Rubbish or Resurrection?

 On GI Billy's 1st day of boot camp, his DI made it crystal clear. "Don't question anything I say or tell you to do. I hardly ever make mistakes. In fact, I've made only one mistake. I once thought I was wrong about something. As it turns out, I wasn't." Before meeting Christ, Paul might have said something similar about being a Hebrew. Like that DI, he'd have been just as wrong. That's what he's telling us in Php 3:4b-14. Let's look. 4bIf anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more. To start, my heritage is pure Jew. I was born a Hebrew. & 5acircumcised on the 8th day. I'm no pagan turned proselyte! I'm 5bpureblooded Israelite by race My parents were both Jews. No mixed marriage in my heritage! Even better, I was born into 5cBenjamin's tribe. The only tribe descended from a son of Jacob born in the Promised Land. The only tribe that stuck with Judah when the 2 kingdoms split. I'm 5da Hebrew's Hebrew. I studied under Gamaliel, Israel's top teacher. I read Scripture in Hebrew, not just Aramaic like most. My heritage? Pure gold. Among Israelites, I'm an insider's insider. What I accomplished is just as golden. 5dIn regard to the law, I'm a Pharisee. Other sects in Judaism give token obedience to the Law. We Pharisees keep all the Law. Even the oral traditions. A few Pharisees, like me, did far more than the Law requires. We worked hard to avoid even an accidental violation of the Law. 6aAnd zeal? I was the most earnest of all. The Sanhedrin trusted me to persecute the church. 6bLegalistic righteousness? Faultless I wasn't perfect, but I made the sacrifices for every sin. No other Jew could make such claims. I'm in a class my myself. Now? 7Whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for Christ's sake. I thought my heritage & accomplishments guaranteed my way to heaven. But when I met the risen Christ? I found out they were worth less than nothing! They couldn't get me to heaven. Ever. Know what was worse? My heritage & accomplishments tempted me to trust in myself, my heritage, & my works. It wasn't gain. All my assets turned out to be one huge loss. 8aNow, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. My heritage? Wealth? Status? Education? All my successes? My sect (denomination)? My Bible version (Greek & Hebrew, NIV, or even KJV-1611 or 1769)? All loss. My only gain? Knowing Christ. No comparison. Why is knowing Him so surpassing? Knowing Him, I know who I am. Whose I am. I know my purpose. Knowing Christ is eternal life. (Jesus says so in Jn 17:3.) 8bFor His sake I've lost all things. They're worse than loss. 8cI consider them crap, that I may gain Christ. He's my salvation. I want to be so identified with Him I radiate Christ to everyone. When they look at me, I want them to see Christ. On judgement day, 9aI want to be found in Him! Not in my works. I don't want 9ba "righteousness" of my own that comes from the law. It can't save me. My works? Worthless. I want 9cthat righteousness that's (Greek) through faith Christ. It's faith of Christ. It's also faith in Christ. Both are true! Paul explains 9dThat righteousness comes from God & is by faith. Christ's faith won it for us. From God. How do we gain the benefit? Through our faith in Christ. Trust only in Him. On the cross, Christ won righteousness from God for us. It's ours through faith. Christ paid sin's price. When we trust Him, His righteousness is ours. So, 10aI want to know Christ & his resurrection power. Knowing Christ is eternal life. But the more I know Him, the more I see I need to grow! The more I want the power that raised Him to life. Brilliant, radiant energy to overcome death. Resurrection power for ministry. Power to raise others to new life in Christ, power to change their lives. I want that power in me. I want to be like Christ in every way. 10bI want to know the koinonia (the fellowship / sharing) of his sufferings. The bond shared by soldiers after shared battles. I want to 10cbecome like him in his death. Why? I want to be dead to sin. I want 11somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead. Only by sharing His suffering & death can I fully share His resurrection life. As an apostle, you probably think I already have it made. No! It isn't12athat I've already obtained all this. Remember Jesus' parable of the Wedding Banquet [1 & 2]? Guests ended up coming in off the street [2]. So, the king provided wedding clothes. But each guest had to put them on. The one who didn't? Thrown out. Anyone can get in. But to stay in, we have to put on wedding clothes, Christ's righteousness. That alone keeps us in. We have to keep putting it on! Try hard, in our actions & faith, but trust only His righteousness. I may be an apostle, but 12bI haven't already been made perfect. I won't be in this life. What can I do? 12cPress on to seize that for which Christ Jesus seized me. He seized me to save me. Eternal life with Him. I press on to seize that prize. I run as hard as I can in my marathon to gain that prize. Yes, He sent me. Yes, I'm an apostle. But, 13abrethren, even after 30 yr, I still don't consider myself yet to have taken hold of salvation. 13bOne thing I do. I focus on my goal. 13cForget what's behind. Forget the bad that drags me down & holds me back. Forget the good that distracts me & tempts me to rest. I don't look back. If I do, I can't run without stumbling. Instead, I 13dstrain toward what's ahead. Keep my eyes on the prize of eternal life with Christ. And 14I press on toward the goal to win the eternal prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. The prize? Knowing Christ, fully & completely. That's eternal life that issues from Resurrection power! Looking at Paul, his message looks impossibly hard. Is it? Who was the greatest evangelist ever? Not who we think. Most likely, it was Dwight L. Moody. In 40 years, he won over a million souls. He founded 3 Christian schools. He launched a Christian publishing house. He established a world-class Christian conference center. And he inspired 1,000s of preachers to win souls & conduct revivals. At 17, as a shoe clerk, he aimed to make $100,000. But he met Jesus at 18. For the next 50 years, he uncovered hidden gospel gold in the hearts of millions. In Brooklyn, he preached to 20,000 a day. There were so many that non-church members were admitted only by ticket! He preached all across the American continent & Great Britain in some of the greatest & most successful evangelistic meetings ever known. His tour of the world with Ira Sankey was the greatest evangelistic enterprise of the century. Henry Varley once said, "It remains to be seen what God will do with a man who gives himself totally to Him." Moody tried to be that man. The world marveled to see how wonderfully God used him. He went home to the Lord in 1899. Two monuments still stand in his memory: Moody Bible Institute & Moody Church in Chicago. If the Lord doesn't return 1st, they'll both fade into the dust of history. What did Moody do that'll last forever? Millions and millions came to know the Lord. How? Moody set his eyes on the prize of resurrection. He ran his race with all he had. Did he look back at the 1st 100,000 he'd led to the Lord? No! Good or bad, he counted all his accomplishments as rubbish. He kept his eyes on the prize of resurrection. He pressed on toward that goal. Like Paul. As he did, he won countless lives for Jesus. Can't we do the same? If we long to know Christ more & more, we long rightly. But count the cost. Growing closer to Christ means sharing in His suffering. The more we become like Christ, the more we'll suffer. It happened to Him. In Mt 10:22-25, Jesus says it'll happen to us. No one chooses suffering willingly. Nor does Christ ask us to. But He does ask us to choose Him. That's choosing resurrection. At no point in our race will we be able to rest on our laurels. Instead, we're to keep our eyes on the prize, Christ's upward call. All the dead weight in our past that threatens to sink us? Throw it overboard. All the weights, even good things that'd keep us from finishing our race? Count them all as rubbish. Good or bad, forget them all. Don't look back. Fix our eyes on Christ. On the prize of Christ's upward call. Let's then run our race with all we have. Let's strain to seize Christ, just as He's seized us. So, what'll it be? Rubbish? Or Resurrection? Rubbish or Resurrection? - Philippians 3:4b-14 Page 1 of 1