Do You Want 2026 to Matter? - Jacob Harkey

Well, like I mentioned, I was home for the holidays. After our Christmas Eve gathering, my wife and I, we loaded up the van with our two little kids. We drove down to Georgia, where both of our families are in the metro Atlanta kind of suburb area. And we spent a week down there. And it's always fascinating to go back home. Maybe some of you felt this, that over the holidays, you went back home or went back to where your family lives and things begin to change. Roads get shifted, buildings sprout ups, buildings get torn down. That as you get back to this place that you called home, for me, for decades of my life, to come home, return home, you begin to see how things are changed. And it always gets me thinking about the older me, that I go to my parents' house, and you work your way through the closets and the pictures on the wall and the things left on shelves that their three sons, all of these different relics of the past, monuments to where our time used to go, where our energy used to go, where our money used to go, where our parents' money used to go. Just trophies and books and photos and toys and things we collected. I went through a shelf filled with CDs, dozens and hundreds of CDs scratched up, beat up of the music that shaped who I was. And it's always fascinating to go home,

to look at all this stuff and get this snapshot of who I was and who I was trying to be. And maybe you've felt that way before. And being home and seeing all this and seeing all these different things that were important to me, got me thinking about milestones and about life. Maybe it's the new year. A lot of you feel that way. You start making up goals for the new year. For me, I was thinking about milestones. I turned 36 in November, which, yeah, whoop, there you go. Which to many of you is like very young and to even more of you is just ancient. But turned 36, it's hard to wake up in the mornings. Everything hurts a little bit. This year, in November of 2026, I'll celebrate 10 years of marriage with my wife, Becca. Our daughters will turn two and four. Coming up this week, seven years of being in D.C. for us after being in Atlanta for almost 30 years. I've been on staff at this church for five years coming up in February. After 10 plus years of being an entirely different field, having a different career. I have these two daughters, like I mentioned, who'll turn two and four. So thinking about all these years and all these milestones and all these significant moments in my life, I've begun to reflect, am I doing well?

Is my life mattering? What measures a life? What matters? I think our default often comes to comparison. That we look at our contemporaries. For me, you go home and you bump into that person from high school and you ask them what they're doing and there's that small part in all of our hearts, if you're being honest, that when they say, oh, I do this for a living, you think, okay, I'm doing better than them. I know you're all feeling, because you laughed a little bit. If it's not your contemporaries, the people you kind of grew up with, or people your age, you look at maybe celebrities or famous people, you look at people around your age and you say, okay, this person, they're also 36, what are they doing in their life? So I could do that. I could look at people who also turned 36 last year and I could say, okay, Taylor Swift, you're a billionaire, you're one of the most famous people on earth, you're getting engaged this year or next year, eventually. I could compare myself to her and say, here's this person who's my age, are we in a similar space? Does my life matter more? Does her life matter more? Or you could look at a checklist that your worldview or your religion or whatever system of thinking you have,

you can say, what do I do? What about me matters? Am I doing it? And I know there's people coming in here this morning from a lot of different places. Some of you are feeling on top of the world, that you are winning, that 2025 was the best year yet, and 2026 is gonna be even better, and you're on top of your career, you're on top of all of your to-do lists, your goals that you set for the new year, you haven't missed once, you are just on fire and everything is good in your life. And there's more of us probably who are coming in here feeling a little down, feeling a little, I didn't do it, I'm not who I wanna be, things aren't what I wanted them to be five years, 10 years, 20 years ago. Is this life? And whether you're winning or losing, you're feeling high or feeling low, all of us need to wrestle with what matters in our life. And so that is where we're at in our text today. What is the blueprint for knowing that I'm living a life that matters? Paul is addressing the church in Philippi, and if you haven't read Philippians in a while, this book, they're crushing it. It's one of the most joyful letters he writes. He writes some that are just scathing reviews of the horrible things they're doing,

but here, the Apostle Paul is saying, I'm so thankful for you all. I love you, I'm joyful for you. You're crushing it, you're doing so well. You're this beautiful community on a mission, supporting me and spreading the gospel around. He's reminding them of all the things that are important as they continue to do this work, but something kind of shifts in chapter three. He goes from all this language about, hey, here's who Jesus is, here's a reminder of how great he is, the humility that we need to live with, here's how great you're all doing, and suddenly, an enemy comes onto the picture. A threat emerges in three, two. He's saying, yeah, you're going about your business now and everything's going well, but there is a way of thinking that has the power to derail your life, that all of this mission that you are crushing, there are gonna be some people and some ideas that creep in that try to push you in a different direction. They're gonna offer you a counterfeit spirituality that replaces intimacy with God with more and more activity. And so he introduces this threat. Looking at verse two, Paul says, look out, three times. Look out for the dogs who did not do well against Ole Miss last week. Look out for the evildoers.

Look out for those who mutilate the flesh. So he warns them three times, look out, look out, look out, and he's telling them there's a destructive spirituality that's going to come your way. And Paul often does this. He offers a rebuttal to falsehood, to bad theology in order to introduce some good theology that we're gonna look at in a bit. And this threat was coming from the Judaizers, this group of people that, they looked at the church, early Christianity, all throughout Acts and all throughout the letters, the same group of people kept popping up where the church has been born and it has exploded and they're chasing after Jesus, and all of these Jewish Christians that as it's going out to more and more Gentiles and more and more people, they're saying, hey, Jesus is great, Jesus is awesome. It's so great that we found Jesus, that we follow Jesus, but what if we added a little bit of the old stuff? What if we added a little bit of this Jewish ritual with a splash of Jesus on top? Jesus is great, but he's not enough. And they were offering this checklist religion that yes, we follow Jesus, but we also, you need to have circumcision like this, and you need to celebrate these holidays like this, and you need to dress like this, and you can't talk to those people,

and you need to eat this way. They're offering a checklist religion. Jesus warned us about people like this, that on the Sermon of the Mount, in Matthew 7, he says, on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, but he will say to them, depart from me, I never knew you. People who were chasing after Jesus, saying that Jesus is important, but really, it's just another add-on to their religious activity, and he doesn't know them. So, what does he say? Look out for the dogs, the evildoers, those who mutilate the flesh. A little bit of background for what this means. These descriptors are meant to be both a little insulting, but also ironic. Look out for the dogs. He's not talking about these lovely little dogs. This is an air bud, just like, hey, here's this beautiful, golden, look out for these dogs. Watch them for me. No, he's saying, look out for these dogs, because dog was an insult. The Jewish people would use the word dog as an insult to the Gentiles, that they were worthless, they were vulgar, they were unclean, that the vision or picture of a dog in this time was this disgusting animal who played around and ate the trash, and so he's saying, look out for the dogs.

He's using their own insult back on them. Look out for the evildoers, the Judaizers. They're saying, hey, these works of the law make us good. If I do all of these things, I will be good in God's eyes. And Paul's saying, no, you are actually the evildoers. The literal description, the literal translation in Greek is you are workers of evil. They're saying, we are workers of good. We follow the law and we have Jesus. He's saying, no, you are workers of evil. And then circumcision was a big part of their culture, their religion. It was the sign of the covenant that the Jewish people had. So what does Paul say to counteract that? He says, look out for those who mutilate the flesh because he says those rituals, when they are detached from Jesus, they're detached from reality. It's just void of power. You're no better than the pagans. You're just mutilating your flesh. By doing this and thinking it adds something to. your relationship with Jesus adds something to your spirituality. You're just mutilating the flesh. So he turns their own insults back on them. And you see time and time again, Paul and others have to combat these ideas. Galatians 1, right off the bat in Galatians 1, he says, I'm astonished that you were so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel. Not that there is another one,

but there are some who trouble you and want to distort the gospel of Christ. That's the same group of people be leery of a distorted and dangerous gospel that offers you a performance based religion. That is what they're offering. And that is what we continue to be lured by what started as love will become duty. Uh, those of you who are married, you might have experienced this, that early on in those days of dating and a relationship and marriage, uh, sacrifice seems to come so easy. That's I'll do all these things for you. And then you look up in five, 10, 20 years, and suddenly you're just passive aggressively doing chores, looking at each other saying, if I do this, it means you have to do that for me. Or it begins in dating and love. And all of us have experienced this where it's poetry. And that first holiday you celebrate with each other, you're like, here's the most expensive thing I can muster up the money to buy. And here's a poem I wrote for you. And five years, 10 years, 20 years later, here's some socks. Here's a robe. Better luck next holiday. That is the type of religion that sneaks into our life where it's all about your spiritual resume. What is a resume? It's your merits, your experience, your achievement. It's all of these different things to get you from outside of something to inside that I'm outside this college. I'm outside this organization. I'm outside this job, but here are all of the things that tell you why I should be on the inside. And we don't just do resumes with jobs. We do them everywhere in our life. Let me prove to you that I am worthy. We do it with our friendships, the way we dress, the way we talk,

the way we laugh, what we have to offer people. We say, this is my friendship resume. Am I worthy to be your friend? We do it with relationships. If I act this way, if I look this way, if I change myself, if I change how I look, if I can earn your approval, your love, then I'll be okay. This is my resume. This is what I have to offer. We all do this in the Judaizers are showing that we do this more than anything with God. We say, God, look at what I've done. Why won't you bless me? Am I not on the inside? I'm following the rules that I thought you needed me to follow. Am I not a good person? A splash of religion to add to what we already would gain through Christ. If I just do these activities, then I'll be okay. But here's the thing. The Judaizers address a good question, but with the wrong answer. It is the right question. How do I fix what is wrong with me? That we've wrestled with that question throughout history and every religion and every worldview is trying to wrestle with that question. So they're not bringing up a new question, but they're giving a horrible answer. There is something broken with us that as we all drive through life, we have the check engine light on constantly that every single light is flashing and I'm anxious and I'm fearful and I don't feel good enough and I'm unstable and I'm insecure and I don't feel good. I'm sleeping at night and I'm waking up in the middle of night and I'm wondering, is any of this worth this? Is any of this matter? We all go through life feeling this time of brokenness and we answer it usually one of two ways. If you're anything like I used to be, you ignore the lights. I'm talking literal with cars right now. You ignore it for a while. Like I can deal with that later and we

ignore the lights in our life often by numbing it or distracting it that we feel brokenness inside of us. So what do we do? I'm just not going to look at that now. I can look at it when I'm 30, when I'm 40, when I'm 60, when I'm on my deathbed, I can deal with the things that are broken inside of me. I'll just put it off. I'll distract myself. I'll numb myself. I'll gratify myself. I'll chase after different things to fill my life. Now I'll worry about those check engine lights later or we try to fix it ourselves. We pull our hypothetical car in this hypothetical illustration to the side of the road and we get out and we got our duct tape and we got whatever you used to fix cars. I wouldn't know. And we get to work. We say, I can. make myself okay. Let me self-medicate a little bit by getting a good job, by getting a good salary, by building this relationship or this family or this thing that I want in my life. If I can do that, I'll feel better about all of the brokenness in my life. And we try to fix ourselves. And what we don't often realize is, although often we put in this one camp these people who ignore the problem, who chase after sex and money and pleasure. And we say, oh, these are these sinful, bad things you're doing. And this other camp who's trying to fix it theirself, it's just as addicting to try to fix it yourself. And we look at what they're doing and we say, that's so bad, that's so wrong. But over here, we are just trying to put a little bit

of religion on our lives so we can feel good with God. That I'll show up on a Sunday, I'll show up on a Wednesday, I'll read the Bible, I'll do the devotional, this year will be different. I'll fix myself and I'll feel good with God. We run after these two things and we will spend most of our life vacillating between the two. The pride of I am good enough and I don't need God and I don't need anyone, I can just fix myself. And the despair of I keep screwing up. And that is where we find ourselves time and time again. And Paul warns us with good reason because the lie you can fix yourself is enticing. It is the lie of the garden. Why do you need God, you can do it yourself. And we still believe that lie. If legalism wasn't appealing, he wouldn't spend so much time addressing it. But he's gonna offer us a better way. He's gonna ground us, but first he's making it clear, your activity can't save you. So moving on through the text, because I looked at the clock. And I always go long and I was given all of this time this morning and I'm still gonna go long. For we are the circumcision, he reminds them, who worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus and put no confidence in the flesh. He's saying this is true spirituality.

They said it back in Deuteronomy, Deuteronomy 36, the Lord your God will circumcise your heart. It's not about the things you do, it's about something that happens inside you that you don't do that he does for you. We're not defined by our outer duty, we are defined by the empowering presence of the Spirit working in us. Everything on the outside is a response. With glory in Christ Jesus, we put no confidence in the flesh. Our boasting, our pride, our joy, our confidence, it's not in the long resume of the Judaizers, it's in a single piece of paper that says Jesus. That's the only thing I can boast in. There's nothing that I can bring to the table except what he has already done. My confidence is in Christ. My grace that he has extended to me is unmerited. It could have only been the blood, as we just sang. He reminds him that that's who you are. And he could have stopped there, but he wants to accent his point. He says, if you could have confidence in the flesh, I'm your guy. Don't take my word for it, look at my resume. And he kind of trumps their appeal to authority, that the Judaizers on the outside, they looked great, they had it all together by this system, by this worldview, look at how clean and beautiful you are.

And he's saying, hey, if you think they have some authority, let me at least flex my authority a little bit. Everybody's an expert until a real expert shows up. What does Paul say? Though I myself have confidence for the flesh, also, if anyone thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day. There's a logical progression to this. It's both birth status and personal piety. He tries to show that an all-encompassing picture of I am better, no matter the standard, I am better. So circumcised on the eighth day. The eighth day is how it was prescribed in the law. He's saying I'm better than the converts. All these people who turned to Judaism later, I did it the right way, I was born into the right family, they did it at the right time, I am better. Of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, I have a genealogical purity, I have the record to prove it. I'm a tribe of Benjamin, that is one of the beloved sons, one of the sons that stuck with King David, that didn't split off when the kingdom split. He's saying not only can I look back and say I am truly from the people of Israel, but I'm from one of the good tribes, the one that was born in the promised land, that was loyal to Judah. I'm a Hebrew of Hebrews, I speak Hebrew. All these other Jews, they might have lost their culture

over time a little bit, maybe Greek was their main language or Aramaic, he's saying I speak Hebrew. I didn't absorb Greek, I didn't absorb these cultures we got exiled into, I am a real Hebrew. I would rather be dead than be defiled by those other cultures. He says as for the law of Pharisee, I'm a member of the elite group, I am the best. We followed the written law, we followed the oral law. I'm zealous as to zeal of persecutor to the church. I'm so radically devoted that I would try to stamp out anything that got in the way of Judaism. As to righteousness under the law, blameless. Doesn't mean he was perfect, but no one could raise accusations to him. It was verifiable. They're saying, I followed all of the actual rules on the outside this way. I am better than you. So he's boasting. He's showing that if anyone could boast, it is me. If anyone can trust their flesh, their work, it's me. But something happened in Paul that changed everything. That made him realize that good performance could not prop the weight of his broken soul. What? Change. His answer? Knowing Christ. But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. He counted it as loss. It says whatever gain he had. He's using accounting terms. Here's my list. Here's the gain that I have. All of these things I was born into, that I held to, that I did passionately, I did zealously, I have done everything right. This was all a gain to me. It was in the positive, in the green. My religious duty account is bigger and better than yours. I have all the advantage, all the benefit, all the profit. And this wasn't bad stuff. He's not saying these things were bad. He's saying this was all gain. It was all good stuff. But now I count it as loss. Something happened that changed everything on the road to Damascus. That everything that was in the profit column, everything in the green, in his heart switched to red overnight. It's loss. It's disadvantage. It's a liability. Again, it's not here's all these bad things I do. It's all these good things I do for

the wrong reason I realize now are loss. Why? Thomas Watson, a Puritan writer from a few hundred years ago, this line, this quote he has has always stuck out with me. He says, the stars vanish when the sun appears. He's saying, oh, the stars, all these good things that were good about me that I did or I was born into, all these great things are these little stars filling the sky. But when the sun appears, when the brightness and glory of the sun appears, all of that fades away. That everything good looks bad compared to Christ. What produced this reorientation of values? The sake of Christ. In verse 8, he expands and repeats and emphasizes these same points. He says this, 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. I love this. He switches from the perfect tense before. He said, oh, you know, I counted it as loss, which you could take as, well, he's just talking about that moment something changed in him. He counted it as loss back then. He switches here to the present tense. He says, I count it as lost. It's still lost to me. I think some of us, we look back at our past and we're like, well, I was a mess when I found Jesus and thank God he saved me. He changed me. All these bad things I was doing, but now I'm okay. I don't need him like I used to need him because I do the right things and I live the right way and I don't look like that anymore. But he says, no, not only did I count it as loss then, I count it as loss now because he's better. And he takes this list of gain and he goes from just his list. Hey, here's my gain that I count as loss. And again, he amplifies it. He says, everything in all things, I count everything as loss, all things I suffered the loss of in order that I may gain Christ. He invites us into the tension to think about our things. What are the things you think are better than Christ in your own life? He suffered the loss. It's not without sacrifice, but he says, what I sacrifice, all of the good things I used to do, the good things I used to chase that I wanted to be, that I wanted people to see about me. Those were good, but they're bad now. And I will give them as a loss. I will suffer them as a loss if it gets in the way of gaining Christ. And

then he uses this word here and preachers love doing this sermon because he swears. I'm not going to, I'm not going to say it. Ben's not here. I don't know what he'd say if I said it. What does he say? He says, I count these as rubbish. You're like, oh, rubbish. That's so bad. Those things are rubbish. That word in Greek, it's what excites pastors and preachers and teachers to talk about, that word in Greek, skubalon, it's so much more than trash, than rubbish, that if you look at it in its context, you look at it literally how they would use it, it's excrement. It's filth. That the most disgusting, nasty thing you could think of, he's saying all of this good, it's garbage, it's trash, it's filth, it's excrement compared to Christ. That all of these things I used to run after, they mean nothing to me now. He's not just saying, well these good things I did, well it's a little bit less than Christ. Christ is 1A, and my works, my good deeds are 1B. He's not saying that, he's saying there's a massive, infinite gap between the good of Christ and everything else that the world has to offer us. I remember speaking of the holidays, when I was a kid, I'm gonna roast myself, my parents did a good job, when I was a kid I wanted an iPod, teenager, I wanted an iPod classic, and I remember one Christmas, I'm thinking I'm gonna get an iPod, and I open this present, and it's a Microsoft Zune. You guys got your Zunes still? The Microsoft Zune, and I was heartbroken because I was a spoiled little brat teenager and I wanted an iPod, which ironically, the Zune was actually pretty nice, like a lot of the iPod features it had before the iPod did, but I didn't want it, it wasn't good enough for me. But in comparison, the Zune and the iPod, basically right here, if you really think about it, one of them had better advertising, marketing, name brand, but they were comparable in what they were used for. Paul is not saying your good works are okay, but Jesus is a tiny bit better. He's not saying your good works, they're important too. He's saying everything you count as good when compared to Christ, it's filth.

If it would get in your way of pursuing Christ, knowing Christ, it is worthless to you. He has so radically transformed Paul's life and many of our lives in the same way that the things we used to run to compared to Christ are garbage. Why? In comparison, he uses this little clause here, translated, in order that I may gain Christ. That's important because he's saying these things will wrestle with our allegiance. What is gain to us needs to become loss if it tries to distract you from the ultimate gain. That all of the ways of living and acting and trying to be this clean, perfect person on the outside of, I follow the right rules, I don't drink, I don't cuss, I don't smoke, I don't do these things, I'm better than those people, I've got the white picket fence, I've got the family, we live the right way, we look the right way, we vote the right way. If I do all of these things and I think that will make me okay and it distracts me from truly following Christ, then you need to count it as loss. You need to consider it garbage. It's like if I told you, hey, I've got this dinner reservation for you and a couple of friends, you're going to a Michelin star restaurant in DC, you can get whatever you want. And then I put a basket of Snickers in front of you and I'm like, here's what you could have, but why don't you just go ahead and eat a Snickers, eat a second one, eat a third one. There's nothing wrong with Snickers, but if you're gorging yourself on this Snickers and it's stealing away from your chance to have the meal of a lifetime, you've missed out. He's saying that is what you're doing, that all this good, this gain, it is loss if it keeps you from Christ. The Christ who is the way, the truth, the life, the light of the world, the resurrection, the life, the Christ who died for you, who rose for you, who has ransomed you with his blood, the Christ who bore the weight of your sin on the cross, gave you life, saved you from death, bore your guilt, bore your shame, loved you when you were unlovable. This Christ is so much better than anything else I can run after.

Paul's saying that if everything the world is after is on the table, if it steals you from him, it's rubbish. Do you think about your own life that way? Because he's better. He's far more valuable. That if my house caught on fire and I ran inside and I started to assess the value of all the things and what would I grab first? If I ran into my house and I grabbed a P.S. five and a TV and some legal documents and some cash laying on the counter and some books that I like, you would say I'm crazy if I didn't run to my wife and kids first. Because they're so much better, the value is so much higher and we have to ask ourselves that this morning, what do you cling to? Because just like these Judaizers, there are gonna be voices that get us to cling to other things instead of Christ, to chase after other things instead of Christ, to a certain way, to live a certain way, to look a certain way. Our allegiances are getting pulled away from him. Anything that would steal my confidence in him, that would place my confidence in my flesh, my allegiance to him, my trust in him, it's worthless. Jesus is not the icing on the top of a good life, he is my life. So do you want tomorrow to matter? Do you want 2026 to matter? Then you need to know Christ as your Lord. This is Paul's only use of my Lord in the New Testament. He gets deeply personal with them. He says, I want you to know Christ as your Lord. What they're offering cannot fix the broken inside of you. The only thing that can is knowing Christ as your Lord. And knowing is not information, it's experience. This word know, it's closer tied to loving Christ than anything else, not having some facts about him. I saw the movie Marty Supreme over the holidays, Timothee Chalamet. Great last name. I saw this movie, I liked it, I don't know if I could, I'm on stage, I don't know if I could recommend movies here, they might be a little edgy. Great movie, I liked it. Timothee Chalamet. Good actor. If I'm like, I love his stuff, I love the movies he's in, I love the performances he offers, and I just get really into Timothee

Chalamet, and I'm like, I'm gonna know everything about him. I'm gonna go to Chalamet trivia nights, I'm gonna go to the Chalamet look-alike contest, I'm gonna do whatever I can to know all this information about him, to be his biggest fan, to win all of the trivia. I can do all of that, but I do not know Timothee Chalamet. I'm not in relationship with him. So if you think that just knowing a bunch of facts about God because you read your Bible once a day, because you go to church occasionally, because you grew up in the church, if I know a bunch of facts about God and you replace this information about him with truly experiencing and knowing Jesus Christ, then you've missed it. He's saying, know Christ. Know Jesus. Know the one who came for you. Don't just know some information about him. You need to know Christ. We reorient our life on things that we love and know deeply, not just information. Many of you know this well, that good theology has not helped you fight temptation. Some good information about who God is, memorize a couple words, memorize a couple verses, that's all good things, but if it's replacing knowing Christ, then you're gonna miss it. When the storms come, if you don't know him, you're standing on shaky ground. He says you need to know Jesus as your Lord. That everything you do, everything you think, every decision you make, you redirect and reorient around what he wants. That you are my Lord and I am going to follow you. I'm gonna know you so well that I know what you want from me. I know how you want me to act and then I'm gonna do it, not like they did it, not because it makes me good, it makes me okay that I have to follow these different rules and regulations. I'm gonna follow what you want me to do. I'm gonna devote myself to you because I know you and I know what you did for me. It becomes a response instead of trying to earn what Christ has already earned for us. The bottom line is this, that if I place anything on the scale, good or bad, in my life and Christ is on the other side, the scale is gonna break. I could load up my accomplishments, my achievements, the things that I believe give me worth and value, but if Christ is on the other side, it's worthless. Know Christ. And for many of you, like I said, you've come in here this morning

and you're feeling low. You're coming into this year and you don't know what to think about your life. You don't feel like you're doing well. You don't think you're hitting the goals, the checklist that you're supposed to hit. You're feeling broken and empty and this should be a balm to you today. That the only thing that I can ask of you this new year that will make your year worth it is if you know Christ. That you could come in here as low as possible and I can't give you 10 best steps to be your best you at work. I can't give give you the promotion or the raise or the relationship or the thing that your heart desires, but if you know Christ, I promise that's enough. And then there's others of you that you've come in here this morning and you feel on top of the world and you're puffed up and you're a high performer and you're crushing it and you might be doing some good things and that's great, but if you think that will save you instead of Christ, you are far off. And you need to redirect your attention, your devotion, your affections on Christ because the storm will come in your life in that closet full of accomplishments and achievements you built up will not hold you in that storm. So what measures a meaningful life? What metric, what standard? Is it the American dream? Is it success? Is it love? Is it having all these things I want? No, it's knowing Jesus.

Why is he worth it? What about him should make us reshuffle our value, our purpose, our motives in our lives? We're gonna close on verse nine because knowing him is the only thing that will give you security in this life. Let's look at verse nine. Says, I'll read into verse eight because it's good context. 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. So he's saying be found in him that I may gain Christ and be found in him. The second verb amplifies the meaning of the first. It's not two separate things. He's saying when you gain Christ, you will be found in him. When you are found in Christ, you have gained Christ. These two things go together. What does it mean to gain Christ? It means you are found in him. You are united with him. This metaphor, this picture is throughout scripture. It's one of the most prevailing pictures of what it looks like to truly be saved is that you're in Christ,

that you are the branches now grafted onto this tree of Christ, that you are a part of this body and he is the head. You are in together. You are with each other. You are knighted together. And the beautiful thing about this metaphor, this union with Christ, is that in a lot of ways, it ties together all the other pictures of what salvation is. I was reading this book from Dane Ortlund recently and he kind of listed these things, so I kind of stole his list. But all these different pictures of what happens in salvation. You are justified. That's a legal term, that you are no longer condemned, that you are going to be condemned because of your sin and because of Christ, when you are saved, you are justified, you will no longer be condemned. You're sanctified. That's temple terminology. You're no longer defiled, that there's something broken and wrong and crooked and impure inside of all of us. And he says, when you've come to Christ, when Christ has saved you by his grace,

you've just put your faith in him. You are being sanctified. You are no longer defiled by sin. Adopted, familial language. You're no longer an orphan. Reconciled. You're no longer estranged. Redeemed. You're no longer enslaved. Purchased. You're no longer in debt. Illuminated. You're no longer in darkness. Resurrected. You're no longer dead. All of these metaphors of what it means to come to Christ, that when you are in him, you have all of them. When you're in Christ, all of this is true of you. And he's saying, if you've found him, if you've gained him, if you are in him, all of this is true in you. Everyone on earth is either in Christ or in Adam, Paul will say elsewhere. And he's saying, as long as you are in Christ, all of this is accounted to you because of what he did. Found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law. He's rebuking what the Judaizers are offering. They're offering a little bit of us

and then splash Jesus on top. Do some things to earn this righteousness and then you'll be okay. Paul is saying, the righteousness does not come from the law. The righteousness comes from him. Do you know him? This aspect of being united with him as you're covered by his righteousness, that all the resources of Christ are now available to you. Our fellowship hinges on having a right standing and union requires righteousness. But when God looks at those of us who are in him and he sees us, and yes, we are broken and we're sinful and we keep messing up. But when he looks at us, he sees the righteousness of Christ because when you are in him and he looks at you, all he sees is Christ. And so those of us who, all of us walking through life with brokenness, with sin, with things that we're chasing after and we're all trying to. fix it ourselves, but when we are found in Christ, we don't have to fix it ourselves because he fixed it for us. And the grace is freely offered to us that if I place my faith that what he did on the cross it counted for me, it mattered for me, when God looks at me, he sees Christ, he sees his righteousness, and that's good enough.

Judaizers had the wrong answer to the right question. There is a righteousness problem that our right standing with God is broken because of sin. That we have chased after different things, we've chased after gratification, we've chased after ourselves, we've chased after all these things to fill us, and it has broken our faith with God from the beginning until now. The sin problem has broken our standing with God. And Paul is showing us that that righteousness that you no longer have, that right standing, that fellowship with God that you seek after, that you lay in bed at night thinking what is wrong with me, the answer to all of those problems is not found in another list, it's found in him. That is what is on the table today. You bring nothing to him. Everything else in life we have to earn, we have to try for, we have to strive for, but not this. In summary, Paul's saying there are two hypothetical means of coming to Christ, works and grace. Works, the law sets the standard and it's impossible, and you're gonna keep striving your whole life. Grace, it is extended freely by Christ's life, death, and resurrection, that he lived the life you could not, he died the death you deserve, but then he conquered death, conquered the grave, rose up for us,

and that grace that is freely offered to us, that is the only way that we are made right. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus's blood and righteousness. What are you building your life on this year? One last story. The city of DC, they love to pave roads. And in our case, this summer, they ripped up our entire road and they paved it, made this beautiful road. It's great, it's great to park on, great to drive on. My wife's laughing at this story. A couple of weeks later, what happens? The water lines need to be fixed. They didn't really communicate on this. They ripped the entire road back up. They start fixing little pieces. I think this was like a week before Christmas, we wake up at two in the morning to jackhammers, gas line had been broken. They had paved over what was already broken. This foundation was messy, that the pipes were wrong, the water pipes are wrong, the gas pipes are wrong, but they said, let's rip it up and let's just rebuild something new here without fixing what was wrong. So my challenge for you this year is to ask yourselves, what are you building your life on? Because many of us, we're gonna head into another year

and we're gonna try to build it on another bad foundation. They're gonna build it on, if I can just earn Christ's love this year, if I can just earn his favor this year, if I can just crush it and be this person, then I will feel okay. If that is what you're building your life on, it's all gonna come down again. Some of us are ready for that change. Let me urge you, don't build on the rubble of what already crashed before, build it on knowing Christ deeper. So ask yourself that this year, what do I want my life to be built on? Good vibes, survival, distraction, trying to earn God's favor through works and religious duty, measuring up to some worldly standard, some cultural standard. If you're doing all of that, you are building sandcastles in a hurricane and it's all gonna come crashing down. So I urge you today to just cast yourself on the surpassing mercy and grace and goodness of Jesus. That if you want this year to matter, if you wanna look back and say, this year was important, this year something was different, something changed in me, then cast yourself on Jesus Christ. Know him better, know him deeper,

come alongside us, not coming to be part of a church because it's a bunch of activities you have to do because we're a room full of broken people who know we're broken and know that what we do doesn't fix us, but we're chasing after the one who does. So come be a part of what we're doing, get part of a community, find men and women to walk alongside you that are also imperfect or broken, but are building themselves on something more powerful, more beautiful, more life-giving than what the world has to offer. And walk with the confidence this year that you are resting on the firm foundation of a righteous church. that Christ purchased for you, that all of the brokenness inside of you, it is solved by him, not by what you can do. Nothing in my hand I bring, simply to the cross I cling. Let that be your 2026.