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If you spend much time with an investment advisor planning for a retirement fund or a college fund, you will most likely hear the phrase, "don’t put all of your eggs in one basket." The common wisdom is that in order to protect yourself from sudden changes in the financial markets, you should spread your investment portfolio out into a variety of financial instruments that balance out the risk of investing, but yield a reasonable rate of return.

However, what if you knew in your heart, you believed, you trusted with all of your being that one basket was the right basket? No matter how great the risk, would you put all of your eggs in one basket? That is exactly what the Apostle Paul suggests in our text for today. What might be sound wisdom in regard to financial matters may not apply equally to matters of faith. Join me as I read from Paul’s letter to the Philippians.

Paul suggests that the truly risky investment would be to spread our faith out among different alternatives. The only "sure thing" is to commit ourselves to knowing Jesus Christ as Lord.

Paul uses the word "beware" in verse 2 as a way of warning believers of temptations to spread out their faith, to trust in things that are added onto the true gospel. He specifically mentions those who come behind him teaching that salvation comes from obedience to both Christ and to the Law of the Old Testament. Paul has nothing against this Law, he just knows from personal experience that the Law can only point out to us how far away we are from God. The law demonstrates our unrighteousness, our inability to be right with God. Only faith in Christ can make us right with God.

So, we are to be aware of the temptation to manipulate the process, to trust in something other than or in addition to faith in Christ to establish our "rightness" with God. Paul holds himself up as the poster child of one who did everything within his own power to gain God’s favor. He was "a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, zealous in his defense of the faith, and blameless in whatever righteousness could be found in the Law." But whatever those efforts gained him could only be understood as a loss when held up against the "surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus as Lord." That one basket, knowing Jesus as Lord, provided Paul with more than he could gain from all of the other baskets in which he had placed his trust.

I wonder what kinds of false baskets tempt us. Where are we prone to invest our faith and trust in hopes of gaining some kind of return? Do we spread the risk, believing that surely one of those baskets will provide us with the fulfillment of our hopes and dreams?

What about the basket of self-sufficiency? This is the basket that teaches us that we have to take care of ourselves; nobody else will do it for us. We Texans have an admiration for "the self-made man," who "pulls himself up by his own bootstraps." We realize that "if you want a job done right, then you have to do it yourself." Spiritually, we have this deep-seated worry that we are leaving something undone; that we will arrive at the pearly gates only to discover that have fallen just short of the requirements for entry.

Or, maybe we are driven by a failure to truly understand grace. We never experience that kind of grace in this world so we fail to believe that we will really receive it from God. So, we immerse ourselves in good works, religious activity, moral causes that defend God and His righteousness. Surely, all of this would make us more valuable to God and make up for any other shortcomings that we might have overlooked.

The problem with self-sufficiency is that we never find a lasting peace, or joy, or contentment from walking with God. Instead of being driven by a relationship with God, we become driven by a need to prove ourselves to God. The problem with that, of course, is that we can never prove ourselves enough. We can never do enough good things to balance out our sin. Karma does not exist.

Do you think you may have shifted a few eggs into the basket of self-sufficiency? Do you entertain the idea that you are more valuable to God because of the good things that you do? Or, do you entertain the idea that something bad will happen to you if you don’t live up to a certain standard?

The basket of self-sufficiency will never pay off. You can never receive the kind of peace and joy that you want by trying to take control of what God can do for you.

What about the basket of self-deception? While the basket of self-sufficiency tempts us to try to make up for our shortcomings, the basket of self-deception tempts us to minimize our shortcomings. We convince ourselves that we are really OK, and that we can believe in a god who just wants make us feel better, to have more, to receive "his favor" as some like to say. The basket of self-deception tempts us to believe that God will agree to live by our rules and that He will be satisfied with whatever attention we are willing to give Him.

The basket of self-deception leads to a false form of contentment. We aren’t sure that we understand God very well, so we convince ourselves that God is so easily satisfied that we spend little time worrying about it. When we need Him then we can pray and He will answer. Haven’t you heard people who claim little faith in God at all say to someone in crisis, "Our thoughts and prayers are with you?"

Have you shifted a few eggs into the basket of self-deception? Have you put together a short list of things that you will do to please God and expect that He will be satisfied with that? Do you ever bargain with God saying that if He will help you then you will pay Him back with something of value?

The basket of self-deception will never pay off. Someday you will reach for a relationship with God that you failed to cultivate. You might even blame Him for it, but the truth is that you never took Him seriously enough.

Those two baskets sit at opposite extremes and there surely are other baskets that tempt us. But Paul assures us that only one basket exists that can pay off, and that is the basket that he describes as Lordship. Everything else is rubbish, he believes, when compared to the value of knowing Jesus Christ as Lord. He describes that relationship with two powerful words, righteousness and resurrection.

Righteousness is the state that we find ourselves in when we place faith in Christ and submit ourselves to His influence ("found in Him"). What our good works cannot do for us, faith does. We cannot raise ourselves up to God’s standard, but through faith He raises us up Himself by putting righteousness on us. By submitting to Jesus as Lord we find ourselves in a right relationship with God.

Resurrection refers to the new life we experience with Christ as we put to death our old ways and take on His new life. We "know Him, the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings." In other words, submitting to Jesus as Lord means to take on His life, to follow in His footsteps and embrace both the consequences and the benefits of making Him Lord.

Putting our eggs in the basket of Lordship means that we will be aware of the temptations to pursue a righteousness that we create, and pursue the righteousness that God creates within us.

Common wisdom tells us "not to put all of our eggs in one basket." That might be true for financial investments and even for some other pursuits. But in our spiritual lives there is only one basket that can fulfill our hopes and dreams, give us joy and peace, help us to know more fully the love of God, and help us to live the life He calls us to live.

If would think of your life this morning as eggs that you hold in your hand, with baskets that are placed in front of you, would you spread them out among a variety of options? Good works, self-reliance, entertainment and pleasure, all of those things that tempt us to trust in them for meaning and purpose, call out to us to put our eggs there. And then there is Jesus, gently calling us to make Him the Lord of our lives. Where will you place your eggs?

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