16th June 2025

16th June 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Philippians 3:1-6 focus v2-3)


Message (Alan Burke)


I mentioned on Monday about the woke sensitivities of some that has caused many classic TV and Films begin with a warning, although I just think people want to be offended and have something to gurn about and these words of Paul would probably, no would most definitely come with one of those warnings if it was put on the telly. Now some people think that I’m a little close to the bone at times but believe it or not, there are many people I’ve come across that while I do not agree with what they teach, that I would even say that they teach a “gospel” that is not in accordance with the gospel of the scriptures, I still haven’t called them dogs as Paul does here. In my mind if I can’t say it to someones face, if I can’t have a discussion with someone about it, it should never ever ever be put in writing and so I think it’s safe to conclude that I’m a Teddy Bear in comparison to Paul. BUT, there is a reason why Paul says this and that it is because of just how important the truth is. 


What Paul says here is a loaded statement, one that would have had more significance to the listeners then that it has to us now. When someone is called a dog today it is used as a term of mockery and ridicule and the same was so 2000 years ago but to a much greater extent. Dogs were not domesticated pets, they weren’t household dogs that ate scraps from the table as would have happened in non Jewish homes, the dogs were wild, they were unclean animals, they were despised. Jews would have used dogs as way of speaking of the Gentiles, those who were not God’s people, unbelievers, it was a religious statement with overtones that would have been offensive to many, it is not the Gentiles who should be considered as dogs, those who were not God’s people, but the Judiazers. So it is with some irony here, Paul is hitting out at the Judiazers that it is they who deserve this label and not the Gentiles that they would have used it off. 


A Judiazer was one that taught that Levitical laws of the Old Testament as still binding on all believers. That means no selfish or bacon, that means boys get a wee operation on the 8th day and in their mind men who covered to Christianity would need to have the same wee operation. The Judiazers were insisting on everything, all the customs and the laws that the Jews followed were to be followed by Christians too. But we are freed from the Ceremonial use of the law and the Civil Law while the Moral law is still binding on us. 


But the Judiazers were expecting the Church in Philippi to observe that which Christ fulfilled and that which pertained to the nation of Israel. That is why Paul says of those dogs, referring them as “those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh”. The Judiazers though putting such significance on that which Jesus had come and fulfilled, they had failed to understand what had happened, they were still wearing the signs of law with pride and demanding others did the same but Paul says that in their pride they are really showing the sign of their own destruction. When we make the gospel about Jesus plus, Jesus plus this or that it robs us of our joy because we been to think that what matters is what we have done. But it is all about what Christ has done and in response we live a life of obedience and when we fail we pick ourselves up and look again to Christ. 


When we do this we are the circumcision because circumcision is of the heart, it is by the work of the Spirit with us. It is entirely possible to have all the outward signs of belonging to the people of God but without circumcision of the heart without being born again by the Spirit then we are lost. Our confidence is not on what we have done or can do, our confidence is on what God has done within us through Jesus Christ alone. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q22 How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man?
A. Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin.
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