Philippians 3:4-14 Pastor Nathan P. Kassulke
The Fifth Sunday in Lent Sunday, April 3, 2022 “Prize True Treasure, Not the Trash”
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. That’s an old adage, dating back at least to the 1860s. It means that some people may not want or be interested in a particular item, but others may still value that same thing. One person might not like a particular painting, for example, and someone else might love it and want to have it. We were maybe even hoping for a little bit of that over the last few weeks as the church tried to give away things that had accumulated and were not being used. Perhaps in the pile of stuff that we would prefer to have gone from our property there would be something that a member or a guest would find useful. Some things are like that. Some things are a matter of opinion like “Which paintings do you like?” Some things are not valuable to the person who just doesn’t have a use for them, but are very useful to the person who knows what to do with those items or who has a particular need. Are those things valuable? It depends. For some people they may be, while for others they are not. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure; one man’s treasure is another man’s trash. This morning in the verses of our Second Reading, Paul is talking to us about treasure and trash. And it seems like people are approaching the question of determining value in two very different ways. But this debate is not a matter of opinion. This isn’t a situation where things just depend on the person. Paul is trying to explain to the Philippians and to us that some things are far more valuable than others. He’s trying to have us prize those things that are truly treasure. And if we are going to do that, we first need to be able to recognize true treasure. In order to show what true treasure really is, Paul first dismisses what others have considered valuable. He talks about the people who were putting their confidence in fleshly and outward matters. The Christians in the city of Philippi were troubled by a group of people we call the Judaizers. They were insisting that Christian men ought to be circumcised among other things that they expected of Christians. And just to make sure that everyone got the point, Paul laid out his own case for how well he could do by their standards. He listed his own fleshly and outward qualifications. Be circumcised? Paul was on the eighth day like all boys born in the Jewish faith would be, and perhaps not like some of the Judaizers who may have been later converts. Trace your lineage to the Israelite people? Paul could, and specifically to the tribe of Benjamin, a tribe that had not been scattered like so many of the others. Paul was a Pharisee. He was the best of the best. Paul had shown just how zealous he was by going and attacking the Christians whom he thought were perverting his Jewish religion. Paul explains that he could compare favorably to anyone if you were talking about keeping the rules and laws. And then, Paul said that all of these things were useless. At one time he would have considered them to be valuable, but now he did not. Now he knew that they were actually a loss instead of a gain. They were a loss because if he focused his attention or his confidence on those things, he would be focusing his attention in the wrong way. True treasure was to be found only in one place, in Jesus Christ. And so everything else, all of those other things and anything else that could be considered, needed to be thrown out. They weren’t worth anything, not in the long run. This is the treasure: that Jesus Christ had given Paul righteousness through faith. He didn’t need to do anything or be anything. He didn’t need to earn or deserve it. It came from Jesus, not from him. That’s the treasure we prize as well. But still our sinful natures try to hold on to something else. Still we hear the voices that claim our worth is found in outward success or beauty or riches, or anything else. And to treasure these things can be a particularly sharp temptation for people who have a lot of them. Go ahead. Make your list like Paul does. What could you claim to your credit? “I go to church every week. I serve in the kitchen. I sing in the choir. I am the director. People tell me all the time what a sweet and caring and helpful person I am.” Should we keep going? “I have had success at work or school. I have saved up money and live in a nice house. I have gone to Christian schools for years.” And some of these things, many of them in fact, are amazing blessings. They are things that we can be thankful for. But if we put them into the category of how we know we have a good relationship with God, if we start to
put our confidence in these things, if we start to focus our attention on them, that is when they are trash. They need to be thrown out with the garbage. Our translation uses the term rubbish. Maybe that’s a term you use a lot. Maybe not. But it reflects well the idea in the original: anything that should be thrown out of the house: the kitchen scraps, the animal messes, all the dirt and dust and the broken stuff that doesn’t get used. Other people may prize those things. We can’t. Other experts might tell us that the best way to improve our lives is to focus on these avenues. But God tells us that we have something so much more valuable that it is hardly worth comparing to those things: We have a Savior. We have Jesus Christ who lived a perfect life. We have his shed innocent blood. We have a righteousness, a perfection, a right-relationship with God that comes from him and is given to us as a gift with no strings attached. It is ours because God led us to faith. It is ours because God revealed Jesus to us in his Word, because he baptized us in his holy name, because he fed us with his true body and blood. We need to recognize the true treasure that is ours. It makes me think of some videos I have seen where the antique experts evaluate something someone brought from their house or garage. Some people come hoping they have found on a dusty shelf something worth maybe a few hundred dollars. They just don’t know whether there is any value or if it is time to chuck it in the trashcan. And then there are the exciting few examples where the expert says, “This is incredible. I have only ever seen one example like this before. Your item is worth…” Thousands? Millions? The face lights up and tears form. They had no idea. They literally had a treasure. We’re not going to the Judaizing experts. We’re not going to the Jewish leaders who rejected Jesus like the farmers in his parable. We are going to one expert, God, who tells us how valuable a possession we have in our hands through faith. It is not worth thousands or millions. It is worth righteousness. It is worth resurrection. It is worth eternity. It is the gift of heaven itself. And once we recognize what is truly valuable, of course we will want to pursue it. Paul confesses that he has not arrived at the end. He knows all too well the sufferings of Jesus. He suffered for his faith and his friendship with Jesus. But the resurrection was still to come. Paul is not expressing doubt when he says, “ 1in the hope that in some way I may arrive at the resurrection from the dead.” He’s just stating the truth. He doesn’t know the details. He doesn’t know the timing. He doesn’t have every answer for people who want to ask what heaven will be like or how this resurrection is going to look. We know a lot about it, but not all. So this is what Paul does: he puts his focus and his effort and his energy on what is truly valuable. He reaches and strains for the goal of knowing Jesus better and sharing him with others. He looks at the finish line of heaven with the focus of an Olympic sprinter who would slow down if he turned his head to either side or got distracted by the crowd. He knows that there is a prize in store. He knows how valuable it is. And still he knows that he doesn’t need to win it. Jesus already won the prize for him. But see what threatens to snatch that prize away. Paul talks about suffering and he talks about death. He forgets what is behind because that would only be a distraction. How does someone strive for the heavenly goal knowing that Jesus has already won it for us? We do that by focusing on it, by receiving God’s gifts they he gives in Word and in sacrament. We do that by remembering that all the other stuff, all the other aspects of our life are worthless when it comes to reaching heaven. It is not a waste of time to take an extra share of our Sunday mornings and to devote it to Sunday School and Bible Study. It is not an infringement on our personal lives to devote a Wednesday during Lent to gathering for worship again. One week from today we begin the annual week-long celebration and commemoration of what our Savior has done for us, Holy Week. Don’t miss out on a chance to walk with fellow believers through that week with services on Sunday and Thursday and Friday. Don’t miss the best Sunday of all, the celebration of the empty tomb and a life that will never end. And don’t miss the opportunity to invite others to celebrate with you. In many circumstances one man’s trash may be another man’s treasure. It this case, there is one treasure. Anything else, no matter how valuable it seems, is as worthless as trash. Prize the true treasure. Hold on to Jesus your Savior. Press on to take hold of that for which Jesus Christ took hold of you.
The Text: Philippians 3:4–14 (EHV) 4If
anyone else thinks that he has grounds for confidence in the flesh, I have more: 5circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6in regard to zeal, persecuting the church; in regard to the righteousness that is in the law, blameless. 7But,
whatever things were a profit for me, these things I have come to consider a loss because of Christ. even more than that, I consider everything to be a loss because of what is worth far more: knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I have lost all things and consider them rubbish, so that I may gain Christ 9and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own, which comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God by faith. 10I do this so that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, 11in the hope that in some way I may arrive at the resurrection from the dead. 8But
12Not
that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus also took hold of me. 13Brothers, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it yet, but there is one thing I do: Forgetting the things that are behind and straining toward the things that are ahead, 14I press on toward the goal, for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.