down the Dome of the Rock and that this was when they were going to build the next temple. And then Moshe Dayan turned the operational control of the Dome of the Rock back over to the Jordanians. And so it has been under an organization called the Waqf ever since. That's W-A-Q-F. And so we wait until Sometime in the future when the Lord allows that to be rebuilt. We have a lot that's going on in our world right now and we have a lot of, excuse me a minute while I try to close off all these things which are not closing. We have one other event that occurred that we're remembering today and that was D-Day. And so I'm just going to play this as background that it was on June the 6th of 1944 that the Allies launched the greatest invasion force that has ever been gathered together in human history. And if you've never been to Normandy, then I really encourage you to go. And I encourage you that if you have children or grandchildren that are teenagers, that you should take them there. because you cannot help but walk through the graveyards at Normandy and realize the cost of our freedom. And in talking with some of my Jewish friends after having gone to Auschwitz while we were on our trip this last month, I think that's another thing that the next generation needs to be aware of is to go to one of the camps and to be aware of what happened during World War II and the results of anti-Semitism. And these are extremely important visuals. You cannot help but realize some things. It takes these events right out of the textbooks and puts them right into real life. So we need to be remembering these things. And if you want to hear some interesting stories about D-Day, there is one lady here who's a member of the congregation whose father was a lieutenant colonel in Screaming Eagles, airborne, and dropped into Normandy on D-Day. And she'd be glad to entertain you with some of his stories. But you've got to figure out who she is first. Okay. Back to our studies. Let's open our Bibles to Philippians chapter three. And as we look at this passage, we're going to come down to verse 12, and which is probably about where we will end tonight, where Paul writes, not that I have already attained or arrived, or am already matured or reached full maturity, but I press on that I may lay hold. Now he's going to lay hold of something. He's going to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. So why did Christ Jesus lay hold of you? Why did he lay hold of each one of us? And that's our goal, understanding that. So why did Jesus Christ lay hold of us? That purpose that the Lord has should be the driving purpose of our lives. So let's look at the context or be reminded of the context again that's very important. And that is that in this epistle, starting in verse 26, I mean, verse 27, Philippians 1, 27, down through 30 that we have a summary or an introduction summary of what this epistle is all about. And it really focuses on two things, one of which has to do with unity and the other has to do with standing fast against the assaults of false doctrine and false teaching. And so this is the topics that are addressed from 127 to 30. We have the introduction, and then from 2-1, most of chapter 2 is dealing with unity, and chapter 3 is dealing with standing fast. And there are two basic problems of error. We've only focused on one so far, and that's the first one. And this is the Judaizers. These were Jewish believers for the most part. that had adopted a view that the cross in and of itself wasn't sufficient, that in order to either be saved or if you were saved in order to have any measure of spiritual growth, then the rituals of Judaism had to be observed, especially circumcision. So they were adding human works to justification and or to the spiritual growth or sanctification The second group we're going to get into when we get to verse 17 and Paul calls them the enemies of the cross of Christ. And so these are the two opposing forces that are playing havoc with the believers in in Philippi. So let's just have a review since it's been over a month since we have gone through this and there's a lot to cover here and it's good for us to go back and think our way through this passage. And so what we have seen so far is that the focal point of this chapter is the encouragement to stand firm against false doctrine. And so this is the way Paul structures what he is going to say. First of all, he warns about the Judaizers. He calls them dogs, evil workers, and the mutilation. Now he's just, he isn't just name-calling. That these are terms that were used to describe the opposition. And in verse 2 of chapter 3, he says, beware of dogs, beware of evil workers, beware of the mutilation. And each one of these was a significant term. By calling them dogs, he was using a slur against Gentiles. The Jews, the Pharisees especially, the religious, the observant Jews, referred to Gentiles as dogs. Dogs were not pets in that culture. Dogs were scavengers. They cleaned up the garbage. And they ran wild through the streets. And they weren't cute little puppy dogs that were everybody's pets. And so this is an unpleasant term that they used to describe the Gentiles. And Paul flips it on them. And he says, they're the dogs. Beware of them because they don't know grace. They don't know Christ. And they are the ones that are outside of grace because they rejected the Messiah. Second, he calls them evil workers. Evil is always cloaked in what looks like something good. And so it's never, when it's being very deceptive, it's never obviously evil. It always is cloaked in the rationales of what is good for everybody, what is helpful for everybody, what is beneficial for everybody. And so that's what makes their sinfulness so evil is because of its deceptiveness. Satan is the arch counterfeiter. He manifests himself as an angel of light and his ministers disguise themselves as ministers of righteousness. And so some of the most evil some of the most evil activities on earth have to do with moral religion because it holds forth a hope of eternal life and that somehow my good deeds are going to count for something. But all it does is pave the road to hell. And so you're deceiving people into thinking that they're going to go to heaven when they die because they're morally good, and instead you're sending them to eternity in the lake of fire. So there's a second term that he uses, that their doctrine won't help anyone, therefore it's evil. It will destroy spirituality and destroy salvation. And then third, he calls them the mutilation as a negative term describing circumcision, physical circumcision, because they taught that this was somehow manifesting something that was spiritually beneficial for them. So he starts by using these three terms, and then in verse three, he contrasts these Judaizers and their emphasis on physical mutilation with believers in the Lord Jesus Christ during the church age who are spiritually circumcised. Our hearts are circumcised. And so he says we believers are the circumcision not the ones who are getting physically circumcised. And then he says three things about them. First of all they that we worship God by means of the Holy Spirit. So here you see an emphasis on the importance of worship as I've been teaching on Sunday mornings in Ephesians. And a passage that when he says here we worship by means of the Spirit, it reminds us of Jesus' conversation with the woman at the well in John chapter 4. So Jesus, instead of walking around Samaria, If you remember map of Israel, you have in the South, Judea, and then in the North, Galilee, and then in between it's Samaria. Just remember that. Now you won't forget it. Bad jokes are good for something. And so typically the Jews would go all the way around and not walk through because they despise the Samaritans. But Jesus goes through and he goes to what is what is now Nablus. But the center of modern Nablus you have the ancient remains of Shechem. And in Shechem you have a well which is where this woman would come. She would have to walk a long ways up a hill in order to get her water. And so Jesus is there and she comes to draw water at the well. And in the midst of their conversation, she's perceiving that he knows some things. She's beginning to perceive he is the Messiah. And so she says to him in verse 19, I perceive that you are a prophet. And she doesn't use, it's not a prophet. She uses the word prophet without an article. Now, in English, that would indicate an indefinite article, but they don't have an indefinite article in Greek. So a lot of times, like in the beginning of John 1, 1, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was God. God doesn't have an article, so Jehovah's Witnesses will come and they'll knock on your door and tell you, you said, Jesus is just another God. The word was a god. There are other gods, but he's not the real god. That's Jehovah. And the problem is they don't understand how the article is used in Greek, that an article is used to indicate or distinguish one thing from other things. But sometimes when the article isn't there, it's emphasizing the quality and distinctiveness of what the noun describes. So God, a lot of times, does not, the noun does not have an article with it because it's emphasizing his majesty, his distinctiveness, his uniqueness. And so here, when she says, you are, she says, you are prophet. And she's referring back to Deuteronomy chapter 13, which is the passage that predicts that a prophet, when Moses says a prophet will come, like me will come. And he's talking about this future prophet. It's a messianic prophecy. And so by saying this, she is beginning to realize that Jesus is the Messiah. And so now she's going to get into the religious debate that is at the core of the disagreement between the Samaritans and the Jews. As the Jews said that the holy mountain was the Temple Mount where Solomon had built the temple. And when these people came back they were kind of a mixed race of Jews and the other people that were resettled in the north by the Assyrians. And they threw out everything in the Old Testament except for the Pentateuch. And that meant that they had no instructions from the Scripture about where the temple should be. And they said that the temple should be there on Mount Gerizim. And even today you have Samaritan descendants, I think there's less than 200 living today, and they have a place of worship up on Mount Gerizim. And they believe that that is where God should be worshipped from. So she gets right into this debate with Jesus, and because this well is located down in the small valley there that's between Mount Gerizim and then Mount Ebal. She says, Our fathers worshipped on this mountain. You Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem worship the father. You worship what you do not know. We know what we worship for salvation is from the Jews. He just doesn't back off of this argument, whatever. But then he says, but the hour is coming and now is. In other words, this has been prophetic, but it's coming now. When the true worshipers will worship the father by means of the spirit and by means of truth, for the father is seeking such to worship him. God is looking for those to be saved and to worship him. God is spirit, he says, and those who worship him must worship by means of the spirit and by means of truth. So he repeats it. So the point of this is that this is the same language that you have in Philippians 3.3, that we worship God by means of the Holy Spirit. So next we see that we, those who are true worshipers worship by means of the Spirit and those who are of the true circumcision worship by means of the Spirit and second, they rejoice. Now this word for rejoice can also be translated boast or glory in something. So the context is important to understand why they're boasting and that is because He's contrasting it with what the Jews are boasting in, which is what they've accomplished in terms of obeying the works of the law and all of their good works. They're boasting on how much they've done. And Jesus is saying that those who are of the true circumcision are boasting in Christ because it's Christ's work on the cross that is important for salvation. It is Christ who paid the penalty for our sins and gave us a sufficient salvation and we cannot add to it one little bit even with human effort or human morality. And the third thing about those who are spiritually circumcised, he says they have no confidence in the flesh. And that's a direct contrast with what he just said. We glory in Christ and not in the works of the flesh or the works of the law. And that He uses that to introduce the transition to where his confidence was prior to his salvation, that he was the poster child for pharisaical righteousness. If anybody could have achieved righteousness, the Apostle Paul, or excuse me, Saul of Tarsus would have done that. And so we looked through verses four through six, that he had confidence in the flesh, not confidence in Christ. It was all what he did. And as I pointed out, some of these were accomplishments that really his parents made those decisions. He had nothing to do with it. And others had to do with a couple of decisions that he made. So four of these were related to his genetic heritage that he had nothing to do with. He was circumcised on the eighth day. That was his parents' decision. He was from the stock of Israel. He was of the tribe of Benjamin and he was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. Three related to Paul's own decisions, his volitional responsibility. He had decided to become a Pharisee and to be the best Pharisee possible. Second, after the development of Christianity, the birth of Christianity on the day of Pentecost, he began to zealously persecute the church and to put Christians into jail and have them executed. And third, he says he was blameless in the righteousness of the law. So that's what he's confident in. And those things are important to remember, because as we go forward in the chapter, we're going to see references where he says, I count all these things lost. Well, these are the things that he's counting to be lost, that he emphasized, the things that he had confidence in. So he says in verse seven, but what things were gain to me, these things I have counted loss for Christ. So we go back to that other chart and we see that all seven of those things were, he counted as loss. And that's where we have the same list. So he said, this didn't count anything. It was useless. It was worthless. And so he will go on to describe this. as skubala, which can be translated as rubbish or manure. Somebody commented, well, manure is pretty useless. You can still use manure for something, like for fertilizer. Well, you can still use rubbish for some things. But Paul's, the illustration stands. He's just saying it's worthless. It doesn't apply to anything. So he says, what was gained for him as a Pharisee was loss for Christ. And then in verse 8 he says, Yet indeed I also count all things lost for the, what? The excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. Now he's emphasizing the important thing is to learn all that we can about Jesus Christ. Learn all that we can about his life during the incarnation from studying the Gospels. learn all that we can from the theological exposition of who Christ was, the development of Christology from the various passages in the epistles, and we should be able to go back through the Old Testament and trace the life of Christ and understand all of the messianic prophecies that are in the Old Testament, all of which give us a much greater understanding of who Jesus is. And you don't want to be like so many Christians who talk about how much they love Jesus, but they don't know anything about Jesus. They've never read anything significant on the life of Christ. They just know that Jesus stands for love, and they like love, so they love Jesus. And none of this has anything to do with biblical Christianity. And, you know, the challenge today is that we have errors on several sides of the aisle as a result of many different factors. And so Jesus is talking about, I mean, Paul is talking about what should be valued. And what should be valued is knowledge. And this is why I encourage so many believers to read your Bible, read your Bible, let the word of God saturate your soul, because that's the foundation of everything that we learn in terms of application. And God has given us all kinds of examples so that we can learn from these examples. And so we talk about the importance of doctrine. Well, the word doctrine just means instruction. It just means teaching. And so everything in the Bible was breathed out by God and is profitable for what? For teaching. So everything is profitable for teaching, so we need to understand that. We need to understand the names, the places, the events, the circumstances, the sins and the failures, as well as the successes. And then when you are in Bible class and I talk about things, then you have a frame of reference for it. But if you're not reading your Bible, it's like a kid who goes through elementary school and he never does any homework. You haven't done what you need to do to learn. And it's very important to do that. So if we look at the Bible, Jim did this one night when we were at the Roman Brethren Church in Romania. There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible. And those of you who are quick with a calculator can divide that by 365 days and figure out how many chapters you need to read a day. But there are 31,103 verses in the Bible. And so we can read through the Bible easily in a year. So I ran across this really nice chart. reading the testaments of the Bible. How much time per day would the average person need to set aside to read through the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the whole Bible? So look at this chart. So if you were just to sit down and read the Old Testament, it would take you 56 hours and 44 minutes. Well, how do you know that? Some people are saying, well, I don't read that fast. Well, this is based on if you were to get an app where somebody would read the Bible to you, that's how long it would take them to read the Bible out loud to you. That's not speed reading. That's reading in a way in which you can understand it out loud. So that would take 56 hours and 45 minutes. So if you are going to read through it eight hours and six minutes a day, it would take you a week to read through the Old Testament. If you read through the New Testament, read through the whole New Testament, takes 17 hours and 45 minutes. So in a week, if you read two hours and 32 minutes a day of the New Testament, you could read through the New Testament in a week. If you read it, and if you want to read it through in a month, 35 minutes a day, and you'd read through the whole Old New Testament in a month. If you want to read it in three months, then just spend 12 minutes a day, and you can read through the New Testament in three months. And so that's what it breaks down to. Now, in the last row here is the whole Bible. And so to read through the whole Bible takes just under 75 hours, 74 hours and 28 minutes. And if you were to do it in a week, that would take you 10 hours and 38 minutes a day. So that'd pretty much take up most of your day just to read through the Bible. And you could get through the whole Old Testament, the whole Bible in a week. Now, if you wanted to read it through in a month, then you'd have to spend two and a half hours a day reading through the Bible. But you could read it through in a month. If you wanted to read it through in three months, that would take you about 50 minutes. And when I was getting ready to go back to seminary to work on my doctorate, I was talking with a pastor I knew here in town. And he made the comment to me, he said, why do you want to get your doctorate? And I said, well, I want the credentials because I want to have the opportunities to maybe teach in seminary or go on the mission field and teach in a seminary overseas. And he said, well, what you have to realize is that if you just put your mind to it and read a lot and study a lot every day, and you'll have the same amount of knowledge at the end of five years that you would have without going through a doctoral program. And he's true. If somebody gave you a curriculum and a reading list and you did that, you could. And he also made the point that as pastors, we encourage people to read the Bible through in a year. And so that takes a certain amount of time. And he commented, he said, I always thought that since most people have to work and they don't have free time all day, that if I'm asking them to take the time to read through the Bible in a year, I should read through the Bible about four or five times in a year. And so if you wanted to read through your Bible in three months, it would take you about 50 minutes a day, unless you're kicking out Sunday and Saturday, because if you're a pastor, you've got to spend time on other things, which is what I did. For many years, I read about 50 minutes to an hour a day, and I would read through the Bible four or five times a year. And that was really, really important. I mean, you just see so many connections when you do that. But if you just want to read through the Bible in a year, that comes down to 12 minutes a day. Most of us are spending more than 12 minutes, if truth were told, we're probably, put it all together, we're probably spending an hour just looking at our devices. And you can take 12 minutes out of that hour and let the Lord teach you something by reading the word. So that's really important to read the word. But you know, the interesting thing is that, and of course, as I pointed out, pastors need to really immerse themselves into the word. But I know of a pastor of a doctrinal church who has commented that he doesn't ever read his Bible. He only reads the passage that he's teaching. And that's the most absurd thing I've ever heard. That's like saying I'm going to tell people all about Texas and we're going to go downtown Houston and look at the intersection of Preston and Louisiana and we're going to get out in the middle of that intersection and look at one square foot and we are going to just spend hours and hours talking about that and then that's how we're going to learn about Texas. That's that kind of mentality. And he's not the first person I've heard takes a doctrinal church and thinks that's teaching, because everything in the Bible is connected. And you have to read the whole Bible to understand the correlation between every phrase, every clause, because the context of every verse is the whole Bible. Let me give you an illustration. We've done this in Bible study methods, and this was an assignment that every person who started, every student who started Dallas Seminary used to have to do. The professor, Howard Hendricks, would talk about observation. So he would read through, give us a lecture on observation, lots of visuals, look at some FBI films, and give you a little self-test of what did you really see. And then he would send us home and say, okay, when you come back to class, In two days, I want you to write out 25 observations on Acts 1-8." And then we would come back and everybody would narrow in and figure out all the things they could say about just this one verse. And then he would come back and start to talk about context. And so that's important because you see, you have to ask yourself, is this one sentence or is this part of a sentence? What's the context? Now in the King James version it looks like it's one sentence because the mentality of the translators was to try to make as much as possible every verse stand alone as an independent sentence. But in a lot of places you can't do that. So if you look at Acts 1 7 and 8 you see that Jesus is talking and he said to them. So you have to identify who he is and who them represents and that's the 11 disciples. And he says, it's not for you to know times or seasons, which the father has put in his own authority. But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you shall be a witnesses to me in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth. So you can't understand Acts 1, 8 unless you put the whole sentence together and you look at Acts 1, 7 and 8. But that's part of a broader context. And so this is right before the ascension of our Lord. And Luke tells us, well, therefore, now you don't get this in reading the English. What you see in the English is simply, therefore, when they had come together, when the 11 apostles had come together, they asked him this question, Lord, is this the time that you're going to restore the kingdom to Israel? But you miss, because there are these, and I've talked about this in a couple of passages, there's this little particle. And a particle is a word that means something grammatically, but it's not necessarily translated. So in one of those types of grammatical constructions is a men-de clause. And so it starts off at the beginning with, and you see this particle like, therefore, it's go un-men. Now the men isn't translated. And then when you get to the next part of the next verse or later on in the sentence it'll say something and it begins with the little particle death which means and. But this is a way of saying on the one hand this but on the other hand that. And what's interesting is I was looking at this today I thought well this is a classic Mendeck construction. And what Luke is saying is therefore on the one hand When they, the disciples, had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel? Verse 7 begins, and on the other hand, now Jesus is going to say something. He said to them, it's not for you to know times or seasons, which the Father has just put in his own authority. It's a contrast. You don't see that Mendea, which isn't in English. You miss some of what's going on in this little dialogue. You have to understand context, and the context really extends much beyond just that. For example, you look at Acts chapter 1, and you find that there's a reference to a prophecy fulfilled a little later on, and then one of the Psalms is quoted. So in order to even understand Acts 1, you have to understand the context of the Old Testament prophecy that's referenced and the Old Testament verse that is given. So you have to know something about the Old Testament. You can't just, you know, think your way through one verse at a time, isolated from its context. And then you get into Acts 2, and Peter quotes a five-verse passage from Joel 2, and later he quotes five different Old Testament passages to make the points that he's making in relationship to the crucifixion of Christ. And remember, Luke wrote both Luke and Acts. They weren't combined together because you can't put all that on a scroll. So the context of Acts chapter one is really the gospel of Luke and the rest of Acts. So you have to understand that when you read in there that they are told to be witnesses to Christ in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. They start in Jerusalem. You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem. That's where they were standing. And then you're going to take the gospel to Judea, that's the territory just south of Jerusalem, and Samaria, that's the territory just north of Jerusalem, and then to the ends of the earth. And so what's the outline of Acts is that in Acts chapters 1 through chapter 7, all the action is in Jerusalem. And then from chapter 8 through 1118, all the action is in either Samaria or Judea. And then from Acts 1119 to the end of Acts, you see the expansion to the ends of the earth. And if you don't understand that, then you're going to misinterpret a lot of stuff that's going on in the book. So how in the world can a pastor not read his Bible day in and day out so that he constantly has in his mind the whole revelation of God. I just don't understand that. Especially when we see that what Jesus is saying, what Paul is saying, is that he has to have a knowledge of Christ. And he uses the word gnosis, which indicates basic knowledge. I mean, we all know that there's a distinction and sometimes an overlap between the word gnosis and the word epinosis. And epinosis indicates a more experiential side of knowledge. But it's based on knowledge, information. You have to begin with information. That's how it is in every discipline in life. You have to begin with just learning terminology and learning names and dates and learning the names of different parts of machinery, things like that. You have to have that nomenclature. It's basic knowledge. And so that's what Paul's saying. It starts there. We have to have this. This is the surpassing excellence of the knowledge of Christ. So what Paul has said so far, first of all, that his accomplishments were a spiritual loss. They were of no value spiritually, no value for Christ, no value for ministry to the body of Christ. That's in verse seven. Then he says, secondly, that the accomplishments were also a loss in view of the surpassing excellence of the knowledge of Christ. So you're putting your emphasis on the wrong thing. Today, the emphasis is on emotion and how you feel. And it's that way run all the way through society. Matthew 16, 26 and 27, Jesus said, what profit is it or what value is it for a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul? What will a man give in exchange for his soul? Well, what we need to profit is the word of God. We need to have that not surpassing excellence of the knowledge of Christ and know what in the next verse he says, for the son of man will come in the glory of his father with his angels and then he will reward each according to his works. So right here in these two verses, Jesus is saying you need to pay attention to what the end result is, what the end game is. It's eschatology, and there's a lot of people who say, well, we can't figure out what prophecy is. I'm really what they call a pan mill. You know, I'm not a mill, post mill, pre mill. I'm a pan mill. It'll all pan out in the end, so I don't need to study all this stuff. People want to wallow in their ignorance. It's just amazing. But Jesus is saying, if you want to gain your soul, you need to understand what the end game is and the whole concept of rewards and judgments, which is interesting in relation to this passage, because that's what where Paul's going to go with this when he's talking about being laid hold of by. I want to lay hold of Christ laid hold of me for What he is saying is that he's using the same background terminology from 1 Corinthians 9 where he's talking about the fact that we're all in a race. And the one who runs the race well gets the wreath at the end. It's reward. So that's where he's going here in this passage. And he has been emphasizing the fact that human good plus faith in Christ just nullifies the faith because you're really relying on, not relying on God alone, you're relying on your efforts to shore things up. Faith plus anything equals nothing. It's got to be faith alone, in Christ alone, and that equals justification. So this is what Paul goes on to say, but what things were gained to me, these I've counted for lost, for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things lost, for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as dung manure rubbish that I may gain Christ to be found in him not having my own righteousness which is from the law but that which is through faith in Christ the righteousness which is from God by faith now here he's talking about justification which is what we studied So in these thoughts, he thinks, first of all, he thinks it through and concludes all the former things he counted on were all debits and losses versus verse seven. Second, he thinks it through further and concludes the losses are replaced by the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord. And the third thing he thinks through and considers is that these things that he thought were of value, these priorities, these things that he thought were significant to his regular daily routine and life and everything, he says, they weren't really valuable. I was spending my time and my money on things that didn't count for eternity. And so he thought they were, he's got to transfer his value system to an eternal value system. So as we get into the next section, we need to be reminded of the three phases or stages of salvation. Earl Rodmacher called them the three tenses of salvation. Phase one, phase two, and phase three. The phase one is at the cross. We trust Christ as Savior and in that instant we are declared just. Phase two is the spiritual life. It is progressive. Spiritual life does not automatically follow from justification. That's an error in lordship salvation. And third is glorification when we are absent from the body, face to face with the Lord. So we talk about these three stages as being freed from the penalty of sin, freed from the power of sin, but we still struggle with it and always will until we're freed from the presence of sin. So what we see is that Paul began in verses 7, 8, and 9 talking about justification, and now he's going to shift to talk about the spiritual life in verses 10 and 11. So I charted this out this way. He starts off, I count all things lost. That's his main idea. Notice how many times he uses the word count. Count here and count count them, and then I think in verse 7 he also uses the word count in verse... What is it? Verse 7? There it is. But what things were gained to me, these I have counted lost for Christ. The word counting, that's what I was emphasizing, this is what he's thinking about. So he counts all things lost It counts them as rubbish for the purpose that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith." That's justification. That's all phase one. But then he says there's a purpose to this. It's not just so you end up going to heaven and God will be so happy to have you around for eternity, that our purpose is to serve the Lord. And so this is where he starts into talking about the Christian life, with the result that I may know him. And in the Greek, it's the word genomai, which means come to know. It's the growth process that I may come to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship or partnership of his sufferings when I was conformed to his death. So that's the structure we're moving here as we go to verse 10 from phase 1 to phase 2. Verse 10, that I may know him and the first thing is the power of his resurrection. It is God the Holy Spirit who enabled the Lord Jesus Christ to be raised from the dead. That's the same power we have. It goes to the Holy Spirit. Romans 15, 13, Paul is closing out the epistle and he says, now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. Where do we get joy and peace? For the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. The first three things there, that you may be filled with joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Verse 19, in mighty signs and wonders by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and round about to Illyricum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ. And in 1 Corinthians 2, 4, and my speech and my preaching were not with persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power. So the power for the Christian life comes from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit when we are walking by the Spirit and being filled by the Spirit with the Word of God. Ephesians 3, 16 said, Paul prays, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man. See, apparently it's not automatic. If it's automatic, then why is Paul praying for it? He's saying, I would pray that he would grant you to be strengthened with my through his spirit. So there's two sides to that. God, the Holy Spirit wants to strengthen us, but we have to be walking by the spirit for that to happen. First Timothy 1.7, for God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power. and of love and of a sound mind. So the Holy Spirit is connected again and again with the concept of power. So when Paul says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection that connects us to the ministry of the Holy Spirit in our lives. And the second he says the fellowship of his sufferings when I was conformed to his death. So being conformed to his death is when we are baptized by God the Holy Spirit were identified with the death burial and resurrection. That's the identification aspect of the baptism by the Spirit. And so as part of that we will suffer for his sake. Now that doesn't mean that you're going to necessarily be burned at the stake or that you're going to be put on the rack But you may have friends that reject you. You may become a social outcast with some people. You may be teased or ridiculed by some of your friends, especially if you're younger, that will happen. When you're older, you're just sort of ostracized by some people. And you have to learn that we're here to serve the Lord, and the only opinion that matters is God's opinion. And so we may suffer in radical overt ways and in very very subtle ways. Acts 9 16. The Lord Jesus Christ is speaking and says to Paul for I will show him many show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake. So in Philippians 3 11 he says. if by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the dead." Now this is a verse that's bothered a lot of people because they think, well, is Paul having doubts? Paul's only unsure of whether or not he's going to be taken in the rapture or die first and then go to be with the Lord. He's not uncertain about his salvation. But the interesting word here is the word ex-anastasis. Anastasis is the word for resurrection. And then this is the only place you have this. He attaches this prefix of the preposition ek, which means out from. So it's very unusual. And there are various people. I've taught this as a word for the rapture for many, many years and several others have. And so I would translate this as he's assuming that interesting greek phrase it's translated if by any means probably has the idea of assuming that i will reach the out resurrection uh... from the dead now i ran across this just glancing through the bible knowledge commentary that uh... philippians was written by bob lightner and uh... i and uh... i think bruce uh... Yeah, Bruce Baumgardner and a couple of other guys that have gone through Dallas Seminary all were teaching assistants for Bob Lightner. He was a really solid, solid guy. And he writes this, he says, Resurrection in Philippians 3.11 is the translation of ex-anastasin, a Greek word used nowhere else in the New Testament. It means a partial resurrection out from among other corpses. literally an out-resurrection. But why did Paul say he wanted somehow to attain to the out-resurrection from the dead? Did he doubt he would be raised from the dead? Hardly. He was using this word to refer to the rapture, thus expressing the hope that the Lord would return during his lifetime. And I never, you know, until I read that about two weeks ago, I never realized that Bob had taken that view. Not everyone takes that view. But I think that is the best view that is out there. So that we would translate this assuming that perhaps I will reach the out resurrection from among the dead. And that gets us to the verse where we'll begin next time. Not that I have already attained. I haven't reached the goal, Paul says. I'm not already perfected. I haven't arrived at maturity. I haven't reached the goal. He says, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Why did he say, for what reason did Christ lay hold of us? What reason? Because I think that that should be our goal in life. See, this is what Paul's going to say in verse 14, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Nothing else in life matters but ringing that bell. We can ring lots of other bells, but they're going to be like scuba. They're worthless. It's figuring out why did Christ lay hold of me? And so we'll come back and examine that when we get into a little bit on rewards and judgments next week. Father, thank you for this time to get into the word that we might be challenged To reshape our values, that's what sanctification is all about, not being conformed to the thinking of the world, but to think differently. And that we are to have different values about ourselves and about our goals and reasons for life and reasons for living. And that this needs to conform to your goal for us. You laid hold of us for a purpose, and now we need to make that purpose, that goal, our goal. So Father challenge us with these things we pray in Christ's name. Amen.