Philippians 3:17
Let us hear God’s word together,
beginning at verse 17 of chapter three of Paul’s letter to the
Philippians. Brothers, join me in imitating
me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example
you have in us. For many of whom I have often
told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of
the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction. Their
God is their belly. They glory in their shame and
their minds are set on earthly things. But our citizenship,
our citizenship is in heaven. And from it, we await a savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be
like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to
subject all things to himself. Therefore, my brothers whom I
love and long for, my joy and my crown stand firm thus in the
Lord, my beloved. Pray with me. Lord, be pleased
now through your word and through the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper
to feed us, to nourish us and to fill us full of all that we
need so that we can confidently remember who we are in Christ
so that we can appropriately know how it is we are to behave
in the household of faith, and so that we can effectively be
lights shining brightly in this world full of darkness, the bright
light of the hope of Jesus. Help us in this, we ask and pray
in Jesus’ name, amen. One of the things that we learn
as Christians is that the church is full of people And it’s full
of two kinds of people. It’s full of those who profess
faith in Jesus and by God’s grace actually possess faith. But the
church also at the same time can be full of those who profess
faith and in reality do not possess faith. Jesus told his disciples
that when he spoke of the wheat and the tares. He tells us in
that parable that the church is like a field and in that field
there is wheat and that wheat will be harvested and used for
good. But among the wheat there will be tears, there will be
weeds. And when the wheat is harvested
and it is cast up into the wind, the tears are carried off the
chaff. It’s carried off by the wind
and the wheat lands back on the ground and that harvest is laid
up for store. In fact, the final judgment The
final judgment of all the inhabitants of the earth is very often portrayed
by Jesus as a harvest. It tells us in the book of Revelation
that the harvesters will come from heaven, from the four corners
of earth, they will gather the elect. And there will be a winnowing,
a gathering, a separation of the wheat and the tares. Now
in heaven, as some of us were studying this morning in the
Sunday school hour, we noted that heaven is pure. Inside heaven
are only the righteous. Inside the eternal church are
only those who’ve come to faith in Jesus and had their sins forgiven
and been given a robe of righteousness that makes them fit to enter
the glory of God. But you see in the church, in
the church that is still in the world, we have many who profess
faith but do not possess it. And we have many who do profess
faith and do possess faith. It’s a reality. Now, before you
start looking around and wondering who’s who and what’s what, we
have to remember that’s just the way God set it up. We freely
preach the gospel. We freely offer salvation as
Jesus is laid out in the scriptures. And we freely admit into the
membership of the church, those who profess faith in him. But there’s a reality. There’s
a reality that sometimes in the church that some who profess
faith don’t actually possess faith. Now, it probably caused
alarm in some of your minds. I probably got a few of you thinking,
am I a Christian? Am I of the faith? I profess
faith. Do I possess it? And the simple
answer to that question is if you’re having to ask the question,
that’s a good thing. because you realize God is at
work in your life. Because if you really don’t possess
faith, you really don’t care about the things of the Lord,
you would be off playing golf or doing something more important. But in reality, we understand
that Jesus teaches there in the church is the wheat, and among
the wheat are the tares. In theology, we speak of it in
this way. We speak of the visible church and the invisible church. The visible church is the church
gathered on the earth. And in the associate reform Presbyterian
denomination, the gathered church or the visible church are those
who profess faith in Jesus and their children. And so we see
all across the earth, all across the world, especially on a day
like today, the Lord’s Day, where the people of God who profess
faith in Jesus gather together with their children to worship
the living and true God. That’s the visible church. Now,
the invisible church. This gets a little tricky, but
in theology, it’s simply this, it is those who truly profess
faith and possess faith because God has granted them salvation. Now, we speak of these distinctions
and there’s a practical side of that. And that practical side
of that appears today in our passage from Paul to the Philippians,
where he says, join in imitating me. Join in imitating me and
those whose walk is according to the example you have in us.
It’s a godly example. And he says, don’t imitate those
who are enemies of the cross, those who have fallen away or
walked away from the Christian faith. And so the challenge for
us today as believers in the Lord Jesus Christ is those who
look to examples within the church is this. We should imitate the
right Christians. We should imitate those whose
walk is according to the gospel. Those whose walk is according
to the commands of scripture. And we should not imitate those
whose walk is according to that of being enemies of the cross.
And so we’ll look at this passage in three ways. One is the good.
The second is the bad. And then the third way is the
glorious. First, the good. Think for just
a moment about growing up in church. Many of you grew up in
church. And think about those who have impressed you the most. Those who taught you something.
Those who modeled or exemplified Christian values and principles
and Christian living. Think about those people. Who
are they? What did they do? What were they like? You see,
we’re getting away from a time where people used to apprentice. They used to watch somebody,
study what they did and how they did it, and then become an expert
ourselves. That was the way with a blacksmith
or a carpenter or some other master skill we would apprentice
under a person. You know, now we go to college
and we mount up all this debt and we think we know something
when we don’t know much. And then we go out in the world
and figure out it’s a real mean world that pays really low salaries
and that student debt keeps mounting up. And I wonder if we won’t
get back to a time where people see value in trades, they see
value in apprenticing. But there’s something we can
learn from that old way. How to pray. We come to prayer
meeting and we watch others do it. How do we worship? We come
to worship and we watch others do it. Oh yes, there’s book learning,
there’s theology, the Bible tells us how to do things, but we often
learn by watching. We learn by seeing and imitating.
And the apostle Paul is speaking about that In verse 17, he says,
brothers, join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who
walk according to the example that you have in us. What is
he saying? Is he saying, I, Paul, the apostle,
am such a great shining example. Do what I do and you’ll do well
in life. Well, yeah, he’s sort of saying
that. Some of you may say, well, he’s quite a boaster. I mean,
you remember every kid in the 1980s, who did they want to be
like? They wanted to be like Mike. And how did Michael Jordan
shoot the basketball? He shot it well, but he had his
tongue out. And so what did you see every
little kid out in their driveway doing? They wore a pair of Air
Jordans, and when they shot, they stuck their tongue out.
Or several years ago, when the Carolina Panthers were in the
Super Bowl, the first go-round, remember their quarterback, Jake,
what did he do before he caught the football to throw it every
time? He licked his fingers. And so what did you see every
kid doing in his backyard? He licked his fingers like Jake,
and then he threw the football. And the apostle Paul is saying,
that’s the way we learn in the church. We imitate those who
are living according to the gospel. We imitate those who are doing
all the right things well. He’s saying, mark what they do
and follow their example, and you can’t go wrong. And when he speaks in this passage
in verse 17 of imitating me, What is he saying? Because he
doesn’t give any examples, any specifics. Well, you have to
go back several verses. What is the apostle Paul, as
well as Timothy and the other godly ones, Philippi? What have
they been doing? Well, he says, I desire to know
Christ. I desire to share in the sufferings
of Jesus. I resolve to live a faithful
Christian life in pursuit of holiness. I desire to attain
the resurrection of the body and the new heavens and the new
earth. And my eyes are up towards heaven as I chase not the things
of this earth, but chase the heavenly things. And so who in
the church should we imitate? We should imitate the ones who
are pursuing holiness. We should imitate the ones who
are pursuing heaven and not earth. We should imitate those whose
love for Jesus is so deep and passionate. that we can’t help
but when we are around them, smell the fragrance of Christ,
emanating from their life, their behavior, their actions, their
words. So who are your examples? Who
are the people that you look at and say, I want whatever it
is they’ve got, because what they’ve got is something that’s
missing in my life that I think I need to have. And I want to
walk in their ways, because it is the gospel way. It is the
glorious way. Who are your examples? Oh, I
can think of all the people that I look up to in my life, men
who taught me in seminary, Sunday school teachers from decades
ago growing up. I can think of my parents, some
grandparents. I think of those living, those who’ve gone before
me. I think of those in the church, churches where I’ve served. There
are many shining examples. I think of even people I haven’t
met, but whose biographies I’ve read and they have faithfully
run the race and served Jesus. Now, there’s a difficulty in
examples today. It’s probably been the same as
it has been throughout the centuries, the decades, the millennia of
Christian life. It’s a struggle to live faithfully.
It’s a struggle to live a single minded life devoted to God, looking
for heaven and striving after holiness. But you see, brothers
and sisters, there is a clarion call, a clear call in this passage
to imitate those who live in the gospel way. But do you see
the secondary implication? We need to live in such a gospel
way that others can see us and imitate us. We do not want in
any way, shape or form for our lives to confuse or to cause
misunderstanding or to lead someone astray because we’re missing
what God has called us in Christ to be and to do. So there’s the
good. Let’s look next at the bad. We find it in verses 18 and 19.
Some of you, like I did, participated in school, what they called the
Scared Straight Program. I can remember as an elementary
kid being taken to the city jail, not the one that’s there now
by the fire station, but when it was over on Fisher Street
or somewhere else. And I can remember as a kid,
just vaguely, being taken into that city jail. And I think if
I remember right, they actually put us in the jail cell. And
we heard the slamming of the door, the clink of the lock.
And we’re there for just a few moments, at least, in isolation.
That’s what we do to scare people straight. You don’t want to be
in jail. Or they latch the handcuffs around your wrist and you feel
their pinch. And you hear the locking sound and you realize
that your hands cannot move, that you are imprisoned, you
are captured. And we experience all these sorts
of scared straight programs. You know, churches back in the
1980s, they used to decry the woes of rock and roll and tell
all these horror stories about how people who listen to rock
and roll had such worthless lives. I mean, just look at me. I’ve
listened to plenty of it. But we tried to scare people
out of their wits. We tried to scare them out of
their wits so they would not want to go down that certain
path. Well, that’s what the apostle Paul is saying here. On the one
hand, he’s saying mark and follow those whose lives are gospel-centered
lives, but do not follow after those who have apostatized, those
who have walked away from the faith. Now, at the beginning
of the sermon, I mentioned to you that the church has both
wheat and tares. The church has in it those who
profess faith and truly possess it, and it has inside it those
who profess faith but do not possess it. And at the end of
the day, only God knows and judges. But we can see from the fruit
of people’s lives. We can see from the outcome of
their ways what is true. Our lives bear fruit for godliness
or for ungodliness. And so here in these couple verses,
the Apostle Paul, when he’s giving an example of who not to follow,
is speaking of those who have walked away from the faith. They
have apostatized. Now, in the Greek language, the
word apostasize simply means to go away from, apo, away from. Apostasize means they have walked
away from something they once professed. Now, it is not possible
for a Christian, a true Christian, one who God has laid hold of
by his word and spirit, it is not possible for them to profess
faith and to walk away from it. The Bible teaches us that over
and over. It is not possible to walk away from the faith.
Once God has begun a good work in you, Philippians 1, 6 says,
he completes that good work. But it is very possible for people
under the influence of preaching or some sort of ministry to feel
the need to profess faith and even to feel the need to walk
in a pattern of the disciple of Christ, only to someday walk
away to apostatize. And that is the example of the
apostle Paul is speaking of here. These are those, look how he
puts it in verse 18. Many of whom I’ve often told
you and now tell about with tears. They walk as enemies of the cross.
Their end is destruction. Their God is their belly. And
they glory in their shame with minds set on earthly things. These folks end is not the resurrection
from the dead, but it is destruction. Their God is not the triune God,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost, but their God is their belly. Now,
that can mean many things. Yes, they love to eat, but they
love the sensual things of this life. They love riches. They
love sex. They love money. They love chasing
after everything that they think in this world will give them
pleasure. They’re glorious, they’re shame.
It is not Christ. Their mindset, their way of thinking
is not heavenly as ours should be, but it’s earthly. And everything on earth shines
so brightly to them that they must have it. And the things
of heaven are not even in their sight for God has been fully
and totally eclipsed in their lives. And the apostle Paul says,
the heroes of our faith, our example should not be the indulgent,
the self-worshipping, Those who are pursuing after things that
will only bring them death. But our heroes, our heroes should
be the godly ones, not the grumbling ones. Our heroes should be the
godly ones, not the godless ones. Now, this couple of verses, these
few verses ought to help us think very realistically about life
with fear and trembling. We ought to be grateful that
we have heard the call of the gospel. And that we have professed
faith in him and that God is at work in our lives. And that
like in our sermon last week, we are pursuing holiness until
we capture it and make it our own. And that we do not let go
or let down or let up until we have the thing which we need
most. And it’s not riches or sexuality or pleasures in this
life. It is simply the holiness of
God that can be ours in Christ through faith. and through the
ministry of the church, the blessing of the word, the sacraments and
all the things God has given to us. But this also ought to
remind us the seriousness of the faith. Do you notice how
the Apostle Paul says, with tears, I’ve told you about these people.
You know, sometimes we say good riddance. And the Apostle Paul says, not
without tears. When someone walks away from
the faith, When someone who once says, I loved Christ, he’s everything
to me, he’s dear to me. And when they walk away from
Christ, when they walk away from the church, when they walk away
from Christian friends and shaping influences, and when they begin
to walk in the world, the path not to the new heavens and the
new earth, but on a path to death, it ought to bring tears and pain
and sorrow. And it ought to remind us over
and over the reality of walking with Christ and the glorious
future it brings. But it also ought to remind us
that to walk away from Christ, to walk apart from Christ is
a dangerous place. Paul gives us two examples here.
There is one to follow and there is one to run from. And so there’s the good. Join
me in imitating Christians. who’ve got the faith down pat,
who are struggling to know Christ and to make him known and to
walk in his ways. Stay away from those who’ve walked away from
the faith. Their end is destruction. Their God is their belly. Their
shame is their glory. And they are earthly and not
heavenly. And now third and final, the
glorious. We find the glorious in verses
20 and 21. There was a sermon written years ago, and you don’t
even have to hear the sermon because the title, which is a
rather lengthy one, tells the gist of it. And the title of
that sermon is this, the expulsive power of a new affection. And that is, you see, the Christian
life. We want to love better things.
We want to love eternal things. We want to love the best things,
the greatest things, and we want to leave things behind. We sing
a song sometimes in the Christian church. that the things of earth
would grow strangely dim in the light of God’s glory and grace. And so as Christians, brothers
and sisters, we need to experience that expulsive power of a new
affection, that expulsive power of a greater affection that God
has in store for us better things than we could ever want. Think
for a moment about the life of Abraham. God had promised him
a child. And over and over, year after
year, that child did not come. And so what did what did Abraham’s
wife, Sarah, say? Well, the baby’s not coming to
me. So take my servant, Hagar, and maybe our offspring will
come through her. Well, they went and had a child, Ishmael, caused
them so much heartache and hardship. But what if they had waited?
What if they awaited? And you see, sometimes for us,
brothers and sisters, actually many times, oftentimes every
day, we have to have eyes of faith that say this is a lesser
thing and God has promised a greater. And if I pray, if I watch, if
I wait, if I have faith, I don’t have to wallow in the squalor
of lesser things, which could be great things, good things,
but I can glory in the better things that God has promised
and I should wait on. And so we need this expulsive
power of a new affection to set our hearts and our minds on things
that are not earthly and things that will lead to self-indulgence
and destruction. But we need to set our minds
and hearts on heavenly things, on glorious things, ultimate
things, things that will never pass away. The great missionary
of last century who died serving God’s people, Jim Elliott, had
this saying, he is no fool. who gives up what he cannot keep
to gain what he can never lose. And that is the eternal perspective,
the glorious perspective the apostle Paul is speaking of in
verses 20 and 21. He says these words, our citizenship
is in heaven. And from it, we await a savior,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be
like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to
subject all things to himself. You see, our eyes are on an eternal
city and our eyes are on an eternal city city where Jesus Christ,
the righteous one, lives. And someday, someday, as God
finishes that work of sanctification in us on this earth and he raises
us up in his resurrection power, that same power that created
the world and everything in it, that same power that raised Jesus
from the dead and that same power where Jesus is able to subject
all things and put them under his feet. That same power will
put a new set of clothes on your body so that you will be fit
to enter the heaven of heavens where Jesus is. We think sometimes
what it would be like to be invited to the White House or the Buckingham
Palace, and we wouldn’t go like we are most days. We wouldn’t
cut the grass and just walk on over. We wouldn’t leave sports
practice or having awakened in the morning and still wearing
our pajamas in our bathroom, we wouldn’t go that way. We would
get dressed, we’d brush our teeth, we’d probably shower, we’d fix
our hair, we’d put on our makeup or shave our whiskers and do
all those things that we do to get ready. And then most likely
we wouldn’t go to the closet and pick out something old. We
would have something new and special just for that occasion.
And friends, that’s what Jesus will do at our death and at our
resurrection. He will raise us up. The Bible
in verse 2021 says he will transform our lowly bodies to be like his
glorious body. We’ll be fit, fit for the city
of God, fit for the throne room of heaven, fit for church eternally. And God says our eyes should
be on that. We are not citizens of Burlington. We are not citizens
of Philippi. We are not citizens of Babylon.
We are citizens of the new Jerusalem. And we remember the words of
the great writer of the letter to the Hebrews, whoever he was,
who said Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the patriarchs,
all the heroes of the faith who went before us, their eyes were
not settled on this place, but they had their eyes on heaven.
A greater city, a city with foundations, whose designer, whose architect,
whose builder was God himself. Oh, brothers and sisters, we
need greater affections than we have. We love this earth too
much. It’s beaches, it’s granite countertops,
it’s fine automobiles, it’s pleasures. We love it too much. Oh, there
are things God gives us to richly enjoy, but they are not lasting. But heaven is. There’s so much
more offered. There’s so much greater in store
for us in heaven. You see, there’s two paths here.
There is one path, those who have apostatized, and they are
on a death spiral as they worship their bellies, as they live for
the things of this earth, as they are following the gods of
this ages and living in darkness. They are spiraling down to destruction. But there’s the other example,
the example of the godly, and they are on an upward path, following
and pursuing the call of God into the heaven of heavens, growing
in grace and holiness in this life and waiting for Jesus to
bring them to heaven, where he will transform their lowly bodies
into a glorious body, just like the one Jesus has, which he achieved
at his ascension, his resurrection from the dead. Oh, friend, who
do you want to imitate? Oh, brother and sister, who do
you want to follow? And especially if there’s one
of you today who has professed faith and you are having second
thoughts because this Jesus isn’t all you think he is. Or you think
you’ve been sold a bill of goods or you think you’ve just been
following your mom and dad’s religion and it’s just fine for
them. But now that I’m old enough,
I don’t think I need it. There is a warning in this passage.
Do not walk away from the faith because that end is destruction.
But the end of following Jesus is to be made like him and to
live with him in heaven forever. And that’s why the apostle gives
us the final verse that we read in chapter four, verse one. Therefore,
my brothers, whom I love and whom I long for my joy and my
crown. You notice how much he loves
them. He has tears for the ones who’ve walked away from the faith.
Oh, but he has smiles and joy. As he sits in prison, awaiting
his trial in front of Caesar, he has great tenderness towards
these in Philippi. And he gives them this command,
stand firm thus in the Lord. Keep your feet planted. Don’t
move. Don’t run. Don’t chase after
lesser affections. Stand firm thus. in the Lord, my beloved. And
that’s his calling for us today. Stand firm. Stay in the faith. Press on. Pursue holiness. Chase after it until you capture
it. May God give us grace. Let us
pray.