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TURNING THE PAGE     PHILIPPIANS 3:8-15     JUNE 4, 2006

 

Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the priceless gain of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I may have Christ ⁹ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own goodness or my ability to obey God’s law, but I trust Christ to save me. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith. ¹⁰ As a result, I can really know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I can learn what it means to suffer with him, sharing in his death, ¹¹ so that, somehow, I can experience the resurrection from the dead!  ¹² I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I keep working toward that day when I will finally be all that Christ Jesus saved me for and wants me to be. ¹³ No, dear brothers and sisters, I am still not all I should be, but I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, ¹⁴ I strain to reach the end of the race and receive the prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us up to heaven. ¹⁵ I hope all of you who are mature Christians will agree on these things. If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you.

(Philippians 3:8-15, NLT)

INTRODUCTION     How many people here have gone to school?  I know… we all have!  How many people- after successfully completing a grade, said, “You know, I really like Miss Jones and this classroom… I think I’ll stay here for the rest of my school days!”?  Now I know that some of us may have had to repeat a year, or maybe we didn’t fully complete our education, but we all know that the point is to move from one grade to the next: We complete the tasks we are assigned, with the goal of moving on to the next level, right?  That is the goal.  In school, you can’t rest on your past accomplishments because you might fall behind and possibly be held back.  That’s how it is in life, there’s always a new challenge, a new goal to shoot for. We have to keep striving to improve. The question I want us to ponder today is, “Are we preserving or progressing in our walk with the Lord?”

 

THE GOAL OF LIFE     This morning as we continue our theme “Dig Deeper… Reach Higher,” the apostle Paul talks about the goal of his life.  (Read Philippians 3:8-11)  Paul’s goal in life is to know Christ and the power of His resurrection, to share in His suffering & death so that he might attain to the resurrection from the dead.  Basically, Paul is saying he wants to be made Christ-like. He wants to know Christ personally and intimately so that through the power of Christ’s resurrection he might be made perfect.   

Notice what he says next (verse 12).  He hasn’t reached that goal yet. He knows he’s not perfect, but he presses on toward that end.  To get there he says he forgets what is behind him, the past, and he strains forward to what lies ahead: eternal life, and resurrection from the dead, where he will finally be made perfect and be able to enjoy the kind of relationship God intended for us to have with Him.  

Now hear me: Paul is a man who has so far accomplished much- he has planted new churches, led people to Christ, had audiences with powerful people, achieved a high level of education and training, gained a lot of respect in the Christian community. He has accomplished much, but he keeps pressing on to the ultimate goal. He never stops to admire himself… never has the attitude that he has arrived. He refuses to live in his past, because he has a future to embrace.

PRESERVING OR PROGRESSING?     Earlier, I asked the question: “Are we preserving or progressing in our walk with the Lord?”  The difference between preserving and progressing is this:

Preserving is living a safe, maintenance-minded life to protect what was, while progressing is movement towards the ultimate goal.

 

Paul has already spelled out what his focus was and ours should be.  But in order to gain the prize we have to be moving toward it.  Sadly, there are many Christians who are content to live in what used to be. They are content to dwell in safety and not take risks for the Lord.  In their walk with God they feel it is much easier and safer to preserve what they have than to reach out for more that God has for them.  But we can’t allow ourselves to become satisfied with past accomplishments. We need new goals to keep us motivated toward continually progressing. This is what Paul is telling us in our passage for today.  

Paul apparently liked sports and he often used sporting events to illustrate his points. Here Paul uses the picture of a race, so let me do the same.  During the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, the favorite to win the 110 meter high hurdles was an American named Greg Foster.  When the gun went off and the runners charged toward the hurdles Greg Foster got off to a good lead.  But just as he jumped over the last hurdle, he turned his head ever so slightly to see where everyone else was. Big mistake. That look back cost him only hundredths of a second, but it was enough to lose the race.  In a race you don’t look back and you never stop: You keep looking straight ahead and keep running until you cross the finish line.  

Paul says life is like a race, so imagine with me that life is like the 110M hurdles. The runners start the race with their gaze straight ahead toward the finish line. When the gun goes off the runners take off like a bullet, flying down the track. After a few steps, a realization pops into their minds and they think, “Whoa, I’m going to have to hurdle over this obstacle to continue the race.”  So they jump over the hurdle and continue running. Then what do they do?  You got it: another hurdle, and another, and another.  The runners don’t stop after making it over the first hurdle and shout, “I’ve made it!”  The runners keep going, jumping over all the obstacles until they finish the race. The goal is not to clear the first hurdle, or the 2nd or the 3rd. The goal is to finish, and hopefully win, the race. That must be our goal, as well.  We have been called into a journey of continually “digging deeper and reaching higher,” grow in the depth of our knowledge and relationship with Christ until it is perfect, and to reaching higher to complete the fullness of the tasks for which we were created.

LEAVING THE PAST BEHIND US     As we accept this challenge and calling, Paul says that there is one major threat to us achieving our goals of the future. What is it?  Our past.  Paul says, “I am focusing all my energies on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.”  Our pasts, both good or bad, can cause us to miss out in the future.  So, like Paul, we have to forget our pasts, live life engaged in the present, and keep our focus ever on the future. 

Unfortunately, many people do just the opposite.  Many people in churches today are simply in preservation mode spiritually. They are holding on to the past and by doing so are forfeiting their future. They are forfeiting the possibilities of what could be because they can’t let go of what has been.  While Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever and His Word is unchangeable- we are changeable and we should not be the same today as yesterday, and especially not in the future.  I don’t want to just preserve my relationship with God, I want to progress in it daily, because if I’m not progressing I’m not growing. 

People who are not growing have allowed themselves to become trapped in one of two places: They’re either caught on the mountain-top enjoying the view, or they’re trapped in the gutter of past failures. Let me explain:

1- “Mountain-top” Experiences     Mountain-top Christians are often trapped with a couple of dangerous attitudes:

 

     a- Yesterday’s experience was sufficient.  There are those in the preserving mode that believe that an experience they had some time in their past was enough and they are trying to living off of that experience.  We often refer to such experiences as “Mountain Top” experiences and they are wonderful… but they’re not enough to sustain us forever.  Think back to the best meal you ever remember eating. I’m sure whatever it was you ate you thought it was delicious and very filling. You may have even thought at the time that you would never eat a meal as good as this for the rest of your life. Now think about how long ago it was since you enjoyed that meal. Have you eaten anything since that time?  Of course you have. Because despite how pleasing that meal was it was not enough to sustain you for the rest of your life. That meal was good for you then but it is no good for you now.

 

Point: No matter how good your spiritual experiences were in the past they are not sufficient for your spiritual advancement anymore.  In Colossians 1:8, Paul tells the believers that as they continue to do good deeds and minister, they “will learn to know God better and better.”  Thank God for those experiences but don’t try to live off of them. You need to build on those experiences and keep pressing on. Yesterday’s experiences are just that- yesterday’s.  Tell me about your experience today!  What is God doing in your life today?  As long as we think that yesterday’s experience was enough we will never be able to progress toward the prize that is waiting for us at the finish line.  Preserving is a defensive hold on the past, but progressing is an offensive hope for the future.  Whenever we let up and start trying to preserve what we have, we actually start losing ground (elaborate). We can’t afford to let that happen so we have to keep taking spiritual risks with God and for God, and not allow ourselves to be content or complacent in our spiritual comfort zones.   

     b- Yesterday’s experience can’t be exceeded.   In our walk with God, if we are going to progress, it’s all about action.  Notice the action words Paul used to describe his pursuit of his goal.  “I keep working… focusing all my energies… I strain to reach…”  Paul had a passion about knowing Christ and it was not a passive thing; it was very active.  He knew there was something greater than what he already knew- something better and richer!   In order for us to progress in our walk with God we have to do and believe the same thing.  We have to be active spiritually.  Until you and I are able to honestly say, “I am perfectly like the Lord Jesus Christ,” we have no right to be satisfied with our spiritual development because we haven’t reached the finish line yet.  We have not arrived!  No matter how much we know, how strong we feel, we can know more and be stronger!  Earlier, in Philippians 1:9, Paul said, “I pray that your love for each other will overflow more and more, and that you will keep on growing in your knowledge and understanding.”  There is a progression, a growth!!

If you are satisfied and have no desire to go on further with Christ, to be more holy, to pray more, to study your Bible more, and to do more for Christ, my only conclusion is that you must already be like Him or you just have no appetite for Him.  You know what it means when you have no appetite? It means you’re ill- that something is wrong. Paul is insinuating that if we don’t have the kind of appetite for Christ that he has described, then we’re spiritually ill.  If that’s the case then we need to consult the Great Physician.

 

2- “Gutter” Experiences     But you know it’s not only good experiences in our past that can rob us of reaching our full potential in the future.  Sometimes it’s our sin and past failures that hold us back. Maybe you find yourself stuck in a spiritual sense today.  You feel unable to move forward spiritually.  No one has ever reached Christian maturity until they were able to deal effectively with their past.  

We all have things in our past that Satan would like to continually remind us of in order to hold us back from progressing spiritually.  In Revelation 12:10, Satan is described as the Accuser “the one who accused our brothers and sisters before our God day and night.”  But Paul’s formula is the same whether your past has been full of “Mountain Top” experiences or “Gutter” experiences: You must forget the things that are behind.  If you’re going to strive for perfection and spiritual maturity, you’ve got to forget the past.  How do we do it?  This forgetfulness can only occur through confession of our sin, correction of our life, and restitution. We have go to come to God and tell Him that we’ve sinned, we’ve got to correct the problem in our life (repent of it), then we have to seek to make things right. Restitution is making right whatever you can that you’ve done wrong in your past.

Many believers feel stuck spiritually, unable to progress because there is something in the past that’s holding them back. The past is wiping out their future.  1 John 1:9 says, “if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from every wrong.” And in Psalms it tells us that God removes our sins from us as far as the east is from the west and that he sends them to the depths of the ocean.  That’s how God deals with the sins we confess to him.  He discards them where they can never be retrieved and He remembers them no more.  We have to take God at His Word and believe that He does what He says He will do.

Usually it is harder for us to forgive ourselves than it is for God to forgive us.  But- if you confess your sins to God they are under the blood of Christ and they have to be forgotten. God dealt with them on the cross of Christ- they are history!- so we have to let them go.  If you don’t forget it, it will remain a bitter memory that will destroy what God wants to do in and through you in the future.

Don’t be historical about your forgiven sins. Don’t keep a record of your faults and failures; let them go so you can progress toward the prize that awaits you at the finish line of life’s race.  As we press on, we will have goals to complete and hurdles to overcome. We can’t stop after clearing our first hurdle or become satisfied after accomplishing a goal- we can’t quit running just because we may have tripped along the way. We have to keep “straining forward to what lies ahead.” 

We need to remember that the race is not over. God is not through with us yet.  We aren’t perfect, we’re forgiven.  We will have many more goals set before us and we must keep pressing on toward the goal of the heavenly calling of God.

 

WRAP UP…     What is the goal?  It is to be like Jesus. What a goal!  If we compare ourselves to Jesus, we soon come to the realization of how far we are from Him in perfection and love.  How could we ever even hope to reach that goal!?!  Well, remember the 110M hurdles: The runners know that they can’t get over all those hurdles in one leap.  No! They must take one hurdle at a time, as they get to them, moving ever closer to the finish line.  God puts all of these goals (or hurdles) in front of us to lead us in the same direction – toward becoming more Christ-like.

If we are going to “dig deeper and reach higher” in our relationship with Christ and the fulfillment of His plans for us, we have to move beyond our past.  We can’t rest on the successes of yesterday, believing that somehow they will sustain us or that they can’t be beat… and we can’t let past failures tempt us into staying down when we fall.  Keep moving forward!  Keep straining for what lies ahead. Keep pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly calling of God.  Whatever other plans you may have for today and tomorrow, make sure that on that list of goals you always have as your priority item, “to be a little more like Jesus.”