Would you open your Bibles to
Philippians chapter three? I've always enjoyed Todd's friendship
and the friendship of this congregation. Always like coming here. And
I never feel stressed in any way except To tell the truth. I don't feel that I have to impress
you. Don't even know that I could if I had to. But it's nice to
know I don't have to. That you love the truth of the
gospel. And if a man will simply tell
it to you, you'll get a good handshake on the way out. And
that takes a load off of me. I want to preach a message entitled
Looking Backward. and forward. The life of faith
involves looking back and looking forward. By faith, we look back. We look
back to the works of God's grace. Now, it might seem a little unusual. I guess if I were to read the
text of Scripture I'm going to preach from, maybe it will make more
sense to you what I'm saying. Paul says in verse twelve of
Philippians three, not as though I had already attained, Either
we're already perfect, but I follow after. I mean, I press on. I'm
stretching out like a runner in a race, grabbing air, looking
for that tape at the end of the line. He said, I follow after
that I may apprehend, that I may lay hold of that for which also
I am apprehended or laid hold of by Christ. And he says in
verse 13, Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended. I
haven't laid hold of it yet. But this one thing I do, forgetting
those things which are behind. Now, I said we look behind. We
look back. And then Paul's saying, I'm forgetting
what's behind. Why is it a seeming contradiction
there? Well, we're not looking back
at what we did. When Paul says forgetting those
things which are behind, he's talking about forgetting what
he did. He never did forget what God did. And so we look back. And we joyfully look back and
to the encouraging of our hearts can look back and see what God
has done. Paul said, I'm convinced of this,
that he that began a good work in you will continue it, will
complete it until the day of Christ. Well, that wouldn't make
any sense at all if I couldn't look back and remember God beginning
a good work in me. And so we look back. We look
back to the works of God's grace in our behalf. We look back to
our former life of unbelief and self-righteousness that we might
rejoice in how far God has brought us from what we were and where
we were. Not that we might boast in ourselves
and act like we are ex-sinners. We're not. I'm weary of the testimonies
of ex-sinners because I'm not one of those. But I'll tell you
one thing. I'm an ex-unbeliever. And I got
it. I got to tally that up to God's
grace. I'm an ex God hater. I don't hate him anymore. I love
him dearly. And so it's good to look back, it's good to remember
what it was like in the days of unbelief when we were slaves
to this world, slaves to our corrupt nature, slaves to the
law and thereby slaves to death and condemnation. And then to
compare that with where grace has brought us. I'm no longer
a slave. It's good to be a son. We do these things that we might
praise God for all His works of grace. You know, the goodness
of a benefactor is most felt when one's previous poverty is
remembered. Now, you were in dire straits,
and this is a pipe dream. Not that you'd be in dire straits,
but what I'm about to say afterwards. If you were in dire straits and
then I gave you a million dollars, there's the pipe dream. But it
then happens. Now, that million dollars is
going to take pretty good care of you. And after a year or two
of that, you might get complacent about your lavish lifestyle,
unless you could remember what it was like to be in poverty. And when we can remember what
it was like to be in unbelief, what it was like, especially
if we spent a long time in unbelief, wishing we could believe after
a sword, if we groped for a long time before God turned on the
lion and opened our eyes. You know, when the prodigal son
was out there feeding pigs, it was a remembrance of his father's
household. that made him go home. But what
do you think made him stay there? The remembrance of the pigsty. And so while we don't want to
dwell a long time on our days of unbelief and unregeneracy,
it doesn't hurt to remember it once in a while. And then by
faith, we look forward. God-given faith turns our hearts
upward and forward. No longer living like brute beasts
with our head to the ground. You know that an unregenerate
person is living like a four-footed beast, you know, with the nose
to the ground, sniffing around at the vile things of the world. They can't look up. They don't
have a mind nor a heart for that which is above, nor are they
well suited to appreciate the things of the Spirit of God. But when we are regenerated,
it's like as we stand on two feet. And like only men, you
know, I'm making an illustration here, but of all the animals,
only man stands like we do and can look up and are well suited.
to take in the things which are above. We look forward to what
is ahead. While we live our lives on earth,
we are ever straining toward what's ahead or above. You know,
the life of faith, even though we're in the world living this
life of faith, the life of a believer is never about the world. We are not trapped to it. We are not slaves to it. We don't
live for it. We don't find our satisfaction
in it, even as we work our jobs. We're doing it simply because
that's what you do while you're here. And we are passing the
time, so to speak, until that savior from heaven comes to take
us to be with him. I'm not saying our lives here
are insignificant. I'm simply saying that we're
not part of this world anymore if we believe God. We just have
to live here and the world has to put up with this. So salvation looks back to the
works of God's grace and salvation looks forward to greater works
of grace. Maybe greater is not the right
word, because how do you get any better than what he's already
getting? But there's more to come. You know, sometimes sloppy words
or sloppy language breeds sloppy theology. We talk about salvation,
and we need to make sure that we define what that word means.
Salvation, in its broadest sense, comprehends everything that God
does in taking us from what we are by nature and making us like
Christ. And salvation shall not be complete
until we are like Christ. Salvation is fully paid for.
And it cannot fail of any of God's elect and redeemed people.
But there's going to be more done. Inasmuch as it says, he
that began a good work in you will complete it till the day
of Christ, let's just know he's not complete yet. And you know
something? I'm awful glad. I'd hate to think this is it.
It's not as though I'm unappreciative of what's already been done,
but I'm hoping for more. I don't only want to be counted
righteous. I want to be righteous. Don't
you? I not only want to desire to
love, I want to love. I am content, even as I am in
this life, I am content to be whatever it is God has made me
by His grace, but I will not be satisfied until I'm like Christ. There's more to come. And we
live, believers are to live, looking forward to it. That's
what hope is about. Hope is not just a wish. Hope
is a confident expectation of things to come, which gives us
joy and strength to tolerate the way things are right now. Now, Paul speaks in this fashion,
verse 12. He said, I've not already attained. I'm not perfect. We know that. He said, but I'm heading for
it. I'm straining for it. That perfection. If I may apprehend
that I might lay hold of that for which I also I am laid hold
of by Jesus Christ. Now, salvation,
that is the experience of it. begins with an arrest. It begins with Christ laying
hold of one of His people. Now, we might say that Christ
Jesus laid hold of His people back in the timeless eternity
before creation in the covenant of the gospel. When the Father,
having chosen His people in Christ, covenants with the Son, and the
Son agrees to bear their sin, to be their substitute, to pay
their penalty, to do whatever is necessary to restore that
fellowship that shall be broken by Adam. And when he did so,
he laid hold of all the people of God. The covenant of the gospel
was not some iffy thing. It was not a blank check, so
to speak. It was not simply an agreement
between the father and the son for the son to go and do something
and see if it works out. But a specific people was committed
to the care of the son, and the son said, I'll take care of them. And so we could say, legitimately
so, that Christ laid hold of his people in the timeless eternity
in the covenant of the gospel. And here's a picture that I love.
I think in terms of pictures. And here's a picture now. I'm
going to try to describe it to you. I hope it pleases you like
it does me. That Jesus Christ laid hold of His people in the
fulfillment of the gospel as He took them up in His bosom
and bore them to the cross to be their substitute. And here's
the picture I see. It may not be a historical one.
We'll call it a spiritual picture. But as our Lord agonized in Gethsemane
And that's an agony that you and I cannot know. Do not try to understand the
passion of our Lord Jesus Christ in Gethsemane, because it involves
things that we do not have the capacity to understand. I was
talking to the pastor here, and I said, you know, a man that's
been born blind has no clue what blindness is. Because you can't
know blindness unless you've seen. You and I cannot know the things
that the Lord faced there in the garden as he contemplated
what lay ahead of being under the wrath of his God. Remember, he faced this as a
human being, so it's not illegitimate for us to say he is God, because
as a man, Jehovah is his God. We don't know what it's like
to be cut off from God because we were born that way. And we're
accustomed to it. We think that's normal. And so, as the Lord Jesus Christ
there was praying, he said, Father, if there's any other way that
this cup can pass from me other than I drink it, nevertheless,
not my will, not what would suit my comfort, not what would be
my immediate gratification, not necessarily what would allow
me to absent myself from the horror that lies ahead, but Father,
not my will. But your will be done, and when
he said that, with arms of love beyond telling, he spanned all
of time, at least as far back as Abel, faithful Abel, believing
Abel, all the way to the last of his elect. And he gathered
them all together and laid hold of them and drew them to himself. and with firm resolution went
forward to unspeakable suffering, with us safe in Him. I read a
story somewhere, I can't even remember where, about a prairie
fire. On this farm there was a hen,
and as the prairie fire made its way to this farm, That hen
gathered her chicks underneath her wings, and she sat down. And that prairie fire swept over
her and burned her up. And after the fire had passed,
the farmer went out to see what damage had been done, and there's
that chicken, there's that hen, dead. And he reaches over to
pick it up, and when he does, all those little chicks come
out, safe. And that's what our Lord did.
He laid hold of us, and the fire burned Him, burned Him to death,
and we came out safe. But Paul is not talking about
that when he says, Christ laid hold of me. That's not the point
he's making. Paul has something else in mind,
namely this, when Christ arrested him on the road to Damascus.
when within the framework of his lifetime Christ stopped him. This entire chapter, Philippians
3, yea, the whole book, is about the experience of the life of
faith. It was never intended that you and I should merely
be believers in abstract points of theology, but that we should
experience the grace of God and live out the grace or the doctrines
that we believe. We must forever be careful that
we don't cushion ourselves in some ivory tower and dispassionately
argue finer points of doctrine and never be affected by them. We'll be like those people in
Matthew 25, the middle of the three parables told there, to
whom the talents were given. And the one who received one,
what did he do? He said, I knew that you were a hard man. And
so I buried it away. I dug a hole and put it in there.
And here it is. It's just like you gave it to
me. And we can become doctrinaires who are very careful that we
preserve the doctrine exactly as we received it. Boy, total
depravity. I got it here. Unconditional election. I held
fast to that. I buried it deep in my systematic
theology book, believe me. Nobody ever touched it. And as
a matter of fact, it never touched anybody else either. But I got it. What did that man
say, the master? Why, you could have at least
taken it to the bank and made a deposit. You could have at
least believed it for yourself. You could have at least invested
this truth in your own heart and borne a fruit, borne an interest
to my glory. Let us never allow ourselves
To be right and unmoved. To be correct and unaffected. I can't think of any way I'd
want to go to hell. But I'd a whole lot rather go
to hell, Abraham, than unaffected. Paul had a way and a truth and
a life. He had a way to heaven, he had
a doctrine he believed, and he'd established a life. We find it
here beginning in verse 4, though I might also have confidence
in the flesh. If anybody's going to put confidence in the flesh,
I can. If there's anybody else that thinks they can do it, I
can outdo them. Like that song from the sixties, I believe it
was a feminist song, but anything you can do, I can do better.
Paul said that. He says, if you think that you have something
you can trust in, I more. You think you kept the law? Listen
to this. Circumcised the eighth day of
the stock of Israel. You don't get better than that. Of the tribe of Benjamin, nobody
more zealous. And Hebrew of Hebrews, pure blood. No half-breed Samaritan here.
No converted Gentile. Is touching the law? Why? I'm a Pharisee. I believe in
the verbal inspiration of Scripture. Plenary, too. I memorize most of it. But someone
told me those Pharisees had the Old Testament memorized. You
know what? This might surprise you. I'm
a 51-year-old pastor. I can't tell you the books of
the Bible in order. You get the minor prophets. Let me find that
one, man. But those guys memorized it. Pharisees did. Concerning zeal? Persecuting the church. Touching
the righteousness which is in the law? I did pretty good. Blameless. You know, that's one
of the things that taught me about our freedom from the law. Paul was blameless under it,
and he still needed a Savior. Blameless. Paul had a way. He
had truth. He had a life. But on the road
to Damascus, Christ laid hold of him. put Him on another way,
gave Him another truth, and gave Him life. Sometime in the life
of every one of God's elect, He stops them on their way. All
we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned everyone to His
own way. I want to tell you something
I learned from a kid in our Sunday school class. I teach the elementary
kids in Sunday school. And I was telling him that verse,
and I said, do you all know what a stray means? Well, this little
fellow heard it like he's heard it before. It's two words, a
stray. And he said, and the words are
connected. But I said, what does a stray
mean? He put his hand up and said, that's an animal that doesn't
belong to anybody. You know, my big definition just
kind of fell apart. You know, I thought, what? Yeah. I know that we belong to them
in the covenant of the gospel and all that. But I tell you,
so far as our experience, when we were astray, we were astray. Stray animals. We didn't belong
to anybody. But we were born astray, wandering
around, going our own way. And there is a way that seems
right unto a man. We weren't going away we thought
was wrong. We didn't say, well, I'm heading to hell. Here's the
way to hell, I think I'll go this way. I think pretty much everybody
that goes to hell is going to be surprised they're there. And
pretty much everybody that goes to heaven is going to be surprised
too, were it not that they believe the gospel. But those folks on
the way end up in hell. How did I get here? I chose a
way that was good. Seemed pretty good. I went to
church, I gave my time, I got baptized, I made my profession
of faith. I even went on Wednesday nights. How did I end up here? If God leaves a man alone, there's
no question where he'll go. Sometime in the life of every
one of God's elect, he stops them on their way and puts them
on his way. And it is a dramatic change. But it isn't the change that
worldly religion says it is. The church in our town emphasizes
this change so much. And they won't believe you're
saved unless you have some kind of vision or experience or some
remarkable change in life. And one of the things that they
always look for is that you got rid of your television. If you
were impudent enough to have one in the first place. Believe
it or not, when I moved to that area, people would have TV, and
when they'd have, they called it house bazooka. I always called
it house bazooka. But the elders would visit, and
it's kind of like they bazooka your house. But they'd come,
you know, to supposedly look in on your spiritual life. You
know what these people do? They'd take a blanket and cover
the television. And the elders would act like it wasn't there.
And I'm thinking, you think he got that past God? You know?
I know what's under there. You think he doesn't? But that's
what, they look for this big change, don't they? Well, if
you touch grass, you're going to get different friends. Well,
maybe you will. Well, you'll quit this, you'll
quit that. I'll tell you what happens. Paul let us know right
here. Verse 7. Here's the dramatic
change. And it don't get more dramatic than this. What things
were gained to me, I counted lost to Christ. Everything I once thought was
a plus, I realized was a negative. When I look at the ledger of
my life, everything I've been putting down as an asset, I find
out is a liability. It wasn't a deposit. It was a
withdrawal. It wasn't helping. It was hurting. He said, here I was. I said,
glad to be a Hebrew of Hebrews. And I was just all puffed up
over that. And I found out that in truth,
that made it more difficult for me to know the truth and believe
it. I was full of zeal. My name was
Saul. Do you know what the name Saul
means? Sought after. Don't you know he liked that?
A little theological discussion come up. Well, let's go ask Saul.
Little matter of the law, just how far can you walk on the Sabbath
day? Let's see what Saul has to say. Oh, he was sought after.
You know what the name Paul means? Little. Little. The wonderful thing is,
is by grace he was sought after. The Lord Jesus Christ said, I
come to seek and to save that which is lost. And he sought
after Paul and he found him on the roads of Damascus. It wasn't
the kind of seeking after Paul was hoping for at that point.
But he was sure glad it happened. But everything that Paul used
to think was good and helpful, he found to be bad and hurtful. It is not difficult to get people
to get rid of their television. But it sure is difficult to get
them to throw out the fact that up till now they haven't had
a television. It's easy to make them think that stuff on TV shouldn't be
watched. And there's a lot of it on that
shouldn't be watched. I'll give them that. But it's sure hard
to get them to think that they're not watching it. It didn't contribute
to their salvation. It's hard to do that. Yea, doubtless, he says, I count
all things but lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord. What does that tell us? One thing
is you can't have what Paul had and have what Christ gave him
at the same time. In other words, you cannot hang
on to that righteousness you have made. and have a righteousness
that God gives you. You've got to choose. Now, we
don't believe in free will, but I will tell you this. Everybody
makes a choice. And I know I can tell you exactly what choice
they're going to make. Until Christ arrests them, they hang
on to their righteousness. And the moment Christ arrests
them, they put that one down and take ahold of His. But, my
friend, they do take ahold of Him. And they do let go of it. Because God will not let you
have both of them in your hand at the same time. He said, And for whom, for Christ
Jesus I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them
but done, that I may win Christ. I get so sick of testimonies.
Now, I should say, it's been a long time since I had to put
up with this. But when the church I grew up in, at least on the
watch night service, they give everybody the opportunity to
give testimonies. And the interesting thing was,
it was never testimonies of the grace of God. It was testimonies of
what they did for God over the last year. And what they gave up for God.
And they would act like what they had given up was what? Sacrifice. Well, this word done
means anything people normally throw away. I mean, it covered
a broad range. It included the garbage in the
house. It included the offal, you know, they slaughtered an
animal, the part they weren't going to eat, that was the dung,
just all, you know. Let me ask you something. On garbage day
at your house, when you go out, go around collecting up the garbage
around the house, and you put it in the big can, and maybe
you all got that kind with wheels on it, you roll it out by the
curb or whatever. Have you ever seen anybody go to the... Oh, I can't give it
away. Oh, I gotta give it up. Who cries
over throwing away garbage? I'll tell you this, you've never
sacrificed anything worth keeping. Everything we sacrifice in order
to obtain Christ is something we were better off without in
the first place. Paul said, the things I gave
up, I don't even think about what
this huge sacrifice I made that I might have Christ. He said,
boy, what a change. I threw it out because I saw
it for what it was. It was garbage cluttering up
my heart. It was foul-smelling junk in
my house. And I'm glad to be rid of it. I'm glad to no longer have a
claim to ancestry. I'm glad in Christ there's neither
Jew nor Gentile. I'm glad that circumcision availeth
nothing. And he goes on. He said, I gave
these things up, I count them but done that I may win Christ. Wow, what an exchange. Who of
you ever gave away garbage for something good? You know, Jesus
Christ is not simply a good bargain. A good bargain is when you pay
less than what the thing is worth. You know what we paid? A negative
value. What people give up when they
are arrested by Christ is not something simply of lesser value
than what they obtained. What they are giving up is that
which was less than zero to start with. Can you imagine going to
the store? You know, you go there and it's
a 25% off. Well, that's a deal. That's a bargain. What if they
came in and said, well, why don't you bring in your credit card
bill and give me that and I'll give you something? Brother, that's a deal. I'd like to unload my credit
card on somebody, you know. Go buy a computer. Why would
you like to buy this computer? Well, here's my visa bill. It's exactly what he's saying.
I gave up my indebtedness to gain his credit. Only one place in the world,
in all the universe, that happens. And that's in the gospel. What
a change. Now, we are not fit to determine
the conversion experiences or the regeneration experiences
of people when Christ arrests them. How God deals with each
one of his own people is his business. For some, it is a violent
overthrow, like Saul of Tarsus. For some, it's as gentle as a
spring breeze. For some, it's an instantaneous
thing. They did not have a clue that
it was coming. Bang! It hits them, and it's
over. For others, God works a long
time. It's His business how He does
it. But there are some things that are common to all of us.
every arrest by Christ, number one, is Christ does the arresting,
not the preacher. In fact, one of the things I
appreciate about the gospel preachers I know of is they do everything
they can to stay out of the process, to get out of the way. Because we do, we are concerned,
and rightly so. that folks will respond to us
and not to Christ. I may arrest you, but it won't do you any good.
I will merely take you off of one road to hell and put you
on another road to hell. There's only one that can arrest you
to your salvation. There's only one who has power
enough to actually stop you from your wild ways, from your insane
pursuit of your own righteousness. I can't do it. Your pastor can't
do it. No preacher on TV can do it.
The whole church gathered to pray 24 hours around the clock
one time can't get it done. Only Christ can arrest a sinner. So it's Christ that will do the
laying hold. Secondly, each is laid hold of individually. In situations such as this, I'm
preaching to a midweek crowd, and you think, well, you ought
to be preaching to them as believers. Well, maybe you aren't. I found this, it's good if I'll
preach to you as sinners, because if you're a believer, you're
going to enjoy it, and if you're a sinner, you desperately need
it. I'm going to tell you something. God did not say Todd's Road Grace
Church. He may have saved a lot of individuals
in it, but he never saved the church. He never saves groups. He may have saved three thousand
people on the day of Pentecost, but that was three thousand separate
arrests. There are no gang salvations.
You can't get into heaven with the crowd. If God's going to
save you, it's going to be you and him. That's the only one
who's going to be involved in this thing. Now, let me apply that to you
a little bit. Are you just along for the ride? Do you think because
you're sitting in this pew among all these sovereign grace Baptists
who believe the gospel, that somehow or another you're on
the same train they are? I can't answer that for you.
But I know this, it says, whosoever shall call upon the name of the
Lord shall be saved. It did not say whosoever sits
in a church where they call upon the name of the Lord shall be
saved. May God arrest you, individual
you, because if he doesn't, you will
individually and personally perish. And I hope that if you're along
for the ride, that that unsettles you and suddenly made your seat
very uncomfortable. Because I would much rather you
be uncomfortable now than later. I would much rather you get real
uncomfortable now and begin to think about these things. And
maybe, from your discomfort, call upon the name of the Lord,
personally and individually. Secondly, each one is confronted
with a rebellion, especially as it is expressed against Christ. While it may take many different
forms, some more destructive than others, but not any more
sinful than others, but here's the kicker, our sins against
Christ. Saul, Saul, he didn't say, why
are you persecuting my church? He said, why are you persecuting
me? And every one of us is a persecutor of Jesus Christ. Every one of us that tried to
to establish our own righteousness, and that's every one of us. We
went up into the face of the crucified Savior and spitted
it. It wasn't just some doctrinal error on our part. It was a personal
affront to the Lord of glory. Each one is rendered powerless.
Everybody thinks they're powerful. You know something? You are more
powerful than me. Your spirit's in bigger trouble than I can
deal with. Your soul is in a deeper death than I can raise you from. You're in more trouble than I
can get you out of. Actually, to arrest you the way you need
to be arrested is going to take someone of omnipotent power. We teach what is called irresistible
grace. That's a very poor term for it,
because we desperately resist it. It's just the grace of God,
thank God, is more powerful than our resistance. And he has the power to render
us powerless. There's Saul riding tall. Traditional descriptions of him
say he's a rather short man. So, you can imagine why he'd
like being on a horse. You know, kind of like Napoleon. You know,
he's going to be the big guy on a horse. Knocked him off. It wasn't even hard for God to
do it. Impossible for anybody else. But Saul was sought after. Beyond
his peers. Down in the dirt. Can't say. He who thought himself a guide
needs to be guided. He who thought he saw all things
can't see anything. God made him powerless, and he'll
render his people powerless. Every one of them hears the gospel
when God arrests them. There is no arrest apart from
the gospel. Every one of them prays. I bring
you back to the promise. It's a gloriously simple promise,
but it's not only a promise. It does draw a line in the sand.
Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
I say this to you children that grow up in this congregation.
What a privilege it has been given to you to grow up where
the gospel is preached. But it does not say whoever grows
up in a gospel church shall be saved. It does not say whoever
has Christian mommies and daddies shall be saved. And if you want
God's salvation, you've got to ask for it. That's just so. Everyone God arrests, praise.
And every one of them bows to him as Lord. Now, I'm being careful
with the clock here because I don't want to wear you all out, but
let me give you a few moments of something to look forward
to. He said we're laid hold of. He
said we're laid hold of and we're laid hold of for a purpose. Christ
Jesus didn't lay hold of us simply so he could put one more notch
on his gun of one more person he got. He laid hold of us for
a purpose. And that purpose is summed up
in the word salvation, which, as I pointed out, is a very broad
term. Paul gives us some various facets of it. Here's what we
were laid hold of for, that I may win Christ. And then verse 9,
"...and be found in him." Friends, you're going to be found. The
question is not if you will be found, the question is where
will you be found. When the rain fell, God found
everybody on the earth. He found Noah in the ark. And
Noah lived. Where will he find you when he
comes? That I may be found in him, not
having mine own righteousness which is of the law, but that
which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which
is of God by faith. Here's what I've been laid hold
of, that I may know Him. Isn't this a marvelous salvation?
All the mundane things men seek in salvation. I got a mention
just over the hilltop. Isn't it something, isn't it
revealing that so much of religion defines heaven in terms of possessing
those things God told us to have contempt for in this world? The
Lord said, man's life's not made of his possessions. It's not
made of gold and silver, and they're all excited about a gold
street, thinking they'll probably have a gold driveway up to it.
Double driveway. And a mansion, probably bigger
than yours. It's nauseating that I may know
Him. Let me tell you something. If
you don't want to know Christ, you don't want to go to heaven,
because that's what heaven is all about, Christ. If you don't
want to praise Christ now, you'll be better off in hell than in
heaven, because that's all they do up there. If you don't want
to hear about Christ here, then you'll be better off in hell
because that's all you're going to hear about up there. If you don't like bowing
to Christ here, God save you from heaven because that's all
they do up there. But I may know him. Do you want
to know him? What does that mean? It means
something more than simply knowing about Him. Paul was talking about
intimacy of knowledge. Remember, he's talking about
experience. And the best way to describe this is as a wife
knows her husband. Paul says, I just don't want
to be a doctrinaire. I don't want to just be a faithful
gospel preacher going around telling people the truth. I want
to enter into intimacy with Jesus Christ. That's what I was laid hold of
for. It amazes me that Christ wants me to know Him. Blows me
away. That I may know Him and the power
of His resurrection. What's the power of His resurrection?
Go back to Ephesians. I'm the only preacher for Ephesians
in the front of the Bible. It came out, so I keep it up
there in the front. I've heard people talk about,
I want resurrection power. And you know what they mean by
that? Power to do stuff. Heal people. Get rich. They call
that resurrection power. Here's resurrection power. Paul's
praying for the Ephesians. In verse 18 of chapter 1, he's
praying that the eyes of your understanding being enlightened,
that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what is
the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and
what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us who believe
according to the working of His mighty power which He wrought
in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at
His own right hand in the heavenly places. That same power that
the Father exerted to raise the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead,
that's the same power that He exerts in His people to raise
them spiritually from the dead, to seat them with Christ in the
heavenly places, to put them far above all principalities
and powers. They can't be touched. Paul says, I want to know the
power of His resurrection. I want to fully realize all that
His resurrection means. He said, that's what I was laid
hold of for, and I won't be satisfied until I have it. And then he
said, in the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable
unto his death. What is the fellowship of his
sufferings? That word fellowship means commonness. It means community. You're probably all familiar
with J.R. Tolkien and his Hobbit books.
There's the one called The Fellowship of the Ring. And if you're not
familiar with that story, you can think about something else
for the next 30 seconds. But those several people of various
sorts, hobbits, elves, all of them, anyway, all of them, several
of them were going to take that ring to be destroyed. And that
little group was called the Fellowship of the Ring. Why were they? That
word fellowship, it just means here's one thing they had in
common, the ring. They were different sorts, dwarves,
hobbits, elves, a human in there somewhere. But here they had
something in common, that ring, and therefore they were a fellowship.
And Paul says, I want to belong to the fellowship of His sufferings,
the community of His sufferings. I want to be among those who
have this in common. Jesus Christ died for them. He
says that I may be made conformable to Him in His death. What does
he mean by that? Well, how was Christ in His death?
When Christ died? He died unto sin once. He's dead
to sin. Paul says, that's what I want
to be. He's alive to God. That's what I want to be. He's
accepted by God. That's what I want to be. He's
raised from the dead. That's what I want to be. He's
at the right hand of the Father. That's where I want to be. And then he goes, if by any means
I might attain to the resurrection of the dead. Does he mean by
that? I'm trying everything, man. I got that Hebrew, Hebrew
thing going and there's a couple of Roman gods. I've offered a
couple of sacrifices there just in case that's the way. And I'm
trying this Christian thing so that if there's any way you can
get there, I'll get there. That's not what he means. He's
saying I have discovered that if there is any way that this
wretched man is going to be raised from the dead, this is it. This is it. Because I know the
other ways don't work. Been there, done that, didn't
work. And so he said, I'm looking back. Christ laid hold of me.
And He laid hold of me for something. He laid hold of me to make me
like Him. And all that that involves. And that is now the hope and
focus of my life. I'm trying to lay hold of it.
He said to Timothy, lay hold of eternal life. May God grant
you to enjoy the look back and rejoice in what God has done.
And then strengthen your heart and the joy of the Lord with
what lies ahead. Because brethren, as good as it is right now, this
ain't a half of it.