3, beginning in verse 12, we
read, not that I have already obtained all this, or have already
been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which
Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself
yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do, forgetting
what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press
on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called
me heavenward in Christ Jesus. Now the life of the believer
is a life of simplicity. The old covenant believer had
a very complex system by which to worship God. They had the
Ten Commandments and then roughly 600 other, shall we call them
lesser commandments, that they were supposed to follow. And
you can imagine the difficulty of keeping track of all of that.
They had trips to take. All the men were supposed to
go to Jerusalem three times a year. I don't know that they did, but
they were supposed to. They were supposed to attend
to all the details of that old covenant. But for the believer,
it's incredibly simple. For example, Paul says, I fear
lest as the serpent beguiled Eve in the garden, so your hearts
should be distracted from the simplicity that is in Christ. Simplicity means of one thing,
not of multiple things, one thing. We normally think of simple,
we think it means the same thing as easy. Well, it's not. Because in all reality, when
it comes to religion, the most difficult thing to do is simplicity. The natural man craves the complexity
of human religion because he figures the more complex it is,
the more it involves them in actually things they don't want
to do, the more they feel that they are sacrificing and contributing
toward their eternal welfare. But God, for several reasons,
brought it all down to one thing, Christ. Everything about the
life of faith has something to do with Jesus Christ. Everything. And, well, it should. What else is there? Is not Christ worthy of singular
and focused devotion? And is he not subject enough
to occupy our thoughts? People say, okay, I got that
part down, now let's move on. What should I do about, wait
a minute, we haven't finished with Christ. We haven't plumbed
to the depths of Him. And as near as I can tell, we
shall spend eternity pondering that and learning more. I don't know altogether what
heaven is like, but I know what it's about. It's about Christ. He is worthy of our singular
devotion. He is large enough subject to
occupy all of our thinking, meditating in religion, all our preaching,
listening, all that we do. And quite frankly, what else
will do us any good? You know, there are many people,
sadly, who will go to church this morning and they will hear
a preacher denounce this or that sin, or maybe even several of
them, as though we didn't already know it was wrong. I do note
this. I remember it from my times in
religion that liked to spend a great deal of time talking
about particular sins. Generally speaking, they're talking
about sins that nobody in the congregation is guilty of. They
find the worst things that society is doing and harp on those because
they're not likely to upset anybody in the congregation. It gives
them an opportunity to feel better than those that are outside.
But why do I want to hear about sin? I hear sin all the time. It's in my mind. It's constantly
saying, do this, or do that, go this way. This is okay. I don't need somebody to remind
me of sin. I actually listened to a graduation speech, a graduation speech given
at a university. The fellow that was giving it
was rather surprising, he was not what you'd consider an intellectual,
by no means an academic. He's a Hollywood movie star and
TV star. But he's also a race car enthusiast
and has raced cars in times past. But he was given the graduates and everybody listening,
giving him some of the tips he had learned over life, some of
the bits of wisdom that had affected him. And one of them was, somebody
told him, don't look where you don't want to be, look at where
you're going. And he said, if you're racing
and you're constantly looking at the wall because you're afraid
you'll run into it, you will run into it. Don't look at the
wall, look at your goal, look at where you're headed or where
you want to head. And I got to thinking about that
in relation to all this preaching about sin. And I do remember
this. When I was in that sort of religion,
one thing that all that preaching did was make me always think
about sin and therefore run into it on a regular basis. Others are going to go to church
and they're going to hear some political speech. Others, they're going to get
tips for how to live, how to have a successful life. You know,
that's kind of a first world religion. You know what I mean
by that. The first world, like the United States and most of
the other European nations, the ones with economies like we have. And so we worry about small things. How to be more prosperous, how
to be happy. There are believers in this world,
they would be happy to know there's another meal coming. You know,
they have bigger problems than how to be successful, they just
want to survive. but we as believers in the Lord
Jesus Christ are given one thing to focus on, Jesus Christ. It's what the preacher preaches.
The apostle said, I determined to know nothing else among you
than Jesus Christ and Him crucified. As I mentioned in the old covenant,
Ten commandments and hundreds more, and it's all been reduced
down to one for the believer, love. And Paul reduces his activity
as a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, not as an apostle, as
a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. The Bible doesn't tell us what
apostles are supposed to do. Why? Well, the 12 apostles already
knew, because Christ had told them. Plus, there are no more
apostles, so why write down what they're supposed to do? That
is, no apostles in the same sense that those 12 apostles were.
And so he's not saying, this is what I do as an apostle. He's saying, this is what I do
as a believer. in our Lord Jesus Christ. And
I like that, he said, this one thing I do, one thing, press on, press on. Now, this business of pressing
on, let's note the difficulty presented. He doesn't say, I
casually walk along. He doesn't say, I stroll or even
trot or run. He says, I press on. Why use the word press? Well,
you'll notice that that's the first part of the word pressure.
You press on because you are encountering pressure to do something
else. You press on because there's
resistance. It's not just a matter of the
distance of running. It's not just a matter that a
course has been laid out. It's that there is a course laid
out. It is a lifelong course. And the course is littered with
obstacles, hindrances, and worst of all, enemies who desire that
you not run that course. So you press on. Our Lord Jesus Christ said this,
the kingdom of heaven suffers violence and violent men take
it by force. Now that's real strange to us. I mean, what? How can someone
take the kingdom of heaven by force? Here's what all he is
saying is. There are enemies to the kingdom
of heaven. And those enemies express violence
against the kingdom of God. with equal, if we can use, it's
really not the word violence, you know, like we think of violence
when people are trying to take over something, but with equal
vigor as those who would like to destroy the kingdom of God,
those who want to enter it, equal vigor, equal effort, equal determination,
they take the kingdom of God. You see, salvation is had without
works, but it has never been gained without work. Now there's
a difference there. When we talk about the salvation's
not by works, we're saying that God has not required any works
of us in order to obtain the fullness of his salvation. Not the beginning of it, not
the end of it, Not supposed extra rewards once we get to heaven.
Everything that God has for the sinner is in Christ and everything
in Christ is given to everyone who is in Christ. And it doesn't
matter how well they ran the course. It doesn't matter how
faithfully they pressed on. If you get anything from God
that's good, eternally good, you get everything. because it's
by grace. So there's no works in salvation,
but there is work because we live in a world that is opposed
to this gospel in every way. There are spiritual powers in
this world opposed to what we believe. They're the ones creating
the work. They're the ones that make it
difficult for us. There's our own flesh that we,
you know, everywhere we go, we take it with us. And it's, you
know, we're pressing on to Christ, it's pressing back. And so it is work, even though
it's not a matter of works, not a matter of works of morality,
not a matter of rendering anything to God. It's just as you try
to approach God on the basis of grace, all the world, your
flesh and the devil and all his cohorts are opposed to you. And they make the way difficult. So we press on. Now, how is it then that he presses
on? Well, he says, this one thing
I do, forgetting, this is verse 13, forgetting what is behind. Now, once again, And we've seen this scripture
before, made this point, but he is likening this to a race. And one thing a racer must do
is in the middle of a race, don't think about the race that's already
been run. Whether it's a 100-yard dash
or a marathon. As you're running, you don't
think about how far you've already come. You don't think about whether
you had a good start or not. You don't think about whether
you fell down or not. The only thing you think about
is what lies ahead. Now, Paul talked about some things
that he forgot. And it's a good thing to forget
this because these are heavy weights upon us if we try to
remember them. And he mentioned all of this
thing here. Here in verse 4, though I myself
have reasons for such confidence, and by that he meant confidence
in the flesh, confidence in what he had done before. And he says,
verse 5, I was circumcised on the eighth day. What's he doing?
He's going back to his life lived as an unbelieving Jew. And the
things he lists Most of the Jews of his day, maybe even believing
Jews, would have thought, well, that's a good thing that he got
started out that way. Paul didn't seem to think so.
He said, if anybody has a right to boast in the flesh, I could.
Look at all these things. I followed the laws. I'm of the
people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. I'm a Hebrew of
Hebrews, meaning that he was purebred. He was a Hebrew. Both his parents were Hebrews.
You know, there's no taint of Gentile blood in him. And he
said, as for zeal, I persecuted the church. And in the time of
his Phariseeism, before the Lord converted him, he wasn't one
of these that was zealous and could say, I'm willing to die
for my religion. He was willing to kill for his
religion. He had an attitude very much like the extremist
Muslims we see in our day-to-day, who will go out and kill anybody
that doesn't agree with them, if they think they can get away
with it. And when the Lord saved him, he was on the way to get
some Christians to round them up, bring them back to Jerusalem,
let them stand trial, and I'm sure that he would have stood
as their accuser and called for their death. And we think zeal is a good thing.
Well, zeal is a good thing. It's just like energy. It's a
good thing if it's used the right way. Electricity, it's a good
thing until you stick your finger in the receptacle, then it's
not such a good thing anymore, is it? Well, he had zeal being
improperly used. He said, the righteousness of
the law, I was faultless. Well, wouldn't that be good? Evidently not. He said, I forget about them.
He forgot about them as having any value to him. His next verse
was, or next words were in verse 7, whatever was to my prophet
I now consider lost for the sake of Christ. Now imagine a ledger,
an accounting spreadsheet, and you've got assets or credits
and debits. He said, whatever I thought was
a credit, I now consider a debit. What I used to put in the column
of things that helped, things that increased my spiritual bank
account, I have moved all of them over into the debit category."
Because they were. All those things he mentioned
were hindering him coming to Christ. They were a loss, he
says. So he forgot about that. He forgot
about what benefit it might bring him and now is a believer. He forgets, forgot about all
the damage he had done in the days of his Phariseeism. He had the blood of some of his
brothers and sisters on his hands. Can you imagine what that'd be
like? You could see how if the Lord converted Paul, he'd just
say, I don't dare become a preacher. I have, I persecuted the church.
I assaulted, some of them were killed. They're never going to
listen to me. I don't have the right to preach to them. Be an
apostle? Never. That can't be. What did he have to do? He had
to forget about all the sin of his former righteousness. Now
this may be something that drags some of you down, it does me.
And I don't mean just the sin before God saved me, I was only
seven, so, you know, there wasn't a lot as we count sin that can
be seen, you know? All the sin I've committed since
then, this past week. If I dwell on that, and it's
easy for me to do that, You know, I'm a believer of that statement
that says in front of every silver lining is a cloud. You know,
I see the negative, I see the problems, and I see my sin. And Paul says, forgetting what's
behind. Well, whatever it was, it's behind. If we keep remembering
it, if we keep dwelling on it, I realize it doesn't mean that
we couldn't call it to mind. But when Paul says forgetting,
he's not acting like we don't remember that these things happened.
If that's what he meant, he couldn't have written the first part of
this chapter. He wouldn't have remembered any of it. He means
I don't dwell on that. That's not what takes my attention. Nothing that has happened up
to this moment is any longer of significance to me. I put
it out of mind. Why? Because all that counts
is what lays ahead. Oh, the blessedness of being
allowed to forget your sin. I come up in this pulpit and
I'm amazed God lets me stand here. I'm amazed God lets me
say his name without a thunderbolt coming out of heaven and striking
me dead for using, you know, saying his holy name with unholy
lips. And if I were to dwell on my
sin, the numbers of sins, the awfulness
of them, the stubborn, if I were to dwell on those things, I don't
know how I'd stand here. and preach. Now to some degree, or in some
ways, it's helpful for me to remember I am a sinner. As one preacher said, I preach
as one who may never preach again as a dying man to dying men.
I am a sinner living in a dying world, and as a sinner I know
how to preach to other sinners. At the same time, if I dwell
over much on the fact that I'm a sinner, I won't be able to
preach at all. forgetting what is behind. And I tell you, brothers
and sisters, we can. No matter what has happened to
this point, by the grace of God, we are allowed to forget it in
our pursuit of Christ and the blessings that are in him. You say, well, doesn't any of
that stuff matter? Well, Tim James, as usual, put it in best.
He said, well, it matters, but it doesn't count. None of what has gone before,
whether good or bad, has any effect on what lays ahead. Even if in this race we fell
flat on our faces, and I remember the old track, you know the track
in our high school, it wasn't one of these paved things, it
was paved with cinders, I mean real cinders. And you fell in
that, those cinders were sharp. And you have something to pick
out of your hands or your knees or whatever it is, hit the track.
And it's painful. And we do. We fall flat on the
track like that. Now, if you sit down and say,
I got to get this out of here or cry over the fact that you
fell or over the fact that it's painful, what's going to happen?
Well, you're just sitting there going nowhere. What you do is
you get up, you forget about the thing. You don't dwell on
the fact you fell. You don't dwell on whatever harm
it may have brought. You just keep going. Keep going. Press on, forgetting what is
behind and then straining toward what is ahead. This straining, and of course
a race is such a good symbol here. I like watching Olympic-type
sports. I never did get into where I
watched the regular sports like baseball, basketball, and football.
I liked that old TV show, Wide Wide World of Sports, because
there were different things. other than, you know, the big
three going on. And I like a good race, and I
especially like a good short race, because I have a short
attention span, you know. I want to, when they fire the
gun or the buzzer or whatever they do to tell them to start,
I like to know real quick who won. You know, the Daytona 500
is about 495 laps too much for me. But I like those sprints. You ever watch those guys? It's
like they're clawing at the air. Everything they've got is put
in to getting to the end of that race. They're not thinking about
the other races, racers. They're not thinking about anything
except putting every aspect of their being into going down that
track. And it's something to watch. Well, we strain. We strain because
we're going against the current. We strain because the flesh constantly
interferes. And we strain because what we
see by faith, that which lies ahead and what we see by faith
is so glorious that inwardly we can't wait to lay hold of
it. Now there's two reasons a believer
would want to leave this world. Reason number one, just plain
sick and tired of it. The older you get, the more it
gets like that. You know, when we're young, we
think we're going to succeed at something. And we might have
some worldly success. But we also have this idea that
we're going to succeed as Christians. And in the biblical sense we
will. But I do remember I used to pray
every night, God make me a better Christian. Now there isn't any
such thing. There's being a Christian and
there's not being one. And it's not about us being better or
worse. Now there are other words we might use, but we shouldn't
apply better or worse to the idea of being a Christian. When
I was young, I could listen to the youth speakers and whoever
was teaching us young people, and they could inspire me for
a little while. aspire to being, you know, a
missionary. And, of course, if you want to
be a missionary back then, you know, go to Africa, deep, dark
Africa, you know, the more miserable the place, the better you were
doing, you know. I would make resolutions. I'm going to read so many chapters
every day. I'm going to do this, all of
this business, trying to be successful. And it comes to nothing. To nothing. And therefore, after years and
years of trying that, I mean, I even came here, and I think,
by the way, that 1987, the year I came here, the calendar falls
out exactly like this year. And I think next Sunday, will
mark exactly 34 years since the first Sunday I preached over
there over City Hall as quote, the pastor of this congregation. But I came here thinking big
things are going to happen. Well, I want to tell you some
big things have happened, but not big the way the world thinks
of it. This congregation this morning,
what, 25 people? If that many? If we had everybody
here on one Sunday, and as one fellow used to say, you know,
do you count everybody? Oh yeah, we count everybody in
the pregnant women twice. And if we did that, we might
be able to get 60. Do you realize in this world
what a 60 person church is? Nothing. That's a start. I had dreams. I remember when
we came here the first time, when Brother Henry Mahan came
and spoke to us in the summer of 88, and this building was
available. And so I brought him over here
to see it, and a few of the other men came along. And Henry looked
at it and said, oh, this would be great. You could have some
great conferences here. And of course, he's looking at
how many people this place would seat. And that time, the organ
works and all that. Well, we've had some blessed
conferences, but no big ones. You realize as you get older
that you're not going to accomplish what you thought you were. And you become world weary. There's natural world weariness
and then there's that which the believer begins to experience. More and more you realize, this
world is not my home. I'm just passing through. And
the quicker I pass through, the better, because I don't like
it here. And then there's another reason
the believer may desire to depart this life. Paul said, for I desire
to depart and be with Christ. Now that's the better of them,
of the two. Like I said, even the natural
man can experience world weariness. As the body gets older, it's
less and less capable of enjoying the pleasures that the world
has to offer. And so, you know, there's not
nearly as much appeal to this world. But believers got something
more. He looks forward to, as Paul
said, laying hold of that for which I was laid hold of. God
laid hold of us for something. He laid hold of us to make us
like Christ and to be with Christ forever. Now, that wouldn't be a very
attractive thing to most religious people, but it's attractive to the believer. I know that we still look to
death with some trepidation, some resistance. That's natural
to us. We have a survival instinct. But if we knew that through that
door, a door we've never seen before, a door we've never passed
through before, but we knew on the other side of it was our
Lord Jesus Christ and that passing through it we would be made like
him, we would not hesitate to go through. I don't care what the door looked
like, we'd walk through it. Well, for the believer, death
is a door. And we've never been through
it before. We may have seen it from afar when someone else that
we knew close by passed on, but we've never been confronted with
it. We've never stood right in front of it. But when we do, Let us remember
our master's on the other side. And it doesn't matter what the
door is like, getting to him is worth it. He says, I'm pressing
on. He didn't have a death wish,
he had a life wish. He said, who shall deliver me
from the body of this death? He counted what you and I are
living, a walking death. And he wanted to be done with
it, that he might live in the presence of Christ. I press on. I press on because there's pressure
against me. I press on forgetting. I press on straining. Straining toward the goal to
win the prize. Oh, so now how do you win the
prize? That sounds like a contest, doesn't
it? Am I running against a bunch of other people? Because, you
know, only 10 out of the first 10 get in, the rest of you, you
know, sorry. And we're not in competition
with anybody else, so far as other runners in this race. The
only competition we face is those who resist us. And he says, I
press on. And he didn't say, I press on
doing a better job of running. He said, I just press on. That's
all there is to it. Staying on the course. And all that is necessary to
win the prize is finish the race. That's all. And it won't matter whether you
ran with confidence stride. It won't matter how many times
you fell. It won't matter if there were times you went to
the side of the track and sat down and cried and pitied yourself.
It won't matter. None of that matters. There's
only one thing that matters. When you reach that door. Are you still on this track?
Grace. Salvation through Christ alone
with a heart desiring to be like Him and with Him. Because you
see, there's a lot of people get on that track and they start
running and they look real good when they start. I could look
real good for the first, I almost said 100 yards, but I don't know
if I can make that anymore. For the first 10 yards of a marathon,
I could look great. And maybe, you know, the commentator,
oh, here's a newbie and he's going to do great. But they'd
notice probably about 50 yards that I'm huffing and puffing
and I've stopped and I'm bent over with my hands on my knees
trying to catch my breath. The issue is not the speed. The issue is what course are
you on and do you stay on it? Pressing on. Now, what things might encourage
us? as we walk this path, run this path, whatever, stumble
on the path, whatever. Well, as I said, remember what's
at the end. But also notice our Lord Jesus
Christ. Now, there was no sin in him
that he had to forget sin behind him. Nothing like that. But he did have a lot of resistance,
didn't he? All of hell was opposed to our Lord Jesus Christ and
was opposed to him in ways that you and I have never felt. And to me, it all focused down
there at the Garden of Gethsemane. And there he is alone, praying. He knows what's coming. He knows That if that path he
was on, if he continues on that path, a Roman beating and crucifixion
awaits him. Pain and agony awaits him. Death
before 24 hours passes by. As a human being, he faced that. And I know our Lord is perfect.
but he's also a human being. He didn't want to experience
that. It was as horrifying a prospect
to him as it would be to you and me, but there was more. He knew that the sins of countless
people would be laid to his charge. He who knew no sin was going
to have pressed upon his shoulders the weight of all the sins of
all of God's people for all of time. All those who came before
him and all of us after him. And I don't know what that would
be like for the son of God. But I know that he abhorred sin
and didn't just abhor it in a legalistic sense of the word because he
thought of what trouble it might bring him. He actually hated
sin. And it was going to touch him. But more than all of that, he
knew not only that he was going to face the pain and the death
and that sin would be laid upon him. He knew that he would stand
before God, the judge of all. covered in the sins of his people,
and he would experience whatever God, the judge of all, can do
in retribution against sin. And he said, Father, if there's
any other way, if there's any other way, let
this cup pass from me. You say, well, was the Lord experiencing
a time of weakness? No. He wasn't backpedaling. He was just honestly facing what
lies ahead. He said, Father, if there's another
way that your people might be saved. can be saved, will be
saved. Let this cup pass from me." But the very fact that he said,
if, lets us know he wasn't weak. He was ready to walk that path,
if that's the only path there was. It's the only way to accomplish
this. And then what he said after that
request, nevertheless, not my will, but your will be done. Now friends, our Lord, we trust
Him, we admire Him, we love Him. If He could bear so much in His
single pursuit of the will of His Father, can we not bear the
light suffering that we endure as we press on to Him? What an example our Lord laid
for us. And the writer of Hebrews put it
this way, fix your eyes on Jesus, who for the joy set before him
endured the cross, despising its shame. Now that can be taken two ways. Most people would take it this
way. Look to Jesus. You look to him and you see him
as an example because he was willing to endure what he endured
because of what he knew would be accomplished by him enduring
it. That's a legitimate way to look
at that scripture. And that's a good motivation. Rather, what
wouldn't you put up with? if the result of putting up with
it was that you're made to be like Christ and to be with Christ
forever. You can bear a lot for that. But I read one fella who
pointed out that the Greek word, it says there, who for the joy
set before him, the Greek preposition that they translated for is the
Greek preposition anti. We pronounce it anti. And it means in place of. And
this fella, and I can't tell you, the writer of Hebrews, I
don't know which way he was going with it. Both of them, both ways
of taking this are good. But this one commentator said,
what is meant there? The Lord at that time, as he
told Peter, he could have called on his father. and said, save me, get me out
of this, and his father would have done it. And do not think
that the devil did not whisper in the ear of our Lord, you don't
have to do this. You could go right back to, you
remember what that was like? Adored by the angels, in constant
close fellowship with your father, no pain, no suffering, just give
it up, it isn't worth it. And so this one commentator was
saying that the Lord, instead of that joy that was set before
Him, instead of that, He endured the cross. And that's what the
world does. Look, if you'll just give up
on this one point, we can be friends. We can get along. If you'll just let me boast in
my own righteousness a little bit, we can get along. And when we start doing that,
now I'm not talking about we go down, jump down everybody's
throat when they do that. I'm just saying taking a stand
on this gospel of grace. We could make our path much easier
and more enjoyable here in the fleshly sense of the word, but
it would cost us. Oh, what it'd cost us. It would
be leaving the path the narrow road. So instead of
that, let's endure whatever. And then because of what comes
at the end, let's endure it. Enduring His cross, because that's
what we preach. The shame that comes with being
simple believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and having nothing
to show the world that impresses them. And I like the writer of Hebrews
says, despising its shame. And that did not mean he hated
its shame. That's not what it means. He
counted it as of no significance, showing contempt with the shame.
They mocked him. He didn't care. They spat out their hatred to
him. He didn't care. He was focused. Let us likewise
be focused.