“Paul said: ‘I count everything as loss’”
Philippians 3:8
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
The airline had mangled her luggage. Her purse had disappeared. And instead of entering the airport through an enclosed corridor like she expected, Debbie Pelliccia of Round Rock, Texas stumbled off the plane into the pouring rain. She was drenched from head to toe and far from home with no money, no identification, and no dry clothes.
Under normal circumstances, she would have been furious. But that night, it didn’t matter. She was alive.
Flight 1420 was supposed to have left Dallas-Fort Worth, bound for Little Rock, Arkansas, at a little after 9 o’clock that night, but it was delayed, and couldn’t fly until almost 11. Then shortly after takeoff, a dispatcher informed the crew that thunderstorms could affect their landing. He said to get on the ground before things got worse.
And things got worse. As the storm approached from the northwest, lightning flashed across the sky. Captain Buschmann announced to the passengers that there’d be “quite a light show off the left-hand side of the aircraft.” He said to his first officer Michael Origel, “We got to get over there quick.” As soon as they began their descent, Origel said, “I think we’re going to be okay.”
But just as soon as he said it, the wind not only changed direction, it picked up speed. Even worse, heavy rain began to fall, and visibility was down to three thousand feet.
Now on final approach, the pilots started the landing checklist, completing all the items except for one--they forgot to arm the spoilers, what would help keep the plane on the ground. But at 460 feet, they were committed to landing, no matter what.
At the last second, they managed to wrestle the plane in line with the runway. First Officer Origel said, “We’re down. We’re sliding!” Moments later, they skidded off the runway at a hundred miles an hour. Then they bounced across the grass and crashed into an elevated metal pier, breaking into three pieces.
One hundred and ten people were injured. Eleven, including the captain, lost their lives.
Later, Debbie said, “When I walked off that plane, I walked off with nothing, then I stopped and thought, I have everything.”
So it was with the apostle Paul. Please turn in your Bible to page 1249 as I read the words of our text. Philippians chapter 3, beginning at verse 1: “Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you. Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh. For we are the circumcision, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh--though I myself have reason for confidence in the flesh also. If anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order 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 from God that depends on faith--that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
If you’ve been with us for the past couple of weeks, you’ll probably remember that Paul’s letter to the Philippians is one of his four “prison” epistles, letters he wrote while he was a prisoner in Rome. And out of those four epistles--Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon--this one, his letter to the Philippians, is the very last one, written just thirty years after Jesus died and rose again.
But this letter is different than the other three. This time, he didn’t respond to some particular problem or crisis. Instead, he wrote it to express his affection for them and to thank them for their love and support.
As one commentator put it: “Paul knew, as did the Philippians, that true joy comes only through humble faith in the saving work of Jesus Christ, joining ourselves in harmony with His followers, and serving others in the name of Christ. This was the life experienced by the Philippian believers, and it’s a life available to us today.”
And what a beautiful book it is, for it’s here that we find words like these. Chapter 1: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Chapter 2: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” And chapter 4: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”
Now here in chapter 3, he begins to draw his letter to an end. So he writes in verse 1: “Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is no trouble to me and is safe for you.”
Then he goes on to warn them in verse 2: “Look out for the dogs,” (that’s the unholy, the impure, the deceitful workers and false apostles). “Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh.”
Then in verse 4, he takes it one step further. I’ll read from a more contemporary translation: “If others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more! For I was circumcised when I was eight days old, having been born into a pure-blooded Jewish family, a branch of the tribe of Benjamin. So if there was ever a real Jew, I am one of them! What’s more, I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to Jewish law. And zealous? Yes, in fact, I harshly persecuted the church. And I obeyed Jewish law so carefully that no one could ever accuse me of any fault.”
Like a page in a ledger book, Paul tallied up a long list of both “Assets” and “Liabilities.” And on that list, he added one after another after another. In effect, he said, “If there was ever anyone who lived better or worked harder, it was me.”
Did it matter? Not a chance. As he wrote in verse 7: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Now I have to stop for just a moment, because it’s just too important to miss. It’s a little word that’s so unique, you won’t find it anywhere else in all of the Bible. In the original language, it’s the word, “skubalon.”
Now you could look at a lot of translations, and most all of them choose to use rather socially acceptable words. For example, our English Standard Version uses the word, “rubbish.” “For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish…” The Contemporary English Version uses the word, “garbage.” The New Heart English Bible uses the word, “refuse.” And the Holman Christian Standard Bible uses the word, “filth.”
And that’s all pretty good. But only a handful of translations are brave enough to use another word, like the Aramaic Bible in Plain English: “For Christ’s sake, I have lost everything, and I consider it all as a dung heap, that I may gain the Messiah.”
If you would, I’d like you to go with me, back in time, to a place and a time long before the advent of the automobile, let’s say, New York City in the mid-1800’s.
Now it’s easy to say that none of us likes the exhaust and pollution of thousands of trucks and buses and automobiles. But imagine, instead, two hundred thousand horses transporting goods and services through narrow, busy, city streets, leaving behind five million pounds of manure(!) each and every day. Now we all can picture mounds of snow piled up alongside the road. Imagine what two hundred thousand horses might leave behind!
That’s what “skubalon” really means!
Yet what does Paul say? Verse 7: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as ‘skubalon,’ I count them as rubbish, filth, garbage, manure, in order that I may gain Christ.”
Now if you don’t mind, let me press it just a little bit further.
Picture the lowly dung beetle. As far as we know, there are some five thousand different kinds of them. Now with all due respect and appreciation for the benefit they provide for us and for the world around us, do you know what they do all day? They push around dung. In fact, in one night, some species can push as much as two hundred and fifty times their own weight in dung! That’s a lot of dung!
And unfortunately, there are a lot of people who do that too--all day, every day, doing what will never really matter, pushing around a big pile of dung.
But Paul would have none of it. As he said in verse 8: “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 from God that depends on faith--that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”
“That I may know Him,” he wrote. In effect, he said, “I don’t just want to get an ‘A’ on the theology exam, and get all the answers right on Jesus. That’s not enough for me. I want to know Him. I want to know everything about Him. I want to have a covenant relationship with Him. Even more, I want to know Him the way His Father knows Him, with perfect love and perfect harmony, today, tomorrow, and forever.”
Born in January of 1797, Edward Mote grew up poor and not at all religious. His parents owned a bar. Later in life he said, “My Sundays were spent in the streets. So ignorant was I that I didn’t know that there was a God.”
When he was sixteen, his boss invited him to a local church to hear a popular preacher preach. And when he heard him speak, from that moment on, his life was never the same. And though he spent much of his life as a cabinet maker, he also wrote more than a hundred Christian hymns.
The most famous of all goes like this: “My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus’ blood and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on Jesus’ name. On Christ the Solid Rock I stand, all other ground is sinking sand.”
As Paul wrote to the Philippians: “But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
Our hearts are filled, dear Father, with deep love and appreciation for all that You have done. Help us to give up the things that don’t matter, counting them all as loss, that we may rest on You and You alone, for Jesus’ sake. Amen