Where Our Loyalty Belongs

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The summer after I graduated from high school, I went and bought myself a car. And it was not the first car I’d bought, but it was the first one I had bought that wasn’t also a hand-me-down from a relative. And so I was really excited to buy this car.

I was excited to have this car. Now, I can’t emphasize this enough. It was not what you would call a cool car for a teenage boy.

But then I’ve never been cool. As a matter of fact, Charla and I knew each other even then, and we’d run into each other around town, and I will tell you, she never gave me a second look in my grandma car. But I loved that car.

I bought it. It was mine. I drove it all over the place and kept it for many years and had a lot of blood and sweat and tears and blood invested in that car.

And after several years, though, it started having trouble. It was old even when I got it, and it started having trouble. And it got to be more and more work to keep it up.

And I knew I was going to have to repair. I was going to have to do some major repairs on it. But I had also, it just kind of fell into my lap that a family member had given me an SUV that they drove it and it had engine trouble.

And they said, I’m just going to go buy a new one. I said, well, can I have it? they laughed at me and said, I guess if you want it, you can have it.

So I took it and started, I don’t know, I’m really not a car guy. I’ve done the work on them, but I don’t know what you call it. I did something with the engine.

I rebuilt it. Yeah, there you go. I told you I’m not a car guy, but I can read a Haynes manual really well.

And so I rebuilt the engine on this thing. Well, the car that I had bought when I graduated high school, I know I was going to have to work on one of these two. If I work on this one, I’ve got an SUV though.

It’s kind of a step up. And so I sold that car to a man who worked at the McDonald’s in town and he bought it for a couple hundred dollars and I used that toward parts and fixed my SUV and drove that around for years and years. But I would see my old Oldsmobile driving around town and I’d get to feeling nostalgic.

I’d get to feeling a little jealous even of the guy driving my old car. Because I’d think of all the adventures I had in that car. I mean, I drove that car all over the state.

I’d think of all the adventures I’d had. And I’d kind of long for that car to be back. Even recently, I’ve had the thought, I wonder if he’s still got that car.

I wonder if he’d sell it back to me for what he paid for it. It wasn’t worth that much then. It’s not worth that much now.

It’s probably in a scrapyard somewhere. But I’ve sat there and wondered, I wonder if I could buy that car. And then the reality kind of slaps me in the face.

And I think I’ve got enough cars that need work. But I had this nostalgia for this car and would have loved to have had it back. But reality, like I said, reminded me it’s going to be a lot more trouble than it’s worth.

But we have moments like that, don’t we, where we long for something from the past. We long for the adventure, the experience, the joy, whatever it was that we had in the past, and we don’t always think about the difficulty that would be involved if we went back to that. We don’t always think, at least not immediately, that if we had that back, if we had whether it be a car, whether it be a way of living, any of that, that if we had it back, it wouldn’t necessarily be as fun or as enjoyable as we’re remembering it. And the Apostle Paul wrote about that same thing in the book of Philippians.

We’re continuing our study today through the book of Philippians. And we come to a point in time where he writes to the people at Philippi about some things that they might have been longing for, that they might have wanted back, that they might have thought temporarily in the moment, you know, it might be fun if we went back to this or that, but they weren’t thinking about the greater headaches down the road. And you and I, just like the people at Philippi, we might, as Christians, have the occasional temptation to re-embrace an old way of living.

Maybe before we were Christians. Maybe we look back from time to time at the way we lived back then and think, you know, it’d be fun to go back and do that for just one day. Now, should we think that way?

No. But I’m saying as Christians, as humans, we may still think that way. Or maybe not even before we were saved, but just before some of the rough edges were sanded off of us by the Holy Spirit.

We look back on some of those things. And I know we’re in church. We’re supposed to pretend to be holy and all that.

We would never think that way. Okay, take yourself out a Sunday morning. Thursday afternoon, do you ever think that way?

Okay, you don’t have to raise your hand. I know we’re in the same boat here. That’s what Paul’s talking about.

And Paul writes to the Philippians and explains to them how it is far more important to remain loyal to Jesus instead of transferring our loyalty back to the old way of doing things. And that’s what we’re going to read about this morning in Philippians 3. If you would, turn with me there in your Bibles to Philippians chapter 3.

If you’re using an electronic device to read your Bible, there’s a link in our bulletin that’ll get you right there, or it’ll be on our screen for you. And if you would, if you’d stand with me, if you can, without too much trouble as we read from God’s Word. We’re going to start in Philippians 3.

17, and we’re going to go through chapter 4, verse 1. It says, Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk as you have us for a pattern. for many walk of, by the way, as he says, follow my example, this is not a bragging thing.

And I’ll talk about this probably a little more later. This is not a bragging thing that says, be like me. He’s saying, follow my example as I’m following Jesus’s example.

Okay. So this is not about Paul. This is about following Jesus.

Verse 18, for many walk of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly and whose glory is in their shame, who set their mind on earthly things. For our citizenship is in heaven. Let that sink in for just a second.

Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to his glorious body, according to the working by which he is able, even to subdue all things to himself. Therefore, my beloved and longed-for brethren, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, beloved. And you may be seated.

Now, one thing I want us to understand right off the bat, when Paul uses that phrase, our citizenship is in heaven, we take that so lightly. You know, you’ve probably heard those man on the street quizzes where they ask people questions from the citizenship test and they can’t answer them. If we care about our citizenship, we should be able to answer some of those basic questions.

We for our country. As a matter of fact, I’ve told my kids they don’t get a high school diploma from us until they can pass the U. S.

citizenship test. And they laugh like they think I’m joking. I am not joking. You will not.

If you’re homeschooled in high school, you will not get a diploma until you can pass the citizenship test. Miss Linda gives me the thumbs up. Don’t worry, we’ll prepare you. You don’t have to pass it now.

I see the look of fear. But you ask somebody that came here and worked to become a citizenship, how much that citizenship means to them. And it means more than those of us who were born here and sort of take it for granted.

Citizenship to Paul meant something different. It was more along the lines of those who had to work for it. Because not everybody had citizenship.

Just because you were born in the Roman Empire didn’t mean you were a Roman citizen. Only certain people got citizenship. And citizenship meant that you had certain rights that not everybody had.

Citizenship meant you had certain protections that not everybody had. Paul couldn’t just randomly be beaten by the Roman authorities where other people could. And there were certain privileges that really benefited Paul and his ministry.

The people at Philippi, I apologize, I don’t remember the story offhand, but the people of Philippi as a group had been granted Roman citizenship, the city. And it was a badge of honor to them. it was valuable and so these people understood the idea of citizenship and when paul says your citizenship is in heaven what he’s talking about here is is not just that you have some attachment to heaven but it’s talking about the closeness of the bond with the lord jesus christ that you’ve been brought into this family this means something it’s not just that your address has changed sort of like if we move between states when I under american law when I moved to arkansas I became a citizen of Arkansas.

Then I moved back to Oklahoma and became a citizen of Oklahoma again. But it didn’t change anything. That’s how I think sometimes we view this idea of our attachment to his kingdom.

But to them, to those who understood what a prize citizenship was, this was a big thing. And to these people who prized their Roman citizenship, he’s saying your citizenship ultimately is not in the Roman Empire, which would have been shocking to them. He said your citizenship is in the Lord’s kingdom.

That’s where your loyalty belongs. So he says all of this. He makes this case to help them understand and by extension to help us understand that Jesus deserves our loyalty first and foremost, and his kingdom deserves our focus.

Jesus, more than anything else on earth, deserves our loyalty and our focus. You realize that? I have to remind myself of that from from time to time because we like to give loyalty here and there to different things, and it’s not always a bad thing.

We were sitting there eating dinner the other night, and the Women’s College World Series came on. I didn’t know that was a thing until I heard some of the ladies talking about it Wednesday night, and I told Charlotte, oh, this must be the game that the ladies were talking about at church. We sat there and watched it.

I didn’t know this was a thing, And yet within five minutes, I’m cheering on the OU Sooner girls because I went to school there. Plus, I’m an Oklahoman. I think I probably would have been cheering for the Cowboys.

Do they call them Cowgirls? I’m not a sports guy either. Because there’s a little bit of loyalty there.

But folks, our loyalty to a team or a school should not be anywhere near the loyalty that we have to Jesus Christ. But we do this with all sorts of things. Our loyalty to our country. We should be loyal to our country.

But our loyalty to our country shouldn’t come anywhere near our loyalty to Jesus Christ. Our loyalty to a political party. Our loyalty to our job. Our loyalty to our friends.

Our loyalty even to our families. I’m not saying those things don’t matter. But I’m saying they shouldn’t come anywhere near our loyalty to Jesus Christ. As a matter of fact, in talking about this very thing, Jesus told people, unless you hate your father and your mother, you can’t be my disciple.

that doesn’t mean that He wants us to hate those around us. Jesus was making the point that unless our loyalty to Him so eclipses every other loyalty that it makes it look like hate in comparison, unless we love Jesus so much that it makes even our love for our families look like hate in comparison, then we’re not doing this discipleship thing right. So it’s okay that we are loyal to people and places and things and institutions.

It’s okay, but our loyalty to Jesus has to be first and foremost. And the reason for this is that Jesus deserves that loyalty. He deserves it. Paul outlines some reasons why he deserves it and why he deserves it so much more than anything else on earth.

We see this over and over throughout verses 20 and 21, the fact that Jesus gives us this hope that cannot be taken away, and there’s nothing else on earth that can give us this hope. None of the things that the Philippians were considering going back to in their old pagan way of life, nothing about their Roman citizenship, nothing else on earth, gave them the hope that Jesus Christ gives that cannot be taken away. We see in verse 20, there’s the promise that He’s going to return for us.

When He says our citizenship is in heaven, He said, from which we all so eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, there’s this waiting, there’s this expectation that He’s going to return. And why do we have that expectation? it’s because He told us that He would come back for us.

If I go to prepare a place for you, I will come again. He said He was going to come back for us. Everyone and everything else in this world may abandon us.

I mean, that potential is there. But Jesus has made it clear that He has no intentions of abandoning His people. And why would He?

Think of the lengths that He went to to purchase us, to make us His people to begin with. Jesus Christ suffered the most incredible torment on the cross. to pay for our sins in full so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be received into His family and received into His kingdom.

Why would He do all that just to abandon us, just to leave us here and forget about us? And we need to know that because sometimes we go through difficult circumstances here on earth that we feel like, you know, if He really noticed or cared or remembered me, I wouldn’t be going through this. No, no, your feelings tell you that, but Jesus’ promise was that He would never leave us or forsake us.

Jesus’ promise was that He would come back again for us. And I need to be reminded, you probably need to be reminded, that if my feelings say one thing and Jesus’ promise, His word says another, then I’m wrong, not Him. My feelings are wrong.

So He’s promised to return for us and we can have hope in that. We can also have hope that He’s promised to transform us, not just to come back for us, but to transform us. It says in verse 21, He will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body.

There will come a day when Jesus will raise us to new life. The Bible says the dead in Christ will rise first. That Jesus Christ will raise us to new life. There will be a resurrection for us.

And we are going to experience the joy of a glorified body and fellowship with Him. That this tent that we were. .

. The Apostle Paul writes elsewhere about our earthly habitation and a tent. He talks about the body like it’s a tent compared to the mansion that our new body is going to be.

Imagine a time when you don’t hurt and have aches and pains and physical limitations. Some of you are saying that sounds pretty good. Some of you are young and saying, I don’t have that now.

Your time will come. Not that I have a lot of room to talk, but I have more aches and pains than I did 10 years ago. I move a little bit slower than I did 10 years ago.

Your day will come, I promise. All right. Imagine a day when we don’t have these limitations.

Imagine a day when we don’t have the flesh warring against the Spirit. When we don’t have this earthly body and the fleshly desires that encourage us to disobey Him. Imagine a time when we are in a glorified body, resurrected just like He’s been resurrected, in a glorified form just like He had and has.

And there’s nothing anymore to stand in the way of our fellowship with Him. So it’s not just that He’ll come back and get us. It’s that things will be different.

And that gives us hope. And there at the end of verse 21, we have the promise that He’s given us to complete us according to the working by which He is able to subdue all things to Himself. One day, Jesus will bring all things into alignment with His will.

One day, Jesus is going to right all the wrongs. He’s going to complete all that’s lacking. He’s going to tie everything up in a neat little bow.

Do you ever feel like there are things lacking from you or your life? Maybe I’m not saying that the right way, but there’s scarcely a day that goes by that at some point I don’t think, what is wrong with me? Why can’t I figure this out?

Why can’t I do this right? Or you feel like something’s missing from your life. It’s because we were made to walk in perfect fellowship with Him, but our sin gets in the way.

It obstructs that so that you and I aren’t able to experience fully what He created us to have. And so it constantly feels like something is missing. That’s why we try to fill that up with stuff, with money, with people, with experiences, and it never satisfies.

It’s like being thirsty and drinking salt water. All it does is make you crave more without ever addressing the craving. But there will come a day when Jesus will subdue all things to Himself.

He will right all that’s wrong, including within us, and He will bring even us into alignment with His will. And there’s hope in that. Now, some people may look at that and say, but I like who I am.

listen, that’s fine. I don’t always like who I am. As a believer, I see His standard of who He is, and I see how far I fall short of that.

And because of that, I don’t always like who I see in the mirror. But there will be a day when He subdues all things, and that means He makes you and me, those of us who belong to Him, to be conformed to the image of Jesus. That He enables us to be everything that He created us to be, and to walk with Him.

That’s the important part, to walk with Him in the way He created us to walk. And so that gives us hope. And this hope comes about because of what He’s already done for us.

It’s not just something that we wait for eventually. Christianity is not just a promise of what will someday happen. It’s based on the truth of what is already done and what He can do for us now.

He has transplanted us into His kingdom. And that’s the language that Paul uses elsewhere when he talks about picking us up out of the kingdom of darkness and putting us into the kingdom of light. Taking us, it’s like He plucks us up in one breath and in the next, He puts us down where we’re supposed to be.

That’s why Paul said our citizenship is in heaven. Not our citizenship will be in heaven or our citizenship may yet be in heaven. He said our citizenship is in heaven.

You and I, as believers in Jesus Christ, belong to Him. Our citizenship, our standing, our position with Him has already been changed. And I realize that’s confusing because we look at ourselves and say, really?

Really? I’ve already been changed? Listen, the Bible teaches this idea of sanctification.

It’s the idea of being made holy. And it teaches a couple things about sanctification. It teaches, first of all, that at the moment we trust Christ, we are sanctified.

We are declared to be holy. It’s like a judicial ruling. Like a judge has made an order.

That in the eyes of this court, you are considered holy. And so in that sense, in the sense of how God chooses to look at you and me Christ, from the moment we trust Him, He declares us holy. But in the sense of our behavior, He spends the rest of our lives teaching us and training us and equipping us to act that way until we’re raised again and that process is completed.

Just like my children, the day they were born, actually I believe they were who they were at the moment of conception. So you go back all the way to the beginning, let’s say that. You go all the way back to the beginning.

They were as burns as they were ever going to be. It’s my last name if you’re not aware. If you’re visiting with us.

They were as burns as they were ever going to be. And now we spend the rest of our lives training them to act like it, right? That’s what He does with us.

It’s more than just a change of outlook. It’s a transformation in our relationship with God. It’s a transformation in where we stand with Him that goes right along the lines of our adoption into His family.

It’s a change of status that we we’re foreigners from the kingdom of God. And now he says, come on in, you belong. You belong here with all the rights and privileges because we’re so good, because we’re so holy.

Don’t you believe it? Because Jesus paid for it. Because Jesus passed the citizenship test for us.

And that’s why Paul said he has rescued us in Colossians chapter one, rescued us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of the son he loves. This citizenship means that we have already been accepted by Him and that we already belong in Him. Again, not because we’re good, not because we’re lovable, but because Jesus paid the price.

So we have this transfer of citizenship. And because of all that Jesus has done for us, He deserves our loyalty and our focus for who He is and what He’s done for us. And that’s the point that Paul’s trying to make all throughout this.

Now this also comes with a warning though, that our earthly concerns will try to distract us and steal our loyalty. Do you ever have those days where you feel like you want to be faithful to the Lord? You want to do what He’s called you to do, but man, I just messed up.

Why did I do that? Am I the only one in this room that does that? I’m not asking for a show of hands, but I can’t.

Please, I can’t be the only one that does that. Now, we have these things that distract us, that turn our attention, pull our hearts away from what He’s called us to do and who He’s called us to become. It’s so easy as evidenced by the fact that we see in verse 18, all these examples that Paul has in mind that he talks about.

He says, many walk of whom I’ve told you often. He’s talking about those who are in opposition to following Christ and walking with Christ. He says, there are many, and I’ve told you this many times, apparently just as now, then it was a big problem. This idea of being distracted away from what we’re supposed to do and having our loyalty pulled away is nothing new.

It was going on then. But for those who turn away and don’t serve Christ, it’s a great loss for them. And Paul weeps for them over the joy that they’re missing.

He says in verse 18, I now tell you even weeping. He’s not weeping because he’s lost anything. He’s weeping because of what they’re missing out on.

And then he says they’re the enemies of Christ. I’m sorry, the enemies of the cross of Christ. Those are two different things. He says they’re the enemies of the cross of Christ. This doesn’t necessarily mean that they are enemies of Christ, although they may be. They may have put themselves in a position of being opposed to Jesus Christ. But there are some people for whom he’s talking about here the cross, the idea of the suffering and the shame that is sometimes necessary for walking with Him.

I’ve told you before that I heard once during a testimony time, somebody said, I trusted Jesus as my Savior and everything’s been wonderful ever since. And then other people started saying the same thing. And I thought to myself, and I know I’ve told you this before, where was that plan when I signed up?

Why didn’t I get that offer? That’s not how it works. And they were trying to put a rosy spin on things, but I know their lives and that’s not how it worked for them either.

It has not always been easy. There’s suffering involved in being a Christian. There’s an expectation of discipline.

There’s an expectation of following Him and being willing to deny ourselves when the flesh says do this and Jesus says do this, that we go with Jesus even if the flesh wants us to do something else. Now, if you’re not a believer, I’m not trying to talk you out of it. I’m just being honest with you.

There’s some struggles involved. And when he says that these people were the enemies of the cross of Christ, I think he’s talking about the idea of sacrifice and suffering and struggle, all of that being repellent to some people. Jesus said, take up your cross and follow after me.

And there are a lot of people that would look at that and say, yeah, no, thank you. If we’re just talking heaven, yes, sign me up for that. But if there’s a call to, you mean I’ve got to sacrifice, I’ve got to follow, I’ve got to do.

. . No, no, thanks, I’m good.

And by the way, we don’t earn our salvation by taking up our cross. We don’t earn our salvation by being committed and working hard. Jesus has already done all that was necessary for our salvation.

What I’m talking about is what we’re supposed to do on the other side of that salvation. And he said there are some that just look at the cross of Christ and that is completely opposite of everything that they want and everything that they are. They’ve been distracted by their earthly concerns.

But he wants us to keep our loyalty with Jesus and keep our focus on his kingdom. How do we do that? How do we get there?

It’s simple. If you and I do not commit to Jesus Christ on purpose, we will commit to the world by default. It’s when we coast. Those of you who were there on Wednesday night when we talked about David and Bathsheba, all of that started with a few decisions just to take the easy road and just kind of be careless.

To follow Christ, we have to do it on purpose. We’re not going to just fall into it. If we’re just coasting and riding on default, we’re going to commit to the world.

That’s who he’s talking about in verse 19 when he says these people have set their minds on earthly things. And now some might say it’s not so bad or it’s not so much of a loss when we’re distracted away from Christ. But Paul here offers three descriptions of what that looks like when our loyalty goes somewhere else. And I think he probably had some specific false teachers in mind, but in verse 19 he describes them, he says, whose end is destruction.

See, they’re looking for fulfillment, but what they find is the opposite. it. Sin promises fun and fulfillment, but it leads down a road of broken promises and destruction.

And many of us could tell stories of times we disobeyed God thinking it was going to turn out well, and it didn’t. He says their God is their belly. This idea of the belly, it’s talking about the fleshly desires.

I had a doctor one time, we were talking about how to lose weight, and he said it’s very simple. We have to not be ruled by this. Because he said all throughout human history, the reason we get up and go forage and go hunt and go work and build bridges and build skyscrapers and build civilization is because this right here was making demands on us.

Like, well, thank you for the medical advice and the philosophy lesson. I think you’re correct, but I had never thought about it in those terms. I make a lot of decisions I shouldn’t make because the belly tells me so. And so he’s using this as a metaphor for all of our fleshly desires.

Things that we know aren’t good for us, but we do it anyway. And he said, that’s what happens when you are not loyal to Jesus Christ, when you are not committed to Jesus Christ on purpose, your fleshly desires will be in the driver’s seat. And people think they’re free, but really they’re just slaves to their desires.

The world looks at Christianity and says, I wouldn’t want to do that because I want to do my own thing. I want to be free to make my own choices, not realizing that they’re really not free. They’re slaves to what their flesh is telling them to do.

And he says their glory is in their shame. It’s part of our human nature to want glory. I mean, none of us like to be mocked or made fun of, right?

We want people to think well of us, say nice things about us. It’s part of our human nature to want glory. But he said their behavior ends up bringing shame on them.

In their pursuit of glory, in their pursuit of living the life that they want to live, and calling the shots in their own lives and being glorified in that sense, They’re leading in a direction that only brings them shame. And none of this is about a loss of salvation, but it’s talking about the difference between what Jesus offers his subjects versus what the world offers. And the point is that we as Christians should not be jealous of what the world offers.

We shouldn’t look at our non-believing friends and family members and neighbors and say, man, I wish I could do what they do. We shouldn’t be jealous of what the world offers, and we shouldn’t entangle ourselves in it even just a little bit. I was taught in college that the slippery slope argument, you know, the idea, oh, just a little bit, and it inevitably leads to more, and you’re down a downhill slope.

I was taught that that argument is a logical fallacy, but if I’ve learned anything over the last two or three years, it’s that the slope is slopier and slipperier than we were ever led to believe. And if we entangle ourselves in the world even just a little bit, it is a slippery slope, and it’ll lead us further, farther, and deeper than we ever intended to go. But the good news is that Jesus is better than the empty promises of earthly things.

The world promises momentary fulfillment. The Bible says that sin is fun. I mentioned that Wednesday night and couldn’t remember where it was found.

Hebrews chapter 11 talks about the pleasures of sin that last a season. The Bible says that sin is fun momentarily, but it only lasts for a little bit. It doesn’t bring any lasting fulfillment or lasting hope.

Only Jesus can do that. So that was Paul’s message to the people at Philippi. But he gives them one more thought as I prepare to close.

Looking at all of that, we say, that sounds good, but it’s really hard. And it is really hard, but it can be done. It’s possible to remain loyal to Jesus, but we have to do it on purpose.

And when I say remain loyal, I’m not saying you’re going to be perfect. None of us are perfect. None of us ever become perfect until all of these promises are fulfilled and we’re raised in the glorified body.

But loyalty is just about our desire to follow Jesus Christ.