Philippians 3:8-14
I always thought I wanted to be an expert. It didn’t really matter all that much in what. I just wanted to be the absolute best in something. Somewhere along the way as I’ve grown up and matured, I realized how impossible that is though. It didn’t seem to matter too much what avenue in life I traveled down or what I pursued, there always existed and will always exist somewhere in the world someone better. As I look back on it now and how miserable I had been at times in that empty pursuit to be the best, I understand that the majority of the time it was my pride that was pushing me. I’d like to say it was a sanctified desire to do everything I could with the talents that the good Lord had given me, which may have been the case some of the time, but in reality, it was mostly my pride. Personally, I thought I wanted to know more than anyone about movies. I thought I wanted to know more than anyone about psychology and human behavior. I thought I wanted to know more than anyone about current events and pop culture. Satan convinced me that somehow if I was “the best,” that would really validate my existence. Maybe some of you want to be the best – the best mom or dad, the best engineer or salesperson, the best teacher or nurse. There’s nothing wrong with the pursuit of maximizing the talents that we’ve been given by the Lord. But ahead of all those pursuits is one thing. And it’s interesting, because contentment with all those pursuits and everything else will fall in place if we follow the Apostle Paul’s example from our Lesson for today from Philippians. He makes up his mind that the most important thing for him to know, the number one thing he wants to be an expert in, the focus of his life he says, is:
“I Want to Know Christ”
I. The Saving Facts about Him
II. The Personal Experience of Him
III. The Life He has in Mind for Me
Philippians is a letter with one of the main themes simply being “Joy in Christ.” When you think about it, that’s really an interesting topic for Paul, the author of this letter, to be writing about. Remember Paul was a guy who, while on his missionary journeys, endured floggings five times from the Jews, beatings with rods on three separate occasions from the Romans, he was stoned, three times he was shipwrecked and left to die in the open sea. He often found himself hungry, naked, cold, weak and bloody. He was in constant danger from Jews, Gentiles, officials, false preachers, etc (2 Corinthians 11:16-33). And at the time he was writing this letter, he was in chains in prison. A simple understanding of human anatomy tells us that Paul, by all accounts, should not have been alive, and at the very least, according to the world, he should not have been happy. And yet Paul is the one who later in this letter to the Philippians has the ability to say, “I have learned the secret of being content” (4:12) and he meant it.
Would you like to know how Paul could be content in all of this? Bear in mind, “contentment” has long been considered by philosophers to be the key mindset to happiness in life, so this is an incredibly profound statement he’s making here. He tells us the secret in the opening verse for our lesson today, verse 8, so listen carefully: “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ.” In comparison to knowing Christ, everything else is worthless. There you have it. It is that simple. If you wake up any day and say, “Man, I would definitely like to be happier than what I am”, push yourself to know Christ, his love, and his promises better.
Don’t buy into the lies that the various forms of media try to feed you – if you only have this car, if you only make this much money, if you’re only this attractive, if you only have this video game system, then you will be happy. No you won’t. They’re all lies. If only I were married, if only I’d married someone different, if only I had kids, if only my kids were better behaved, then I’d be content. No you wouldn’t. Those are lies too. Paul has the God-breathed answer right here for you – know Christ. Every day, strive to know him better than the previous day.
The first thing we need to know about Christ is The Saving Facts. Paul summarizes our justification, our being declared not guilty for sins quite beautifully in verse 9 of our lesson today: I want to “gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” As Christians, we breathe a sigh of relief when we hear this message. Satan tries to creep into our lives every day and tell us what we need to do in order to continue to make God love us. “You better do this; you better not do that, or else……” No. That is not our motivation for keeping God’s commands. Our righteousness is not based on the law. Thank the Lord it isn’t, because James writes in his epistle, “Whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” (James 2:10) And there is not enough super-glue in the world to put those tablets of God’s law back together. Our righteousness is not found in ourselves, it is found in the cross of Christ. When he bore our sins, he placed his righteousness on us. Our faith receives that righteousness as we focus our eyes, our hope, our lives, our eternity, our everything, on our Savior’s cross. Now God looks at us through that cross and sees us as his righteous children. That is the simple fact. If we were on trial in a courtroom, God would look at all the evidence that’s been submitted and authoritatively judge “not guilty.”
Knowing those saving facts about Christ leads me to seek him out in a more personal way. I recently received a very generous gift from several people and I guess you’d consider maybe half of it, partially anonymous. But it wasn’t enough for me to just know that I had received the gift. I wanted to know who this person was and see them face to face. I needed to know what motivates someone to care so much and be so generous with someone that they hadn’t really met before. In a way, that is similar to our quest for knowing Christ. As Christians, we desire to Know the Personal Experience of Him who died for us to give us the most generous gift imaginable. The next verses in our lesson say, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead.” How is this true man yet true God so powerful that he’s able to create the universe, raise the dead, including himself, wash away not only my countless sins but the sins of the entire world throughout history, and promise us heaven, not to mention walk on water, heal thousands, drive out demons, calm storms, feed the hungry, and so on. Honestly, who is this guy? How is this man so loving and so merciful that he was willing to put himself through tortures that don’t exist today because even the sinful world we live in deems them too cruel. Such humility in the face of those who were mocking and taunting him; such discipline in the face of those who beat him, flogged him, tortured him, and crucified him; such resolve in wrestling with himself, knowing that as God he could have stopped any time he pleased, but he didn’t. And it was all for my sake. Honestly, who is this guy? And after this all was complete, he rose from the dead and lives for eternity in heaven. Whoever this guy is, I want to be with him. I need to be with him. I need to know his every move in life, his every teaching, his every word, so that every move I make for eternity will be with him.
So, every day I press on toward that goal. Knowing the facts about Jesus, knowing all that Jesus did for me and what he continues to do for me, I learn What He has in Mind for My Life. As content as he was, Paul knew that what he was experiencing on earth was nothing, absolutely nothing compared to what was in store in heaven. He makes that point very clear in our lesson. In fact he mentions it twice in verses 12 and 13 because he knew that there were listeners then, just like there are now, who will continue to be disappointed when they don’t experience heaven on earth. Apparently there were false teachers amongst the Philippians who were claiming that perfection could be reached here on earth. Today countless self-help books exist that promise to give you you’re best life now. We’re not really supposed to experience our best life now. We’re supposed to experience heaven in heaven. We wouldn’t want to change that, because we may have 70, 80, 90 years now, but we have forever in heaven. Paul says, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.” Notice that picture here. Christ Jesus took hold of us with his cross. It’s as though with that cross, Jesus reached out his giant hands and like King Kong and grabbed onto us, looked us in the eye, and said “You’re mine.” In our Holy Spirit—led lives we grab on to that cross as tightly as we can as well, knowing, because of that cross, no matter if our arms tire on the journey, Christ still has us in his mighty grip.
Christ has grabbed hold of us. But we cannot be grabbed by Christ within the walls of this sanctuary and then head outside after the final hymn and live just as the heathens. With our understanding of Christ’s love and mercy, we consider everything else in this life a loss, complete garbage when compared with that knowledge. Included in that garbage that needs to be thrown out is our past lives of sin. Paul says this, “But one thing I do: forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” Imagine the joy that Paul had in Christ as he wrote these words. Remember that Paul, before his conversion on the road to Damascus, was the number one prize student of the Jews, rising up in their ranks, involved in persecutions and even murders of Christians. Imagine the weight of his conscience knowing that he was at least in part responsible for the death of these martyrs. And yet he says here that he presses to forget his past sins.
Now, we cannot be unrealistic about it, there is no way short of a lobotomy that Paul would have literally been able to forget about what he had done. But, through Christ he was able to forget about the consequences of such actions. The consequence was paid for in full. Paul uses the picture in these verses of a runner in a race. Paul seemingly was a guy who, living as a Roman citizen in the Roman Empire, was naturally interested in sports as many of the Romans were. In his writings he occasionally references boxing or races. Here he alludes to a runner in a race. If you’ve ever ran in a race competitively before, you know that looking backwards while running is not the ideal athletic position. Odds are, that kid on track and field day in Elementary School who is looking backwards while running to see who he’s all beating is not the kid who is going to win the race. Don’t look back on those past sins. Once you have repented of those mistakes Christ doesn’t want you look back at them any more. Satan does. Satan wants you to dwell on them, to try to earn God’s favor by atoning for them, to doubt God’s love because they are too great. God wants you to forget them and look forward, focusing on the prize that he has in store for you because of Christ. Set your sights on heaven. Every day run away from temptation and run towards the life that God intended you to live—one of peace and joy, one of hope and contentment, one of sharing that gospel message.
We have more opportunities than we can count to share that message of salvation. And it doesn’t have to be such a struggle to act on these opportunities. Sharing God’s gospel message of forgiveness and salvation is kind of like when you get off of a roller coaster that was the most exhilarating experience of your life. You run over to your friend and say, “You’ve got to try this.” Maybe you don’t like rollers coasters, maybe it’s your favorite movie or book, and you tell everyone you know to see it or read it. It would never cross your mind to hoard that joy or be stingy with it. You naturally are compelled to spread that joy.
You already know we have our Festival of Friendship Sunday coming up next week. You’ve been given the cards that tell all the pertinent information. You’ve been given the people in your lives to witness to. You’ve been given prayers to pray each day to ask God to grant you the strength and to open the hearts of those to whom you share that message. This is tee ball. It’s sitting right there for you. All you have to do is swing away.
But, admittedly, taking that swing can be scary. “What if I miss? What if they think I’m just a crazy Christian weirdo?” I’d be lying to you if I told you that I experience no apprehension, no fear of rejection when I talk to people about Jesus. When I walk up to the front door of prospects, there’s a part of me that is hoping no one opens that door. There have been times when people have said “No thank you” and shut the door in my face. And there have been times when some of my best friends have closed the door, removing me from their life because they simply don’t want to hear the message I have to tell them about God’s Word and his will for their lives.
But for the times that I have experienced some rejection in my life when evangelizing, you know the thing that bugs me the most – it’s that I haven’t had more doors closed in my face. What I mean is this – I have been too easy to get rid of, too easy to dismiss. Someone was probably ready and ripe to talk about God’s free forgiveness, but my fear grabbed a hold of me and I “politely” said something to the effect of, “well, I don’t want to bother you” or “take up any more of your time.” That’s what really bugs me – that I don’t take advantage of those opportunities that God places into my life.
Look at it this way, if you saw a little child playing out in the street, and a car was speeding down the street, the driver oblivious of that kid in its path, you’d run out to help that child and get them out of harms way, right? Let me ask you this, would you say, “Well, I don’t know that child, so his safety isn’t really my responsibility.” No, that’d be ridiculous. You’d run out there without thinking about it and help him. Would you say, “Man, that kid really looks like he’s having a lot of fun right now. Who am I to ruin his good time?” No, that’d be ridiculous. You’d run out there without thinking about it and help him. Would you say, “I’d like to help him, but I’ve got a lot going on right now. There’s enough to deal with at home. I’m not very good at rescuing people, I should probably leave that in the hands of someone who has the training, maybe I’ll call the fire department.” No, that’d be ridiculous. You’d run out there without thinking about it and help him.
Each and every one of us knows people right now out in that street who maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe 70 years from now are going to be run over by that car called “death” that would knock them straight to hell. Now, if they don’t budge when we try to help them, that’s their decision, but in the meantime we will make sure we do everything we can to get them out of harms way.
We do this because we know Christ. We know the facts of what he did for us. Very personally we know the experience he went through for us. We know that life that he has in mind for us. We know the eternal life that he has planned for us. Today we know Christ, and tomorrow we will know him better. Amen.
–Vicar James Hein