Respectfully Distant
Samuel Prime · Tidal Church Moncton · November 1, 2026 · Joy Anyway series
Samuel Prime walks through Philippians 3:3-11, where Paul counts all his credentials as loss for the sake of knowing Christ. He invites us to stop trusting our checklists and to let Jesus into every room of our lives, not just the mudroom.
More from Samuel Prime · The Joy Anyway series
Topics: Faith, Identity, Relationships, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:00] This morning, I'm going to start with a question. And so if you've ever sat down with me or maybe have gotten to know me a little bit, you would know that I love questions. I probably ask one too many questions pretty consistently, and it's truthfully how I process and get to know people, but also how I process and I approach the Scriptures. And so the question I'd like to ask this morning to start, and I'm going to ask several questions through our time together this morning, is: Have you ever had trouble getting to know somebody, somebody that you truly wanted to be friends with and know at a deeper level? Have you ever had trouble getting to know somebody, somebody that you truly want to be friends with at a deeper level? No matter how hard you try to get beyond the surface, you can't seem to do that.
[0:46] And it's not like the person's hostile towards you. It's just that any attempt that you make to build relationship with this individual just doesn't seem to be received. It's like, "Hey, how are you? How's your week? Wow, beautiful weather we're having." And then it never progresses further than that. Maybe you've lived in a place or been in a situation where you go over to somebody's home, and they invite you into the mudroom or just inside of the door, and it's pleasant. You're having conversation with them. They're not being rude towards you or anything. And then you really want to know this person, and they invite you into the mudroom or whatever room it is. They offer you a seat, and they talk about the weather. But as you glance past the mudroom, as you kind of see into their home, you notice that all of the doors in their home to their kitchen or to their dining room or to their living room or the sunroom or whatever it might be are closed off, and they don't invite you into the home where real life kind of takes place.
[1:47] And so, again, the host isn't hostile. They're gracious and hospitable, but they've designed the space so while everybody is welcome to kind of come into that mudroom, nobody's ever invited in further than that. And so what I want you to do this morning is I want you to hold that thought for just a moment. Well, maybe longer than just a moment. We're going to come back to it at the end. So hold on to that for just a moment. We're going to be in Philippians 3. We're continuing on our series here. We're going to be starting in verse 3, and we're going to do something a little bit different than what we're used to. It's actually something that we do with our students on Sunday morning during our nine o'clock service up in the family center. But we're going to open up a passage like this morning in Philippians 3, and we're going to work through it verse by verse.
[2:32] And so sometimes what that'll practically look like is I will say a few words, I'll explain what it means, and then we'll kind of keep going. And at the very end, I have some questions that I want to wrestle with here together. And so if you have your Bibles with you, you can follow along in Philippians 3. If not, it'll be up on the screens here behind me as well. So in Philippians 3:3, we read, "For we are the circumcision." For we are the circumcision. Now, for us in the 21st century, living in Moncton, New Brunswick, being several thousand years removed, we read something like that, and we're like, man, what does that mean when the Apostle Paul says, "We are the circumcision"? And so what this means is this is kind of how they would delineate who the people of God were. And so the Gentiles, most of them weren't circumcised.
[3:24] And so what they're saying really is they're saying that we are the people of God. And what Paul is going to say is he's going to say, "Hey, you know what? The people who are the people of God are not those who are circumcised. They're not those who mutilate the flesh." No, the Apostle Paul is going to say, "The real people of God are those who," and the Scripture continues in verse 3 to say, "Those who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who take no confidence and who don't put confidence in the flesh." Those who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh. Now, we hear confidence in the flesh, and again, it's one of those terms like, man, what does that really mean? And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask us a question later on this morning, and I'm going to define later what confidence in the flesh means, and it'll click for us here. And so Paul unpacks this last phrase because confidence in the flesh is something that we are most likely to miss in ourselves.
[4:27] It's something that we can just kind of gloss over, that we don't see. We hear it, and we'll think, well, you know what? Maybe that isn't me. That's most likely to maybe not be me. And so Paul doesn't hand us a definition for confidence in the flesh. What he does is he actually does something better. He stacks word on word on word till we get to the end of it, then we'll actually understand, oh, hey, what Paul is actually saying here is really profound. And sometimes I'm sure if you've ever read anything that Paul has written in the Scripture, like you kind of go, man, Paul, why can't you just like come out and say it? Why do you stack word on word on word on word? And when we get to the end of this, we're going to go, wow, this is actually really profound. And so what Paul is doing is he isn't trying to seem super wordy. He's not saying the things that he's saying to seem super smart or out of touch.
[5:17] What he's actually doing is he wanted to be sure the people that were reading this letter fully and wholly understood what it is that Paul was saying. And so what he says is, he says this again. He's like, if you want to know who the real people of God are, they are not those who are circumcised as the nation would say, we are the circumcision, we are the people of God. He says, no, that's not it. It's actually those who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh. And so what does that mean? What does that look like? Because if you've read Philippians, you would know that in Philippians 1, Paul actually says that it's better for me to remain in the flesh so that I can keep doing ministry among you. And so very clearly, there is a good side to this flesh thing that Paul is talking about. How does that work?
[6:05] So what we need to do is we need to slow down a little bit. And so he says this. It's the same thought process here in verse 4. "Though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also." Why does he say that? Why does he say, hey, don't put confidence in the flesh, but if anybody could, then I could be the one to put confidence in the flesh? Why is it that Paul does that? He says, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, the Apostle Paul says, I have more. Why is it? Why does Paul say that? That's kind of an interesting thing to say. Paul is not a boastful man. He is not a prideful man. What the Apostle Paul is saying is he's saying, whoa. Like he's doing what's called a rhetorical boast. And so he's saying, hey, if you think you have confidence in the flesh, if you think you have reason to be confident, and he says, Apostle Paul's saying, like, whoa, I have more. And here's what he's asking.
[7:01] Here's effectively what the Apostle Paul is asking. He's saying, like, don't you think that you might be putting a little bit of confidence in the flesh? Like, don't you think that you might be doing this? Because the Apostle Paul knows what's going to happen. He's writing to this church in Philippi, and he knows that there's going to be a group of people that are going to show up to this city and this church, and they're going to tell them that you have to keep the law, and you've got to do this, and you've got to add that, and you've got to kind of do this to make sure that you're right with God. And of course, we look at that, and we go, well, man, like nobody really does that today. Except we hear it constantly. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. You've got to add one more thing. And what Paul says is, hold on a second. The people of God were not known for putting their confidence in the things they do and the rules they keep. No, they're glorying in Christ Jesus.
[7:53] They're worshiping by the Spirit of God. And so before we continue this morning, and we will get to it because I don't want you to come at me with pitchforks. What I'm not saying is I'm not saying that like what we do doesn't matter, because it does. It's the same idea that the Apostle Paul writes about where he says, hey, because we're followers of Christ, because we've received grace, does that mean that we can keep on sinning? And the Apostle Paul goes, no, of course not. It's kind of the same idea. So what we do is still important, but what Paul is talking about is saying, hey, the things I do are the thing in the equation that makes me right with God. And what the Apostle Paul is saying is, no, that isn't the case. And so he says, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, if you think, like if you really want to have this argument, the Apostle Paul says, I have more. I've got more to be boastful in than any of you, Paul says.
[8:46] And in a minute, he's going to tell us that none of that matters, but he has to kind of set it up first. And so what he's really saying, I want to be clear about, is you want to talk about being the people of God and all the things that you can bring to the table, the Apostle Paul is saying, look at what I could bring. And so one of the questions that we have to wrestle with is this: How are we going to know who the people of God really are? How are we going to know who the people of God really are? Is it how well we perform? Is it what we bring to the table? Is it being in the right group of people? Is it kind of a combination of all of these things, and you take this, and you take that, you put it together, and boom, you get the people of God? What is it? Because if you want to go there, again, the Apostle Paul says it's people who do not put confidence in the flesh. But Paul says if you want to go there, here's my list. Paul says in verse 5, "He was circumcised on the eighth day." Paul's like, "Hey, eighth day circumcision. Check.
[9:39] Got it." He says he was born or he was of the people of Israel. He's like, "I was on the right team. I was in the right group." Talk of being from the right nationality. The Apostle Paul is like, "I am from the right place." Not only that, he says, "I was a Hebrew of Hebrews." As to the law, he was a Pharisee. The Apostle Paul was like, "God's law, I kept it meticulously. I kept it flawlessly. I kept it perfectly." He says, "As to zeal," zeal is almost like a form of emotion. He said, "You want to know how my emotions were? My emotions were so in check and so on fire for the Lord." He said, "My zeal is right." The Apostle Paul says, "I was a persecutor of the Church. I was taking people out for God. I was taking people out for God." And he says, "As to righteousness under the law," as to righteousness under the law is the key part there.
[10:34] He says, "Blameless." He says, "You want to come to the table? You want to bring your list?" He says, "Mine is pretty strong." And then what's used is a simple word here, and the word is "but." The Apostle Paul says, "I give you this list of all the reasons that I can be confidence in the flesh, but," he says, and this is really important, "Whatever I had to gain, whatever I could bring to the table, whatever I could put forth, whatever bit of morality I could muster up and put forth," he says this, "Whatever gain I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ. Whatever I had, I count it as loss for the sake of Christ."
[11:19] What's happening here is Paul is using accounting language effectively, is what he's doing. And so what he's saying is, he says Paul looks at the bottom line. He looks at the bottom line of this thing of what he can do, what he can bring to the table. Look at how great I am. Look at what I've done. Look at my emotions. Look at all of this. And he says, "Yeah, you know what? I looked at all of those things, and I looked at the bottom line, and these didn't get me to where I needed to be." He said, "These things didn't get me to where I need to be." And so the Apostle Paul says, "I counted them all as loss. I let them go. I moved them to the other column for the sake of knowing Christ." This wasn't about him keeping everything. No, no, he moved all his loss so that he could know Christ.
[12:09] This was about a person. This was about knowing Jesus. All those things that the Apostle Paul had, he gave them up because they didn't get him to the bottom line that he needed. The only thing that mattered at the end of the day, at the bottom line, was that he had Christ, and Christ had him. The only thing that matters for us is that we have Jesus, and Jesus has us. That's what the Apostle Paul is saying here. That's what he's saying. And so people need to understand this because it's so, so, so important because Paul isn't finished here. We need to really wrestle with this because it's so easy for us to walk into a room, to walk into spaces like this and go, "God, I'm going to worship You. I'm going to put forth everything that I bring to the table instead of worshiping You, not only, one, for who You are, but two, for what You've done."
[12:59] It's so easy to say, "God, I get to worship You because what I am capable of." And the Apostle Paul is going to go, "No, no, that's not it." In verse 8, we read, "Indeed, I count everything." Again, there's nothing that I bring to the table. He counts everything. And this is a word, I believe, for us in the North American and the Canadian church. I truly believe that this is a word for us. And so I just pray, Holy Spirit, that You would come, that You would soften our hearts, Lord, that we would have the ability to receive this word from You, Lord. I just pray humbly, Lord, that You would just come and You meet us here in this room. Heavenly Father, we pray this in the powerful name of Jesus. Everybody under the sound of my voice, please listen to this. I believe that this is for us. "Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.
[13:46] I count everything, everything, nothing is off-limits. I count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord." Let that sink in for just a moment. Paul is saying that you really want to know what it's like to be the people of God? You really want to know who the people of God are? It is knowing Christ Jesus, and it's Him knowing you. And I think sometimes it's really easy for us to do this, and I've talked about this with students, and maybe I've said it here, I don't know, but I believe it's important for us today. It'd be really easy for us to have this framework of knowing Jesus and be like, "Hey, I read my Bible. Hey, I prayed. Hey, I did all these things." And those are good things. We should do those things.
[14:31] It's a part of how that relationship works. It's about being able to know Him. The goal of reading your Bible is what? To know Him better. The goal of prayer is to have conversation both ways to know Him better. And sometimes the thing that I hear most common is like, "Man, you have no idea how busy it is that I am. My relationship with God would be so great if I wasn't so busy." And here's the reality that set in for me not too long ago. The average person spends about three and a half hours a day on their phone. And so I did the math. If you were to do that from age 14 to age 80, are you ready for this? It's 12 years of your life. Twelve years. And so sometimes it's easy to hear things like that and go, "Well, yeah, no, you spend a bunch of your life sleeping and driving." But no, no, you're actively engaging in something that most of us don't remember when we walk into the other room what we just consumed.
[15:30] And so there's this call here for followers of Jesus. Do we know Him? Do we come before the Father and say, "Look at all these things that I did for You"? And the question is this, do we know Him? Do we know Him? And so Paul is saying that if you really want to know what the people of God are like, it's knowing Christ. It's Him knowing you. That he counted them all as loss for the sake of knowing Christ Jesus. But there's more. There's more. And again, I believe that this is a word for us today, and so lean in for this. "For His sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and counted them as rubbish." I counted them as rubbish. Garbage, trash. The KJV uses the word dung. They're nothing.
[16:19] He counts them all as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus. Anything that we can bring to the table, garbage. Can't do it. Not worth it. Nothing that we can do. It's all about Jesus. Religion is very important. If you haven't guessed it, we are a religious people. When we approach the Book of Mark, for example, and we're reading through it, and Jesus is talking and going back and forth with the religious people and leaders, we have to say, "Hey, who are we in this story?" Well, guess what, folks? We are religious people. And so religion isn't inherently bad, but what the Apostle Paul is saying, religion isn't the thing that gets you to the bottom line. Jesus is. And so what the Apostle Paul is saying is this isn't a religion thing.
[17:05] This is a relational thing. It's about actually knowing Jesus. It's about talking to Jesus and Jesus talking to you. It's, again, talking to Jesus and Jesus talking to you. It's listening to the voice of Holy Spirit. It's actually walking in communion and relationship with Him. And so this really cool thing is the Apostle Paul says, "I want to be found in Him." I don't want to be found in all the stuff that I do, and look at what I can give, and none of those things are bad. But the Apostle Paul says, "Hold on, you can't bring any of that stuff with you." Do you know Jesus, and does He know you? In verse 9, it says, "And be found in Him, not having a righteousness that comes from my own, but one of my own that comes from the law." He's saying, "Hey, these things don't make me right with God.
[17:58] The things that I do can't save me." This is a prevalent idea in Western ideology that everybody is inherently a good person. Like, oh, everybody's just a good person. Or self-actualization. The Apostle Paul is saying none of those things can save you. What you do cannot save you. You cannot be a good enough person and inherit the kingdom of God. No, what the Apostle Paul is going to say is he's going to say this, "But that which comes through faith in Christ," the righteousness from God that depends on faith. What happens when you put your faith in Jesus, when you follow Him, when you pursue Him, when you know Him? What happens is you receive His righteousness. You receive His righteousness as you live and follow Him and know Him and in faith. This is the essence, that we may know Him and the power, and this is hard for us, the power of His resurrection.
[18:55] We hear that and we go, man, I want God's miraculous healing power, and I want the power works, and man, I want to know God in His glory, and His majesty, and His power. And none of those things are bad. We should know Christ in those things. But the Apostle Paul doesn't just say, "I want to know Him in the power of His resurrection." No, what does he say? He says, "And may share in His sufferings." And may share in His sufferings. And I acknowledge this morning that that's not something that we're going to just go and put on a coffee mug, right? We're not going to sip our morning coffee, I'm sure, on that. But the really important thing to remember here that I always go back to, and this isn't original. This is something that I've heard said, and it clicked for me in a way that it never has before. And sometimes we see the cross, we see what Jesus did on the cross, and sometimes we almost make it a cartoon, or we make it something that's light and easy to wrestle and grapple with. But when Jesus gives us the command to pick up our cross and to follow Him, what Jesus is effectively asking us to do is to put a death mechanism on our backs and follow Him.
[20:16] What is the cross? The cross was something that was created to be a painful, humiliating death mechanism, and Jesus asks us to pick it up and to follow Him. There's a reason that we're asked to die to ourselves. And so what the Apostle Paul is effectively saying is he's saying if you want to know Christ in His resurrection power, if you want to know Him and know the abundant life that the scripture talks about, then there is a suffering that needs to take place. That there is a dying of self that needs to take place. That there is a picking up of the death mechanism and carrying it on your back that needs to take place. Because the truth is, there would be no resurrection without death.
[21:18] That we want to have, and the point of this is that we want to know Him, that we don't want to just know about Him, that we want to know Him in His glory, and His resurrection power, and all the things that He can do, and the healings that He can do, and the powers that He can do. But we also want to know Him so intimately in a way that we can share in His sufferings, because that is also who He is. He suffered. I want to know Him in an intimacy with God that isn't a performance. It's not confidence in the flesh. It's just becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible, I may obtain resurrection from the dead. That by any means possible, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible, I may attain resurrection from the dead. That there is a dying of self that needs to take place within us.
[22:04] Not that he's doubting that he will or will not. At the end of the day, that we know that this life is not all that there is. That someday we'll get to be with the Lord forever, but it doesn't happen by putting a bunch of credit statements of what we can do or what we've done together. That's not how it works, of what we did. It works by knowing Jesus. And so I have two questions for us this morning. The first is, as I promised, I would define what confidence in the flesh is, and we're going to do that. But the first question is, where is our confidence really found? And so confidence in the flesh is trusting anything other than Christ: what we've inherited, what we've achieved, how sincerely we feel, to make us right with God or better than somebody else. If you want me to put it a little bit more plainly and less words, I'll do that. Confidence in the flesh is anything I add to Jesus to be accepted by God. That's effectively what we're talking about when we talk about confidence in the flesh. And one of the things that is prevalent that we see of churches in the New Testament text, and one of the struggles for the first century is a struggle that still exists within the church today.
[23:18] It's something that the Canadian church still struggles with and still is happening now. And there's a term in academic circles that's used, and it's this term called syncretism. And syncretism is effectively this idea where you take things and you add them to Jesus, or you take something and you add it to something. But in our case, it's when we take something like a belief, a soapbox issue, or maybe something that you brought into your faith or Christianity or whatever it may be, and you fuse it with Jesus. And what happens is that Jesus then effectively becomes the person that supports it or only sees it this way, and then what happens is you have a different sort of Jesus or a different sort of Christianity than pure, unadulterated Christianity or a pure Jesus that we see in the scripture.
[24:10] Because the truth is Jesus doesn't fuse with anything. He doesn't fuse with anything at all. He, on His own, is the God of the universe, the Savior of all humanity, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords. He does not need something or somebody to prop Him up. And so again, I ask, where is our confidence really found? And I don't know where you are this morning. I don't know where you've been. I don't know if you've had a bad week, or a great week, or a bad month, or a great month, or as Pastor Pat said, you fought with your kids on your way to church or whatever. I don't know. But let's just take a moment and ask that question, where is our confidence really found? Where is our confidence really found?
[24:58] Because Paul goes that the people of God don't really put their confidence in the flesh. It's not really how we or they roll. They don't see it that way. The Apostle Paul says, "I could have given you a great list. In fact, I did in verse 5. I gave all the reasons that I could have confidence in the flesh," and he says that they didn't matter. If we were to look at Paul from an outward appearance, we would say that the Apostle Paul was 100% in. Right? I think that's safe to say. We look at the Apostle Paul and go, man, he was 100% in. He had zeal. He was taking people out for God under the law, blameless. But Paul says it had nothing to do with it. Paul says, "I had all of those things, and yet I didn't even know God.
[25:44] I didn't even really know Him." When Christ arrested Paul on the road to Damascus, he had an encounter with Him, and God spoke to him and said, "Saul," Saul before he was Paul, "why are you persecuting Me?" And he was a Pharisee who was blameless under the law. But the Apostle Paul says, no, we don't have a righteousness around. We, as followers of Jesus, as we live out in faith and trust and obedience to Him, we put on Christ's righteousness. And so for us, it isn't circumcision or the tribe of Benjamin or zeal, or it's not like you walk out in the atrium and say, "Man, I took people out for the Lord just a day ago." That's not something that we do, right? But I do believe that we have our own checkboxes. And so maybe for you, it's I show up to church every time the doors are open.
[26:34] Barna, a research group, did a study that showed the average evangelical attends church, what's considered regular, is about 1.9 times a month. And so for you, you're like, man, I'm not like those people. I show up to church every single time the doors are open. And I'm, again, not saying that's bad. Maybe for you, it's heritage and pedigree. Maybe for you, it's my mom, my dad, my grandfather, my grandmother was a deacon in the church, was a board member in the church, was a pastor in the church, was so and so in the church, served in this ministry in the church, and my family's all in. What are the things that we put our confidence in? What are the things that we put our confidence in on a regular basis that we say, "You know what? I think these things make me good enough.
[27:24] I think these things are the things that I have confidence in." What are the things that we have not moved yet to the lost column? What are the things in our life that we have not moved into the lost column? What the Apostle Paul says, to put it even more plainly, is he says that doesn't get you to the bottom line. It's not that that stuff would be bad. Like having a family lineage or family legacies in the life of a church is not a bad thing. Coming to church every week is not a bad thing. Reading our Bibles and praying is not a bad thing. But a quote that's attributed to Keith Green, whether it was not that he said it, it said that going to McDonald's makes you no more of a hamburger than going to church makes you a Christian. Apostle Paul is going to tell us what it really means. You cannot put confidence in the flesh. And so what are some areas that you maybe put some confidence in the flesh?
[28:12] What are some areas you could go, "Yeah, you know what, Sam, maybe I do that." Is that really what Christianity, is that really what following Christ is all about? About check boxes and checking things off, and you go from one tradition to another tradition, and they have their check boxes, and they're different from that, so you mix them around, and you move. And be like, well, is that really what this is all about? Is that really what our trust and our confidence is in? Because let me tell you, if that's what we put our trust and our confidence in, we shouldn't. Our trust and our confidence should be in the resurrected Christ Jesus and the resurrected Christ Jesus alone. That the glory on this earth should not be for our glory, that everything that we do should be to the glory of God alone.
[29:01] That it should not be things that we do to make us prideful and to put us up on a pedestal, but no, to say, hey, the things that we do as I follow Jesus, as I have received the Holy Spirit, as I push forth the Kingdom of God in my workplaces and my family and my friend groups, wherever it might be, this is all for God's glory, not so that I have check boxes. I think the second question that we need to think about and pause here for just a moment, and it's a simple question. What does it mean to really know Him? Is it outward appearance? Is it bringing a list of things? Is it making sure everything's checked off? What does it really mean to know Him? Because the Apostle Paul says that I may know Him in the power of His resurrection and may share in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death.
[29:54] To have intimacy with Christ means you do know Him in the power of His resurrection, but you also share with Him in His suffering. And I don't think that that's something that we like to hear. I think it makes us flinch a little bit back when we hear that. But to follow Christ actually means that we have to die to ourselves. That there is the old creature has to be done away with. That we are, when we come to faith in Jesus, in confession and repentance of Him, that He creates us in the power of the Holy Spirit, creates us to be a new creature all together. And so sometimes, to go back to the story at the beginning, sometimes we want to know God. We don't want to get too close to Him because it's easier to trust and to treat God respectfully than to know Him intimately.
[30:51] That it's really easy to invite Him in to the foyer, to invite Him in to the mudroom, to invite Him in just off of the porch, but not actually let Him in to have lordship of our lives. It can be really easy to say, "God, I've said the prayer, Lord. I have the check boxes. I've read the scripture. I've done all these things." But then never have any meaningful change in your life, to never experience the abundant life. One of the questions that I've personally wrestled with is what areas of my life am I not experiencing the abundant life that Jesus talks about? And if I'm not experiencing the abundant life that Jesus talks about, in what ways have I not died to self? In what ways have I not shared in Christ's sufferings?
[31:43] In what ways have I not picked up the death mechanism on my back and carried it? In what ways do I need to suffer so that I can join in Christ's resurrection power? For us, what does it really mean to know Him intimately? To know Him intimately means to be able to identify things in our life that are not of Him, that are not from Him, that we don't find in Him, and to say, "Lord, no more. Jesus, I want You and You alone. Father, I want Your righteousness, Lord. I want You, not whatever morality I can muster up and bring into the equation." And so there are so many of us that sit and we have these boxes, but that is not what faith in Jesus is about. It's not about our boxes and our check boxes.
[32:37] It's about Christ and what Christ has done for us. It is by Christ alone. It is by Christ alone that we can what? We can know Him. We can know Him. And so Jesus said it this way to His disciples in John 16:1, and He said in John 13 and 14 and 15, He's like, "I've washed your feet. I told you that the Spirit was going to come," because in John 16, verse, chapter, John chapter 16, verse 1, He said, "I've said all these things to you to keep you from falling away." He said, "I don't want you to end up in something that I never intended for you." And so the reason I'm sharing this with you this morning is, one, yes, I acknowledge that it is a heavy passage, but I believe that this is the heart of Jesus saying like, "No, I don't want you to end up in something that the Lord never intended for you." The Apostle Paul says they will kick you out of the synagogues, the religious people that have these boxes that you're supposed to adhere to and follow, they're going to kick you out because they got it right and you got it wrong. And not only that, Jesus says, "Indeed, the hour is coming whenever whoever kills you thinks that he's offering service to God." They'll kill you, and they say that it's godly. They'll assault you with words, they'll treat you terribly and say that it's godly. And get this, church.
[33:53] And they will do these things because they have not known what? The Father nor Me. They got their credits, they got their list, and God's going, "I don't want just a performance. I want to know you, and I want you to know Me." I don't want a performance. And so when we open up the last book of the Bible, in the Book of Revelation, it's written to religious people. And so again, when you read something like Mark, when you read something that's talking to religious people or religious leaders, you have to ask the question, who am I in this story? I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but we are religious people. And so the Book of Revelation, which was written to churches, it was written to people who were assembling and worshiping God, and He writes to one church, and He says, "Oh, man, this isn't what I want." In Revelation chapter 3, verse 17, "For you say, 'I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing.'" I have all the boxes. I have everything that I need. I've got it good.
[34:54] I've gotten figured out. I got it right. And He says, "Don't you realize that you are wretched and pitiable and poor and blind and naked?" And I have to ask, in what ways am I pitiable? Am I wretched? Am I poor? Am I blind? Am I naked? You don't say that in the same church three verses later. They're in church, they're singing songs, they're worshiping Jesus, they're talking about the Bible, they're doing communion, and Jesus is like, "I'm on the outside. I'm at the church door knocking, and I just want to come to where you're gathered and have communion and fellowship with you and sit down and have this real relationship." And in verse 20, it says, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock.
[35:40] If anyone hears and opens the door, I will come to him and eat with him and he with Me." And church, I truly believe that the heart of Jesus, the heart of the Father, is for us to truly know Him in the power of His resurrection, but also in His sufferings. And so can I just ask a question? Do we want one without the other? But truthfully, do we want one without the other? Not like check marks. And seriously, as one of your pastors here, I have to tell you that our Heavenly Father is coming after you. He's pursuing you. He wants you to have far more in this life than you have any idea. I'm not talking about wealth. I'm not talking about anything like we... I'm truly talking about the abundant life that Jesus talks about. Like truthfully, He is pursuing you. And it's a little uncomfortable because sometimes, again, we treat Him respectfully and not intimately.
[36:34] We keep Him at an arm's length and say, "Lord, I don't actually want You to have lordship over my life because that sometimes means that You're going to actually ask me to give up something that I rather like. You're going to ask me to maybe give up something that I've become comfortable in." But the truth of the matter is, I think sometimes why we don't actually see God move in resurrection power, why we cry out sometimes for revival but we never see it, is because we are a people who are so comfortable that refuse to share in Christ's sufferings. If Jesus were to walk in the room and were to ask us to give something up, like what would we do if Jesus walked in the room and said, "My child, I just want you to put that down"? What is that thing that we go, "Lord, I just don't know that. The cost of that is too great." I implore you that the cost of not is greater. The cost of not is greater.
[37:30] I think sometimes we look back at what Jesus did and what He's done and who He was, which is good, but sometimes I think we fixate so much on the past that we forget who Jesus is and what's to come in the future. And so if you would just bow your heads with me, and I'm just going to declare this passage. It came to me in the first service, and I just feel like I need to share it here. It's in the Book of Revelation. It's Jesus coming back on a white horse. And so just declare this with me in your hearts as we close in prayer. "Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. The one sitting on it was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems, and He has a name written that nobody but Himself knows.
[38:23] He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which He is called is the Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following Him on white horses. And from His mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. And He will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh, He has a name that is written, King of Kings and Lord of Lords." King of Kings and Lord of Lords, we ask You, Holy Spirit, we ask You to point out the thing in our life that we refuse to give up for You. Jesus, I ask that You would point out the thing in us that are checkboxes, are things that we think make us right with You instead of You and Christ, and Christ alone. Father, please bring forth a thing in our mind that we take all the glory for. When You say, "Son and daughter, you have taken or tried to take My glory from Me, which is not yours to have." To God be all of the glory.
[39:28] Lord, we love You. We worship You. We ask You to do what it is only You can do. That anybody under the sound of my voice would know and count everything as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. That people would step into the abundant life for maybe the first time in their life as they deny themselves, as they pick up their cross, and as they follow You. Lord Jesus, come. We pray this in the powerful, the holy, the mighty name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.