About this episode
Get every episode summarized
Each time PrayRadio publishes, we email you a written briefing from the transcript — the topics, who appeared, and any specific claims, with the ad reads skipped.
Email me new episodesFree for 3 shows. No card needed.
Hosts & guests
Transcript ready
109 searchable segments. Every word is indexed and playable.
Full transcript
PrayRadio — A Better Word with Dr. Nick Gatzke - Sep 12 - 9:00 am. Machine-transcribed; use the interactive transcript above to jump the player to any line.
Today, on a better word with Pastor Nick Gatsky, these people who Paul refers to as dogs are anything but harmless, at least when it comes to your spiritual life. In fact, these people had values that undermined the very essence of our relationship with God, and they were trying to impose those values on all the other Christians. Imagine applying for your dream job, only to open the job description to discover a long list of additional requirements. Must own a blue car, must drink green tea daily, must have exactly two and a half children. Sounds absurd, right? Yet in Philippians 3, Paul confronts a similar spiritual absurdity, religious rule-makers who were adding their own requirements to God's free gift of salvation. Today, on a better word, Pastor Nick Gatsky explores the difference between authentic faith and religious perfectionism.
So, Nick, why do you think we tend to feel like there must be something more we have to do in order to be saved? Because doing things is something we can measure. And I feel like when it comes to our faith and when it comes to trying to figure out where we stand with God, we want to see the result, we want to see the measurement, we want to have some skin in the game that's maybe a positive and it's a fact. But that dynamic actually goes in contradiction to the gospel itself, the core of the gospel message. And see, I wonder how many people think it's even too good to be true. There's like a sense of really, what do you do that for me? Yeah, right. So, how do we distinguish then between man-made rules and God's expectations of us? I love that question because the answer is so simple and yet we so often make it more complicated than it needs to be.
We read the Bible. That's it. We read the Bible and the things that God says that we are to do, the commands that He gives, we seek to do them. And the things that He prohibits, we try really hard not to do those and we don't add to them and we don't subtract from them. He gives us everything we need for life and godliness in the Bible. And he's so gracious to do that. It's amazing. We don't have to guess. We don't have to wonder if we're pleasing him or not. He tells us what pleases him and what doesn't please him. We just have to follow it. It should be a relief in a sense, right? It's a huge relief. It's a huge burden that's removed. Well, thanks, Nick. Let's now listen to a message you preached called the Lord and the dogs. In Philippians chapter 3, Paul tells us to watch out for the dogs. So let's hear about it. Look with me at Philippians chapter 3. And today we're going to read just three verses starting at verse 1. This is what it says.
It says, finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord to write the same things to you as no trouble to me and is safe for you. Look out for the dogs. Look out for the evil doers. 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. The section begins with a simple command. Rejoice in the Lord. It has a tone to it, doesn't it? Because verse 2 takes a decidedly different tone, doesn't it? Watch out for the dogs. And it begs the question, what connects the two? And the answer has to do with the ideas of cleanliness before God, what it means to have the identity of his family and how we get access to him.
And so let's look at the description. The image of calling these particular people dogs was full of bite because as we'll see, he's connected that image to some strict Jews called the judyizers who were trying to make the Gentiles clean when they themselves were actually the ones who were making them unclean. You see the judyizers were a group of Jews that believed that Jesus was the Messiah. However, they still followed the Old Testament law and insisted that all the Gentile Christians, the non-Jewish Christians, would do the same. In fact, you needed to become a practicing Jew before you could become a follower of Christ, at least that's what they said. And all practicing Jewish males had one thing in common. They were all circumcised.
Of course, we know this side of salvation history, Jesus fulfilled the law of the Old Testament. He mediates a new covenant between God and humans, the terms of our relationship are related through him, not through the law, not through religious ritual. And thus, the judyizers were some of the earliest legalists that we see in the New Testament. And their legalism was through physical mutilation requiring circumcision. You can't be clean before God unless you're circumcised. You can't be part of God's family unless you're circumcised. You have no access to him unless you come through us. And they were holding people back. You know, legalism has the same effect on people today. And I'm sure you've come across it at some point, or perhaps you're the one who struggles with it. Many of us do.
This is when a person or people impose external requirements to be considered a Christian. And in our context today, it often comes in the form of taking a biblical principle, something that's good, and then adding a layer around it around the outside, calling that layer of practice, righteous or sinful, and imposing it upon other people in the way that the Bible never does. There's a lot of ways that we could explore legalism, right? I mean, some of the most obvious ones through history have been the consumption of alcohol, which the Bible doesn't prohibit, does prohibit drunkenness, but not consumption. How about singing certain styles of music and not others? There's a lot of legalists here on this one. For years, there's been legalists on the side. If you don't sing the traditional hymns, then clearly you're not of the pier sort.
There's also legalists on the other side of the issue. If you don't sing all the contemporary songs, then clearly you're of a substandard spiritual condition, and you probably don't have the Holy Spirit. That's called legalism. One author goes on to write that legalism says, God will love us if we change. And the gospel says, God will change us because He loves us. David Wilkerson once said, at its heart, legalism is a desire to appear holy. It's trying to be justified before men and not God. And so what is Paul getting to here? Two conflicting ideas, praising God and avoiding the legalists, the mutilators, the dogs, the evil doers, all in the relationship of access to Him.
We might summarize it like this. Praise God that our access to Him is given by Christ alone. Paul says that legalism isn't the entry point or the requirement of those in God's family. So watch out for those who impose extra biblical requirements upon you. In fact, we see that just the opposite is true. Look at verse 3 and 4 with me. He says, for we are the circumcision who worship by the spirit of God and glory in Christ, Jesus, and put no confidence in the flesh. We are evidence of God's family who aren't legalists. We're evidence of it. How so? We are the circumcision, he says. Circumcision was the physical identity marker of God's people under the old covenant.
Baby males were circumcised for their whole lives. They bore the marker that they were part of the people of God, God's family. It was a source of identification for them. It was a source of or an identification of their trust or their parents trust. And to some degree, possibly even faith, but the physical marker is no longer needed. And obedience to the law is no longer the obligation, not even circumcision. Long has God said that he cared more about the spiritual circumcision of people, the spiritual marker of their identity. He calls it even the circumcision of the heart. In Romans chapter 4 verses 9 through 12, we see that Abraham had faith even before he was circumcised and that faith was what brought him into a righteous standing with God. It wasn't the physical act of identification.
Listen to what it says. Paul writes, is this blessing only for the circumcised or is it also for the uncircumcised? For we say that faith was counted to Abraham as righteousness. How then was it counted to him? Was it before or after he had been circumcised? It was not after. But before he was circumcised, he received the sign of circumcision as a seal of the righteousness that he had by faith while he was still uncircumcised. The purpose was to make him the father of all who believed without being circumcised so that the righteousness would be counted to them as well. And to make him the father of the circumcised who are not merely circumcised but who also walk in the footsteps of faith, the faith that their father Abraham had before he was circumcised.
Likewise, Jeremiah chapter 9 verse 25 says, the Lord will judge those who are only circumcised in the body. Meaning there's a spiritual identification that needs to happen in the heart. And the point is this, your standing before God, an entrance into his family, comes from no external action that you do. It comes through faith. It doesn't come through obedience. Obedience to God's commands come after faith and as a result of faith. And Paul gives us and them three reasons why this is so, why they can say, we are the marker. We are the identifier. We are the circumcision. He says, we are in God's family because, look at verse 3 and 4, we worship by the spirit.
When you receive new life in Christ through the forgiveness of your sins, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in the life of the Christian, the Spirit empowers us to truly worship God in an ongoing sense and rejoices in the Lord like he says in verse 1. Sometimes I hear someone who looks at a church or looks at an event and hears some loud music and sees the low lighting and engages with people who are emotionally caught up in what they're singing. You might say something like, wow, the Spirit is really present in the worship today. And that may be true or it may not be true. But emotional response is not the same as worshipping by the Spirit.
The Spirit is when the Spirit of God produces an internal vibrancy for God in your soul. So much so that you want to live for Him, you want your life to be defined by Him, you want the expressions of your being to come out of that vibrancy. That's a marker of God's family. Paul gives a second marker. He says, we are in God's family because we glory in Christ. Opposite of taking recognition for accomplishment, different than seeking recognition for our earned spiritual standing contrary to any other reason that we could make much of and celebrate for entering God's family, there is only one. Not two, not five, not ten, there is only one in whom we should glory. And that is Christ. Why can we come to God? Because Christ makes the way. Why can we be pure? Because Christ takes our sin away. Why can we enter into heaven? Because Christ purchases our life and gives us a new one. We glory in Christ.
And if we do, we recognize that the third reason is that we are in God's family because we have no confidence in the flesh. I want to please God with my life. I want to please God with what I do in my life. But I know that it won't justify me before Him. I'm still guilty of sin. I still need Christ. I want to identify myself as a Christian, even with my body. But that won't be the ultimate marker because we need a circumcision of the heart. And that only comes through faith in Christ. I want to be confident as I head toward my death that I will be with God someday and forever. But there is only one reason for my confidence. It's the work of Christ.
It's been applied to me. You enter into a relationship with God through faith alone. And He gives you grace alone. And that all happens through Christ alone. Praise God that our access to Him is given by Christ alone. Now, let me pause right now before concluding. It's important for us to recognize that there's a stark difference here. And these differences come along multiple axes. The first one is that for some of us who may have grown up in a very legalistic upbringing or very strict upbringing, that this will and should great against legalistic tendencies in which you were brought up. It does not mean that those legalistic tendencies or ideas had certain pure motives behind them, not assigning motives to anybody. But your confidence is not in the fact that you are a religious person. It's not in the family you came from. It's not with what you've done in this life.
Your confidence is in Christ and Christ alone. Conversely, some of us in our congregation today grew up in the Roman Catholic Church, which has with it a variety of activities and religious rituals that, depending upon which church you go to, might be communicated to you as necessary for having favor with God. And what Paul is saying here is, watch out, because there's only one way for favor with God. There's only one source of our confidence. It's not in outward identity markers. It's through the inward transformation of the heart. This is why, friends, especially those of us who grew up in a Roman Catholic background, this is why the Protestant Reformation happened 500 years ago, was along this very issue. It's important to know the difference.
Praise God, friends, that we have access to Him by Christ alone. Harry Ironside tells the story of Bishop John Taylor Smith, who was the former chaplain of the General British Arms. This was well over 100 years ago, when he was preaching from John, chapter 3, verse 7, when Jesus says, you must be born again. On one occasion, he told us that he was preaching in a large cathedral on this same text. In order to drive it home, he said, my dear people, do not substitute anything for your new birth. You may be a member of a church, even the great church of which I am a member of the historic church of England, but church membership is not new birth. And accept a man be born again. He cannot see the kingdom of God. The rector was sitting at my left pointing to him. I said, you might be a clergyman like my friend, the rector here. It not be born again. And accept a man be born again. He cannot see the kingdom of God.
And on my left set the archdeacon in his stall, and pointing directly at him, I said, you might even be in archdeacon like my friend in his stall and not be born again. And accept a man be born again. He cannot see the kingdom of God. You might even be a bishop like myself and not be born again. And accept a man be born again. He cannot see the kingdom of God. And he went on to tell us that day or day or so later that he received a letter from the archdeacon in which he wrote my dear bishop, you have found me out. I have been a clergyman for over 30 years, but I had never known anything of the joy that Christians speak of. I never could understand it. Mine has been hard legal service.
I did not know what was the matter with me, but when you pointed directly at me and said, you might even be an archdeacon and not be born again. I realized in a moment what the trouble was, I had never known anything of the new birth. He went on to say that he was wretched and miserable and had been unable to sleep all night and beg for a conference if the bishop could spare the time to speak with him. Of course, I could spare the time, said Bishop Smith. And the next day we got together over the word of God. And after some hours, we were both on our knees. And the archdeacon taking his place before God as a poor, lost sinner and telling the Lord Jesus, he would trust him and him alone as his savior. And from that moment, everything has been different. It was a striking example of the absolute necessity for new birth and of the sad possibility of being deceived with false profession and going on for years, not understanding one's true condition before God and how to access God in it.
Friends, you can access God in your condition and it comes through Jesus Christ. Praise God, praise God that we can access him and you can access him even today through his son Christ. Let's pray and praise him together. Father, we thank you that there is no burden of physical performance to bear to reach you. We thank you that you keep us safe and make us strong because of who you are. I pray for my friends here today, men and women, boys and girls alike, any who live under the strain of a rule or a legalistic tendency that causes them to believe they might have favor with you. Release them today. Help them to see their savior, fresh. Give them confidence in nothing else but him. And it is his name we rejoice. Amen.
You're listening to a better word and a message titled The Lord and the Dogs to hear the complete message go to a better word dot or g or listen on your favorite podcast platform by searching for a better word with Pastor Nick. This month we're offering a classic Christian book by 16th century theologian John Calvin that every Christian should pick up read and apply. It's called a little book on the Christian life and it's just the thing to guide your journey as you follow Christ. Here's Pastor Nick to tell you more. Thanks Brian. Are your theological beliefs abstract concepts or do they shape how you handle daily decisions? Does your faith impact every aspect of your life, including how you manage your time money relationships or how you deal with suffering. As a pastor, I regularly counsel Christians about how to move beyond intellectual faith to transformative living. And I found a helpful book that tackles the common struggles we all face. It's not a new release.
It's a timeless classic called a little book on the Christian life by John Calvin. This isn't a dry theological thesis. It's a practical guide. Calvin addresses real issues such as how to practice self denial in a self focused world, how to suffer while maintaining hope and how to enjoy life's blessings without becoming enslaved to them. What strikes me about Calvin's approach is his pastoral heart. He understands that the Christian life isn't about perfection. It's about progress. If you're ready to move beyond more intellectual faith, I encourage you to request a copy of a little book on the Christian life. This book has been helping believers for centuries and I pray it will help you too. Now here's Brian to tell you how to get in touch and request your copy. We'll gladly send you a copy of a little book on the Christian life when you make a generous financial gift. Thanks for partnering with us to bring a better word to listeners in your community and around the globe. To give generously, go to a better word dot o-r-g and click donate. That's a better word dot o-r-g. I'm Brian Dallin inviting you to join us again next time on a better word.
A better word is a teaching ministry of Old North Church in Canfield, Ohio.
More episodes
