The surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ as Lord is the central claim in the passage, drawing from Paul's declaration in Philippians 3:8. The message contrasts worldly gains with the ultimate worth found in Christ, illustrating this through Paul's radical re-evaluation of his past achievements and status. The core lesson is that true Christian life requires continuous, deliberate judgment, discarding all competing values for the supreme knowledge of Christ. The sermon concludes by urging listeners to embrace this perspective, recognizing that a life transformed by Christ's Lordship can profoundly impact the world.
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As you know, Don Yama was a very poor lady in the early years of her life, and some have wondered how she was able to get sufficient food, not only for her own children, but for the extended family that she was creating. Well, she was a very intelligent woman, and the idea came to her mind one day that there were other people in Porta Plata who would appreciate having their meals made for them each day, people who worked, and so she began to make food for others and it was sold to them and eventually each day she made enough food for forty people in our country people come with containers specially made in different levels you put the rice at the bottom then the beans and then if there's some meat and then a little salad and they're in a special container and often the children come they will come around eleven thirty with their containers and Don Yem would fill them all up and they would be taken to these different homes.
And by doing that she had enough food not only for her own family, but as a woman of God she began to think of those who were in need. And every day plates of food were sent from her kitchen to other people less fortunate than herself. And that continues right down through her long life until she died just a month ago. Food was still being sent to other people who were poor and in need. During the long years, she took time each day to meet with her family for prayer and for the reading of the scriptures and for some devotional material.
This was a very regular event in her life. And it began just for her family. But friends began to hear about this. And eventually there were people who never missed being there in the morning for that devotional period. Some went every day, others went when they couldn't. And if you had come into her home on an ordinary day, early in the morning, you could have found sometimes twenty or thirty people gathered together to listen to this woman as she read the Word of God, some devotional material about the portion, and then she led them all in prayer.
Some people thought that Don Yema had a rather severe character. Well, she was both mother and father. She was caring, yet sometimes she had to be severe, but she was very sensitive. to those who were in need both materially and spiritually. I have sat quietly sometimes in her home and listened as she led that group in prayer, her children and others who gathered round. Her voice would be firm until she thought of someone in need or someone who had wandered away from the things of God.
And if you opened your eyes, you would see the tears coming down her cheek. She was very sensitive to those in need, and she pled their causes in the presence of God day by day. It was a happy time in those years. The dictatorship was over. We had had had elections. We had moved into democracy. Our country was becoming the most democratic country in all of that part of the West Indies. And there was prosperity. The country was progressing on many different levels. And in the family of Don Yama, there was still one male figure.
That was the oldest son. He was a good man, a good friend of mine. He wasn't a platform man. He never even opened a meeting. Sometimes he would take part in prayer. But he, like his mother, was very sensitive to those who were in need. He prospered in business, and I have no idea this evening how many lives he touched in kindness through financial gifts when he saw people who were in need. I think one of the most beautiful lessons that Grace and I have learned in the Dominican Republic over the years is the lesson that those who often have been born into prosperity or who have been afflicted by adversity are the very first to move towards others who are in need.
Not those who are affluent, not those who have all that they need, but those who are just barely getting by, they remember the others and they help them to the best of their ability. Well, Jose was loved by many. He was the older brother, the father figure in that family and in the extended family. And we will remember the night the phone rang and Jose died suddenly like his father of a massive heart attack. So there was no male figure left in that family, just on Yemen. And again, in a moment of crisis, she was the one that gathered together the daughters who were left, and also the extended family and the friends, and she comforted them and encouraged them and reminded them, those we love may leave us, but the Lord has promised, I will never leave you nor forsake you.
Tomorrow night, let me take you just a little farther into her life. I'd like you to join Paul, Silas, Luke and possibly Timothy as they walked into the city of Philippi for the first time, the leading city in the main district of Macedonia. They walked up and down the streets. I'm sure Paul was looking for a synagogue. Apparently he did not find one, which would be the evidence that in that city, which was really a Roman colony, the Jewish population was very weak. I believe you had to have at least ten male Jews in order to form a synagogue.
And apparently there were not that many male Jews in that Roman colony. He asked questions and he was led to the prayer meeting beside the river. He would have walked out the Via Ignatia under the arch over the highway, which was the symbol you're entering a main city and a Roman colony. And outside by the river he met some women, and they were in prayer, and they sat down and they talked with those women, and that was the beginning of the church in Philippi. We all know about Lydia. We don't really know if that was her name or not, because this woman came from Thyatira, and that city was in the old kingdom of Lydia, which now was part of the Roman province of Asia.
And it's possible the term just means the Lydian or the woman from Lydia. It is interesting that in this letter that we're looking at, Philippians, written not that long after the beginning of the church, perhaps maximum time, four to five years, no mention is made of Lydia. That is strange because apparently the church met in her home. When Paul and Silas, after they had been beaten and thrown into the inner dungeon of the jail, when they were finally freed, they went to the house of Lydia, and there they met with the Christians. That was the meeting place, but her name is not mentioned in the letter, possibly because Lydia was not her name, she was the woman from Lydia, or else maybe she had moved away and gone back to the city, which was her home city, and had taken up residence there.
But you do have in the city of Philippi, by the time Paul writes the letter, a church. We don't know how large the church was, but if Lydia was still there, if the jailer was still there, you have some Christian men and women who have been now committed to the Lord Jesus for approximately five to six years. Now Paul is writing to them and he wants to tell them something about himself in order to encourage them as they face some problems in the local church. And tonight we're going to go back to the letter to the Philippians chapter three and I would like to read verse eight.
Philippians chapter three and verse eight. But 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 rubbish." You'll notice at the very beginning of the verse that the word count, that verb appears again. What we can't see in our English translations or in our Spanish translations, is the formation of this sentence in the original language.
It begins with a string of five conjunctions, little words, one after another. You couldn't possibly translate them into English or Spanish. They simply would not make any sense. But in the original language, Paul is making a very clear statement. And by that string of conjunctions, he is powerfully indicating that he's moving from the past tense of the verb to count to the present tense, I count. Verse seven, he has looked back over thirty years, and he says to them, What things were gained to me, those I have counted, past tense, as lost.
Now he says, and indeed also I count. You might strengthen that phrase just a little with the addition of the verb continue. Indeed, I also continue to count right now. Over thirty years later, all things lost. Now Paul over thirty years, but he's writing to the Philippians. Lydia, if she's still there, the Philippian jailer and others, who began so well, here is the challenge. Are they going on the same way they began?
Most of us here tonight are aware of friends who began well, and then their Christian life weakened. They did not necessarily leave the Christian community altogether, But there wasn't the vitality, there wasn't the joy that you saw when they first turned to the Lord. Paul now says, I haven't made any changes, and today I continue to count all things as loss. I would judge by that that verse seven speaks of the beginning, and the beginning is wonderful, but it is only the beginning.
And every true and vital Christian life goes on day after day, month after month, year after year, making clear judgments, very important decisions in the Christian life. You just don't drift. I don't mean to be critical, but I sometimes wonder if one of the plagues that afflict the Christian community is that so many Christians begin and then they simply drift for the rest of their lives. Paul is saying the same energy that was required to study, to ponder, to evaluate, to calculate.
When I made that initial decision, that same type of outlook ponder, study, evaluate, calculate, characterize my whole life. I continue to count all things but loss. One theologian has said, and I think his words are very significant, it is still true that the grace of God, far from annihilating the functions of man, rather it enhances then and recreates them in freedom. We are not boxes.
We are not machines. We are not a system of technology. We are creatures of God. We have the faculty to make judgments and to make decisions. And Paul, by using the word count, deals with the beginning, verse seven, And then he carries that concept right into all his Christian life. He's nearing the end now. And yet he says, I continue to count. This time he says, all things. Verse seven, what things were gained to me, but now all things. I judge that to mean that the decisions which a Christian is required to make are related to the things that intrude on our lives and sometimes take the place of Christ.
Paul was very careful. It could be legitimate things. It could be good things. It could be what a man has done or what a man has achieved. It could be rated to the gifts that a man has. But Paul says, whatever it is, Anything that competes for the place that only belongs to Christ, he says, I continue to count all things but loss. And then he tells us why. And you have one of the most beautiful verses in all of his writings, one of the most beautiful phrases, the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.
Basically, it's the same thought in verse seven, what things were gained to me, those I have counted loss for Christ. But now he takes that basic thought and he amplifies it in a most beautiful way, the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. And it's such a beautiful pregnant phrase that you've got to take it part by part. You begin with the word excellence. If you have in your home other translations, you should look up those translations and see how translators wrestle to try and give the meaning of that word.
You'll find something like the surpassing greatness. You'll find something like the supreme advantage. You'll find a translation that reads, The ultimate value. All of these words are speaking about something that is unique, that cannot be compared to anything else. There are advantages. This is the supreme advantage. There are values. This is the ultimate value. There are greatnesses. This is the surpassing greatness.
This is the excellence. And you wonder, now, Paul, what are you talking about? Well, the word that follows, knowledge, is the word that corresponds to excellence. In other words, if you take the two words, here's the word excellence, and here is the word knowledge. And you say to excellence, what is excellent? What is of surpassing greatness? Where is the supreme advantage? The answer is knowledge. And if you go to the word knowledge and you ask the word what type of knowledge, the answer is excellent, supreme advantage, ultimate value, these two words face each other.
they are in meaning just the same. The trouble is that the word knowledge today is the word that really comes from the ivory tower, from the academic world. Like many of you, we spent some time in the University of British Columbia in Canada, in Regent College, which is the center of advanced Christian studies, and there we took a master's degree, and I spent two and a half years sixteen hours a day, except for Sunday, spending hours in libraries, hours reading, hours investigating, I was filling the mind with knowledge, with information, with details.
You did that when you studied in school many years ago. Well, if that is our concept of knowledge, then in this phrase, We have missed the point. Paul is not telling us you have to be a graduate from a university. You do not need to have a doctorate. Paul's not talking about that. That's why I would suggest that as some of the other translations read, we are much better with the participle knowing instead of the noun knowledge, the excellence of knowing. Of course, the background is found in the Old Testament, and there you find that God knew His people.
How did He know them? Well, He knew them in grace and in election, the most insignificant of all the peoples. But grace, the grace of God, elected that people. They became His people. God knew Israel in grace and in election. The people, not always, but at their better moments, they also knew God. How did they know God? They knew God in love and obedience. They loved Him. They obeyed Him. So you have a mutual knowing.
God knew His people, and His people knew God. Paul now is taking that whole background and bringing it to bear on his own personal life. And he speaks about the excellence of knowing. We ask the question, what are you talking about Paul? And the answer comes back, a compound word or name, Christ Jesus. Most of us here to know that Christ is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew concept of Messiah. Jesus is the name our Savior had down here in the world.
What is it then that Paul is talking about when he says, the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus? Well, I suggest to you that the basic thought in a paraphrase is this. The surpassing greatness of knowing that the Messiah is Jesus. Or you can turn it around. The supreme advantage of knowing that Jesus is the Messiah. And you come right back to the Damascus experience. When the light shone down from heaven, round about Paul, he's down in the dust, looking up, though his eyes are blind, into this great display of divine glory.
and there in the very midst is a person. He doesn't know who the person is until he asks that question, Who are you, Lord? And the answer comes back, I am Jesus. And why are you persecuting me? With all his background in the Old Testament, Paul must have known instinctively If this man is in the midst of the divine glory, then Jesus is the Messiah. And he never got over the wonder of knowing that Jesus is the sent one of God.
In Second Corinthians, where I suggest to you, you have the inner conversion experience referred to by Paul, he speaks about how he knew or he received the light of the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Jesus, who is the Messiah. And so Paul, that day at Damascus, his heart was opened and he knew who Jesus really was. And that knowledge, it transformed his life, the excellence of knowing Christ Jesus. And then And only here, nowhere else in all of Paul's writings does he use this phrase, only here.
And it's here that he opens the door of his heart in a way that most of us probably would be unable to do. We might be embarrassed. Paul opens the door of his heart and he lets you look right in. And he says, Christ Jesus, My Lord. I find it instructive that Paul the Apostle, who perhaps more than anyone else that we know of in our limited knowledge, lived for over thirty years in glorious submission to the Lordship of Christ.
He never talked about it lightly. You see, this is not a factual declaration. you might even have on your car a bumper sticker that says Jesus is Lord you certainly will see it everywhere you move in the Christian community today that is a statement this is not a statement Paul is giving a very precious and intimate insight into his life and he calls Jesus my Lord only once in all of his writings. In other words, it's easy to talk about the Lordship of Jesus.
It's easy to say that Jesus is Lord. It is entirely different when your life is a projection of His Lordship. And whether you say it or not, those who look at you, they know that you are subject to His leading and his guidance. Jesus is Lord. And then Paul takes us a step further, and he says in this verse, and now this is the third time, and you almost wonder why the repetition, for he says, For whom I have suffered the loss of all things.
Now he's already mentioned loss in verse seven, going back over thirty years ago. Now in verse eight at the beginning, He says all things, loss. Now for the third time, He reminds us for whom I have suffered the loss of all things. I suggest that in the two previous references, maybe somebody in Philippi, maybe somebody in Keystone Heights today might think that it was just a theoretical process in his mind. You know, you do that, you sit down someday and you're planning to take a cruise down through the Caribbean and you get the information, you make all your calculations, you know that if you go on this trip you're not going to have as much money in the bank and you go all through this, but it doesn't come to anything.
It was just a theoretical process. No decisions were made. Well, some might think this was all in Paul's mind, but now And some translations use the word, in fact, Paul is now telling us, I really and truly lost all things for Christ. Some have wondered if it was done in an official way by the Supreme Council in Jerusalem. And believe me, I have no problems with that idea. If you go back to Acts chapter nine, when you have a moment of quietness, and read how Luke describes the conversion experienced in what followed.
After Ananias came and met him and gave him his sight, Paul stood up. And the first thing that Luke says, he went out and in all the synagogues, plural, he went in and he began to talk. Now you're a leader, an elder in a synagogue in Damascus. You've been waiting for this man to come and to deal with the heretics who are in the congregation and who believe that Jesus is the Messiah. You hear that he had a fall outside of Damascus, that he's been resting for some days in this home prepared for him, and you're just waiting for him to come.
And one day as you stand at the reading desk, in the synagogue you look up at the doorway and there is the distinguished visitor he's finally come and he comes right in and right up to where I'm standing tonight big table the scrolls are on the table where they read the scriptures and he addresses the men who are present and the ladies who are over in the corner and he stands up and he says I was mistaken Jesus is the Messiah. You couldn't imagine a greater bomb exploding in the minds of these men and women who were present.
The man who had been chosen and sent to destroy the Christian community now is standing up and telling them all, I was mistaken. Believe me, Jesus is the Messiah. And then he did it so well, he confounded them. Now Luke doesn't go into all the details, but he was a Pharisee. He almost knew by memory Paul the Old Testament. So he draws from the Old Testament. And as we would do today with an open Bible, don't you see what it says? And he would go right down. There is no doubt about it. Jesus is the Messiah.
And no one could stand up and refute what he was saying. And because they could not do that, then they decided to kill. And his friends got him out of the city in a rather an original way during the middle of the night. And the way he went, his life was spared. And Luke goes on, he went to Jerusalem. Now it's one thing to do this in Damascus. Imagine in Jerusalem. Under the shadow of the Supreme Council of the Jews, in comes Paul to Jerusalem. The Christians don't even want to look at him. They can't believe that this man is really a believer. Thank God for Barnabas, who came and lay hold of Paul and brought him into the Christian community.
He said, he is a real believer. He believes in Jesus as the Messiah, and he was welcome. And what did Paul do in Jerusalem? He spoke boldly about the Lord Jesus. Now, just imagine you're one of the members of the Sanhedrin. You've anointed this man to go out and to persecute the Christians. And you hear what happened in Damascus, and now he's doing it right in the city of Jerusalem. I can see them all met together, and they would strip him of all his glory, his prestige, everything they had given him. The only thing is, I know of nothing in the scriptures that indicates that happened.
I would probably then just rather take the other view that Paul simply turned his back on all that he had achieved. And he did this for one reason. He had met the Lord Jesus in all of his glory. And he counted it. He lost everything he had. There are even those who wonder if that includes his family. Most Pharisees were married, but again the Scriptures are silent. What we do know is Paul says, I lost everything. When was the last time that you lost something of great value?
I remember last year we were up in New Jersey having meetings, and one night we were free, and Grace and I decided to go over it into Manhattan, through Manhattan, into Queens to visit some of the Dominican Christian friends who were there. And we arrived, had a beautiful evening with them, spent the night in one of their homes, and the next day we left again for New Jersey for commitments. And when we came to the Garden State Parkway, which some of you have traveled many times, we decided that's the best way to go down to the CMML home, so we got on the highway. And we came to the place where you pay the first toll, and I took out my wallet, and I remember giving it to Grace.
And Grace took it, got out the money, and I paid for the toll. And the way we went, and my wallet remained on Grace's knee. I didn't know it. I didn't think about it, nor did Grace. We came to one of these beautiful rest stops and decided to have Just a moment of walking and a little change of position. We drove in and parked. I got out my side. Grace got out of her side and she heard something and she looked down. She couldn't see anything. We both closed the doors and we went in, walked around and I thought, I'll buy a paper before we leave and I put my hand back. And I knew exactly what had happened.
And I looked for Grace and when I told her she knew, Now, we're rather elderly people. We didn't run back to the car, but we went back as fast as we could. And this distinguished lady's down on her knees looking under the car, not a thing. Now, people our age, we don't weep. There wasn't a lot of money in this wallet, but here was my residence card so I could live in the Dominican Republic. My special identification card, which I need to be in the Dominican Republic, my Dominican driver's license, credit cards. I said to Grace, it's lost and it's gone.
We're just about to get into the car when a lady came running up not to leave you in suspense. She said, sir, they found it and the manager has it. And we went down and there it was. They hadn't taken a thing out of it. There are still honest people in the world today. But we did not weep, but we certainly felt very upset. I don't want to be too personal. It's only two or three years ago that in the stock market here in this country, there was a setback. And some of you who had investments, they just went down like that. I don't know how you felt about that at that time, but I have an idea that there was a lot of complaint. Why didn't they tell us the people who look after our money ahead of time?
Why weren't we warned? There was lamenting. There was sorrow. Here is a man, one of the most prominent men in Jerusalem, Saul of Tarsus. He has lost everything. And there is no sorrow. And there's no lamenting. As a matter of fact, as we close, look at his last words just towards the end of the verse where he says, And I count. Now there's the third time. You find count in verse one, pardon me, verse seven in the past tense. You find the verb to count at the beginning of verse eight. Now you find it one more time.
In other words, here too, he evaluated, calculated, he meditated and pondered the whole issue. And he came to the conclusion, I counted as rubbish. Now the word rubbish is far, far too soft to word. This is really almost a vulgar word in the Greek language. Not a bad word, but it's the type of word that you would not ordinarily use in society or in the family circle. It's a word that speaks of excreement.
It speaks of filth, of decomposing bodies. It's something that if you came anywhere near it, you would turn instinctively and go in the other direction. How a man who is at the very top of the social, religious level of his society could all of a sudden look at all of those things and consider them as absolute filth is still a mystery to a lot of people today. Paul says, there is no mystery. He said, I saw the living and glorified Jesus.
It's the excellence of knowing that Jesus is the Messiah. My Lord, having seen him, he turned his back on everything and went on to serve him for over thirty years. And only half of that time, or less than half, was he involved in active missionary work. And in that relatively short time, he cracked the foundation of the Roman Empire and he turned the world upside down. That's what happens when a man has come face to face with the Lord Jesus.
Not once at the moment of conversion, but day by day. and in the light of His glory, you never let anything else in that will compete or detract from that glory that is His alone. Most of us tonight are senior citizens. We look back over our lives and some of us would bow our heads and feel that perhaps we are so insignificant. There have been moments of weakness But here is a man who sets an example. And Paul writes under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, and this is for you, doesn't matter whether you're young, middle-aged, or in the declining years of your life.
This is still a word for you. Paul says, be imitators of me, as I also am of Christ, as Christ was committed to the cause of his father. as Paul was committed to the cause of the Lord Jesus, we find the example for us right now today. We maybe can say, I once counted the key issue today is your attitude right now towards the Lord Jesus. Not going to press the point or be over sentimental tonight, but how many of us, in honesty, in the presence of the Lord, could take from Paul, not borrow, but make them our own words and speak about the Savior and say the ultimate worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.
Now take your little chorus book. You probably know it by memory. And let's stand tonight and sing number twenty-three. He is Lord. He is Lord. He is risen from the dead and He is Lord. It's number twenty-three. Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. We're going to stand and we will sing this chorus twice before the closing benediction. He is Lord, He is Lord. Shall we stand?
He is Lord, He is Lord. He is risen from the dead, and He is Lord. Every knee shall bow, every that Jesus Christ is Lord.
He is Lord. He is Lord. He is risen from the dead and he Every kingdom of all, every kingdom of heaven. And now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.