As we grow in our faith and as
we grow in our hunger to see the Word of God and to get more
of our time together in the Word, we find that sometimes we've
sat for an hour and we don't realize we've sat for an hour.
I know for me, I can blab on and talk and talk and talk and
three hours can go by, as some of you can attest to in personal
experience. But ultimately, when we are talking,
when we are teaching, when we are preaching, when we are hearing,
if it is for our good and for our joy, it's only just a moment.
But there will come a day, and I love the last stanza of that
song we sang, that our dead tongues, our physical tongues will be
lying silent in the grave, but we will sing with a nobler tongue
to the power of the gospel to save us. And I'll tell you, I'm
looking forward to that day, that even now as we preach and
talk and share the gospel with each other, it is a fleshly tongue
that is not even doing justice to the glory of God. But yet
that is the vehicle through which God has prescribed in His wisdom
for His glory and His wisdom and His Christ and His gospel
to be proclaimed. Why? Because that's God and we
don't know why. But that is His vehicle. So we
do it knowing that if it were not for His Spirit, as Brother
Doug prayed, we would just be blabbering and just slobbering
all over ourselves without any coherent wisdom or thought. But because of God's sovereign
grace, because of His power, because of His Spirit, mere,
mortal, fallible men can proclaim the greatness of His excellencies
and the power of His majesty. And so for that this morning,
I pray that as we see this text in Philippians, that we will
look and pause and we will let it preach to us, not just today,
but it will preach to us as we go about our week. And you might
think when you come to fellowship with the church sometimes that
it's It becomes very routine. I pray, I pray that there is
never a routine thought or focus or habit in your lives when it
comes to celebrating the gospel, when it comes to gathering as
the church. I pray that it never just becomes the mundane thing
that I do, that it's next on the schedule, that it's next
on the day, that it's what we accomplish as people to go to
church and to then go home. Because friends, there's no power
in that. There's no glory in that. There's
no majesty in that. There's nothing awesome about
that at all. What I'd rather see you do is
fight tooth and nail to be in fellowship with the saints. I'd
rather see you come to church on Sunday in such a way that
would cause you grief and frustration. that you get up and it would
be easier in your flesh to remain in the bed or to go out and cook
or just say, man, this is just too difficult for me. But even
then, you would strive and fight and push and honk the horn in
the driveway as your kids are running with their shoelaces
stringing behind them. But you made it to the saints'
gathering. And you are glad that you did.
I'd rather it be a war to be in the Word of God than just
some mundane potty time at seven in the morning. I'd rather you
struggle with it to the point where you have to take a break
for lunch from work and that you don't get to eat because
you need to get into the Word and pray in your car because
you just need God to show you truth. I don't want your faith
to become mundane because it is no faith and it is not alive.
When walking with Christ is just something we accomplish as a
scheduled thing during And I would pray that this sermon would be
not just another one would be the only one that resonates in
your heart at the time you hear it. And then until you hear God's
word again, that it would strike you in such a way, not my words,
not my commentary, but the words of God through the mouth and
the hand and the letter of Paul to the Philippian Christians,
that it would ruin you to joy. You ever thought about that?
That's what the word of God does for me. It ruins me. unto joy. It ruins me because it shows
me my flesh. It corrects it. It breaks it. It perplexes it. But in the end,
it's like, thank you, God, for your grace. Thank you, Lord,
for shaking the living dog mess out of me, for giving me hope,
for giving me encouragement, for smacking me around a little
bit, for lifting me up when I was down, for raising my hands when
they're unable to be raised. and for giving me that which
you might need as a brother or sister in a time of need." Friends,
we are here for that purpose. We are gathered around God's
Word in His power, not our own. And so that many of our brothers
and sisters who are out and about today for whatever reason, they
know that they miss out on this type of power when they don't
fellowship together. And they may think that going
online and listening or doing, it will give you what God wants
it to give you, but it will never give you fellowship together
when it's on a screen. It'll never give you a face to
pray for. It'll never give you a heart
to hug. It'll never give you a burden
to bear with the saints next to you, in front of you, behind
you. And so I'm thankful that God
has ordained this day for us. that we might celebrate his loving
kindness through Jesus Christ together. And so as we look at
Philippians chapter three, we're not almost there, we're running.
We're running a race, and if you look at verse 12, I'll start
there and read through verse 16, and we'll pick out just a
couple of focus things. We've been here before, three
weeks ago, we were here four weeks ago, but I want to point
out, just like I did last week, one specific thing that needs
to be pressed upon, pun intended. Verse 12 of chapter 3, not that
I have already obtained this. He's speaking, obtaining the
righteousness of Christ and the resurrection of the dead, the
perfection of the gospel. Not that I have already obtained
this or am already perfect, but I, listen, press on to make it
my own. Brothers, I do not consider that
I have made it my own, but one thing that I do, forgetting what
lies behind me and straining forward to what lies ahead, that's
not what he does, that's what he's doing as he does what he's
about to show you. I press on towards the goal,
for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Now let's
break that down for just a minute before I get into it. Look at
it. It says that, brothers, I do
not consider, verse 13, that I have made it my own, but one
thing I do, I press on toward the goal. That's what he's saying. And as he presses, he says, as
I'm pressing, I am forgetting what lies behind me and I'm straining
forward to what lies ahead. This conversation, if you will,
this personal testimony of Paul is interesting because he uses
words like press on, straining forward. And then he says, I
press on toward. If we've read other Pauline letters,
this is not the first time we've heard such language. Paul says
to Timothy that he runs the race. He even tells Timothy that he's
finished the race. He tells the Corinthians that
he's like a runner should strive. He tells Timothy the same thing.
We ought to run for the prize. We ought to press into these
things. And so a lot of times, the reason
that Paul says these things is because just like the suffering
Christians of Philippi, the suffering Christians of Evans, Bullock,
Tattnall, Chatham, Effingham, Emanuel, whatever county that
you're a part of, I could list them all out. We are just like
them in that when we suffer through this world, when we strive and
fail, we sometimes get weak in our faith. We get weak in our
faith, just like the Thessalonians who were striving in their faith,
as Brother Jesse shared with us two weeks ago, yet Paul, because
he wasn't there to see, though he heard, he wanted to see. He
was concerned for their well-being lest they walk away from the
faith. Friends, it's an urgent thing for us to understand that
when we are having everything go wrong, it is the greatest
opportunity for us to forsake the gospel. But because the gospel
is the power of God unto salvation, God sustains His own, and He
allows us to hold fast to the confession of our hope in Jesus
Christ in a supernatural way, but also in a community way,
that the church, as we are together, we strive together. But there
is a great problem right now in our culture, right here in
this city, where people actually have come to the conclusion that
because they are found in the grace of God, can live their
life in a lazy, unmotivated, unholy, unfocused way. That they're able to just sit
around with their feet propped up, watching the game and say,
look, I'm in the will of God. Now you probably could be watching
a game, being in the will of God. But the problem is, is that
we misunderstand what that means. The will of God for us is for
our sanctification, not to be holy without Christ as we've
looked at last week, the righteousness of Christ. But that if we are
the righteousness of God, what is it that the Scripture teaches
us? that I, we are, what, while we were sinners Christ died for
us? He that had no sin became sin? So that we could what? So that we would be the righteousness
of God. So if we're the righteousness
of God in Christ Jesus, and our righteousness is a picture, and
not just a picture, but it's the perfection of Christ, then
what we see when we just decide we're not going to work into
our personal holiness. We're not going to strive for
obedience to the faith. We're not going to long for the
saints. We're not going to press in to understand the Bible anymore.
The scripture teaches that something is astronomically and exponentially
out of place. Because when we read the New
Testament letters, every letter gives commandments, absolute
declarations, commandments, teaching that we should act and think
and live and love and grow and move and learn in a specific
way. And not just a specific way,
but an explicit way that's apart from what the world teaches.
And so if this is true for us, and it is, then striving and
moving is the words that should actually exemplify our lives. We ought to be moving in Christ. We ought to be living for Christ. Paul would even say, to live
for the glory of Christ in whatever you eat. and whatever you drink,
even in the context of food. What are we doing with the small,
normal, natural processes of our schedule? Are they for the
glory of Christ? I came to conclude many years
ago, and I said this publicly, and one of my great mentors called
me out on it when I said, we ought to even be putting our
socks on for the glory of Christ every day. And I got a good amen,
and people, oh wow, and some people are going, how am I going
to do that? I can't hardly brush my teeth for the glory of Christ
yet, so how am I going to get my socks on? I can't even get
my Bible study for the glory of Christ yet. How am I going
to worry about my socks? And he came to me and he said, James,
I think that's a tall order. It's a little misapplication
there because God's not worried, and these aren't the exact words,
it's been 15 plus years, but he said, we shouldn't teach people
that they should be concerned about how they put their socks
on. I said, brother, you missed it. That's the first time ever
I've had to sort of Mentor to mentor, it was a little unnerving.
I said, let me explain to you where I'm coming from and then
you can correct me if I'm wrong. And he didn't. He said, oh, I
see what you're saying. And what point that I made, and
when I say that, what point I'm trying to make is that we are
not just putting our socks on because it's time for socks.
There's some plan for our day. There's some joy to be had in
the fact that we have socks. You ever been part of a gift
giving opportunity for third world countries? And you get
the list of things you're supposed to put in the box. And we're
thinking Ninja Turtles and Hot Wheels and candy and all that
kind of stuff. What do they ask for? Toothbrush? Sock? Underwear? And missionary friends of mine,
not just with that organization, but with many organizations who
do like ministry, and they go over to these places, and these
children see the truck come, and they know that once a year
they're going to get these things, and it's the essentials. How
often do we replace our toothbrushes and socks? And they're getting
a few pairs, a couple of twos of toothpaste, and their socks,
they're thankful for socks. Socks is the throwaway gift during
our holiday season. Socks are the things that you
keep stashed in the bottom drawer of the china cabinet for when
some guy or gal in your family brings the boyfriend over or
the girlfriend over. You've got, well, we're exchanging
gifts, we've got nothing for John over here. What's your last
name again? Go get that pair of socks. Wrap it up, put, we
love you, John. He's like, we just started dating
yesterday. How'd you get me a gift? It's beautiful, thank you. And
he takes it and he goes home and he throws it in the trash.
But those socks to people who need socks are amazingly an opportunity
for worship. You see how we ought to just
have that mindset we put on our socks. And we throw socks away that
don't even match or get holes in them. That's not what the
sermon is about, but it's about worshiping God and glorifying
him and everything. So I think when we put on our socks, at
the minimum, we ought to have a celebration in our heart that
God had provided socks for us. That we might have a job and
we might think it's all us and we've got mad skills and we can
do all sorts of things that earn a living, but let me tell you
something, without the Lord, there'd be no living. Without the Lord,
without God's creative hand and His sovereign grace, there'd
be no skill. Much less a drawer to put your socks in. You have
a sock drawer. We have a sock basket. We have
a sock cabinet. We have a sock room at our house.
We could have a sock room. And that's for the ones that
don't match. So when we put on our socks,
we ought to be celebrating. We ought to be doing it so that
the glory of God is foremost and foremost on our mind and
foremost in our lives that we not only have socks, but we don't
deserve socks. Never thought theology could
be centered around socks, could you? But if what I'm drinking
has got that command, and what I'm eating has that command,
surely what I'm wearing has that command. And what about what
I'm putting on socks? Am I putting them on socks to
warm my feet, or am I putting them on socks so that I can put
on my shoes, so that I can go do something? What am I planning
for? What is my day about? Where am I going? To what end
am I doing all that I do that day? To the glory of God. You're
not working for your boss, you're working for Jesus Christ. You
and I don't mow lawns and sweep driveways and paint walls and
do computer work and write and everything else. We don't do
that. We don't supervise people for the company. We supervise
and we do all that we do for Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior.
So there's no wasted job, there's no wasted effort, there's no
wasted work, that we work and labor for the sake of the glory
of Christ who gave us all that we have, knowing that it is futile
in this world, but it's not for nothing because it's a small
display of our appreciation, a small display of our worship,
sort of like Paul says in Romans chapter 12, that our lives are
to be a living sacrifice for Jesus Christ. What are we going to do so that
we are to do it all for the glory of God? Friends, it is impossible
to live that way apart from the power of Christ. And even then, our flesh is going
to make a mess of it, sometimes. But when it does, if it does,
we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. So now, These are the things
that should be on our minds as we consider Paul in these verses. Specifically, verse 13 and 14,
as Paul really, in my mind, and he's setting up what he's about
to do, closing out chapter 3. It wasn't in his mind to close
out, but the thoughts are closing out here, moving to the conclusion. And he says to them in chapter
4, verse 1, Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my
joy and crown stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved. And
there's the crowning jewel of this letter. Stand firm. Hold fast in suffering. Hold
fast because of whose you are and what you are becoming and
everything that Christ has done for you. Hold fast in the power
of His glory because He is powerful over you. He is powerful in you.
He is powerful through you. And He's powerful among you.
Hold together. Not individually fast, but together
hold fast. Hold fast in unity. Hold fast
with the mind of Christ. You see how all the letters start
to come together? It's one letter, it's not a bunch of little letters.
Sometimes exposition can be so laborious in its length that
we lose sight of the whole. But Paul is saying to these people,
you are who Christ has made you to be, so have this, it is yours.
You are to be this way because Christ has made you this way,
so therefore you be this way. Live this way, love this way,
go this way, teach this way, understand this way, have discernment
this way. Pray this way, all these things,
because I have done this for you. Don't labor this way in
burden for me, apart from Christ, but rejoice in your burden for
me. Because of Christ, I am in chains. Continue in the way that
you're going, for it is a glorious display of the power of God.
For He began this work in you, and He will complete it. It is
a guarantee. There is no sense for you to
suffer in worrying about your place in Christ Jesus, but as
you live, certain of your salvation, certain of your future glory,
certain of the power of the gospel, strive for it, press in it, lean
on it, run toward it. This is where He is. You see
that? This is it. And it's a stark
contrast to the world. Friends, let me tell you something.
This is terrible that we have to say these things. It is in
direct contrast to the teachings of most anything you'll hear
on the street, out of the mouths of Christians. The years and
years and years of ministry and church. How long have y'all been
in church? As long as I have. As a fetus,
I had my first church service. As a zygote, probably. Fetus,
embryo, then fetus, then child. Been in church all my life. It's
what you did in the South. If you weren't in church down
here, you'd... What are you? A devil worshiper? Don't buy
bread from the bread man, he's never been to church. Are you
kidding me? Oh my goodness, we run him out
of town on a pole. So you've been there, you've
heard it. And so for that point, most everybody you meet on the
street in these cities, in these towns and communities are for
the most part church goers. Most anyone, any family who's
been here has a history of churchmanship. But yet, a national secular statistic
show us that just in this county, 8 out of 10 people are unchurched
every week. But 9 out of 10 claim to be affiliated
with the church. And how that works, three generations
ago, their granddaddy took them to church and he helped build
it. So that's their church. That's like saying, there's my
doghouse. Where are your dogs? Oh, I never had dogs. That's
just my doghouse. That's my church. That's a building.
Who are your church? What is the face of your church?
Who is it that prays for you? Who holds you accountable? Whom
do you hold accountable? Who who is there to labor with
you in the gospel? And yet they will tell you this.
When we see and we hear of these people who have been in church
as youth and they leave the church and they go into the world and
they leave the faith, and what do we say? What's the verbiage
that we use in our Baptist circles? They backslidden! You know what
a backslidden is? That's when you accidentally
turn around on the water slide. And you're not sure if your trunks
are going to come off or stay on. That's about the biggest
embarrassment you get in backsliding. Backside sliding. It's not backsliding when we
reject the gospel. It's unbelief. And it'd be different
if we didn't have the text of the New Testament to show us
that this is a clear and present danger. It would not worry us
if we didn't have Titus, if we didn't have Timothy, where Paul
even names people who were missionaries with him to the cities, planting
churches. And then they said, and they
walked away from their calling. And Paul said, because they did
that, they were never in Christ. They were just doing Christian
stuff. They were never born of God. They never had power. They
never had glory. They never had hope. They never
had faith. They had a mental application of something that
they wanted to be a part of, and it suited them socially,
so they did it. And then finally their flesh
got tired of it, and they walked away when Paul began to hold
them to the truth of the gospel. Paul even says, it hurt me greatly.
I've been desperately hurt. They hurt him. Imagine. Imagine
the life of Paul and then the people that you depend on the
most walk off on you. It's like having a grout pump
ready to go and 25 trucks of cement pulling up to pour that
stuff and all your help leave. What do you do? If you don't
know what that looks like, that's a mess. That's a very costly mess. Paul
says people walk away from the faith. In the Hebrews chapter
10, it says there are people who actually have experienced
the power of the Holy Spirit through the presence of the church,
being a part of the church and local believers. The power of
the Word of God. They've even proclaimed it with
Judas for Pete's sake. Can you say Pete's sake? Because
he was there. Judas preached the gospel. The right gospel. So don't say I'm born again because
I preached the right gospel. If my life doesn't follow suit
with the gospel, it makes no difference what I preach. It's
not proof of my salvation. It's just proof of my knowledge. If you walk in light, then you
are of the light. If you walk in darkness, you lie and you
do not practice the truth. These are the words of John. These
are the words of John who actually wrote those things, who spent
time with Jesus, who was the most intimate with Jesus on earth. Jesus himself said, this disciple
whom I love, And when everybody fled, including
John, John was at the cross. He went back. He saw the God
of heaven bleed and die. He saw that which was manifested
to him suffer. He saw his body taken from the
cross. He saw him put into the grave. And he says that God is light
and in Him there is no darkness. If we say we have fellowship
with Christ, if we say we are born of God, if we say we have
faith in Jesus, if we say we are a Christian, if we say we
have eternal life and we do not walk in the zeal, in the passion,
in the pressing, in the movement, in the striving for Christ in
the light of God, we are liars and we are not of God. These
are not my words. Those are exact quotes from the
disciples of Jesus. Therefore, those are the words
of Jesus. And to say, I don't like that, is to spit in the
face of the Son of God, to whom the Bible says is a dangerous
proposition, to spurn the Son of God. How much worse is it
to spurn the Son of God, the Word that came from heaven, though
they disbelieve the saints, they disbelieve the prophets? Oh,
when they disbelieve the very God of heaven, come to speak
to them, woe be unto them. Don't disbelieve the gospel today.
Don't put your pride in place of your eternal glory. Don't
love the glory that comes from man versus the glory that comes
from God. Friends, we've got to hear and
heed the Word of Christ. Unless we perish. Because if
we think we're going to have an excuse, but Jesus, I thought,
even if we were allowed, it would have no merit. Paul says in Romans
that all mouths are going to be shut up. That we'll never
be able to give an account, an answer for our unbelief. Because
in that unbelief there is no excuse. Do you believe the gospel
today? Don't reject the gospel today,
because the Bible also teaches that as we reject it, as we reject
it, as we reject it, that God will seal the hearts of those
who continually reject it when he is ready that they cannot
believe any longer. I hate that. And when I first
read that in three different places in scripture, I'm like,
you've got to be kidding me. But you know what it did for
my evangelism? It sharpened it. Because I couldn't sit at home
and say, you know, I'll go share the Gospel tomorrow. Because every day, whether we
hear it or not, have we heard the Gospel, according to the
Scripture, we reject it if we're not believing. Every moment we reject in the
Gospel when we're not believing it. And so for we who have eternal
life, we ought to have a zeal for others to hear this Gospel.
Because had they heard it, they're still hearing it. And they're
still refusing to believe it. And God has that appointed time
when he will say no more. So now to the point. I do one thing, Paul says. I do one thing as I look out
for evildoers, as I watch people who mess up their bodies and
say that it's biblical, I do one thing. As I don't have confidence
in my flesh, though I have reason for it, I do one thing. As I
put up with these people who continually try to make a shipwreck
of their faith and mess you up and teach you a worldly gospel,
I do one thing. I give it all away, and as I
give it all away, and as I count everything that I've ever done
in my spiritual life as trash, I do one thing. I suffer the
loss of all things, and I do one thing. I have righteousness
in Christ alone, not my body, not my flesh, not my religion,
not my faith. I have righteousness through
faith alone in Christ, not my faith. Not faith in my faith,
not faith in what I've done, not faith in my ability, but
faith in the suffering and the satisfaction and the sufficiency
of Jesus Christ who satisfied the wrath of God against me.
I have all of this, and that one day I will obtain the life
that Christ has for me, and I will be raised to life as Christ was
raised to life. And as I do these things, or
as I have these things, as I await these things, I do one thing. I press on toward the goal. Now see right here, this is some
of these texts that everybody in their mind has an idea. What's
the goal? And I could just stomp and snort, get excited and talk
about the goal and in my mind and heart know what I'm speaking
of and assume that you are in agreement with me about the goal. But ultimately, if we're thinking
about different things, we're thinking about the wrong thing.
And so Paul clearly then says, I press on towards the goal,
and this goal then is to obtain for the prize of the upward call
of God in Christ Jesus. And he says in verse 15, let
those of us who are mature in Christ think this way, and if
in anything you think otherwise, you who are in Christ, God will
give you the revelation of this truth. Now, people who are unbelievers
who like to debate, Christians hate this type of verbiage, because
what we do is we appeal to Scripture as the absolute sovereign source
of all truth, that Christ is the wisdom from God. And it is
a fallacy in a worldly way. We appeal to a text, but it's
the only thing we can do. Because to appeal to anything
else puts the proof or the evidence of anything greater than God. So we appeal to the Word of God
when He says, and if any of you aren't thinking the way I'm thinking,
you're just immature. To which some people would say, well,
show me, prove me. To which Paul says, God will show you if you're
in Him. You know what the end result of that is? Those who
understand live in that understanding, and those who do not understand
live to grow to that understanding, or they reject it and move away
from the church. And guess whose fault that is?
Theirs. It's not ours. It's our fault when we keep them
on a hook trying to explain through evidence. trying to explain through,
well, I know that, and what's the context here? People were
coming back who had said they believed in Jesus Christ and
saying, now that you guys, these Gentiles that lived in Philippi,
believe in Jesus, that's all good and all, it is about Christ
alone, but you've got to get with the program of doing the
Jesus stuff as it was in Judaism all these years. And Paul's saying, listen, you've
got to strive for the righteousness of Christ and hold fast to the
confession of your hope. You've got to hold and press
and move away from that garbage by forgetting what's behind you
and pressing on to the goal. So let's back it up and show
sort of the order of things here. Look what he says. I press on
toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in
Christ Jesus. Verse 14. So what happens here
is that it begins with God. Let's back it up. and C. Here we have God giving a call. How does He give the call? What
is the call? You see how many questions come
from a text like this? Well, if we think about the call,
then we have to understand what does Romans 8 say. For God calls. Verse 28. God causes all things
to work together for good for those who love Him and are called
according to His purpose. So that God calls people, and
here in this text Paul is saying that God calls people in Christ
Jesus. so that there is a clear understanding
that the call of God comes through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ,
that there is no other gospel except Christ, there's no circumcision,
there's no baptism, there's no sacraments, there's none of all
this stuff that actually effectually benefits you in the sense of
righteousness, standing before God justified, except Christ
Jesus. And that the call only comes
through Christ Jesus. It doesn't come through the evidence
or the apologetics of man. It doesn't come through any of
those means. It comes through Christ alone. So that when the
gospel comes, the good news, it is the good news of God in
Christ Jesus. God has called you in Christ. And it's not just any call. You
see, we keep backing up. The upward call. It's the upward
call. Now what's the point here? The
point here is that Paul is helping his readers remember that this
call of God in Christ Jesus is not a call to this world. It
is not a call of this world. It's a call out of this world.
It's an upward call that's greater and higher. Somebody said to
me just a couple of months ago, you know, after the mayor retires,
you should run for the mayor of your city. And I know this
sounded arrogant. I said, why would I want to step
down? I live my life hopefully and
prayerfully by faith to proclaim the gospel. Why would I want
to bog it down with something eww? I'm not knocking it. I think mayors and governors
ought to answer the call of God upwardly. We're not going to
influence our culture by having famous Christians and powerful
Christians. God doesn't do that. According to 1 Corinthians 1,
He takes the nothing, the nobodies, the hated people, the despised,
the ugly, the stupid. Me! And you, yeah. To bring to nothing
the things that are. Where are your wives? Where are
the soothsayers? Where are the wisdom of your
age? Where are you? You're nowhere. You're high and lofty in your
positions, but there's nothing. We're going to bring you down,
the Bible says. The Bible says in order to see
Christ, you've got to be brought down in humility. It's not haughty. It's an upward call. Paul is expressly trying to help
his readers see that this call is a call of glory. In 1 Peter
5, verse 10 it says, And after you have suffered for a little
while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal
glory in Christ, will Himself restore, strengthen, and establish
you, and confirm you. This call is an upward call to
the glory of God. This is a call not to be glorified
in this world. This is a call that makes you
a nothing. On the way in this morning, you
know, the six blocks I have to come in, there's not a lot of
time to hear the radio anymore, and you live in a town like this,
you just... I was hearing someone talk about the martyrdom of James. And how they took him out on
the Temple Mount, and they told him that if he would reject the
gospel of Jesus, they'd let him live, but if he didn't, they
were going to throw him off the Temple Mount. And he did it, and they threw
him off, and his legs broke. And so they went down and stoned
him to death in the head. And if you read Fox much, if
you read the martyrdoms of Christendom, the martyrs of Christianity,
if you read any of that stuff, it'll blow your mind. And with very few exceptions,
when people's beards catch on fire, they're still proclaiming
praise to Christ. Many opportunity to reject the
gospel, but they die because they know they have an upward
call. Friends, we have an upward call. What good is it to gain
the whole world? What good is it to be known for
something after you die that's worldly and going to die anyway?
What good is it? We want our children to become
something great? Let them be nothing for Christ. You want our children to be wise
and to be known? Let them live for the world and
die without hope. This is frustrating. Yes, my
children, by the Lord's grace, will go to college, will seek
out a career, will do that which they feel is most pleasing to
the Lord in their call, in their area of ability, in their skill
set. But it's not the point of life.
It's not the call of life. Friends, we can do all these
things and still strive for the upward call of Christ. We don't
all have to become so overly radical that we throw everything
away and live in a trash bag. But if God calls us, then so
be it, and know that we have received the greatest reward
by giving everything up. Not because we gave it up, but
that we are able to give it up. God has established us by faith
in Christ Jesus. How do people do that? Some people
do that to earn their salvation, which will never work. But Paul
didn't earn his salvation. If he could have, if anybody
could have, Paul could have. But he says it's garbage. He
became the overseer of Israel to a prisoner, a crazy moron
that everybody laughed at and scoffed at. And he never defended
himself because he had an upward call in Christ Jesus. This upward call. And this call,
if you would just bear with me, Paul says, has a prize, has a
goal. The goal is to win the prize.
And the prize, for lack of a better way of putting it, without going
into last week and two weeks ago, is Christ. The goal is to
obtain Christ. The goal is to be with Christ.
The goal is to live, whether in life or death, honoring Christ
in our body. And though we live is good, but
to die is better. You see, because Christ is the
prize. Christ is the goal. Friends,
the mansions of heaven are a metaphor of Christ. The crowns of life
are a metaphor of the Savior. I don't like that. Then you don't
like the gospel. The gospel is Jesus Christ as
the crowning prize. Young ruler, you have much wealth,
you have much righteousness in the world's way, Jesus says.
You want to know, you bow down to me, you call me God, you want
to know how to get what I offer you, then you go take all that
you are and you flush it down the toilet. You take all that
you have and you give it away to those who don't deserve it.
You take every ounce of the substance of your priorities and you pour
them over the mountaintop and let them flow into the sea from
the river. You go and give it all away and
you will have riches in heaven as you follow me. And he actually
commands him to follow. Then you come follow me. I am
the riches of heaven. I am the pearl of great price.
The kingdom of heaven is the Christ. This is the goal. This
is the prize. What must we do? We must believe
in Christ alone. We don't just hang it on the
wall and we don't just sing about it. We hold fast to it. We hope in it. We long for it. We press. And so Paul then says
he presses toward this goal. The goal is to win Christ that
has already been awarded. That's the beauty of it. Paul's
not saying you've got to work toward Christ. Paul is saying
you work because you already have Christ. Paul says you are
working. I am working. I am laboring.
Like Peter would say, I don't see Him, but I love Him and I
know He's mine and I can't wait to get there where He is. So
this is the striving. Paul tells the Corinthians church
in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, he says, do you not know that in
a race all runners run? All runners run, but only one
receives the prize. If you were running a race and
there was only one prize to be had, would you not run the race
with a greater zeal? Would you not run the race at
the cost of others losing it? He's not saying that eternal
life is won this way. He's saying, don't you know that
if you want to compete, if you want to win the one prize, you've
got to run. He says, run in that way. Run
that you may obtain it. Run, strive, press, hope, push. Don't sit complacently. Your
life ought to be a race in which you run that the world looks
on and says, what a fool. He's running for a prize that's
worthless. That's what the rich young rulers
saw of Christ. That's worthless. That's what the people in John
12 saw. When they saw Jesus was truly God, He'd raised Lazarus
from the dead. And Lazarus and he and the sisters
of Lazarus were hanging out in Bethany and hanging out in his
house and people just lined the streets to see this man who had
been raised from the dead. And you know what? Many of the
Sanhedrin, many of the Pharisees, many of the Sadducees, they believed
in Jesus, but they dared not confess it because they loved
the glory that came from man rather than the glory that came
from God. So in their complacency, though they knew He was who He
said He was, they felt that it would be better for them if they
keep their mouths quiet. It wasn't a belief in faith,
it was a belief in truth. and the reality that Jesus, He
is who He says He is. But I'm not getting into this.
Politically, it's bad for me. So they got into the program,
they got behind the chief priest who said, we've got to kill Him.
We've got to kill Him. And if nothing ever shows you
how silly we are in our flesh to kill men who raised and have
been raised from the dead, That's just silly. What did they think
was going to happen? They knew, but just by hope that
they were wrong, they wanted him out of the way. The upward goal of God is to
forsake it all. This upward call is a heavenly
call. This upward call is a call of joy, a call to die, a call
of hope, a call of heaven. It's a call for glory, not worldly
glory. That's that's oxymoronic. There's
no such thing as worldly glory. It's just worth worthless. To
call it glory is just a waste of the word. It's just garbage. As Paul would say, I count it
all as rubbish. Living for the glory that comes
from man, living for the glory of a selfish, self-centered,
intrinsic American dream is just a wasted life, living in a pig
pen. But even the prodigal son was
a son and he came to his senses. While Israel, the older brother,
hated him. There's an opposite call called
a worldly call. And friends, I hate to tell you,
it's hard to tell the difference sometimes because the worldly
call that we see oftentimes is so painted with Christianity.
It's painted with ministry problems and issues and things of that
nature. Friends, it is how I began my
ministry and served in the whole the whole of it for a decade
or longer. Worldliness. So I press. I run, I strive,
I won't, I strain. These aren't words of easy living,
these aren't words of complacency, these are not words. Of stagnation,
these are words of action that are painful. So how do I press? What must I do to press? You
would ask today as we finish these words. Well, we'll see
some next week as we continue to look at what Paul teaches
these brothers in Christ. But for what we've seen thus
far in these first three and two-thirds chapters, we've seen
Paul make it very clear that his running and striving and
pressing and straining is not putting a hope in anything he's
done or accomplished thus far, but that his hope is forever
before him in Christ alone, number one. Number two, as he trusts
in Christ alone, his dependency upon Christ continues to empower
him because it changes his mind. It changes his focus. It changes
his priorities. It keeps him set on the race
in which he's been called by God upwardly to run. Therefore,
when something else comes along that takes him off the race of
the gospel, he goes, I don't want that. Much like he's telling
these Philippians in just a few sentences, I don't need your
support because it will take me off of this which God is doing
in me right now. We'll see it. So striving, impressing,
as he starts out, he prays even in his burden, even in his suffering,
he's praying for the spiritual growth, the joy, the discernment
and the wisdom of the Philippians. when he himself is in great need. He's not concerned with his needs.
All he wants is that he would continue to proclaim the gospel
in chains because the word of God is not bound so that the
imperial guard would continue to hear the gospel and put it
into places where it could never be. So Paul's desire to be prayed
for is not selfish because of his wounds. It's eternal. It's pressing into the gospel.
It's pressing into the call of God that is upward. So as you
pray for me, Philippians, pray that this would take place. Don't
waste your prayers on my release. I don't need it. Don't send your money. I don't
want it. I'm not dying and I don't need money to serve in prison. Paul says, holding fast is pressing,
walking, being a light even in the most darkest place. I know
that's incorrect grammar. So he presses, he forgets, he
presses, he strives, he pushes, he moves, and everything he does
is for the sake of the joy of the saints of Christ. Friends,
do we live to that end? Do we live? Do we get up? Do we want the Scripture? Do
we want the saints? Do we want to learn? Do we want
to grow so that we can go into the world and make disciples
so that we can go and be prepared to, at any given time, preach
the Gospel so that we are always ready and willing to give an
account for the hope that we have and a reason for this hope,
as Peter would say. Are we ready? You know what it
takes to get ready? Being born again. Sometimes it takes years to wrestle
with the doctrinal things and the studies. Wow, I never realized
that. And we look at it, and we hate
it, and we're confused by it, we're angry by it, we love it,
and then we hate it again. I mean, there's a lot of things in Scripture
that we don't like. And I hate to say that there's
been times I've thrown my Bible, and then went, that cost a lot
of money. I picked it up. I hope I didn't tear it. When
I get a cheap Bible, he's going to throw it. Don't throw your
Bible. But you see what I'm saying. Just frustrated. You read dead
men and they make no sense. You read them again and they
make you angry. You dig it out of the trash can and you go,
wow, that's true. That takes years. But it doesn't
take years to be prepared to tell people of the hope that
you have. It doesn't take years for you to have a zeal for Christ
in your heart. It's just a moment. A moment. You're dead in your sins. God
has rightly judged you guilty of being wicked and evil without
any hope. And no matter what you do in
your morality, you cannot muster salvation and justification before
God. You cannot give an argument to
stand before the Creator of all things and say, you made me this
way. You cannot stand there and say,
but I'm good as I can get, and expect Him to hear you. He has
judged you rightly, and in His holiness, and in His love, He
has condemned you to an eternal damnation, which is absolutely,
perfectly right. But God, in His deep love and
His mercy because of the love with which He loved us, has given
us the gospel, the good news, Jesus Christ, that if we believe
by faith that Jesus has lived on this earth as a man, who is
fully God and has satisfied the holy requirements of God. If
you know that that is true, and you know that Jesus then willfully
and obediently went to the cross at Calvary and suffered the wage of sin, which is death,
and He suffered the judgment of God by the hand of the Father,
and He was counted righteous, He was also counted sinful. Not because of the sins that
they committed, but that God put our sins on Him. God put
your sins on Him, and then He killed Him. Do you believe that
this is what God has done for you? Believe in Christ alone. Trust in Christ alone. Hold fast
to Christ alone. And not only did He die to satisfy
this judgment, He was raised to life to prove that it had
no eternal power. and that you would not just be
free of sin, but you would be resurrected to life. And there's
so much more. I want to preach another sermon.
It's always troublesome. And that's even too much. The
gospel. Have you believed in the gospel?
And when you do believe the gospel, there's so much. You don't have
to be told how to share that. It sounds something like this.
I'm evil and wicked and unworthy for anything but the judgment
of God. But in his love for me, he gave Christ who took my sin
and died and was raised to life. And I don't need anything else.
You see that? Now, the scripture says a lot
of people say those things and they don't mean them and they
think they mean them. And that's why the Bible was
written to the church. The New Testament was written
to the church so that we who confess Christ every moment of
our lives are faithful. Not every moment of our lives,
but we're striving for it. We have faith in the one who is
faithful. And we're reminded of the gospel. We're reminded
of the struggle. We're reminded of the suffering.
We're reminded of the movement and the motion that is required
of us as believers. And we're equipped and empowered
to walk in it. That's why a Christian without
the Word of God makes no sense. It's like being a genius without
a head. In what? We hold to Christ and we long
for Him. Do you long for Christ? Not only
that He saved you and gave you life, Do you long for Him to
be empowering you every moment of your life? Do you long for
Christ in everything you plan to be glorified? I pray that
you do. Don't hold on to what you had.
Hold on to who you have now, who is Jesus. Let's pray. Father, help us to always believe. Help us to always see. And I thank you for your grace.
And Lord, there may be some in this very room together who are
not believers. Would you bring them to that
realization this very moment? Would you help them to see that
their sin has separated them from you? And would help them
to cry from the depth of their soul for your mercy found only
in Christ Jesus. And Lord, as we come to see this
gospel and to believe in Jesus, Lord, help him to empower us
to share it outside these walls, to a dying world, to a dark world
who has no hope apart from Christ. And Lord, help us not to get
so bogged down in the headiness of faith and help us to stay
focused on the heavenliness of faith. the awkward call that
you've given each of us. In Christ's name we pray, amen.