Knowing and Growing - Philippians 3:7-11

Alright, so we're at Philippians 3, 7-11, and so one of the things that we have this short title is Knowing and Growing for this year-long elective. We have three months of looking at knowing the Lord, and one of the things I point out, we're only going to be going largely through New Testament passages.

Are there Old Testament passages about knowing the Lord? Yes, there are. In fact, if we had more time, we could get to them. So I will be sticking with New Testament passages, and this, of course, being one of them. But there are, in fact, Old Testament passages about knowing the Lord. And let's ask this question. Just something like Psalm 23.

Here's David, right? The Lord is my shepherd. So this is a getting, this is a knowing the Lord, right? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. So it's knowing the character of the Lord, knowing his care for me. So that would be just a quick example of knowing the Lord from the Old Testament.

Then we could bring up many more. So this one here, this is Philippians 3, 7-11. Let me read through it. Whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted lost for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so I may gain Christ, and may be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead." The larger context, can anybody summarize for us what is the book of Philippians? Tell us about the book of Philippians.

Alright, so one is the Apostle Paul is in prison, we'd actually call it house arrest. You're here in Rome, you're in this house that's rented, you're very likely tied to a Praetorian guard 24-7. You're under house arrest, and so Paul will write as a prisoner of the Lord and things of that sort. And so that's one thing.

What else can we say about the book of Philippians? Yes? The theme seems to be rejoicing in God. A very important point is rejoicing and related words grace and whatnot. Every single chapter is salted with those kinds of words. rejoicing, and grace, and joy, and that family of words. Yes, very good.

Now, here he is under house arrest. He can't go out and do the missionary work that he's been doing for years. As a matter of fact, it's been at least a couple of years since he's been able to do that, and probably a little bit longer. How else can we typify this book of Philippians? It probably comes to the recognition the typical Jewish Jew is not what he is anymore, and he sees himself as something in Christ, so he actually loses the pride that goes with being a descendant of Abraham to being identified with Christ.

Yes. We won't have the time to look at it, but the passage immediately before this, verses 1-6, He's telling them, he says, watch out for these, you know, Judaizers, is essentially the term that's come up. Watch out for these guys. And he gives actually very strong warnings about them.

His warning is a triple warning and every single letter in the key words in the warning start with a K. And so he has this warrant, and then he says, if I were to take pride in Judaism, and he lists seven things, by the way, what's the number seven, what does that tell us?

The number of perfection or completion? He has four things that he was born into and three things that were his accomplishment. So did he have anything to boast of in terms of Judaism? He did, if that was of any value. So when he goes into this passage, that's what we've got to look at. He's looking at, man, if anybody has got qualifications under Judaism, four things by being born into it, three things by my own accomplishment, he says, I've got it. I'm there. I've arrived. So he has himself laid out as, well, I'm exemplary. And that's where we come into this passage here. All the self-effort, everything that I thought I was worth. So he warned them about the Judaizers.

So here's what he says, and I'm quoting from the middle of page 1 there, Philippians 3.7, first verse in our passage.

But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted loss for the sake of Christ. So he's got all these spiritual advantages and prestige items under Judaism. And so, whatever things were gained to me, what does that tell you? Yeah, those before, those were really, really important to him. He was born under Judaism. He had all these different things that he was born into, and he had on top of four things he was born into under Judaism, he had on top of that three things that were accomplishments, attainments.

And what happens with our own accomplishments and attainments? The bottom line is, they don't hold up. They don't count, it doesn't matter. So whatever things were gained to me, did he consider them gained before? This is spiritual assets. Previously he would have said, I have these great spiritual assets. And these are all very important.

As a matter of fact, I've got seven of them, which is the Jewish number of completeness and totality. I've really, really got it. Nobody's got it better. Nobody better than me. Whatever things were, past tense, gained to me. Whatever things I used to consider as assets and values, At one point in time, Paul then saw, counted all his credentials under Judaism, and that's seven of them. I'll try to hold up seven and still hold the paper. And that's seven of them. These things were real assets. He would say these were significant values.

Paul used the same Greek word in Philippians 1.21 when he actually made a reverse assessment.

Philippians 1.21, for me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Same word. So there, what kind of assessment is he making? To die is to gain a great deal. By the way, if he died, would he retain the things under Judaism? No. It all goes away. It all goes away.

So, Philippians 1.21, the gain is heavenly. Paul believed that his Jewish advantages and prestige were earthly.

That's Philippians 3.7. So he had already come to the conclusion, the things that I have that are heavenly, that's gain. The things that I have that are earthly, So that's where we come to the top of page two here.

Philippians 3.7, but whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss. What's he doing? I've counted as loss. Well, it's not so much that it puts him in minus territory, but There are no values. Zero it out.

And what's interesting here, he uses a term that was often used in accounting in those days. And what's interesting is to look at some of those accounting terms in the New Testament. Here's Jesus on the cross, and what does he say on the cross among his last words? To tell us, die, it's all paid. Perfect tense. Done deal. Right? It is finished is the way the translations often go, but it's actually an accounting term. Yes.

And I think also he was effectively saying that nothing in Judaism. I mean, he didn't leave a crack in the door or the window at all. He closed it all off and said nothing. And that's huge to these Judaizers and the people who were trying to bring back aspects of the law and all those other sort of things.

I mean, he closed the door. I just told him. So, yeah, you look at this He's making an accounting assessment. In several of Paul's letters, he uses the Greek word logizomai. Let's back off to what that means. This is Romans 6.11. You must reckon or consider. One way to look at that is you must figure it out. Calculate. And so that's one.

1 Corinthians 4.1 would be another example where he uses that same word, same verb form even. You must reckon, consider, count it out, that we are stewards of the mysteries of God. And here's one that's probably a surprise.

Philippians 4.8. Whatever's true, whatever's lovely, whatever's worthy of praise, let your mind dwell. That's also to get some idea. So it isn't dwell, like sit there and hover on the thought. Let your mind calculate and consider whatever's right, whatever's true, whatever's lovely and worthy of praise, and reach a logical conclusion.

This is a similar use of an accounting term. I once valued this, and that's what they do in accounting, right? I've got a car, and it's sitting in the parking lot, and it's a company asset, and it's this old, and it started off with this value, and I'm writing off the value over time, right? So it's worth this much, and I expect that unless it gets wrecked, right, that it'll be worth this much next year, etc. And so there's an accounting of how am I going to value things. But there's also a point of writing something off, isn't there?

One of the things they had in engineering school was engineering economy. One of the things they talked about was a sunk cost. And the example they gave was a ship that sank. Okay, here's a ship. It sank with a bunch of cargo, but it's down there and it's irretrievable. How much value do you put on it? Zero. It gets written off because you can't get it back up. The stuff that was in it is wrecked. The ship is gone and whatever value it had in its own as a ship and whatever the contents were, we now must write it off as zero. That's what he's saying here. He says, here is this set of things, seven of them, and I once considered them very valuable. I now have to write them off. I now have to write them off. Yeah, Jim?

You know, I get the idea that Paul, if he wasn't an only child, he was at least the firstborn, because he seems to me like such a an extreme type A type of person to accomplish all these things under Pharisaism and come out way ahead of all his peers. And now he's taking a complete reversal of course. And write it all off. Who else but Jesus Christ would do that? Yeah, and write it all off.

So let's look at the bullets in the middle of page 2. Paul has suffered the total loss of all things. One question is, he looks, the place of value is there in the heavenlies in Christ, right? What am I going to take through heaven's gates, so to speak? What am I going to take there from here? Everything that's going from here to there is what God is going to take from here to there. And even this body will be transformed and translated. It won't go as is. And I say hallelujah, right? I don't want it going into heaven as is. So God's going to take me spiritually.

He's already done a major work that I'm spending decades catching up with. But He's going to take me spiritually and physically to heaven and nothing outside of what he has done, is doing, or will do, is going to matter. Things you have financially, possessions, accomplishments. Well, we already know that any material thing is just going to stay right here. It's all going to be burned up anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And it's all left. And so there's this kind of spiritual fantasy that people can have that things here have a spiritual value that they don't.

I went to seminary, I got a doctorate. Is that going to go through heaven's gates? As a matter of fact, it's only what I've done while walking in fellowship with the Lord and trusting in Him that's going to matter of that at all. And even here at Holly Hills, it is only what's done in trust for him, for all of us. That's going to matter, right? So Paul isn't concerned about having suffered the total loss of all things.

Why? Is he going and thrashing and wringing his hands and extremely concerned that he suffered a loss? I think it took him a little while to realize. that everything was different, that those things were worthless. Yeah, I think you're right, that there's this kind of almost a shock of, oh, I've invested everything here, and I now find that it's not worth a thing. And that there's a certain disorientation that happens with that, but also revaluing and coming to a place of, of seeing what's of value.

Let's ask this question. How long, by the time Paul wrote Philippians, about how long had he been a believer? What, about 20 years? Yeah, a little bit more than that. About 25 years, maybe a year or two longer than that. That was about it. He'd been a believer and he didn't know at the outset everything that he knew And it had been revealed to him by the time he writes this.

Did he know the day when he was a believer and he went to Ananias' house on Straight Street and met with Ananias on Straight Street in Damascus, which is probably now a disaster. Anyway, so here he goes there. Did he know that he was seated with Christ in the heavenlies? Did he know, as Philippians says, that he had a heavenly citizenship?

He didn't know any of that. So he's coming to realize these things and increasingly saying, oh, all that stuff I invested my life in. I went around killing Christians and making sure that everybody else carried out that sentence because of what I valued. And it's all worthless.

Yeah. In that situation, it would be interesting to be able to go back and look at the family dynamics in that, his extended family and all that they had put into him and how they cherished what he knew and what he was and all that stuff and then he comes back this crazy guy who brings all this other stuff that what's happened to him and what shall we do with him? Yeah. Yeah. Sam?

Okay, this knowing that you're talking about today, is that mainly gnosis or is it a way to... Yeah, this is an experiential knowing. This is an experiential knowing. Good question, because there are different words for knowing. This one is an experiential knowing, getting to know by experience.

As opposed to, I got that, I know that, I'm all the way up to speed. Or, let's put it this way. Suppose I could say, I have studied Christ for decades and I know all about Him. Does that relate to this word? No, it's something entirely different. There are people who have spent decades studying Christ, but don't know Him. There are people who have spent decades studying Christ, but are not getting to know Him.

I'd be interested in knowing how much he learned when he was in the desert of Korea for three years. Because he was in constant communication with Christ. The Holy Spirit revealed many things to him throughout his lifetime. But those three years were foundational, I believe.

When I was in high school, we had moved up to the farm country. our family had, but we had the church where we would come from down in Palo Alto had sent up a team of people to teach Vacation Bible School at the church building where a new pastor was beginning that week. So this new pastor comes to this church and we've already got arranged, here's this vacation Bible school being taught, and a whole team of people there, and I was kind of working with them and cooperating with them. As it turns out, by the end of the week that pastor became a believer. Fascinating, right?

I recall reading another pamphlet that my dad had many decades ago. He says, I was a pastor for 50 years and then I became saved. So yeah, just being a pastor, just going to seminary, just having degrees, it does not equal knowing the Lord, it does not equal being saved, it does not equal knowing in the sense that we're looking at here, experientially, progressively knowing Him. By the way, can an unbeliever experientially, progressively know the Lord?

No, there is a moment in time. They have to come to a place of knowing Him by way of introduction, which is believing Christ died for your sins, was buried and rose again, and therefore be saved. It has to happen that way. But academically, it's like almost anything. You can study and determine a lot about about a particular thing or person. But what you're talking about is to be born again and spiritually to understand the benefits of and the new life that you have in Christ. That you can't attain.

There are people out there who study and read a lot and that's what New Age is. Because they're constantly coming up with new things and You know what I'm saying? And that's where the metaphors and the allegories and all these other things really come into effect. Because they think they know. Right, and so there are people who will talk about God and talk about things that sound spiritual.

Everything needs to be biblically evaluated and I'm not necessarily equipped to do that. Okay, so let's look at the next part here. So all these things that Paul values, the all things, he counts them as rubbish. And the best equivalent English word on careful evaluation is likely dung. There's actually a range of possible meanings that that word has. It's not used often in Greek literature. But probably dung is the best translation of that word on thorough study, it draws out the idea of revulsion without bringing out profanity or crudeness. So how does Paul value this stuff? It's manure.

So all those values are so that Paul may gain Christ. So, let's ask this question, isn't Paul already a believer at this point? Yeah, we've said that he has been for something like 25 years. So, to put it in poetic pattern here, as we have on the bottom of page 2, more than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish, so that I may gain Christ."

Didn't they have a, going back to the word dung, didn't they have a dung gate, and actually that connects to the sacrifices, right? Yes. Because of all the things that were of non-value, or of unworth, They took those and threw them out into this garbage place, right?

Yeah, so you have just south of the temple, and just slightly to the west, you have a place called the Dung Gate, and it's called that now. And it was a place, because you'd have animals in there, right? You'd carry out your dung and other refuse out that gate. That was the designated gate. Here's where you'd get rid of the stuff.

And so that was the picture that he had, not necessarily what I would have growing up on the farm. This is a very Jewish term. It was, by the way, however, used among the non-Jewish people as well. OK, counting in rubbish, dung, whatever you want to call it. And again, I think his intent is not to be profane or crude, but just simply to say it's not really worth a thing. At best, an equivalent term might be table scraps. So anyway, going on to the top of page three.

So in this poetic pattern, the experiential knowing Christ Jesus the Lord of me, in the more literal translation, is parallel to so that I may gain Christ. So we can restate this as the experiential knowing Christ Jesus, the Lord of me, is how one may gain Christ.

So now, so here's Philippians 3.9 in poetic form, and that I may be found in him not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but having that which is to faith in Christ, that is, having the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith." This is a more thorough explanation of what he said, that which is to faith in Christ.

So what was his righteousness under Judaism? Yeah, and first of all, I'm born a descendant of Abraham. That just puts me in a special standing that you can't have the equal of that. So that is where it starts, but then what tribe was he? He was of the tribe of Benjamin, right? He says, I'm of the tribe, the one tribe of the others that remain faithful to the tribe of Judah. So, I'm of the right tribe, I'm of the right descendancy, I was born into all these things, I had attainments, I was trained under Gamaliel, I just had it the best of the best. I was born into it, I attained it, I had it, but he throws that all away for what?

Instead of the righteousness as defined by Judaism, You've got to memorize all 613 laws and all the other ones that surround it. What's work has 39 different considerations as to what's work, plus a list of exceptions. By the way, healing on the Sabbath was not one of the list of exceptions.

So that's why Jesus got in trouble. So now, righteousness that comes through what? faith in Christ. Through faith in Christ, and that's it. Does any part of the law help? No. What about the ten? No. I mean, now he's gathering together with believers and they're meeting on the first day of the week. Sounds like he's not necessarily even doing the Sabbath thing all the time.

Righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith and no other way. If you're just thinking that it's all self-righteousness, but you're thinking of what Paul had before, and maybe some of the people, the lesser people, still had the same kind of self-righteousness. But with God's righteousness, it equalizes the whole thing, doesn't it? It all becomes the same. You don't have to want better than the other one, which is all self-righteous.

Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. This is a complete, you know, all that stuff that I counted really valuable, it's now down to zero. I've written it off. All this stuff that previously I didn't even comprehend, and I thought, well, this is so worthless that I'm going to kill the people who value Christ. That's how worthless it is. You guys are so awful to depend on Christ for your righteousness that I think you ought to be dead. And I'm going to do everything I can to make sure that you are. He's got this radical reorientation that starts all in one shocking day to come to a place, All that stuff that I counted as so valuable and was passionate about, write it off.

And now, all that stuff that I went around trying to kill people for, they valued something I didn't. But guess what? I'm where they're at now. So then we have, on the bottom part of page three, Only righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith in Christ may be found in Christ and only in Him.

So Philippians 3.10 and 11, that I may know Him and the power of the resurrection of Him, that's my somewhat awkward but a little bit more literal translation, and the fellowships of the sufferings of His, being conformed to the death of His, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead ones. so that I may know him." Doesn't Paul already know him? In the sense of having believed?

I mean, what did he ask on the road to Damascus? Who are you, Lord? I am, they go, and me, I am, I, capital, A, capital, M, capital, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. Do you know that Paul, not only is that recorded there in Acts 9, but Paul repeats that conversation twice later in Acts.

This really grabbed it. Have you ever had a memorable event where you just remember everything that happened? For Paul, it was one of those times. He would tell the story. It was the most important thing in his life ever. For the rest of his life it mattered.

Before that he was saying, who are you Lord? Yes? Don't you think he was hearing about that Christ resurrected and that all the people that saw him, and he visited these people, and he heard all these stories, and everybody was telling him this. But it's like, at least in me, until I see it, or until I experience it, there's always that little bit of a question of a doubt. And when Jesus was talking to him here, and he said, I am Jesus, it was like, wow. This is all true. I'm sure he believed it before, but this is like epi-belief.

So let's read at the bottom there. This is Acts 9, 1-6 and I say Acts 22, 1-8 and 26, 12-18. Those are the times later in Acts where he repeats what happened and what he said and what he heard there on the road to Damascus. So Acts 9, 1-6, Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest. and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus so that if he found any belonging to the way, both men and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.

So let's stop right there. So what is Paul intending to do? Does he want to find these people? Kill and persecute. Press and murder. He wanted them dead. He did not want some mild treatment. Don't do that again. These guys, I want them just flat dead gone. And that was his mindset. Why? Because they didn't believe in the very things that he later said were of no value. Yes, and so why?

He valued the things that he had in Judaism. And he valued them very highly. more highly than these people's lives, and he valued them. Listing these as seven, he thought he had totality and completeness of righteousness under the law, both by what he was born into and what he attained to. Gamaliel was probably the foremost and most famous rabbi of the first century, and he had about a thousand disciples. And Paul was one of them.

We're going to see Gamaliel show up a couple of times as we go through the book of Acts here. So then, next part. As he was traveling, it happened that he was approaching Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him, and he fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? He said to them, Who are you, Lord? Here's again, does he know him? No. He said, I am, capital letters, egoi me, Jesus whom you are persecuting, but get up and enter the city and it will be told you what you must do.

So, when the saints in the body of Christ are being persecuted, how does Christ view that persecution of the saints? As himself. Yeah, and I think this is what kind of the middle of this Page 4 is an attempt to get across. Our tendency can be, he was persecuted, but now he's just having a great time up there in heaven, seated next to the Father. Nobody's bothering him or harassing him. You don't have any crazy Sadducees asking stupid questions. You don't have any Pharisees making accusations. Rome can't touch him. Everything is cool up there.

But I'm down here and I'm having a rough time of it. So our perception can be that. People can even get mad at God. But is that how Christ views what we're going through down here? The answer is no. And what we see here is Saul, Saul, not why are you persecuting my followers. Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting He takes their persecution personally. I would say very personally. You're right. Exactly right.

And that's one of the reasons for the term, the body of Christ. Here's Colossians 1.24, Now I rejoice in my sufferings, whose sufferings? Paul's, in this case, my sufferings, lowercase m, for your sake, sake of the Colossians, and in my flesh I do my share on behalf of his body, which is the church, in filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Now was there anything that was not quite full and complete and total in what Christ suffered? So what's going on here? Is Christ's suffering deficient?

Okay, so did Paul mess up here in Colossians 1.24 or what's going on here? The bottom line is it is not that anything Christ suffered on earth was anywhere short of what it should have been. But it is rather that the total sufferings of Christ and the body of Christ are not complete until the day of the rapture. Not complete until the day of the rapture, because the sufferings of Christ did not end when Christ died and was buried and resurrected. Yes? Yeah, I was thinking about this too, and I was wondering, he says that he is our life, that we are alive by faith in him, that he is living in us. So when we suffer, it's him?

I think a lot of times, he's there and I'm here kind of mentality, where here's the Apostle Paul, he's writing the Church of Corinth, terribly confused people. Chapter 3 says the Holy Spirit, you are a temple corporately of the Holy Spirit. Chapter 6, you are a temple individually of the Holy Spirit. Are you in Christ? And is Christ in you?

There is a union there that is complete and intimate so that what we experience and are going through, even what we take the Lord through in this body, He's brought along with it. He's not just somewhere up there kind of looking down on us and kind of delegating the Christian life to us. and to think of us as being like a toe or something. Yeah, we're connected, intimately connected, and in fact, multiple ways.

We went through Romans 6 and we said, you know, we have, I'm in the Spirit and the Spirit's in me. I am in Christ and Christ is in me. Excuse me, Romans 8, I'm in the Spirit, the Spirit's in me, I'm in Christ and Christ is in me. If I put John 17 in there, I'm in the Father and the Father's in me.

Now, do those all mean the same thing? No, they don't. But those positional statements have a practical outworking. God is not up there and just looking down on me and delegating things and saying, hey, when you get back here, I'll see how you did. But everything that is going on in our lives here has an ongoing connection to Him. And Christ says the things that He says, and He has Paul write the things that He says, because Christ does take it personally, He continues to take it personally, all the way up to the day the Lord calls us home. So here's Philippians 3.10b and c, and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to the death of his. Finally, the Apostle Paul finishes the passage, but not the book, with this attaining to the resurrection from the dead.

So it's Philippians 3.10.11, that I may know him, power of the resurrection of him, the fellowship of the sufferings of his, and being conformed to the death of his, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead once." So Paul's use of in order that here is not that I've got to go through these things in order that I'm going to be resurrected. That's not his purpose here. But rather, Paul means to tell his readers and us that these processes are present ones in anticipation of resurrection.

Now, what if I were to come to you and I say, you know, all this conception of our going home to be with the Lord, you know, someday and hopefully someday soon, that's all an illusion. And we're just going to stay here and stay here and stay here and stay here. Any volunteers? No, that's going to be pretty rough, isn't it? We're not going to stay here and stay here and stay here and stay here.

And there are people teaching that. I remember there was a kind of a cult group in the San Francisco Bay Area when I was down there. And they taught that a true child of God never dies. And so if one of their members died, they said, well, he wasn't a true child of God. And of course, this group dwindled. That doesn't work out very well. So anyway, as we look at it, no, we're not going to stick around here forever. It isn't going to go on and on. We're looking for what's next.

And whatever is going on here, even the things that we go through that are rough, tough duty, that are a matter of being conformed to the image of Christ, Romans 8, 28 and 29. the various things that God uses in the way of circumstances, it's aimed towards what? It's aimed towards life after we're resurrected. Would there be any value in being conformed to the image of Christ, but then when you're all done here, it all just goes away? No. And we answer no, and the reason is because this is a getting ready kind of place. Everything is about getting ready for what's next. So this is a getting ready kind of place. Ready for what?

For eternity with the Lord. So as we talk about, notice twice in this passage it talks about knowing Him. Knowing Him. And it's a progressively knowing Him. Yes. Yes. It's all with that as anticipation, not in order that meaning I have to go through these things so that I can be resurrected. which is sometimes how you take those words, but in this case it's all for the purpose of, all to the end of, that I'm going to be resurrected and all these things being conformed to his death now is simply looking towards resurrection. There's value in it now because of the resurrection.

If it was simply a matter of, you know, you're going to be conformed to his death, and conformed to his death, and boy, that's just going to go on forever. So this is really an amazing insight, but he twice in this passage directly talks about knowing the Lord experientially now. experientially now. And that's why I looked ahead to this elective, not because we just cover a subject, but because this is about knowing the Lord, and really everything else we're doing here is about that. We'll go through classes on discernment and apologetics, and we'll go through classes on this and that, but it's all about knowing the Lord. Going back to the end filling up, so what you said and relating it to what you wrote here, then that has something to do with the fact that before the foundation of the earth, before the foundation of the world, things were determined that are now being played out.

And part of the salvation process is suffering. Now, you say part of the salvation process is suffering. Is our suffering a necessary requirement that we be saved? No. So when we say part of the salvation process is suffering, you've got to suffer or else you're just not going to be saved.

But it's going to happen. But it's going to happen as a result of the fact that you're saved. Only because we are part of the Church. Yes, that's right. Let's ask this, do we have any accidental trials? Is God going, wow, I wasn't ready for that one.

The last step of the Beatitudes was that you would be persecuted. Yes, and that also was promised because the Beatitudes are not directed to the church. However, the disciples were told what? That they would be persecuted in the church context. And in fact, we're going to see an act pretty soon here that the disciples are rejoicing because what the Lord told them came about. We were in fact persecuted, and they're rejoicing because of it. The Lord told us this was going to happen. Not because they were persecuted, but because they realized that they really were accepted as believers. And that helped prove it to them. Imagine the disciples' mindset as they're coming gradually to realize, you know, the Lord told us this stuff, and we're kind of catching up to it. We didn't want to hear it at first.

Here it is, the Last Supper. Jesus has got hours before he's going to be crucified, not very long at all before he's going to be arrested. And they're arguing at that time about which one of them is the greatest. I mean, this is stunning. So these guys are really going through shock, but as they start to get it, and we're going to see today in the Acts chapter 2 passage some more, these guys are really starting to get it, and as they, oh, that's what the Lord meant, they saw the full extent of what the Lord was passing on to them, and increasingly so. And even the fact, yeah, we were persecuted, and rejoicing in that, not Peter saying, isn't it great that I'm the greatest? So what they were arguing about there at the Last Supper, they realized, no, that's not it. But the Lord told us we'd be persecuted, and hallelujah. It's happening. Just like He said. The Holy Spirit was given, just like He said. You'll receive power, the Holy Spirit's come upon you, just like He said. So this is what they're rejoicing in.

So they're getting to know the Lord in that Acts context, and we have the very opportunity ourselves to experientially know the Lord moment by moment, growing in that. I think they're seeing both sides of that. John 15-20 says, remember the word I spoke to you, a slave is not greater than his master. If they persecute me, they will also persecute you. If they catch my word, they will also keep yours.

So they're seeing persecution, but they're also seeing a lot of people Yeah, is it all bad news? No, I mean, essentially the fulfillment of warnings about you're going to be persecuted. What if Christ didn't tell them you're going to be persecuted? What would they think of the persecution?

Yeah, I'm doing something wrong. Man, I sure wasn't prepared for this. Man, there must be something really haywire. I didn't expect this at all. They would run from it. Yeah. Suppose we sent our soldiers into Afghanistan and said, hey, it's going to be a cakewalk. You guys are going to go in there and everybody's just going to run from you, right? Would that be a good thing to tell them? Not at all.

What you're going to do is you're going to tell them, look, here's the circumstances and this is what you're stepping into, and here are the hazards out there, and here's how you deal with them. So you want to tell them the truth, and that's what Christ did. He says, here are the hazards, but here are the great things that the Lord is going to do.

And so anticipated, be ready for it. They didn't know all the details about how it was going to happen. There were certainly things that they were constantly surprised by. But the Lord gave them things to expect and anticipate. And so they said, yep, it's happening like the Lord told us. They cautioned and warned. Let's pray. I can tell Brian is just ready to go. I don't think I've got tinnitus or something. Okay.

Lord, we thank you for your word. We thank you for this passage here where Paul speaks specifically twice about getting to know you. also the values that we have in knowing you. We thank you for your word and what you've laid out. We thank you for everything, Lord, that you've presented and we can look forward to as we continue through your word and look at other passages that shed light on knowing you. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.