Sermon from Feb. 9, 2014.

1. Before?
Relationship with God is first and foremost a gift, and not
something earned—an act of grace and not a reward for merit.
After?

2. “The Pharisees
weren’t selfrighteous.”
“Saul wasn’t
legalistic.”
PKen.

3. “You and your fellow
Jews think I only love
you. I also love baconloving, uncircumcised
Gentiles just the way
they are.”
“You’re not too
legalistic. You’re
too restrictive.”
Saul.

4. Philippians 3
4-6 If it were right to have such
confidence, I could certainly have it, and if
any of these men thinks he has grounds
for such confidence I can assure him I
have more. I was born a true Jew, I was
circumcised on the eighth day, I was a
member of the tribe of Benjamin, I was in
fact a full-blooded Jew. As far as keeping
the Law is concerned I was a Pharisee,
and you can judge my enthusiasm for the
Jewish faith by my active persecution of
the Church. As far as the Law’s
righteousness is concerned, I don’t think
anyone could have found fault with me.
CHOSEN

5. Philippians 3
7-11 Yet every advantage that I had
gained I considered lost for Christ’s sake.
Yes, and I look upon everything as loss
compared with the overwhelming gain of
knowing Jesus Christ my Lord. For his
sake I did in actual fact suffer the loss of
everything, but I considered it useless
rubbish compared with being able to win
Christ.

6. Moralism
Let’s all straighten up and fly right!
Recipe for a spiritual disasteR

7. “The theological temptation of moralism is one many Christians and
churches find difficult to resist. The danger is that the church will
communicate by both direct and indirect means that what God expects
of fallen humanity is moral improvement. In so doing, the church
subverts the Gospel and communicates a false gospel to a fallen world.”
–Albert Mohler, President, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

8. “God will love and
bless us most if we
behave and pursue
moral improvement.”
“If we try hard enough,
we can overcome any sin
or temptation. Perfection
is always possible.”
“Hey, none of us are
without sin. We’re just
without scandal.”
Christians.
I am astonished that you are so
quickly deserting the one who
called you to live in the grace of
Christ and are turning to a
different gospel— which is
really no gospel at all.
Galatians 1:6-7

9. “You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find
eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all
about me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to
receive from me the life you say you want.” John 5:39-40 (MSG)

10. Philippians 3
For now my place is in him, and I am not
dependent upon any of the self-achieved
righteousness of the Law. God has given
me that genuine righteousness which
comes from faith in Christ. How changed
are my ambitions! Now I long to know
Christ and the power shown by his
resurrection: now I long to share his
sufferings, even to die as he died, so that
I may perhaps attain as he did, the
resurrection from the dead.

11. Grace is something none of us deserve, but all of us are worth.
Imperfect and Wired for Struggle
but always worth loving and belonging
“God has given me that genuine
righteousness which comes from
faith in Christ.”

12. Philippians 3
12-14 Yet, my brothers, I do not consider
myself to have “arrived”, spiritually, nor do I
consider myself already perfect. But I keep
going on, grasping ever more firmly that
purpose for which Christ grasped me. My
brothers, I do not consider myself to have
fully grasped it even now. But I do
concentrate on this: I leave the past behind
and with hands outstretched to whatever lies
ahead I go straight for the goal—my reward
the honor of being called by God in Christ.

13. Philippians 3
Faith in Christ’s Work, Not
Our Works, Is What Saves
15-16 All of us who are spiritually adult
should set ourselves this sort of ambition,
and if at present you cannot see this, yet
you will find that this is the attitude which
God is leading you to adopt. It is important
that we go forward in the light of such
truth as we have ourselves attained to.

14. Always
Relationship with God is first and foremost a gift, and not
something earned—an act of grace and not a reward for merit.
Forever