Philippians 3:12-16
Let’s give our attention to God’s
holy word now as we turn to the book of Philippians. Our reading
today is from chapter three. And our verses are verses 12
through 16. In Philippians, the apostle Paul has written to a
church that he planted on one of his missionary journeys. And
as he is now sitting in a Roman prison waiting for a hearing
with Caesar. because of an event that took
place back in Jerusalem on one of his visits home. Their pastor
has come to Rome to take care of Paul and also bring news of
the church at Philippi. So Paul writes a letter back
instructing them in the things of the Lord, helping them through
some problems. They’ve got some false teachers
who believe that if you have faith in Jesus, you also need
some of the old Jewish practices of circumcision and other things
in order to make yourself a full Christian, a real Christian,
a supreme Christian, as it were. And the apostle Paul is saying,
no, no, no, that’s not correct. And so he has written to them
about several things. And in the last several sections
we’ve considered, he said to them, we need to have the mind
of Christ. And he’s given them some examples
of having the mind of Christ. He’s shown us Christ himself,
but he’s also shown us the ministry of Epaphroditus and Timothy.
And I think vaguely he’s mentioned himself. And he said, this is
how one ought to live in light of the example and the call from
Christ. Now he’s moved to a section where we’re to lay hold of the
true things about our salvation and we’re to live in such a way.
And today is one of the most important passages, I think in
the book of Philippians about how we kind of in a nuts and
bolts practical way can live the Christian life. And so let’s
hear God’s word together. Philippians chapter three, beginning
at verse 12. The Apostle Paul says, not that
I have already obtained this. Now by this, he’s speaking back
to verses 10 and 11. Not that I have already obtained
this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own
because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not
want to consider that I have made it my own, but one thing
I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what lies
ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward
call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature
think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will
reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what
we have attained. Pray with me. Our Lord and God,
we ask and pray that you would give us eyes that see and ears
that hear and hearts that understand all that is written in the scripture.
We thank you for your scripture, that it is breathed out by you,
it is from you, it is your life-giving breath to us. Help us to believe
it, help us to live it, and help us to repent where we fall short,
but help us to trust overall in the Holy Spirit to give us
the strength to do all that you command. Lord, you give high
and tall orders, but you give us every resource in heaven to
help us live the Christian life. So help us to see it and to leave
this place ready to live for you. And we pray it in the name
of Christ Jesus. Amen. The story goes something
like this. Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth Bell
Graham, was passing through a construction zone on the highway. And as they
inched their way along and made the slow progress that one usually
makes after traveling through such a place. They reached the
end of the construction zone and there was a nice little sign
on the highway that said, end of construction, thank you for
your patience. And she quipped at that time,
that is what I would like as the epitaph on my tombstone.
And so if you make your way to Charlotte to the Billy Graham
Museum and Library and you tour the ins and outs of that place,
you’ll see all of the adventures of Billy Graham. You’ll see how
Mrs. Graham was the great a wife behind
all the missionary and evangelistic work that he did. But remember
that he is still living and she is no longer living. And some
10 years ago when she was laid to rest there at the Billy Graham
Museum, her wishes came true. There’s a rock and it marks her
simple grave. And it says Ruth Bell Graham,
and I believe has her dates. And it simply says on their end
of construction, thank you for your patience. And you see, that
is a picture, a wonderful picture of the Christian life. You see,
God is in a process of saving us. And as we have spoken of
over the last several weeks, we understand that the Christian
life is messy. The Christian life is difficult.
The Christian life is like a roadway construction zone. It’s slow
going, it’s loud, it’s noisy. And at the end, there’ll be a
wonderful paved road that will make life traveling easy. But
while we live in this life, it is a messy construction zone
where God is at work. Now, the Bible likens the Christian
life to many things. It never likens it to a construction
zone, for the ancient writers knew nothing of those sorts of
things. But what Mrs. Graham does is wonderful. But
what does the Apostle Paul and other writers of the scriptures,
what do they liken the Christian life to? Well, the Apostle Paul
speaks of the Christian life being a fight. I have fought
the good fight. He likens it to a race. I have
finished the race. He likens it to a contest where
we look for a prize. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have
laid hold of the crown of righteousness. And in this passage of scripture
that we read today, the apostle will use the analogy or the picture
of a race. Now, it was just a year ago,
2016. We watched the Summer Olympics. I can’t recall where they were
from. I do remember that my favorite basketball coach took another
gold medal, and that’s a good highlight. But we watched a lot
of running, a lot of foot racing. And that is exactly what the
apostle Paul has in mind as we make our way through Philippians
chapter three, verses 12 through 16. Now a couple of nuts and
bolts or housekeeping items to remember. When the Bible speaks
of our salvation, it speaks of it in three ways. It speaks of
it in way more than three ways, but for now we’ll just do three.
It speaks of our justification, our sanctification, and our glorification. Our justification, remember,
is an act, an act of the God of the universe who judges every
one of us And thanks be to God, he judges us in Christ. He does
not see our sin. He does not see our disobedience.
He does not see our lawlessness, our wickedness, our rebellion.
No, he sees the perfect obedience of Jesus. And when God justifies
us, he pardons all of our sin and he declares us righteous
in his sight. only for the sake of Christ.
And it’s to those who receive Jesus by faith as he’s offered
in the gospel. But all of our past, present,
and future sins are pardoned. We like to say in our justification,
it’s just as if we’ve never sinned and just as if we’ve always obeyed. You see, brothers and sisters
of the Lord Jesus, when we come to faith in Jesus, God, the judge
of the universe, the judge of the world, he declares us righteous
in his sight. And one of the great things about
that is his gavel has already been pounded on the great desk
of the judge of heaven. You know the outcome of your
trial already. You’re justified. The second
way our salvation is spoken of is in this process of sanctification. And that’s where our passage
last week and today will take us. But sanctification is a work. It’s not an act. It’s not momentary. It is a work of God’s free grace
where he enables us all the more to die to sin and to live to
righteousness. He gives us his word. He gives
us his spirit. He gives us suffering. He gives
us prayer. He gives us the fellowship of
the church. And as we make our way along this pilgrim life,
from Babylon to the new Jerusalem, God is at work sanctifying us,
making us more like Jesus, making us holy. That’s literally what
sanctified means. Now, when we are justified and
declared righteous, there is some sense where God has called
us His holy ones by name. And so we are declared holy.
But God is continually working out our sanctification or our
holiness in this life. And I have a big fear, brothers
and sisters, of this. And my fear is for this reason.
It’s because I’ve experienced it in my own life. I don’t think
Christians in America think that they need to go through sanctification.
What are we most concerned about? We are most concerned about with
getting rich, with having things and then being able to retire
so that we can enjoy those good things. And it’s necessary to
work and to earn and to save and to have all those things
in place. And God does give us richly all things to enjoy. We’re
thankful for that. But our higher calling in this
life is a call to be sanctified. It’s a call to be holy. It’s
a call to be more like Jesus. Now, you know, we’re good Calvinist
around here, and we believe that it is all a work of grace. It
is all a work of God so that no man can boast. But do you
know that in the process of sanctification, God calls on you to work too.
He calls us to lean into our sanctification, to put our full
energies into our growth in grace. And so that might lead us to
think, well, it’s a 50-50 proposition. God puts up half, I put the other
half. No, it is a 100%, 100% operation. God gives you everything
you need in heaven and on earth to grow in grace and holiness.
And he expects you. He expects us because we love
him and want to please him. And we’ve been saved for this
purpose. He expects us to wholeheartedly lean in to our growth and holiness
and sanctification. There’s a third thing that God
speaks of regarding our salvation. We are justified, legally declared
righteous in God’s sight. We are sanctified, the whole
of life being made holy. And then there’s glorification. When we are glorified, when we
die, our spirits are made perfect. They pass into heaven. And our
bodies rest in the grave until the resurrection, when at the
great last day, the trumpet sound of God, all the dead in Christ
shall rise, our bodies and souls united together. And we are perfectly
in heaven, body and soul forever. But in this life, we live imperfectly. We live in what we call a progressive
growth in grace. It’s ongoing. It’s up and down
and back and forth. It’s messy. It’s dirty. It’s
bloody. There’s sweat. There’s tears.
We offend each other. We divorce. We say words like,
I hate you. And then we say, I’m sorry. We
say things like, I love you, God, and want to worship you.
But then somehow we buy a place down at the coast and we spend
years worth of sadness there. And then we come back to our
senses and say, oh, Lord, I want to be in your house with your
people. It’s up and down and back and forth. We use words.
We don’t use words. We clean up our language. We
let it turn the air blue. It’s messy. It’s difficult. And you see, you see the Christian
life is up and down. It’s backwards and forwards.
And it can be utterly discouraging if you are a Christian who is
thinking biblically and you recognize daily there’s a holy God and
there’s an unholy you. and it can be utterly discouraging. But the Apostle Paul here today
gives us, he gives us an instruction on how to live in light of all
these realities of our justification, of our future glorification,
but our present sanctification. And he’s gonna tell us it’s progressive,
it’s lifelong, it’s messy. Remember what he said, though,
in Philippians chapter one, verse six, he who began a good work
in you will be faithful to complete it. I love reading the beginning
of Bible books and the end, particularly the Apollyon Epistles, for they
always have the glorious stuff about the nuts and bolts of salvation.
The end of Jude says, now to him who is able to keep you from
falling and to present you faultless before the throne of God. See,
God’s blessing, his benedictions, the doxologies, the wonders of
scripture over and over remind us that it is God who saves,
But friends, brothers and sisters, in our sanctification, we must
lean in. And this passage calls us to
move onward through life and upward towards heaven. And so in this little couple
of verses, the Apostle Paul is going to say, I desire to know
Christ. I desire to be like Jesus. I
desire to bear his image, but I also desire to have a resurrection
that is like his, where I will be made perfect and in heaven
forever. But what is the goal of Christian life? Is it to know
that you’re saved and going to go to heaven and not go to hell?
I mean, some may think that is, that’s what popular evangelicalism
has done. It’s made, it’s made Christianity
a bus ticket or a train ticket or a plane ticket, or maybe even
a chariot ticket. I got my salvation, it’s like
my fire insurance. I got it in my hip pocket and
when that chariot swings low or the train conductor says all
aboard, I just whip that thing out of my back pocket and I get
on that train and I make my way to heaven. Friends, the Christian
life is not a waiting game. It is not the fire insurance
policy or the ticket or the reservation in hand and I just wait till
the call comes and I go. The Christian life is a daily
struggle. to be more like Jesus, to be
more Christlike, to be more like we were intended to be in the
garden before Adam and Eve were deceived by Satan and sinned
and broke the whole world and humanity apart. And so we ought
to desire to know Christ and to become like him. And in this
passage, he’s going to say to us, we need to pursue holiness
and we need to seize it. and to capture it, and to make
it our own. Look, if you will, with me at
verses 12 and 13. He says, not that I have already
obtained this. Now, what is the this? And there’s
a it coming too. What is that? Well, those of
you who are grammarians and masters of the English language know,
well, it means something previous. So look, go back to verses 10
and 11. He wants to know him, Jesus,
He wants to know the power of the resurrection. He wants to
share in the sufferings of Jesus and he wants to become like Jesus
in his death. And so that by any means possible, he may attain
the resurrection from the dead. And he’s saying, I have not obtained
this yet. I have not captured it. I have
not seized it. I go back to verse 12. Not that I have already obtained
this or I’m already perfect, but I press on to make it my
own because Christ has made me his own brothers. I do not consider
that I have made it my own, but one thing I do, I forget what
lies behind. I strain forward toward what
lies ahead. I press on towards the goal for
the prize of the upward call of God in Christ. Now, there
are four times in this passage in the Greek language, it doesn’t
translate well into our English, where the apostle Paul uses the
word seize. I pursue something and I seize
it. I pursue it and I seize it. So walk back with me right quick
through verses 12 and 13. He says, not that I have already
seized it or captured it, or I’m already perfect, but I press
on to seize it or capture it because Christ Jesus has seized
or captured me. You see what he’s doing? And
then he goes on, brothers, I do not consider that I have yet
seized it or captured it. What is it that the apostle Paul
wants to pursue and seize? It is the knowledge of Christ.
It is to be made like Christ and it is to enter heaven wholly. Is that not something worth pursuing?
Is that not the thing, the very thing that we ought to wake up
every day and say, what is the top of my to do list? Is it to
go to Food Lion or Walmart or get gas or run the car through
the wash? Is it to check the stock market and make sure I
can live a few more years in retirement? I mean, those things
do matter, correct? But the tip top of our list should
be the tip top of Paul’s list. I have not yet seized it, but
my life is to live to pursue it and to seize it because he,
Jesus, has seized me. You see what he’s saying? It’s
a very rich passage. And so there’s three actions,
three needs of us as Christians that we need to follow. And it’s
these three, forgetting, straining, and pressing. Now, I’m not a
runner. You can tell by my belly, by
my chubby cheeks. I don’t run. I don’t train. I
don’t exercise. Well, I do walk every day, but
I just don’t do that. I don’t work out. Now, some of
you must. Some of you do. Some of you enjoy
it. It’s part of your life. It’s what God has called you
to do. So I don’t understand what the apostle Paul is saying.
And I’m guessing the apostle Paul didn’t either, because he
was a chubby old short guy who wasn’t really much of an athlete.
And besides that, he was chained in a Roman prison. but he uses
the common athletic theme here. And first he says, we must forget.
Look at verses 13 and 14. I haven’t obtained it. I’m not
already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because
Christ Jesus has made me own brothers. I do not consider that
I’ve made it my own, but one thing I do, I forget what lies
behind and I strain toward what lies ahead and I press on toward
the goal. Those are the three words we
want to remember today. We want to forget, we want to
strain, we want to press. First, what does it mean to forget?
What’s the worst thing a runner can do? It’s to look behind them. You children who come to Wednesday
night cat kids, if you’re on my team, what’s the number one
thing I tell you to do? It’s to run to that base without
looking, without listening, but doing anything but saying, I’m
getting to that base and come hell or high water, I’m going
to get on that base. And what do I tell you is going
to happen if you look around to see if you’re about to get
tagged, you’re going to get tagged. And that is the number one rule
in running. You don’t look back. It stops your stride. It slows
you down. It makes you inefficient. Oh,
brothers and sisters in the Christian life, we have a lot of failures.
We’ve fallen on the track. We have skinned our knees. We
have tripped other people. We’ve cheated. And the Apostle
Paul is saying, don’t look back. Don’t look at what lies behind
you. And who is it in the scripture
that reminds us of our failures? Is it Jesus? No, it is Satan. Don’t look back. Friends, we
have so much to leave behind. If we were on our deathbeds now,
hopefully we would think of the glories of being in heaven. But
you know, most of us would be a little bit introspective, probably
a lot. And we would think of all the things that we wish we
had done and the things that we wished we had not done. And
the blessing of our justification is those things past, present
and future are forgiven. And Paul says, leave it behind.
It’s rubbish, it’s refuse, it’s of no use to the Christian life.
Leave it behind. What does Jesus say? What does
the Bible say? I have forgiven you and I have cast your sins
as far as the east is from the west. And I remember them no
more. And so we forget what is behind
and we look forward as we strive and as we run and we keep pace. and as we stay out front in this
race called the Christian life. So there’s forgetting, there’s
also straining. We find it again here in verses
13 and 14. He says, there’s one thing I do, I forget what lies
behind and I strain forward to what lies ahead. Do you know
what it means to have your eye on the prize? To only have your
eyes fixed on the victor’s crown, the finish line, the tape that
we will break through as we run the race of life. We must stretch
our bodies and our necks towards growing in grace and holiness.
We’ve got to be like the horses that we watch in the derbies
on television, the beautiful green grass and the ladies in
their hats and the seersucker suits and all, but those horses,
they’re stretching their necks forward. And sometimes, how is
it that a horse wins? By a nose or by a hair. And the apostle Paul is saying
the same thing to us. You must lean into your sanctification. You must lean into your growth
and grace and holiness. This is not some sit back and
watch. You know, they say of our culture now, we’re a very
passive culture. We let the TV wash over us. We let the entertainment wash
over us. We don’t read anymore. We only come to church sometimes
if there’s nothing better going on. We don’t nourish our souls
like we used to. Our brains are fried with gadgets. It’s an epidemic. It’s a problem.
If you don’t think so, try to go a day without your iPhone. Try to go a day without the television.
without Fox News. Try to go a day with interacting
with people, reading a book, taking a walk outside, looking
at nature and enjoying the fresh air. You see, we’re so addicted
to noise and things. We do not live a contemplated
life. We do not live a thoughtful life,
a scripture-saturated life. You know, we’re living like a
lot of, I guess a lot of people eat their veggies. You know,
you go to the cafeteria and you get your vegetable plate You
put a little sugar or a little salt and a little pepper on it
to make it a little flavorful. And you see a lot of people treat
the Christian life that way. We think as long as I live my
life the way I want to live it and I sprinkle a little Christian
salt and a little Jesus pepper by coming to church on Sunday
and maybe coming on Christmas Eve and a few other times, it’s
going to be okay. And that’s not what the Bible
teaches. The Bible teaches that our whole world and life view
is to be lived in the reality of God, the creator, Jesus, the
redeemer. The Holy Spirit, the teacher, guide and comforter.
And so every moment of every day is to be lived with Jesus
and God and the spirit and the word saturated through our life
so that every moment has meaning. Oh, it’s not salt and peppered
little paganism with a little Jesus flavor. That’s what it
could be. But we’re called to live deep
lives. And so, friends, brothers and sisters, we should strain.
We should lean in in the pursuit of Christ. You know, there’s
a new phenomenon in our culture. It’s called binge watching. And
what is binge watching? We get our little gadget out
and we log into Netflix and we say, oh, look, I used to watch
that TV show. I remember that when I was a
kid. What a great show. And so we watch an episode and
we watch two and three and four and five and six. And next thing
you know, I’m not kidding. People will watch their little
gadgets binge watching for hours upon hours upon hours while their
copy of God’s word sits on the shelf. And while that same gadget
will play a podcast of some of the greatest preachers the world
has ever known and can feed your souls and can lift you out of
your depression better than Netflix and can help your heart and your
mind through the troubles that you have. Oh, what a crazy world
we live in. We no longer strain for the prize. We sit back. our bus ticket in
our hip pocket, and we wait for that chariot to swing low and
take us home. And what the apostle Paul is
saying is we strain, we strive, we go towards that prize. Think
of two Psalms. Psalm 42, as the deer pants for
the living waters, so does my sole pants for you, oh God. Or
how about Psalm 119? My kids are just waiting for
that to be the psalm for Sunday night preaching. It’s a long
one. But in that whole psalm, David
says, your word is all I need. Oh, how many places do we go
eat every week? The feeding troughs around us
abound. We can get barbecue. We can get
dessert. We can get yogurt. We can get frogger. We can get
coffee. We can get and we stuff our faces
and our bellies. But are we straining towards
the knowledge of Christ that is offered here, that is offered
down in the Sunday school wing, the Bible study classes, it’s
on our iPods, it’s on our podcast, it’s everywhere available to
us. We forget, we strain. And the third thing is this,
we press on. What is our longing? What is
our deepest desire? What will complete what is incomplete
in us? What will fill that God shaped
hole in us? It is only Christ. And that is
the thing the apostle Paul says we must pursue and capture. Jesus
has pursued and captured you. Now it’s our turn to pursue and
capture him until we are filled full of the knowledge of Jesus.
We are made holy and we are fit for heaven and arrive there.
I have a friend who every time you leave him, his parting comment
is this. Press on and keep the faith. And you see it as full of meaning.
These are the two main verbs in this passage. Press on, press
on. Press on and strive. Press on and forget. Press on
and strain. Press on and be made holy. What
does it mean to press on? It means we pursue, we chase,
we go after. It is the one thing in life that
we want, that we can’t live without. And so we go after it until we
get it. And like Jacob, we won’t let
go until God blesses us. Oh, we forget, we strain and
we press. I know it’s difficult to take
advantage of every opportunity God has for us to grow in grace. And I also know that what works
for one does not always work for the other. I have friends
that read the Bible through in a whole year. They follow Robert
Murray McShane’s reading plan. They read the Bible through in
one whole year. That does not work for me. But I could try. Or Sunday morning and Sunday
night. We’ll make it on Sunday morning.
But we offer Sunday night, and it’s a glorious time. We’ll even
feed you most weeks. Or Sunday school, or a men’s
group, or a ladies’ Bible study, or figure out what to load up
on your iPhone and to fill your podcast and then your mind and
heart with. What magazines do I subscribe to? What devotionals
do I read? You see, friends, we are not
pressing on. It’s hard. and as deliberately
and as fruitfully as we could. Now, I don’t want any of you
to feel bad and say I’m doing all I can. I couldn’t do any
more. That’s just fine. But think about this for my own
spiritual good. Is there something else I could chase in order to
seize Christ that will help me grow in grace? I’d be glad to
help you, glad to serve you in that way, and I’m sure every
one of us could do it. Well, the Apostle Paul ends this
passage in this way. He says, those of us who are
mature need to think this way about pursuing, about forgetting,
about straining and about pressing on because we know we’re not
perfect. As we made our way through the
Beatitudes on Sunday nights, blessed are the poor in spirit.
Blessed are those who mourn their sin. Blessed are those who are
meek, teachable, submissive. Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness. That is Jesus’ way of saying
the same thing Paul does. You are poor, you are not perfect,
and you need to be filled full of things like righteousness,
so you better hunger and thirst for it in a submissive way, recognizing
your poverty and your bankruptcy. Saying the same thing that the
apostle says to us. So Paul says, let those of us
who are mature think this way, but if anyone thinks he is perfect,
that’s what he’s saying here. God will show you that you’re
not. Now, God has a sense of humor.
He has a way of making straight what is crooked. And if you think
you can pull one over on him, just you try it. He has such
a wonderful sense of humor. If you think you’re perfect and
you have arrived at holiness, oh, he has a way of taking you
down one, two, three, four, a thousand, a million notches. But the apostle
Paul is telling us here, grow in the grace and the knowledge
of the Lord Jesus. He speaks here of a call, an
upward call of God. And what he has in mind is the
runner as he finishes his lap and as he crosses the line, there’s
a judge’s stand. And what does the winner of the
race do? He goes up to that judge and he is given a crown. Friends,
that is the goal of our pursuit and our seizure of Christ, is
that we will get through life safely and we will approach the
judge of the race and he will place a crown upon our head and
it’s by faith and it’s by perseverance and there’s not room for any
of those who do not finish for those who do not fall out of
the race. And that’s why we have one another while it is today
to pick one another up by the arm. We see it in races where
someone falls and others instead of winning, they go pick up the
other and we make our way safely to the judge’s bench together.
And sometimes it’s a group with our shoelaces dragging a shoe
missing a skinned up knee. But we slide into heaven and
the judge says, well done, good and faithful servant. Pray with
me. Our Lord and our God, we thank you for this call to be
more like Jesus, to know all of Jesus and this call to persevere
in the faith and make it safely to heaven. We thank you that
that it’s by the strength of Jesus. It’s by the power of the
Holy Spirit. But we thank you that you want
us to have some skin in the game. In fact, all of our skin. And
so help us to be diligent, to press on, to pursue and to capture
the prize, to forget what’s past, to strain towards the goal, and
to press on and to press on and to press on. Let us not be discouraged.
Let us not grow weary. Let us not fall down and not
get back up again. And help us to help one another
as we run this race together to make it safely to heaven,
where we will see you, the judge of the earth, and those wonderful
crowns will be placed upon our heads. This we ask in the name
of Jesus, our great savior. Amen.