Philippians 3, 1, Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord.
So next time you see a pastor or a vicar say finally,
you can't hold it against them because it is biblical. It's right here.
But right after that, he starts to get serious.
Telling the Gentile Christians, you know, that Jesus was a good start,
but if you really want to belong to God, you've got to have the right credentials.
Paul calls those teachers evil-doers, or translated literally, it's bad workers.
But then he says that if anybody wants to play the credentials game, he'll win.
When it came to being a Jew, he said,
if anyone else thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more.
And I don't doubt him.
Paul would know because he's been playing that game most of his life.
The first time we see Paul in Scripture is Acts chapter 7.
And he isn't preaching.
He's standing at the edge of a crowd outside of Jerusalem.
Men throwing their coats at his feet to free their hands up so they can throw stones.
And the man they're stoning is Stephen.
Luke explains it pretty clearly. He says, Saul approved of his execution.
And if you'd asked Saul that afternoon why he had every right to be standing there,
he had his answer ready.
Years later, he wrote what that answer would have been in Philippians.
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.
Now, he never really earned most of that list.
He didn't pick his parents.
He didn't get to pick what tribe he was born in.
And I don't think anybody asks eight-day-olds for permission.
God gave him all of it.
In the same way that he gave Israel everything that we see in Isaiah's song from our Old Testament reading.
What more was there to do for my vineyard that I have not done in it?
Isaiah also tells us what the vineyard is.
The vineyard of the Lord of hosts is the house of Israel.
So God's people were his vineyard, and Jesus calls it the kingdom of God.
Saul and others like him held these gifts from God as if it were a deed to some property.
And if anyone was going to threaten their claim, they had to go.
And that's the vineyard in Jesus' parable this morning.
The owner sends servant after servant, and the tenants beat one, killed another, stoned another.
So he sends his son, and they say, this is the heir.
Let us kill him and have his inheritance.
Saul couldn't get his hands on the son anymore, but he went after the son's people.
He asked the high priest to write letters to the synagogues in Damascus for him to deliver.
And any followers of Jesus he found there would be chained up and brought back to Jerusalem.
Saul set out on that road to Damascus, Luke says, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord.
He was going to have his inheritance.
But Saul never did make it to Damascus with those letters.
Continuing in Acts, it says, as he went on his way, he approached Damascus, and suddenly a light from heaven shone around him.
And falling to the ground, he heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
Saul had never laid a hand personally on Jesus, but instead he was dragging Jesus' people out of their homes, some of them to their death.
The risen Son of God takes every blow to His people personally.
Who are you, Lord, says Saul? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.
Now think about what Saul had come into him right then.
See, in the parable, Jesus asked, what will the owner do to tenants that are like that?
And the leaders answer him, he'll put those wretches to a miserable death.
Saul would have given that same answer. He'd been handing that verdict out for some time now.
That light from heaven should have ended him.
Instead, Jesus sends a disciple named Ananias, one of the very people Saul was going to arrest.
And the first words that he says to Saul were, brother Saul, brother Saul.
And as he laid his hands on him, something like scales fell from Saul's eyes, and he rose and he was baptized.
The tenants in the parable who held on to their plan lost the vineyard.
But the heir that they killed went looking for one of them on the road to Damascus
and gave the inheritance to a persecutor named Saul.
And so fast forward, we see years later, Paul is now the one in chains,
as he's writing this letter to the church in Philippi.
And he's talking about what happened to that list of credentials.
He said, whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ.
For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish.
Or if you prefer the King James, it's dung.
He threw them out. He threw it all out 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.
When Paul describes his old life, he calls himself a persecutor of the church.
And when he describes his new one, he says, I press on.
But in the Greek, it's the same word. Chasing.
See, Paul's zeal, his passion never went away.
But Jesus turned it around.
The man who had been chasing down the church spent the rest of his life chasing after Christ.
Because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
Now, Paul doesn't tell the story to the Philippians to get social credit.
He's not trying to look cool.
He's telling it so that they will see themselves in his story.
So I figure it's a good idea for us to do that, too.
What does our list look like?
I don't think anyone here is bragging about their tribe.
But if Paul were to make a list today, it might look a little like ours.
Read the Bible every day.
Never miss a devotion.
Fast before every communion.
Serve food at the pantry.
Adopt an angel tree family every Christmas.
See, all those are good things.
So please don't go home and stop doing devotions.
They're great things.
In fact, in the small catechism, Luther says that fasting and bodily preparation are certainly fine outward training.
But he says that the person who is truly worthy and well prepared is the one who has faith in these words.
Given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.
Good works are good.
They're not a claim to God's kingdom.
But we can tell when we've started treating them like one.
When we start keeping score.
Now, it doesn't usually sound like threats and murder.
At least I hope.
It sounds more like, you know, I'm a Bible study every week.
Where are they?
What's their excuse?
Man, my kids are a handful, but it's not like theirs.
It's the Pharisee in the temple all over again when he says, God, I thank you that I am not like other men.
But the scary part is that keeping score tends to feel like faithfulness.
Saul thought he was serving God right up until the light knocked him to the ground.
And so here's the question that Paul's list puts to us.
When you stand before God, what are you planning to hand him?
If a Pharisee who could honestly call himself blameless had to count his whole list as loss,
ours isn't getting us in either.
In Isaiah's song, God tells his people, judge between me and my vineyard.
Go ahead and judge.
Every good thing on our list, the moment we hold it up to God as a reason that he should take us in,
goes in the same pile that Paul's did.
But that leaves us really right where Saul ended up.
Face down in the dirt.
Nothing left in our hands.
And that's exactly where Jesus finds people.
Saul didn't get up off that road and have a better list.
He got up blind.
And three days later, he was baptized.
That's how Jesus found you too.
Most of us don't have a Damascus Road story to point to.
I imagine if you ask a group of Lutherans what their testimony is,
you'll hear something like, I was born and I was baptized.
That's not a very boring story.
It's the same one Paul has.
Before you could put a single thing on the list, Christ Jesus made you his own.
The moment you were born, he was pursuing you.
The tenants in the parable said, come, let us kill him and have his inheritance.
And the ones who held to that plan lost the vineyard.
But the son let himself be thrown out and killed.
And by his death, the inheritance went to people who don't deserve it.
Like a persecutor named Saul.
Like you.
So those words ended up true after all, just maybe not for the people who said it.
Let us have his inheritance.
Not because we took it, but because he gave it.
You are, as Paul writes in Romans 8, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.
So that list you've been holding up to God, the score you've been keeping on your neighbor,
every gift of God that you've tried to claim as your own is forgiven on account of Jesus Christ.
Crucified and risen for you.
And he is risen.
The son they threw out and killed didn't stay in the grave.
On the third day, the father raised him and he lives and keeps every promise that he's made to you.
That's the power that Paul wants to know.
The power of his resurrection.
It's the same power that met him on that road in a bright light and it's the same power that met you at your baptism.
Jesus said it himself, because I live, you also will live.
Meaning your grave won't be the end of your story any more than it was for him.
So as Paul presses on, forgetting what lies behind, straining forward toward the upward call of God in Christ Jesus,
he's not doing it to earn a prize.
He's running because Christ has already secured it for him and for you.
So finally, and I do mean finally, rejoice in the Lord.
Rejoice in the Lord.
The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and mind in Christ Jesus.
Amen.