18th June 2025

18th June 2025


Pray (ACts)


Read (Philippians 3:4-6)


Message (Alan Burke)


I’m confident although it may be foolishness that I’m going to leave my study and the lock on the door and everything will be as I left it when I arrive back hopefully not before Monday morning. Although I suspect my hope not to return before Monday morning is most likely a foolish hope and I take no confidence in this. There are some things that we put a great deal of confidence in, like our health but I know some of you who are reading this know just how fragile that is and your health hasn’t been great, we can put confidence in health, the bank balance, qualifications, in bricks and mortar among many other things. But before God the only way that we can have confidence before him is not through what we have done but through Christ, in Christ alone is salvation found, in home alone can we have confidence before God. 


Here Paul tells us that very truth, that we are to put no confidence in the flesh. Paul once took confidence in the flesh which he now understood the futility of, the foolishness of having confidence in anywhere but Christ. Before Paul’s conversion No One could have looked at him and thought that he was anything else than a Jew of Jews. His credentials were perfect. He was circumcised the eighth day (v5)— he was circumcised at the time that the law required. For those who were not circumcised there was a clause that the male child, which is not circumcised the eighth day, shall be cut off from among his people (Gen 17:14) this was literally observed in the case of Paul.


He was of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin aHebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church as to righteousness under the law, blameless. If anyone could be said to be blameless in following the law, it was Paul, not sinless but blameless. But before God it was no righteousness at all, for though Paul thought he was pleasing God, but after his conversion realised that he was foremost among sinners. 


So, when it came to the things of the flesh then, of all people it was Paul who could have confidence in his worldly achievement. He could have had much more confidence in what he once was than the Judaizers to which he is referring to, who were opposed to the teaching of Paul that salvation is by faith alone. The Judaizers had put their confidence in their accomplishments that what they had done would be enough to earn their salvation giving them reason to have hope and confidence in their own efforts but Paul is putting the church straight, this is not the case. For none of us can have confidence before the Lord unless it is through Christ alone. 


Paul once took confidence in the flesh which he now understood the futility of, the foolishness of heaving confidence in anywhere but Christ. It confronts us with the futility of thinking that we are good enough, that our works will see us alright, that we have done enough to keep our selves right with the Lord. Any confidence that we place in anything other than Christ Jesus just makes a mockery of the Gospel. For we are saying by our words and actions that we don’t need Jesus, his sacrifice, we are ok but we are not. Our greatest need is Christ. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q24 How doth Christ execute the office of a prophet?
A. Christ executeth the office of a prophet, in revealing to us, by his Word and Spirit, the will of God for our salvation.
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