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Welcome to day two of our look at Philippians chapter three in Daily Drive Time
Devotions. We're looking at verses seven to nine today, and Pastor Buddy Owens
is with me today also. We're going to be looking at these verses together.

These are verses that are about how to have joy in your accomplishments. Paul in
verse seven to nine talks about the fact that if you're going to have joy as you
look at the things that you do and can do and don't do in your life, you've got
to turn your thinking upside down. You've got to begin to think in an entirely
different way.

He uses a sort of kind of an accounting mindset here as he talks about
considering your profit loss. In fact, we're going to talk about two things in
these verses today. You've got to consider your profit loss, and you've got to
count your loss as gain.

Buddy, it's sort of a profit and loss statement on his life. Yeah, and I like
your phrase about upside down thinking. That's really what this is.

First, Paul says consider your profit as loss. In verse seven, he writes, "But
whatever was to my profit," he's just in the previous verses talked about all of
his great accomplishments. And now in verse seven, he says, "But whatever was to
my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

" He's got a whole new value system here. It's like having two sets of books.
There's our set of books, and then there's God's set of books.

And yesterday we looked at Paul's set of books, and he came to see that God had
a different set altogether. You know, some companies keep two sets of books, and
that's against the law. That'll get you into trouble.

There's one set that's really what's happening, and then there's another set
that's just a lie. And Paul said, "You know what I learned? I learned that the
set of books that I was keeping of all of my values and all the things I thought
were important, I learned that set of books was a lie.

Because when I added it all up and when I got to the bottom line, it did not add
up to joy, and it didn't add up to hope, and it didn't add up to life. " You
see, Paul had been using the wrong measuring stick. It's like using a yardstick
to tell you how much you weigh.

It's just not going to work. And he was using the law to tell him how close he
was to God, and he realized that wasn't going to work. He had to change his
measuring stick.

And you know, it's so easy for us. Let me personalize this. It's easy for me to
hang on to my life and to miss out on God's life.

I so often hang on to some little achievement, some little accomplishment that I
think is so great and important, something I've done. And by hanging on to that,
I miss out on something great that God wants me to do. It reminds me of
something I learned not so long ago in India about how to catch a monkey.

Now, I know this is going to be really applicable to our life here in the United
States, but it's a great little picture how they catch a monkey. They take a
gourd and they cut a hole in the gourd that's about the size of a monkey's hand,
and then they put some kind of a sweet little treat inside that gourd, and they
hang the gourd in a tree, and then they wait until the monkey comes along. And
when the monkey comes along and he smells whatever that sweet little treat is in
there and puts his hand in that gourd and he gets a grip on that treat, now his
fist is too big to get back out of the gourd.

And the strange thing is that monkey, even though he's risking his life, he will
not let go of that sweet little thing that's inside that gourd. And because he
won't let go, the people hunting the monkeys can just come and pick them up
because they won't let go. And that's so true of so many of us.

We get a grip on things we think are important, and because we got a grip on the
wrong thing, we cannot get a grip on freedom. We lose our freedom. It costs us
things we thought were so valuable, they wind up costing us everything because
we can't get a hold of what God wants us to have.

And the truth is those sweet little things we go after, they're not going to
last anyway. Things in this world don't last. I've always loved what Jim Elliott
said, "He is no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.

" So you consider your profit loss, Paul says. But then he says, number two, you
count your loss as gain. Let me read for you verses eight and nine.

"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 and
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 comes through
faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. " Count
your losses gained.

You gain Christ. Now, as Paul talks about this, he says, "I consider everything
a loss. I consider them in fact rubbish.

" Now, that's a very kind translation of that word. The word really means
sewage. He's saying it's meaningless.

It's nothing. In fact, it's even sewage compared to knowing Christ. I want to
know Christ.

And I think you, as you're listening to this, you're listening to this study in
Philippians because you want to know Christ. You want to get to know him better.
But do I really see, I have to ask myself, do I really see that big a gap
between the things that I try to do to accomplish righteousness and what only
Christ can do?

Gaining Christ or sewage, that's a pretty big gap. The key to joy Paul is
reminding us of here is that everything else is worthless compared to knowing
him. Here's one of the principles of joy here.

That means I can lose any of those things. They're just garbage. They're just
sewage anyway.

I can lose any of those things, and I still have Christ, and that's what's going
to last. That means no matter what I face in this world, I can still have joy
because I know I have gained the only thing that's really meaningful, the only
thing that is really going to last. Now, when we talk about gaining Christ, when
we talk about being found in him, let's just get practical for a second here.

Does this mean if I really have a passion to gain Christ, does this mean that I
should leave my job and just go sit on a mountain and get to know him? You might
be driving to work right now and it might sound very attractive. Does that mean
I should leave my job and just go sit on a mountain somewhere?

No. No. You don't leave where you are.

In fact, you don't have to leave where you are because he's already there. He is
with you where you are. You get to know Christ in the midst of the realities of
life.

You don't get to know him by trying to escape life somehow. You get to know him
in the midst of the realities of life. You gain Christ.

That's counting your losses gained. Then, buddy, it talks about a second thing
here. It talks about gaining righteousness.

That's right. Gaining righteousness. He says, get righteousness.

You know, if you surveyed people and asked them what are the 10 most important
things in your life, you probably wouldn't find the word righteousness showing
up on their list because, you know, for most folks, righteousness has kind of a
negative connotation. They usually think of self-righteousness, people who kind
of look down their noses and wave a bony finger at you if you do something
wrong. Well, Paul had found a different kind of righteousness and it's the kind
of righteousness that we all really need.

So what is this true righteousness? Well, true righteousness is not found in a
list of good deeds. True righteousness is being made right with God.

It's being declared not guilty before God. It is true spiritual wealth. Now, if
that's what righteousness is, true spiritual wealth, it's this declaration of
innocence before God.

Well, how do I get that? How do I get righteousness? How can I be made right in
God's eyes?

Well, we've got to get back to the basics, the basic principles of what it means
to follow Christ. It's the ABCs of knowing Jesus. If you don't get how to get
righteousness, then you're not going to get any of the things that Tom and I are
talking about.

You see, righteousness is something that you cannot earn. No amount of good
deeds or good intentions is going to get you righteousness. And righteousness is
not something that you can buy.

You know, you can be a great philanthropist. It's not going to make you
righteous. Righteousness is not something you can learn.

You can sit in a seminary and study the Bible 24 hours a day. That's not going
to bring you righteousness. The only way to get righteousness is to surrender to
it.

Because righteousness, being made right with God, that declaration of not being
guilty, that only comes through surrendering to God. It is His gift through
faith in Jesus Christ. That's the only way.

Verse 9 of this chapter, Paul says, "To be found in Him, in Christ, not having a
righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that kind of righteousness
which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God and is
by faith. " He's talking about here two different kinds of righteousness.
There's self-righteousness which comes from keeping the law.

In essence, it's saying, "Look what I did. " And then there's God's
righteousness that comes through faith. And it's saying, "Look what God has
done.

" It's trusting in what the Lord has done for us when He did for us what we
never could do for ourselves. And that's where Paul had made his mistake.
Because he thought that his human achievements, that those were the keys to
spiritual wealth, but as he tells us here in Philippians, he ended up feeling
bankrupt.

In spite of all of his achievements, he was spiritually bankrupt. Our
achievements should express our spiritual wealth, but they can never earn true
spiritual righteousness. The things we do for God are the result of what God has
done for us.

God's grace, faith in God's grace, that's where true righteousness comes from.
Let me give you a little spiritual accounting term. It's a funny little word.

It's the word imputed. And it means to credit something to someone else's
account. And that's what the Bible says Jesus did for us.

He imputed righteousness to us. It's as though we had an empty bank account and
He filled it with an unlimited supply. He imputed His righteousness and filled
our bankruptcy with His unlimited wealth of righteousness.

It's enough for all of eternity. That's what He's done for us. I'd like to close
us in prayer.

And as we come to a time of prayer, take a moment and search your heart again.
Do you consider the things that were profit, do you see them now as a loss
compared to what Christ has done for you? Are you counting those as losses?

And then are you counting Christ as true gain? Lord Jesus, we're thankful for
what You've done for us. Help us to have the value system of the kingdom of God
to see all of our great accomplishments as really in the final analysis just
worthless compared to what You have done for us.

Teach us how to surrender our lives to Your gift of righteousness and then to
live our lives for Your glory, not in an attempt to earn Your favor, but as a
response to having been given the gift of Your favor already. We thank You for
that and we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. Buddy, thanks for being with us these couple of days. I'll be back
tomorrow.

We'll be looking together at verses 10 to 11 of Philippians chapter 3.