So in just a couple weeks, I'm gonna be on a plane
with about 10 other villagers, village people,
and we're gonna be heading down
to the Central American country of Guatemala.
Anyone else ever been to Guatemala?
No?
Okay, didn't think so.
But we're heading down to Guatemala
to hook up with our missions partner down there.
Village has been supporting and connected
to Village of Hope down in Guatemala.
And so we're gonna tell you a little bit more
about that trip in the next two weeks.
You'll hear a lot more details.
But for me to be able to go on that trip
and the others to go on that trip,
I've gotta have a very important document with me.
You guys know what that document is?
I have a passport.
A passport, right?
I've gotta have a passport.
Now a passport is this official government issued document,
right, that identifies me and my nationality
and allows me to internationally travel.
It allows for an individual to enter
and leave a foreign country and provides evidence
that that holder has a right to return
to the country of their origin.
And I don't know if you guys have ever done this,
but inside that passport, if you have a passport,
there's some text written inside that front cover
of the US passport.
And these words are written right there
from the Secretary of State and it says this.
The Secretary of State of the United States of America
hereby requests all whom it may concern
to permit the citizen national of the United States
named herein to pass without delay or hindrance
and in case of need to give all lawful aid and protection.
So basically this states that when I travel,
I'm an American citizen
and that I am under the US protection
and therefore as a US citizen under its protection,
this document, the passport, actually acts
as an official diplomatic request.
Our country is asking another country a diplomatic request
and their request is, hey, allow him to travel
and provide for him any assistance
and protection he might need.
That's pretty extraordinary.
And a small little booklet there,
you're carrying diplomatic documents to another country.
I was born a citizen of the US,
my parents were as well and theirs and so on.
In fact, we've traced both sides of my parents back
to the mid to early 1600s.
So we were here on the East Coast
before the US was the US.
But not everyone has that history.
Not everyone was born in the US.
Some folks who are from elsewhere,
they come and they want to become oftentimes
a naturalized citizen.
They wanna become a citizen of the US.
And to do so, they have to go through a series of classes
and interviews, they've got classes on history and language,
all kinds of things related to what it means to be a citizen.
And once they're approved, their citizenship is approved,
they have to, the final step is an oath of allegiance.
An oath of allegiance and that oath of allegiance
for those seeking citizenship begins with these words.
I hereby declare on oath that I absolutely
and entirely renounce and abjure,
that's not a word we use every day,
abjure all allegiances and fidelity
to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty
of whom or which I have heretofore
been a subject or citizen.
As though in other words,
once you become a citizen of one country,
you become a foreigner of all others.
To become a citizen of the US is to forsake
all other allegiances and ties.
To become a citizen of one country,
you become a foreigner of all others.
To be a Christian is to make that very change.
It is a move from being a citizen of the world
to a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.
You belong to the kingdom of heaven,
you are a citizen of the kingdom of heaven
and the kingdom of heaven is not some distant future reality
but is to be experienced and lived
through its citizens today.
And this morning we're gonna look out of Philippians
chapter three, beginning in verse 17.
If you have your Bibles, feel free to turn over there.
Philippians chapter three, beginning in verse 17.
Paul in the book of Philippians is writing to a church
in a town called Philippi.
It's a Macedonian city named after Alexander the Great's
father but at this time it's a part of the Roman Empire
and it's located about 800 miles from Rome itself.
And so the people of Philippi would be very familiar
with the idea of being a part of a kingdom
about consistently hearing news of the kingdom
and what's going on and even as many of these towns
were familiar with, they would eagerly await
for the chance to see the emperor, the Caesar,
make his rounds and his trips through
the different towns and countries.
Philippians chapter three, verse 17 begins,
join in imitating me, brothers and sisters,
and pay careful attention to those who live according
to the example you have in us.
For I have often told you and now say again with tears
that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Their end is destruction, their God is their stomach,
their glory is in their shame
and they are focused on earthly things.
Our citizenship is in heaven and we eagerly wait
for a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
He will transform the body of our humble condition
into the likeness of his glorious body
by the power that enables him to subject everything
to himself.
This is God's word.
We're gonna work through a couple of points.
If you're taking notes, the first point
that I'll have you write down is be imitators.
Be imitators.
Paul begins Philippians chapter three by saying,
join in imitating me, brothers and sisters,
and pay careful attention to those who live according
to the example you have in us.
As Christians, we're not meant to walk alone.
We are designed to live and learn and walk in community.
There's a really fancy word called koinonia,
it's a Greek word that translates to the English word
fellowship and we oftentimes talk about fellowship
and lots of churches will put a sign up that says koinonia
or something somewhere, right?
Koinonia fellowship, right?
But fellowship doesn't mean donuts, coffee,
and some gossip.
Yeah, fellowship doesn't mean we shoot the breeze
and we talk about the weather.
The koinonia, the Greek word for fellowship
means to work alongside each other,
as in the family business.
To fellowship is to have a common goal or purpose
to which we are all working toward.
And to be a Christian means that we don't walk alone,
we are designed to walk and live in community
in koinonia fellowship, working towards the common purpose
of honoring and glorifying God through our lives.
That's our job, that's our purpose, that's our aim.
In many of the trades, a beginner will oftentimes
have to first complete an apprenticeship
before they're qualified or cleared to work unsupervised.
They carefully work alongside a journeyman or a master
to hone their skills and learn,
partly because these trades, they're so complex
that you can't just learn them in a classroom,
you can't just sit down with a book and then go to town.
You have to be on the job and see how it's done.
And apprenticeships in the trades oftentimes
take several years to complete.
As Christians who are learning to surrender to Christ
and learning to follow Him every day,
we have something to learn from the Lord
and we have something like the trades have.
They call it apprenticeship, we call it discipleship.
Discipleship.
Discipleship is the process of apprenticing with Jesus
by learning from and imitating the faith and life
of more mature believers.
It's always been that way and it continues to be that way.
If Jesus was present here, I'm sure all of us
would be walking around after Him
and learning from Him, right?
But in His stead, He's placed mature believers in our midst
for us to grow and learn from in order to walk with Christ.
And it is Christ in them that is leading us to Christ.
Dallas Willard, the Christian philosopher and author,
has said, discipleship is the process of becoming
who Jesus would be if He were you.
We need examples, people who are striving to live
as Christ would to help guide us in that journey.
We need examples.
And Paul began by saying, imitate me, brothers and sisters,
as I've imitated Christ and pay careful attention
to others who live like me so that you can walk as they walk.
The reformer John Calvin also said
that true followers of Christ walk after the Lord
and walk after the pattern of godly men.
By following them, we are not led to men,
but to Christ, the supreme example.
And you can trade in men and women where he said men.
We are not led to the men or women,
but we're led to Christ through the pattern of their life.
They lead us to Christ.
Every single one of us needs discipleship.
Everyone needs a pattern to imitate.
And Paul says to the church in Philippi,
imitate him and those who pattern their life
and faith after him.
And we already know this, actually.
This is how we teach children, right?
We teach children all the time by what we do in front of them
and have them imitate.
Most of what children do in the beginning is imitation.
They do what daddy does.
They do what mommy does.
There's one study that says 50 to 80% of all behavioral
and social skills and values are shaped by the environment
that children grow up in, not by what they're taught.
50 to 80% of what they know,
they got by watching examples around them.
The church, we need godly patterns.
And here at Village, we have opportunities for discipleship.
We have what you might call one to one,
one to some, and one to many.
So in our Sunday morning service,
this is kind of a one to many.
I'm speaking and you guys are just listening.
We're not having a dialogue here.
But you can get together with lots of folks all together
and hear the same word and then that can cause
all kinds of conversations to happen
and all kinds of life change to happen.
One to many.
And then there's one to some, we call those small groups.
Small groups gather throughout the week
and you can go and process the things that you're learning
or the things that God is teaching you in your life
or the things that you're struggling with.
And other believers more mature than you
can speak truth into your life,
help you along the way, pray for you.
And so, and then there's always the one to one, right?
Find another believer who's more mature.
See if you can't regularly connect with them.
See if you can't grow in relationship
and follow the pattern of their faith.
Watch how they pray.
Watch how they share the gospel.
Watch how they live in public
and pattern your life after them.
The great evangelist D.L. Moody once said,
out of 100 men, one will read the Bible,
the other 99 will read the Christian.
Let your life be one worth reading.
May not be able to get everyone to read the Bible every day.
Right?
We've all heard that if you grew up in the church,
you gotta read your Bible every day.
You gotta do your devotions, whatever it is.
But can we get people around, godly people,
and pattern the life of what it means to follow Christ?
People are watching, more people than you think.
So are you connected to someone who is mature
and are you imitating their life and faith?
Are you imitating their faith?
Are you close enough to see their life and faith
on a regular basis?
Have you connected to the many and the some and the one?
So that you, as a disciple of Christ, can grow,
Paul says, be imitators.
That's what the Christian life looks like.
One of our congregants, Michelle,
you may have met her, Michelle Cooper.
She was out and about this last week.
And she responded to the word of God
that was preached a couple of weeks back.
She felt moved to respond.
And in doing so, she shot my wife a voicemail
just to encourage Adrian and to say,
hey, I want you to know that I'm hearing the word
and I'm responding to the word.
And we got her permission.
We're gonna go ahead and play that voicemail.
This is Michelle's voicemail to my wife this week.
Let's go ahead and make sure the audio's up.
Go ahead and restart it.
There we go.
Audio's up.
Here we go.
I just wanted to testify.
Maybe this will give a little pep to your step today.
But I had some labs for just medical reasons
and was sitting across from a young lady
and as we got to talking, I just felt like the Lord was like,
you need to speak up.
You need to say something.
You need to share faith.
And so as I did that, it just opened up my heart.
It just opened up the doors and I invited her to church.
I got to pray for her.
She is a believer, but she's coming out
of some really hard times and has been judged
for her appearance, not looking like a churchgoer
in the places she's been before.
And it was just incredible.
I just am so thankful to be encouraged and convicted
by what John shared a couple weeks ago
and just know that I was able to let my life shine
and hopefully it just produces the fruit
that we desire to see for people to know
how good our God is.
So just sharing that today.
Have a great day, buddy.
Michelle was at a doctor's appointment,
if you didn't hear, and she was getting testing
and there was a gal sitting across from her
and she felt convicted, start a conversation.
And it led to her opening up her life
and sharing her struggles and that she was a believer,
but she'd been a part of a church and hadn't been received
because she didn't look like a church person.
And so that had hurt her and driven her out of the church,
but Michelle was able to minister to her
and speak truth to her.
And who knows what will come out of that.
That was just one little touch point.
But then she gets to share that with us.
And in a sense, disciple us.
She sets a pattern for us to follow,
to say, hey, maybe next time I'm at the doctor's office
or in the grocery store or wherever I'm at,
I should be looking for opportunities to share.
This is what it means to be in community and to disciple,
is to learn from one another and look at the patterns.
Godly life lived out.
Doesn't mean we always nail it or we're always perfect.
In fact, we're more often than not, we're not.
But it does mean that these patterns
can begin to take shape in our lives
and we can see and tell these stories over and over again.
Don't go it alone.
Imitate, be imitators.
And number two, if you're taking notes,
write down the words watch out or watch for imposters.
Watch for imposters.
So Paul backs up his case for needing godly patterns
by saying that there are many who live
as enemies of the cross in the church.
And he says that we need good patterns
because there are bad ones out there.
Verse 18, for I have often told you and now say with tears
that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Their end is destruction, their God is their stomach,
their glory is in their shame
and they are focused on earthly things.
And here's the deal.
If you've been around, you know this.
I've been around.
They're in every church.
They are in every church.
They are in this church.
Impostors, fake citizens.
They may know all the right words.
They love religious rituals.
They know scripture even.
Paul says in another place in First Corinthians,
he says they masquerade as servants of righteousness
just as Satan masquerades as an angel of light.
They don't deny doctrine outright.
They wouldn't stand up in the middle of a sermon
and say, I disagree.
What they'll do is they'll deviate.
Subtle deviations.
They'll say what itching ears want to hear
in a private conversation somewhere.
They'll backtrack on things that are true
to try to give people space for their sin.
They'll do all kinds of things
like that, manipulate, they prey on emotions.
Sometimes validating those emotions
in order to gain trust and loyalty
so the person's ears are open to hear more of what they say,
more of what they spew.
In places where discipleship and sound teaching lack,
those people are easy pickings for imposters.
They can be taken any which way.
It's why Paul warned his protege, his apprentice, Timothy,
to be very concerned about teaching sound doctrine
and to look out for these people.
Teach sound doctrine as a bulwark against these people,
but keep your eye open because there are those
who are here, who are imposters,
who are looking for a following of their own.
In Acts 20, Paul's talking to the elders from Ephesus.
They've come to visit him before he heads off
and he tells the elders in Ephesus that savage wolves
are coming in among them
and these savage wolves will not spare the flock.
Even from their own number, people will rise up
and distort the truth in order to draw away disciples
after them.
That's what Paul said to the church in Ephesus.
But he repeated it in Romans and Corinthians and Timothy
and Titus.
In fact, in Romans 16, Paul says that there will be those
who cause division and will teach things
that are contrary to what is true.
He says to keep away from them, stay away from them,
for such people are not serving our Lord Jesus
but their own appetites.
Paul clearly had that in his mind multiple times.
Including in our scripture in Philippians.
They're serving their appetites.
Their end is their destruction
and there will be a lot of collateral damage along the way.
Their God is their stomach.
Very well though, young lady that Michelle
was ministering to, met one of them.
Met one of them and got a side eye or a gossip
about how she looked.
And that caused her to meet her destruction,
to wander away, to no longer want to be a part
of the church because someone twisted the truth,
the gospel, and made it about how someone looks.
The gospel's never been about how someone looks, ever.
The church has often fallen into that error.
Such people are not serving our Lord but their appetites.
And that's what Paul said to the church in Ephesus.
Their God is their stomach.
And that's just a way of saying that they are driven
by temporal appetites.
They're driven by their appetites,
their fleshly appetites, their appetites for pride
and exaltation.
Their appetites to be known or seen.
Their appetites to be followed or to have leadership
or dominion over people.
Their appetite for sexual desire.
Their appetite for all kinds of things.
Their God is their stomach.
Their God is their appetite.
And they feed their flesh in their sin nature.
And these folks that we are to watch out for,
they have a twisted value system in which they take pride
in behaviors and desires that are disobedient
and dishonorable to God.
They celebrate things that according to God's standard
are sinful and morally wrong.
And Paul says they're enemies of the cross.
And you remember the cross.
The cross is an implement of death.
It represents the Christian life.
The cross represents the Christian life.
And the cross is an implement of death.
The call of discipleship is to come follow me,
to take up your cross, to deny yourself,
to lay your life down to follow Christ.
And these imposters live for the here and now.
They don't die to themselves
and therefore they're enemies of the cross.
They don't put to death their worldly appetites
and live for God.
They feed their worldly appetites and live for themselves.
And the final thing he says about them is that
they are focused on earthly things.
They are focused on earthly things.
So what is our proper approach to those
once we have understood or seen
and watched out for these imposters?
I think it's telling that Paul's approach, even here,
whether they're misguided followers or intentional wolves,
it says that Paul weeps.
He is crying.
He is weeping for those who are perishing.
He weeps for those who are,
Paul is brokenhearted by their failure to love
and their failure to find their all in Christ.
He's broken and grieved that they are deceiving others
and that they're leading others to destruction.
It breaks his heart.
It breaks his heart for the effects of their life,
but his heart is broken for that which is lost
because he has a heart of God.
He has got a godly heart.
And God would have that none would perish,
but all would find life.
And so for us, our posture towards these imposters
is not to curse them to hell,
as we might be inclined to,
but it is to weep over their state,
to be moved and grieved over their lostness
and to pray for their salvation.
At the same time, getting the rest of the sheep
as far away from them as possible.
We can love someone by removing from them
the opportunity to hurt others.
We can love them by praying for their salvation.
Watch for imposters.
Number three, know your true identity.
You gotta know your true identity.
Our citizenship is in heaven, verse 20,
and we eagerly wait for a savior from there,
the Lord Jesus Christ.
As citizens of heaven, as kingdom of God people,
we are all about our King Jesus.
The Greek word that's used for citizenship is polyuma,
polyuma, and it has that same root word
that we get the word politics from.
And so as a believer, if you're a citizen of heaven,
you know what your politics are?
Your politics are in heaven.
Your politics are all about heaven.
Our ballot has one name,
and that's the word politics.
Our ballot has one name on it.
Every year it comes up and it's always got his name on it.
And we actually don't get to vote.
And it ain't your name and it ain't my name.
One name stands above them all.
There's not a blue mark next to him,
there's not a red mark next to him.
That means nothing in heaven.
Notice that Paul says our address is in heaven,
our citizenship is in heaven.
He actually at the beginning of the letter says,
when he's addressing the church in Philippi,
he says to the church in Philippi, in Christ Jesus.
See, there's a physical address, they live in Philippi.
I'm addressing the church in Sacramento, in Christ Jesus.
There's a spiritual address too.
And the spiritual address is the one that's more important.
The spiritual address is the one that's more important,
but heaven itself is not the goal.
Not heaven as our concept is.
We're not gonna go float on some clouds,
play some harps, shoot a few arrows,
frolic about in the sky for a little while.
That's not the goal.
You notice what Paul says, our citizenship is in heaven
and we eagerly await a person.
Our citizenship is in heaven,
but we eagerly await a person, a savior
from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The goal is a person.
The object of our waiting is King Jesus.
The desire of our heart is his return,
that Christ would come.
You want a good citizenship test?
You wanna know if you are a kingdom citizen,
how badly do you wanna see the King?
How badly do you wanna see the King?
How are you waiting for the King?
Are you excited?
Are you eager to see the King?
Are you excited?
Are you eager?
Are you like Zacchaeus who couldn't catch a glimpse
of Jesus as he was passing by?
And so he had to find a tree
that he could climb up and see the King.
Jesus is the only way.
And you may be wondering, how do I become a citizen of heaven?
Well, there's only one way.
That way is this, you need to have your name
written in heaven.
If your name isn't written in heaven,
you're not a citizen.
You need your name written down in heaven.
You need to be in the book of life,
as Paul references one chapter over
in Philippians chapter four.
You need to be in the heavenly citizens' role.
You need to be in the Lamb's book of life.
I, it's been about a year doing security guard work
a while back in another life.
And they stationed me most of the time at the guard house.
And I was the guard house of a gated community
up in El Dorado Hills, Serrano, the gated, beautiful,
those homes that are on the cliff, they were all in there.
And I was at the guard house, right?
So my job was to watch and report,
but I was also, you know, access control.
And someone, when I was in station,
someone couldn't just go in to the gated community.
You can't just drive up and say,
I wanna drive around a little bit
and look at these multimillion dollar homes.
No, in order to get in, you either had to live there
and be able to prove it, or someone else had to call you in.
They had to call your name in to me.
And then you had to prove that you were who you said you were
before I ever let you in to Serrano.
They needed someone to make an appeal on their behalf.
They needed someone to intercede for them,
otherwise they weren't getting in.
You can't make it in on your own.
No amount of trying, no amount of wanting,
no amount of working will get you an address in heaven.
You need someone to call your name in.
You need someone to call your name in to get you access.
And there's only one someone who can do that,
and that someone is Jesus.
He said that he is the way, the truth, and the life.
That the only one with access to the Father
and the right to put any names in that book is Jesus.
And the Bible says that Jesus is the way, the truth,
and the life, and the life.
And the Bible says that we're saved by grace
through faith in Jesus Christ alone.
That we must throw the whole weight and hope of our life,
the whole weight and hope of our future,
the whole weight and hope of the afterlife
has got to be thrown into the arms of Jesus,
and that we must trust him fully.
Faith is the condition that God has put on salvation.
No faith, no salvation, but with faith.
If you believe in all that Jesus is, you can be saved.
Your name can be added to that book.
You can get a heavenly address.
This is the promise of the gospel.
It's not through your working,
it's not through your cleaning up.
It's through your faith in the one
who can add your name to the book.
Let me invite the worship team up
as we examine one last point from Philippians.
The final point is invest for eternity.
Invest for eternity.
Verse 21 says, he will transform the body
of our humble condition into the likeness
of his glorious body by the power that enables him
to subject everything to himself.
For all our concerns and cares on this earth,
we have this one resurrection hope,
and that hope is that God will transform these lowly bodies,
the bodies of our humble condition,
into the likeness of his glorious body.
You guys ever, your knees ever ache?
Your back ever ache?
Kirk has been laying a lot of this flooring here,
I'm sure, knees and back ache a little bit, right?
This lowly body, get this,
even the most physically fit person,
the specimen of humanity we could bring up here,
and Paul would say, lowly body, humble body.
It has an end, it will perish.
All that work, all that care,
whether the care is into the physical body,
the strength or whether the care is into beauty,
all of that will meet an end, will go away.
All of that is a lowly body, a humble,
the humble condition of our bodies,
but we have a promise that our humble bodies,
our lowly bodies will be transformed
into the likeness of his glorious body.
What was his glorious body like?
Well, some people got to experience that
after his resurrection, before he went up to heaven.
They could touch him, he was real, he wasn't a ghost.
He still had the scars in his hands and in his side.
But then he could pass through walls,
just be gone, disappear, or conceal who he was.
But even in that, people could still recognize him,
he looked like him, Jesus was Jesus.
It's just different, it's glorified, changed forever.
And we have this promise that in Christ,
if our citizenship is in heaven,
if we have an address in heaven,
our lowly bodies too can be changed
by that same power in Christ.
In Christ. I heard one pastor ask,
how am I gonna look in heaven?
And he told his congregations
to turn to the person next to him and say, better.
You're gonna look better,
that's what you're gonna look.
You may be the most physically fit,
you may struggle to walk, it's going to be better.
You may pay super close attention to everything you eat,
you may have a workout routine, you may not.
This body is going away
and the new one is going to be better.
It's incorruptible, eternal.
So I'll close by saying, you belong to a kingdom
that is far greater than any earthly nation.
And in Christ, you have pledged allegiance to a king
who supersedes and triumphs over all other allegiances.
In order to be the citizen of the kingdom of heaven,
you must renounce all other citizenships.
This doesn't mean you don't live in America,
you don't vote.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't be a proper citizen
as you traverse this world in this world.
But I'm telling you what the word allegiance really means.
It means that which is greater than the thing.
So if you pledge allegiance to the United States of America,
to the flag of the United States of America, right?
Those used to be on stage, right?
At churches.
And you go into the kingdom of heaven,
your allegiance to him supersedes your allegiance
to this nation.
Your allegiance supersedes all other allegiances.
We make it about the nation, all other allegiances,
Christ and Christ alone.
Did you know that you have faith brothers and sisters
who upon threat of death, public humiliation,
were commanded to say Caesar is Lord,
and they wouldn't do it.
They were commanded with the knife to their throat
to say Caesar is Lord, just say it.
You can cross your fingers and have it behind your back.
It doesn't have to mean it, just say it.
Just add also in there, they wouldn't do it.
I won't do it.
Jesus is Lord.
The belonging that we have as a citizen of the kingdom
isn't just a future hope, but it's a present reality
that should shape our very daily lives.
As citizens of heaven, we're called to imitate Christ.
We're called to imitate those who follow him faithfully
and to eagerly await our King's return.
This heavenly belonging should transform
all of our priorities.
It should change our relationships
and get down to the very core of our identity.
You are not of this world, but you are here for a purpose,
to represent your true home
and to invite others into this eternal kingdom.
So my challenge for us is to live as one who belongs
to Christ, knowing that one day he will bring us home,
perfected and glorified, to the place where we all truly belong.
Amen.