Philippians 3:19

Philippians 3:19

Whose end is destruction

I.

Their sin. Earthly mindedness. It seems hard to say that we should not at all mind earthly things. These are necessary to sweeten our pilgrimage, and support us during our service. We have our “earthly house” that must be maintained (2 Corinthians 5:1). Therefore God does allow us in some sort to mind earthly things, but--

1. Not only. Some mind them who have no tincture of religion (Psalms 10:4; Romans 8:5; Luke 10:42; Luke 12:21).

2. Not chiefly. The gross worldling is discovered by his only minding, the secret worldling by his chiefly minding. The rule is that spiritual things must be sought in the first place (Matthew 6:33), and we must trust God for other things in the way of honest endeavours. The minding of earthly things is when religion is subordinate to the world, when the lean kine devour the fat (Luke 8:14). This matter will be known by three things.

(1) What is your chief end and scope? It must be God and heaven (2 Corinthians 4:18; Philippians 3:14). The end cuts out the work and forms the thoughts.

(2) What is your chief business? If it be about earthly things you are earthly minded. Surely our great business is to obtain salvation by Christ (chap. 2:12). It is dangerous to miscarry in so weighty a work.

(3) What is the great joy and trouble of your hearts? Is it to have and want the world? (Luke 12:19). The saints fetch their solace from spiritual things (Psalms 4:6-7; Psalms 119:14; Psalms 94:19; Psalms 30:7); but if disappointment in the world be the cause of our trouble, and happiness in the world feedeth our icy, surely we mind these things most.

3. Alas! a child of God is often too worldly. In particular acts he may carry himself too much like an earthly minded man, but no prevalent covetousness, voluptuousness, or ambition possesses his heart instead of God. He is growing out of these distempers and settling his soul to his constant bent, work, and joy.

II. The aggravations of this sin.

1. “Whose God is their belly.”

(1) They prize the belly. Provision for the flesh is the sum of worldly happiness. But the world yields no more than bodily food and clothing, which the poorest may attain without so much ado. Are they nearer to true comfort and further from the grave? (Psalms 17:14). You say that some rich men will not afford themselves conveniences, but fare hard. Answer--

(a) Covetousness is usually the purveyor of the flesh (Romans 8:5). Those who seem to deal hardly with it, please it--by hoarding if not by spending.

(b) They are twice fools, for they transgress the laws both of nature end of grace (Ecclesiastes 5:18-19).

(c) They lay it up for them who spend it on the belly; and as one goes to hell for getting, so does the other for spending, till it revolve into hands that will use it better (Ecclesiastes 2:26; Proverbs 13:22; Job 27:17). Estates are ruined by sins of omission as well as commission.

(2) This belly is made a god. Our god is that which we value most, and for whose sake we do things (Colossians 3:5; Ephesians 5:5).

(3) How justly are they deprived of eternal salvation.

(a) They put a vile scorn on God and Christ (2 Timothy 3:4; 1 John 2:15).

(b) They that serve a base god cannot but have a base spirit. Every man’s temper is as his god is (Psalms 115:8),

(c) They are not only unfit for God, but opposite to Him (James 4:4).

2. Their glory is in their shame.

(1) That which a man prizes most he will glory in, be it wealth, honour, parts, or the Lord (Jeremiah 9:23-24). Man will glory in something. True Christians renounce all carnal gloryings (2 Corinthians 1:12; Galatians 6:14; 1 Corinthians 15:10).

(2) The true object of glorying is God and Christ (Jeremiah 9:23-24; Jeremiah 4:2; 1 Corinthians 1:30-31).

(3) Not only benefits but sufferings for Christ should be more to us than all the world (Hebrews 11:26; Acts 5:41; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10).

(4) A mortified estate is a greater cause for glory than an exalted, because it is a far greater mercy (Galatians 6:14; James 1:9-10).

(5) The carnal rejoice in earthly things as pleasing to the flesh; and so do the godly, as far as the flesh remaineth in them; but this is our weakness and disgrace.

(6) This is to bid defiance to religion and to glory in your shame when you bless yourselves more for having an estate in the world than an interest in the promises. This is as if it were a sign of prudence to glory in the finding of a pin.

III. Their punishment--“Their end,” etc.

1. It is good to look to the end of things (Deuteronomy 32:29; Lamentations 1:9; Jeremiah 17:11; Hebrews 13:7).

2. Worldly pleasures will end in everlasting destruction (1 Timothy 6:9-10; Romans 6:21; Romans 6:23; Galatians 6:8; Romans 8:6; Romans 8:13; 2 Corinthians 11:15).

3. The punishment is the more dreadful to give us the more help, and the more powerful argument against those pleasing lusts. It is sweet to please the flesh, but it will cost us dear.

IV. Uses.

1. Do we mind earthly things or heavenly?

(1) Do not fix them as your scope (1 Timothy 6:9).

(2) Let not this be your great work (Matthew 6:24).

(3) Let not earthly things be your great delight (1 Corinthians 7:29-30; Philippians 4:12; Psalms 62:10).

(4) When your estate is yet to be made or gotten, let your desires be modest (Isaiah 5:8; Ecclesiastes 5:10; Hebrews 13:5).

(5) Moderate your cares about these things (Matthew 6:25-32; Philippians 4:5-6; 1 Peter 5:7).

(6) Be willing to resign them to Christ when the enjoyment of them is inconsistent with your fidelity to Him (Luke 14:33).

5. To dissuade us from earthly mindedness consider--

(1) You must shortly die and come to your account, and according to the account you give and the preparation you have made you must live in endless joy or misery.

(2) The danger of abundance (Matthew 19:24; Ecclesiastes 5:11-12; Luke 12:48).

(3) See by faith those sure, great, and glorious things which are infinitely more worthy your love and labour (Colossians 3:2; Hebrews 11:25).

(4) Think often of your great necessities (Luke 10:42). (T. Manton, D. D.)

Earthliness

I. Its manifestations.

1. Sensuality.

2. Pride.

3. Covetousness.

II. Its shame. It degrades--

1. The understanding.

2. The moral nature.

3. The immortal spirit.

III. Its end.

1. Ruin.

2. Misery. (J. Lyth, D. D.)

Materialism

There is--

1. A philosophic materialism which reduces the soul to a series of phenomena to be accounted for by superiority of physical organization in man, and makes God an expression for the sum of nature’s workings.

2. A practical materialism which does not trouble itself to deny the existence of the soul or the claims of God, but is nevertheless buried in matter, and swallowed up of earthliness. There were baptized Christians in Philippi who were enemies of the Cross, because while wearing the Christian name they were given up to sensuality. This, in various forms, is a crying evil in all prosperous times. The text is applicable to the worldling now.

I. Who are they who mind earthly things?

1. Those whose sole care is the increase of wealth. Business occupies their whole attentions. Material interests absorb their whole soul. Such was the man described by our Lord (Luke 7:18, etc.). These divorce what God has joined together--diligence in business and fervency of spirit.

2. Those whose sole enjoyment is the pleasures of this life (Luke 16:19). “Whose god is their belly” describes one type of sensual enjoyment. But a man wholly given up to even innocent enjoyment is, in truth, a mere sensualist. He neglects and despises the pleasures of--

(1) devotion;

(2) godly companionship;

(3) heavenly anticipation (Philippians 3:20).

II. What is the end of those who mind earthly things? “Destruction.” “They that sow to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption” (Luke 16:24-25). (Family Churchman.)

Illustrations of the apostle’s sentiment

Even heathen thought in its higher types could brand sensualists as κοιλιοδαίμονες, men who worshipped belly gods. The striking words which Euripides puts into the mouth of the Cyclops, the type of this class, have often been cited in this connection: “I sacrifice to no one but myself; not to the gods, but to this my belly, the greatest of the gods; for to eat and drink each day is the god for wise men.” We have, further, the greatest of the German poets representing Mephistopheles as contemptuously, yet insinuatingly saying to the fool rejoicing in his possessions, “Du hast dafur was Schluud und Bauch begehrt.” And we have the words of scathing denunciation of John Ruskin, “The creation over which God appointed us kings, and in which we have chosen to live as swine.” With such instances of the contempt with which men can justly regard the lower, baser levels of life, we can the better comprehend the indignant yet sorrowing scorn with which the apostle contemplates the objects of his denunciation. In view, too, of such grossness of nature as is here depicted, we can listen to the call which Chrysostom has addressed to every true cross bearer--the call to higher things--“Thou hast received a belly that thou mayest feed, not distend it; that thou mayest have the mastery over it, not have it as mistress over thee; that it may minister to thee for the nourishment of the other parts, not that thou mayest minister to it; not that thou mayest exceed limits. The sea, when it passes its bounds, doth not work so many evils as the belly doth to our body, together with our soul.” They are men who, in the contemptuous words of the Roman satirist, in their all-engrossing care for their belly and their amusements, ask no other favours of their emperor than “bread and circus games.” They are those who, as Cornelius a Lapide puts it, are like the moles, ever concerned with the earth, ever blindly digging in the earth, and ever breathing of the earth, whereas Christians feed on heavenly food and breathe the air of heaven. Or once more, we can recognize these men in the picture in the interpreter’s chamber of Bunyan’s allegory, “The man that could look no way but downwards, with the muck rake in his hand, while there stood over his head one with a celestial crown in his hand, and proffered him that crown for his muck rake; but the man did neither look up nor regard, but raked to himself the straws, the small sticks, and dust of the floor.” (J. Hutchison, D. D.)

The curse of carnality

Carnal men are daily partakers of the serpent’s curse: they go on their belly, and eat dust. (Archbishop Leighton.)

Whose god is their belly

The Sicilians erected an altar and a statue in the temple of Ceres to Adephagia, the goddess of gluttony, thus literally illustrating these words. Similar examples of the personification and worship of lusts abound in modern heathenism. (J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)

Glory and shame

Of Anacreon, the famous lyric poet (520 B.C.), whose genius was devoted to the praise of sensual pleasures, the people of Athens raised a statue in the citadel, in which he was represented as an old drunken man singing. He had lived to eighty-five, and was choked at last by a grape stone. (J. F. B. Tinling, B. A.)

Belly worship reproved

A gentleman in England, who had a chapel attached to his house, was visited by a person from London, to whom he showed the chapel. “What a glorious kitchen this would make!” said the visitor. “When I make a god of my belly,” replied the gentleman, “I will make a kitchen of my chapel.” (Biblical Museum.)

The love of this world is a great hindrance to the gospel

Dr. Justus Jonus told Dr. Martin Luther of a noble and powerful Misnian who above all things occupied himself in amassing gold and silver, and was so buried in darkness that he gave no heed to the five books of Moses, and had even said to Duke John Frederick, who was discoursing with him upon the gospel, “Sir, the gospel pays no interest.” “Have you no grains?” interposed Luther; and then told this fable:--“A lion, making a great feast, invited all the beasts, and with them some swine. When all manner of dainties were set before the guests, the swine asked, ‘Have you no grains?’” “Even so,” continued the Doctor, “even so, in these days, is it with our epicureans; we preachers set before them, in our churches, the most dainty and costly dishes, as everlasting salvation, the remission of sins, and God’s grace; but they, like swine, turn up their snouts, and ask for guilders: offer a cow nutmeg, and she will reject it for old hay. This reminds me of the answer of certain parishioners to their minister, Ambrose R. He had been earnestly exhorting them to come and listen to the Word of God. ‘Well,’ said they, ‘if you will tap a good barrel of beer for us we’ll come with all our hearts and hear you.’ The gospel at Wittenberg is like unto the rain which, falling upon a river, produces little effect; but descending upon a dry, thirsty soil, renders it fertile.” (Luther’s Table Talk.)