Philippians 3:12-14
Notes
Transcript
Philippians 3:12-14
Philippians 3:12-14
Philippians 3:12–21 “Not that I have already attained this—that is, I have not already been perfected—but I strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead, with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore let those of us who are “perfect” embrace this point of view. If you think otherwise, God will reveal to you the error of your ways. Nevertheless, let us live up to the standard that we have already attained. Be imitators of me, brothers and sisters, and watch carefully those who are living this way, just as you have us as an example. For many live, about whom I have often told you, and now, with tears, I tell you that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, they exult in their shame, and they …”
Good morning, Introduce, Happy New Years.
As you all know by now I’m not really big on doing holiday themed sermons.
And I don’t want you to think that I’m a big fuddy duddy, and Just don’t enjoy holidays.
In fact I’m a big fan of celebrating holidays.
But it has everything to do with the way in which I plan out my sermons.
There’s basically two different ways to plan out a preaching calendar. The first way is to sit down and look at the calendar, look at what’s going on in the year and circle all the important dates. Is it an election year? when do the major holidays fall, etc etc, and then plug in sermons in those days. and say, ok between Mothers day and Memorial day, there are 2 weeks. So the first week I’ll talk about Forgiveness. And the next week i’m going to talk about Baptism.
And then you just fill out the calendar.
I do things backwards.
I start by saying “what book of the Bible do we want to talk about?”
And then I’ll say OK, if I want to go through this book I think it’s going to take me 8 weeks. We’ll do chapters 1 and 2, 3 and 4. Chapter 5 is longer so maybe I’ll have one week where I only do one chapter.
And then I take those and then I pull out the calendar and I plug those passages into the calendar.
The reason I do it this way is because I know that I as a flawed human being have a Bias. If I choose the topics in advance, or if I have a week or two here or there to pick a random section of the Bible, I know that I’m going to end up talking only about the things that I want to talk about, and avoiding the things that I don’t want to talk about.
So a lot of preachers will—I think without even thinking about it—have pet projects that they really like to preach about.
Sexual immorality is a perfect example. Some preachers really want to talk about sexual sins, and so they plug that topic in any chance they can.
On the flip side there are preachers who are extremely uncomfortable talking about sexual immorality so they just never get to those sections of the Bible.
And so I do it the way I do it to avoid that phenomenon from happening.
Now here’s the downside. The way I do it makes me less flexible as a preacher. There’s times where I really want to talk about something that is applicable in the moment for you all. Maybe someone has suffered a loss, or is going through Grief, and I pull out the passage for that week and it just doesn’t speak to that topic.
And the second downside is the fact that when Holidays come around there simply just aren’t enough weeks in the year to go through books of the Bible like we do and ALSO talk about holidays. Because we have a major holiday like every month.
So right now every church in america is either this week or next week doing their “new year” sermon. Where they’re doing the whole “new years resolution” thing, and looking forward and talking about the vision for the church.
But here’s the amazing thing.
More often than not when I trust the process of letting the Bible set the theme, and letting the Bible speak, instead of picking and choosing what I want to talk about, God always seems to make it work somehow.
Because I think that the passage we have today fits in perfectly with the idea that we as a church should be looking forward to the new year, and re-focusing our mission as a church.
If you have your Bibles I encourage you to turn to Philippians chapter 3.
We’re going to be reading verse 12, but before we do that I want us to back up to verse 8 so that we can get the context.
More than that, I now regard all things as liabilities compared to the far greater value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things—indeed, I regard them as dung!—that I may gain Christ,
and be found in him, not because I have my own righteousness derived from the law, but because I have the righteousness that comes by way of Christ’s faithfulness—a righteousness from God that is in fact based on Christ’s faithfulness.
My aim is to know him, to experience the power of his resurrection, to share in his sufferings, and to be like him in his death,
and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
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Not that I have already attained this—that is, I have not already been perfected—but I strive to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus also laid hold of me.
So Paul has made the case that the way someone becomes “right” with God has little to nothing to do with their actions.
But it’s not because Paul is “against” good actions, and doing good things, and, obeying the law.
In fact if you read the rest of the New Testament, and especially Paul’s letters what you’ll find is that often times Paul sets forth a Moral Standard that is—I would venture to say—unattainable.
Approaching Moral perfectionism.
But Paul is extremely clear here that the initiation process of becoming a Christian comes entirely from God.
-It’s not our “righteousness” It’s God’s Righteousness. It doesn’t come from our actions, it comes from Christ’s faithfulness.
-Instead, Paul says, the entire aim is simply to know Christ, to imitate Christ.
-To be of one mind with Christ.
-But it all comes from God. We don’t bring anything to the table.
Verse 8 Paul says all the stuff that I brought to the table, it’s all dung. It’s worthless.
-All that matters is knowing Christ.
-And the obvious followup question then is, well OK after I know Christ, if I don’t bring anything to the table, then what am I supposed to do?
-And Paul would say, once you know Christ? Look I, Paul the apostle, don’t even claim to have reached the point of Knowing Christ.
Paul says he “strives to lay hold of that for which Christ also laid hold of me”
-If this verse is confusing to you, if you read it and it sounds a little bit like a word salad that is difficult to understand, I want you to feel at ease.
-I read this sentence like 20 different times. I read it in 6 or 7 different Bible Translations, I read it in the original Greek, I Diagrammed it out on a piece of paper with different colored highlighters, Trying to parse out exactly what Paul is getting at here.
-One thing that is helpful, is the fact that the words Paul is using here are words you would use in a foot race. In fact this entire section has “racing” imagery all throughout. By this point we should be used to that. Paul uses sports metaphors all throughout the book of Philippians.
-What you should be picturing here, is Jesus running in a race. And the trophy in the race is Paul. And the reason why Jesus won the race to win paul, to lay hold of Paul, was so that Paul could in turn run his race, and win the trophy that Jesus wants Paul to win.
-In other words, Paul is saying “Jesus saved me for a purpose.” He had a purpose for saving me. And I want my purpose to be that purpose.
For by grace you are saved through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so that no one can boast.
Again, we don’t bring anything to the table. It’s a gift we receive. Not because good actions are bad, but because God doesn’t want us to brag about our own merits. he doesn’t want us to boast about our accomplishments. He wants us to boast about Christ’s accomplishment.
But then verse 10 says.
For we are his creative work, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them.
Think about that. If you’re a Christian, Jesus died on the cross for you, specifically. And he didn’t do it just because he thought it would be a pleasant thing to do on a friday morning.
-He didn’t wake up one morning and think, you know I think I might want to get crucified today.
-Here’s another thought.
-God didn’t need to save us in order to defeat satan.
-You don’t think God couldn’t have just spoken it out of existence? But he chose to do it in such a way that he rescued human beings in the process. Why? because he has a Job for us to do.
And Paul says I haven’t finished my Job yet, but I’m striving toward it.
Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have attained this. Instead I am single-minded: Forgetting the things that are behind and reaching out for the things that are ahead,
He’s so confident that he’s “not there yet” that he says it twice.
Instead, he’s focused on nothing else besides Christ’s purpose for his life.
[EXAMPLE]
I like to use this example when I teach youth and kids about how salvation works.
I’ll have the kids draw a line. And I’ll say on one end of the line I want you to imagine the worst person to have ever lived. The most evil most wicked, person to have ever existed, or who ever will exist.
And on the other end of the line I want you to imagine Jesus.
It’s a pretty big line.
And then I’ll say, every single human being exists somewhere on this line.
Some of them will go to heaven, some will go to hell. The thing that determines that is NOT your location on the line. There’s not a halfway point where once you’ve crossed a certain point now you go to heaven.
Instead, the determining factor is which direction you are facing and which direction you are moving.
So a person can be all the way on this end of the line, but if they’re moving toward Christ, then they’re saved.
and the opposite is true. If you’re alll the way over here, but your back is turned and you’re moving away from Christ, you’re not saved.
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with this goal in mind, I strive toward the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
What are we running toward?
-If we listen to Paul in his letter to the Philippians he tells us that we should be running toward Jesus.
And if we’re looking at the entire letter our Goal, should be to be of ONE MIND with Christ.
The same attitude he has, we should have.
The upward call of God, In Christ Jesus.
And we get there by Knowing Christ.
How do we do that?
I would argue that we Know christ by being in conversation with Him.
Through His word. Through our actions. By our Love.
But all of this passage, we’ve been reading through the lens of the individual. What race am I running. How am I striving toward Christ. What purpose was I chosen for?
But as we’ve read in this letter, Paul’s viewpoint on all of the things we’ve talked about has been about unity. Being of One mind, working toward a common goal.
What I want us to do for the next 15 to 20 minutes as a Church, as a group of people who are called to be of one spirit, one mind, contending side by side for the faith of the gospel, I want us to lay out the next year.
I want your input on what we study, what we do.
I want your input on what you’d like to see more of, and what you’d like to see less of.