Citizens of Heaven

the following message by aleister begg is made available by truth for life for more information visit us online at truthforlife.org philippians chapter 3 verse 1 page 832 in the church bibles finally my brothers or my brothers and sisters rejoice in the lord it is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again and it is a safeguard for you watch out for those dogs those men who do evil those mutilators of the flesh for it is we who are the circumcision we who worship by the spirit of god who glory in christ jesus and who put no confidence in the flesh though i myself have reasons for such confidence if anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh i have more circumcised on the eighth day of the people of israel of the tribe of benjamin a hebrew of hebrews in regard to the law of pharisee as for zeal persecuting the church as for legalistic righteousness faultless but whatever was to my prophet i now consider loss for the sake of christ what is more i consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing christ jesus my lord for whose sake i have lost all things i consider them rubbish that i may gain christ and be found in him not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law but that which is through faith in christ the righteousness that comes from god and is by faith i want to know christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings becoming like him in his death and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead not that i've already obtained all this or have already been made perfect but i press on to take hold of that for which christ jesus took hold of me brothers i do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it but one thing i do forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead i press on towards the goal to win the prize for which god has called me heavenwards in christ jesus all of us who are mature should take such a view of things and if on some point you think differently that too god will make clear to you only let us live up to what we have already attained join with others in following my example brothers and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you for as i have often told you before and now say again even with tears many live as enemies of the cross of christ their destiny is destruction their god is their stomach and their glory is in their shame their mind is on earthly things but our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly await a savior from there the lord jesus christ who by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body therefore my brothers you whom i love and long form my joy and crown that is how you should stand firm in the lord dear friends amen and now before we turn to the bible together a quote from john newton and then a prayer from john calvin the quote from newton will perhaps be remembered by some newton writing in the 18th century said i counted my honor and happiness that i preach to a free people who have the bible in their hands to your bibles i appeal i entreat i charge you to receive nothing upon my word any further than i can prove it from the word of god and bring every preacher and every sermon that you hear to this same standard now let us pray together employing a prayer from calvin from a long time ago we call upon you our good god and father beseeching you since all the fullness of wisdom and light is found in you in your mercy to enlighten us by the holy spirit in the true understanding of the word teach us by your word to place our trust in you to serve and honor you as we ought so that we may glorify your holy name in all our living and edify our neighbors by our good example may we render to you o god the love and obedience which children owe to their parents since it has pleased you graciously to receive us in christ as your children amen well it's not quite a tradition but it is becoming increasingly customary for us to turn to this particular passage in philippians 3 on or around the 4th of july and particularly to one phrase that you will find in the 20th verse indeed one sentence that begins verse 20 of philippians chapter 3 but our citizenship is in heaven our citizenship is in heaven as thankful as we should be and as thankful as we are for all the benefits and privileges we enjoy as citizens or at least as residents of the united states the bible speaks of a citizenship that transcends all the ties that are earthly that are geographical or that are national and my concern in coming to this morning increasingly as the day approached was to bear a burden that was on my mind and the burden fell in terms of a question and the question that came to me was do your people know who they are does your congregation know who it is do they have a sense of identity and how if asked would they identify themselves i know that in the 60s it became customary to go in search of ourselves and people still today talk about looking for themselves and so on we're not thinking in those terms not in terms of personal angst my place in the universe but rather seeking to understand what it means when paul writes concerning citizenship in heaven when in that phrase he provides us with an indication of our identity and in that identity a discovery of security and in that security all of our significance and all of our dignity we're going to employ those three words in just a moment but for now let me remind you that paul is writing from prison in rome he's writing to philippi to a church that he loves we might actually say that he loves this church as much or more than any church that he was privileged to found and philippi is almost like a little rome if we had been there we would have discovered that architecturally it looked like rome linguistically it sounded like rome culturally its practices were marked by rome and paul recognizes that there is a wonderful analogy in this insofar as the people who lived in philippi actually belonged somewhere else and picking up on that as he writes to them he speaks of those who while living here on earth actually belong to another place who find their citizenship in heaven and the terms of endearment that run through the four chapters of this letter are hard to mistake indeed the congregation would have to be pretty dead to fail to respond to their pastor when he addresses them with such endearment and such love look for example at verse 1 of chapter 4 therefore my brothers and sisters you whom i love and long for my joy and crown that is how you should stand firm in the lord deal dear friends if you had a school teacher who greeted you that way on a monday morning and now class whom i love and long for whom i have missed all weekend who are my joy and my crown whom i love to tell about everywhere i go goodness gracious the class would just be sitting up so tall in its seats as opposed to some teacher comes and says you know you are a miserable bunch you never finish your homework you never show up on time i don't know what i'm going to do with you i don't think any of you will become anything at all you know and everybody just goes slower and lower and lower into their seats listen to how phillips paraphrases this uh statement here so my brothers and sisters whom i love and long for my joy and my crown stand firmly in the lord and remember how much i love you just remember how much i love you now this is the relationship of pastor to people this is as it should be and so it is that we come this morning to the text of scripture i have the privilege of addressing you in this capacity i long to do so in the same measure and with the same deep sense of concern that we as a congregation as individuals might understand our identity our security and our dignity as being in the lord jesus christ that is the objective if we succeed then it will be time for a hymn and on towards lunch three words first word identity now it's important that you keep your bible open and your finger in your bible and if you turn back a page in philippians to the first chapter you will notice that he has barely begun his letter before he employs one of his favorite descriptions or definitions of a christian verse 1 chapter 1 to all the saints and here's the phrase in christ jesus in christ jesus here is the nature of the christians identity remember classically in 2 corinthians 5 17 he writes if anyone is in christ he or she is a new creation and it is this phrase that paul employs as you read through his letters some 100 times or more it is a parallel phrase to that which for example we find in chapter 2 and in verse 1 if you have any encouragement from being united with christ when you go into chapter three and then into chapter four you will discover that he also employs another parallel phrase and that phrase is in the lord okay so in christ jesus united to christ in the lord all of this speaks to the question of the identity of the one whose citizenship is in heaven becoming a christian is defined as being in christ so the real question always for anybody considering the bible and its claims inevitably comes to this am i in christ am i in christ if someone says to me what how do you identify yourself you would say i am in christ i am a christian now paul works this out in various places in 1st corinthians 15 and classically in romans chapter 5. romans chapter 5 is on page 798 if you're using a pew bible and i want you to turn to it with me for just a moment because unless we understand this we we will go immediately and sadly wrong in the book of romans paul is making clear that the whole world is accountable before god that none of us has a claim upon god that although we may have missed the mark only by two and a half inches or missed it by two and a half miles we have all missed the mark all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of god and no one will be able to protest their innocence before god the wonderful thing he then goes on to say is that despite the depth of this dilemma god has come from the outside and provided for us what we need in a savior and that when we are justified by faith we have peace with god in other words when we are declared to be in the right with god then we know peace that by nature we're alienated from god he is angry and we are rebellious jesus has come interceding on behalf of those of us who are rebellious against god and he bears in his own body the anger of god against all of our rebellion and he settles the charge that is against us that's what he's arguing as he goes through by the time he gets to chapter five he is beginning to make this clear and from verse 12 on he makes this classic statement concerning the nature of our lives so verse 12 he says just as sin enter the world through one man and death through sin when people ask you where did death come from the answer is it came from sin they ask you where sin came from the answer is it came through one man that's what he's arguing what he's saying is this that adam the first man was appointed by god as the representative of humanity therefore what adam did counted not only for adam but counted for all whom adam represented namely the totality of humanity so paul says since sin has entered through that one man we have sinned in him we didn't be unduly concerned about blaming it on adam because we're sure each of us made perfectly clear that we've got a good handle on sinning left to ourselves what we are by nature we are also by action now if you look down at verse 18 he makes this point very clearly consequently just as the result of one trespass or if you like the trespass of one just as the result of the trespass of one was condemnation for all men so also the result of the act of righteousness of one or one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men for just as through the disobedience of the one man that is adam the many were made sinners so also through the obedience of the one man namely jesus the second adam or the last adam the many will be made righteous now it's not our purpose to work all of this out this morning but what we need to understand is this that this is the foundation for if you remember from school when you had to do milton's paradise lost and paradise regained now my not my favorite time in english literature but nevertheless we gritted our teeth and we we made our way through what in the world was milton on about he was on about this actually in his own way and style the fact that humanity had fallen into sin as represented in adam and that the only way out for all of humanity was to be found in that second adam namely in the lord jesus christ when you read first corinthians 15 which you may do at your leisure you discover that paul is making the point there that jesus is the second or the last adam who has come to undo all that adam did by the fall and to do all that adam failed to do on account of his disobedience so if you like he is adam in reverse undoing what adam did and regaining what adam lost and that is the significance of being in christ we are all in adam by nature but we are only in christ by faith we are all in adam by nature born we are all in christ only by grace born again you see the significance of identity you see how easy it is for us to think of ourselves in terms that make us feel okay about ourselves in superficial transient passing ways while failing to recognize the great need that is represented in our lives of being in christ so when we read this we discover that it is only when we are in christ when what jesus has accomplished by his life and death and resurrection has been applied to us that all that jesus has done becomes of any significance or of any practical benefit to us do you understand what i'm saying it is only when we're in christ that what christ has achieved what he has accomplished in his death for sinners in his living of a perfect life it is only when we're in christ that it becomes of any practical benefit to us and you know that if you have come to christ because before you were a christian whether you were growing up in your home and your parents told you and jesus died upon the cross for sinners and he lived a perfect life and were accepted on the basis of his righteousness we just nodded our heads it seemed like a mathematical formula it seemed like one of these equations that balance that always has to balance out whatever they're called if people would sing in christ alone my hope is found he is my light my strength my song and we realize we're going through four or five lines and we have no clue what we just said but now when we sing it it means everything to us in christ alone my hope is found he's my light he's my strength he's my song he's my solid ground he's my only hope in life and in death why do i sense this because you are in christ because all of the blessings and benefits that have been accomplished in jesus have been applied to your life as you have come to trust in christ and that is paul's personal testimony isn't it in chapter three you can read it again for yourselves at home he says if you want to think about acceptance with god in terms of personal righteousness and a number of you apparently want to put up your hands and say yes then he says i can tell you that i had that covered in the extreme if you want to hear my credentials they are as follows i was circumcised on the eighth day i was part of the tribe of benjamin i was born as an israel as a citizen of israel i grew up in this way and so on and then he says the most remarkable thing but whatever was to my prophet i now consider loss something has happened to him for all the days of his life he's been making deposits in the bank and as he puts the money in the bank he thinks he's putting money in the bank and now he says i wasn't actually putting money in the bank i was actually taking money out of the bank and everything that i thought was in the profit account is actually in the loss account why what changed i met jesus i met jesus jesus changed everything i was chasing down all the followers of jesus and he arrested me laid hold of me he says in verse 12 of chapter 3 too cold of me and when he took hold of me then it dawned on me and he took me to himself and now i have a righteous standing before god that is not a righteous standing that i had worked so hard to attain but is a righteous standing which is entirely on the basis of who jesus is and what he has done paul you see i think would have been very happy with the lyrics of in christ alone and that is the testimony of all who are in christ this morning i was thinking about this as i drove here and i i thought of the song that begins a debtor to mercy alone and then i went and found it and let me just give you a this is augustus top lady in the 18th century here is the testimony of somebody who is in christ who understands their identity a debtor to mercy alone of covenant mercy i sing nor fear with your righteousness on my person and offering to bring the terrors of law and of god with me can have nothing to do oh who do you think you are the terrors of law and of god with me can have nothing to do oh i want to hear the next line augustus you must be one special person you don't fear the judgment of god you don't fear death i mean you're saying that that in christ alone song no guilt in life no fear and death where does that come from the terrors of law and of god with me can have nothing to do my savior's obedience and blood hide all my transgressions from view i am in christ therefore i am viewed in one sense by god as being as righteous as christ as righteous as christ because the only righteousness i have is the righteousness of christ has nothing to do with what i'm doing everything to do with what he has done there is no story like it anywhere else except in the bible and if you are in christ today if you are a christian then to some degree this will be your testimony somewhere along the way you will be able to explain that by agency of your parents your loved ones your friends your pastor a book a neighbor or somebody you were brought to repentance and to faith you came to a point where you said i need christ and you came to trust in him and the holy spirit worked in you the miracle of new birth so that although what you thought you were doing was just mumbling out a bunch of phraseology i admit that i'm a sinner and i need you and so on and you walked away from wherever the encounter was in somebody's back garden or in a prayer room or whatever it is and he said well who knows what that was about but today you know what it's about because everything changed what happened god regenerated you you were made new by the holy spirit you were united to christ and as a result all that jesus had accomplished on the cross was applied to your life and so your identity is entirely in him second word is the word security and it follows naturally i think there is a security that emerges from our identity i've been traveling largely on my american passport but if the line is shorter then i use my british passport and uh and sue comes with me and i go with her it doesn't matter but we managed to work our way through the shortest line both passports i think are pretty good i wouldn't want to argue that the best passports in the world to have but they're up there and with that passport comes all of the benefits and blessings of citizenship it is because of the relationship that is enjoyed with the nation and through the nation that the secretary of state stamps on the inside of the passport that the bearer of this passport is to be allowed free passage is allowed to go to their destination is allowed to do all of these things and all of that is backed by grounded in the fact of our identity so that our security is found in who we are that is the point that paul makes and when you think about it is very important because inevitably somebody says well i've begun to follow jesus but i don't know if i'll be able to keep going well who started the thing off for you the answer is god did oh you believed god didn't believe for you but when you look back on it you go it's quite amazing to me that i ever come to trust in christ and so paul in philippians 1 he encourages the folks he says i'm very confident of fact that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of jesus christ god began the good work in you and he will bring it to completion why is that well because the righteousness the right standing before god comes through faith in jesus christ to all who believe the righteousness comes through faith in jesus to all who believe that god's acceptance of us god's declaration about us doesn't depend on our accomplishments or our endeavors but upon christ's accomplishment and christ's endeavors and that once and for all completed life and death and resurrection is not only the basis of the christians identity but is the ground of the christian security every so often you make a purchase whatever it might be you might buy a tie you take it outside the shop you walk down the street you take it out to have another look at it when you're having a coffee and you go i think this is a miserable tie i'm going to take it back and your wife says to you well why don't you just look at the receipt and you look at the receipt and all the dreaded words on the bottom no exchanges no refunds you're stuck with it unless you want to give it to your uncle for his birthday the transaction has been affected and there's no way out well from the negative side that's disappointing but from the positive side which is the nature of the gospel it's fantastic what jesus has accomplished on the cross and affected for us in applying it to our lives is final and complete he's not going to back out it is an inviolable contract it is an inviable covenant there is no rescinding of it no exchanges no reversals that's why it is so wonderful when you get to romans chapter 8 and you read these glorious words there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in christ jesus to them that are in christ jesus why is there no condemnation you say well i feel condemned i feel ashamed that was a bad thing i did that was a bad thing i said of course and it was and it needs to be repented of but it didn't alter your standing with god it didn't alter your identity you didn't move three seats down in the classroom like when you were at primary school and you filled in the report and you're no longer third top of the class you're now 17th in the class why because of your performance it doesn't work like that because all of our identity is in jesus oh you say what am i going to do when my past condemns me when it rears his ugly head when out of nowhere something jumps up and says yeah i can't believe you did that said that where that or when our present disappoints us and disappoints the people around us and we know when we know ourselves to be miserable or when our future paralyzes us and makes us fearful what do you do then where is security only in christ only in christ that's why we sang what we sang be thou my battlefield sword for the fight jesus goes out as our champion in the way that david went out before the armies of philistines remember and he goes out not simply as david the shepherd boy but he goes out as david the representative of israel and that's why when he defeated goliath and chopped off his head all of the armies swarmed behind him and declared their enjoyment of the great victory that david had accomplished it was a picture of what jesus would do that he would stride out onto the battlefield with the evil one that he would dislocate him that he would deal with him that he would put him out in the garbage waiting for final collection and all who are in christ come behind in the champion of jesus and we say he is he is our victory he is our battlefield the answer is that our identity is found in christ and our security is found in looking away to christ it is a reminder it is in the reminder of what we are in christ that serves as a constant defense against our slipping back into what we are by nature you got that it is the reminder of what we are in christ that serves as the defense mechanism against slipping back into what we are by nature that's the paul that's the argument that paul uses isn't it he says given that you are in christ do you mean to tell me that you would engage in this activity he doesn't give them a long list of rules and regulations to try and protect them from that which we be in violation of the law of god no he simply reminds them of what they are you are in christ all of the benefits of jesus are yours all apply to your life therefore it's not impossible for you to act in this way but it is incongruous and it is a very incongruity of it which of course alarms us and we understand it and that is why the westminster confession of faith tells us that the as christians were involved in a continual and irreconcilable war romans chapter 7 works it out there we are aware of the fact that we're a mess and so on and where do we look while we look to christ who by his death bore the penalty of our sins and by his life and in his resurrection didn't simply bring us back to square one back as it were in the monopoly game of life back to back to zero to start again that wouldn't be very good would it that all that happened was that we we got all our all our bad stuff cleaned up and you got a clean sheet and then you had to go at it on your own what confidence would i have that in the time that i've now got from getting the clean sheet to finally handing in my sheet i won't make a complete mess of the whole sheet what confidence do i have that now having had my past all dealt with my future is going to be any better than my past was how do i have any confidence that when i stand before the examination i will have anything to say the answer is the same it is in christ in what the theologians refer to as the active righteousness of christ that since we are in christ all of his keeping of the law all of his perfect obedience all of his absolute life is our life he lived it for all who are in christ gresham machin who died on the first of january in 1937 was a professor at princeton and then a founder at westminster seminary and writing to his dear friend the late professor john murray days before his death he sent murray a telegram and the telegram simply read dear john i am so thankful for the active obedience of christ no hope without it i am so thankful for the active obedience of christ no hope without it what was he saying well in a radio broadcast he addressed that very subject and i'll give you a brief quote we'll go to our final word and we'll be through listen to this those who have been saved by the lord jesus christ are in a far more blessed condition than was adam before he fell adam before he fell was righteous in the sight of god but he was still under the possibility of becoming unrighteous right those who have been saved by the lord jesus christ not only are righteous in the sight of god but they are beyond the possibility of becoming unrighteous in their case the probation is over it is not because they have stood it successfully it is not over because they themselves have earned the reward of assured blessedness which god promised on condition of perfect obedience but it is over because christ has stood it for them it is over because christ has merited for them the reward by his a perfect obedience to god's law that's why augustus top lady can write what he writes the terrors of law and of god with me can have nothing to do well just one word concerning our dignity where does our dignity lie in christ jesus all of our dignity so the dignity that attached to their identity and their security didn't have a rat to do with whether paul was writing to somebody who read it as a doctor or somebody who read it as a soldier somebody who read it as a homeowner or someone who read it as a slave because all of them recognized that their dignity was found in their identity and their identity was found in the lord jesus christ you see how amazing this is it allows no basis for division no basis for division on the strength of race color education finance school tie whatever all the things that are mechanisms for identifying ourselves and who are you well i am a certain lord always lose all oh really very nice who are you well this is what i do but who i am is i'm i'm a sinner saved by grace no no reason for us to be divided and no reason either for us to be defeated we know who we are we know what we're like i have told you before to quote dick lucas that if you knew what i was really like you would never listen to me preach and if i knew what you were really like i probably wouldn't preach to you i'm aware of failure and sin and of shame and of disgrace but that is not the whole picture that is not the completed story i am by god's grace in christ on what basis are you planning to stand before god what are you going to offer on the day that he asks you to give an account let's suppose you can get rid of every bad thing you've ever done you can eradicate it what are you going to offer in your defense what will you wear what would you wear if you were going to see the king what would you wear if you were going to see the president you spent a long time wouldn't you you might even look at all your wardrobe and say you know what there's nothing that i can go in there in even my best stuff looks like not so good but what if he came out of his chambers and said here i have a robe for you to wear wear this that's the story of the gospel that on our best day when we've polished up all our dudes all our best endeavors to make ourselves acceptable before god are frankly a shambles and we have no basis upon which to approach it unless he would give us a robe of righteousness from god through faith in jesus to all who believe to all who believe so go out and enjoy today go out and rejoice in the privileges of freedom democracy american citizenship and everything else but do not go out and spend a nanosecond assuming that those freedoms and those benefits and a knowledge and intellectual knowledge of what i have just told you is equivalent to those truths being applied to your life through personal faith and trust in the lord jesus christ i beseech you as though god were making his appeal through my very mouth be reconciled to god father thank you that you have made so wonderfully available to us this great and glorious good news thank you that it turns on on its head all of our notions every religious idea about acceptance with you and when we reach the end of all of our endeavors we find there stands christ forgive us lord when we have stayed away from you because we think we're so good that we don't need a savior help us when we think we're so bad that you would never be our savior hear our prayers let our cries come to you for your son's sake amen this message was brought to you from truth for life where the learning is for living to learn more about truth for life with aleister begg visit us online at truthforlife.org

Channel: Alistair Begg

Views: 22,032

Keywords: Christian Living, Christian Life, Kingdom of God, Union with Christ

Id: QbtbaLZNaeA

Length: 42min 14sec (2534 seconds)

Published: Wed May 19 2021