Right, I'd like you to turn to Philippians
chapter 3.
I'm sure when you think of the subject
of pressing on, that's probably where your mind
goes to.
Philippians chapter 3, verse 12.
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 towards what
is ahead, I press on towards the goal
to win the prize for which God has
called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.
All of us who are mature should take
such a view of things.
And if on some point you think differently,
that too God will make clear to you.
Only let us live up to what we
have already attained.
Join with others in following my example, brothers,
and take note of those who live according
to the pattern we gave you.
For as I have often told you before,
and now say again, even with tears, many
live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Their destiny is destruction.
Their God is their stomach, and their glory
is in their shame.
Their mind is on earthly things.
But our citizenship is in heaven, and we
eagerly await a saviour from there, the Lord
Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables
him to bring everything under his control, will
transform our lowly bodies so that they will
be like his glorious body.
Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and
long for, my joy and crown, that is
how you should stand firm in the Lord,
dear friends.
Let's pray together.
Father, thank you for the privilege of being
together this weekend.
Thank you for the time and the desire
you've given us to be together.
Thank you for the freedom we've had to
meet and hear your word and sing your
praise quite freely.
Thank you, Lord, for everything you've said to
us.
But, oh God, we appeal to you this
afternoon that what we've been through this weekend
together might not just be an information exercise,
might not just be an academic exercise, but,
Lord, we do pray that it will be
a life-changing experience.
We pray that many of us will look
back to this weekend later in our lives
and see this weekend as an opportunity we
took to take a step fresh, a step
of faith, a step of commitment.
Lord, we pray that even this afternoon, in
this final session, you'll help us to seal
some issue with you.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Now, this third chapter of Philippians is a
chapter of personal testimony.
The Apostle Paul has explained in the opening
verses, which I'm sure are very familiar verses
to you, how all the things he had
previously considered to be so important and which
other young men of his generation would certainly
have considered to be highly important, he now
considered as loss or refuse.
And he just had one consuming ambition in
life.
You can read about that in verse 8.
He says, I consider everything else a loss
compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord.
There'd been this transformation in the life of
this man, Saul of Tarsus, who used to
live for many things, things which others of
his generation lived for, had become Paul of
Tarsus.
There'd been this transformation in his whole life.
And the one consuming ambition now was to
know Christ Jesus my Lord.
And verse 9, to be found in him,
not having a righteousness of my own that
comes from the law, but that which is
through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes
from God and is by faith.
Now, I just want you to look at
those two verses, 8 and 9, for a
moment.
And I want you to recognize the spiritual
desire that comes through that statement.
I consider everything a loss compared to this.
This consuming, driving ambition in Paul's life to
know Jesus Christ.
You know, if I pray for anything more
than any other in my life, and if
I was to pray for you, one prayer
request above all others, I think my prayer
for myself and for you would be for
spiritual desire.
That I would have a consuming desire to
know God, and that you would have that
as well.
I think it was A.
W.
Tozer who made this simple statement that has
meant so much to me, I suppose, in
the past 15 years of my life.
He said, you will be as holy as
you want to be.
Sometimes we complicate the Christian experience, don't we?
We make it mystical or we make it
technical.
Really, it's very simple.
You will be as holy as you want
to be.
Spiritual desire, wanting God, wanting a closeness with
God, is the key to everything.
The Lord Jesus said, in the middle of
that manifesto of his, at the beginning of
the Sermon of the Mount, Blessed are they
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they
will be satisfied.
You want satisfaction as you move away from
Motherwell later this afternoon.
You want to be satisfied in your spiritual
experience.
Of course you do.
Of course I do.
Well, here is satisfaction guaranteed.
Jesus doesn't say you may be satisfied.
He doesn't say you'll have an inconsistent experience.
Someday it'll be good, someday not so good.
He says you will be satisfied.
What is the key to guaranteed satisfaction?
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
righteousness.
That's the key.
If we know what it is to hunger
and thirst for righteousness, we will know deep
satisfaction in our lives.
Now the image that Jesus had in his
mind, no doubt, as he made that statement
on the Mount, was of the man traversing
the desert, and the sandstorm blows up.
And he takes his banus and he puts
it around his face, and the sand is
filling his nostrils and his mouth.
There's a dryness, he's lost, there's a hunger.
And Jesus says when you get like that,
in your desire for me, and for my
Father, and for righteousness, when you become as
desperate as that lost man in the desert,
then you will be satisfied.
And I hope you're going to go away
from Motherwell this weekend with an increased spiritual
desire.
I long for that for you more than
anything else.
That you will go away from this place
with a desire for God and for righteousness.
That's what Paul says here.
He says I used to live for certain
things.
The normal things that my peers lived for,
those were the things I lived for.
But there's been this total transformation.
Now my one consuming desire is to know
Christ, and to know his righteousness.
Now of course there's one sense in which
Paul was entirely confident that he had received
once and for all the righteousness of God
by faith.
He knew that nothing could be added to
that righteousness.
Nothing could be subtracted from it.
And I hope you're resting in that experience
yourself this afternoon.
I hope you're not still trying to achieve
righteousness before God by your own endeavors.
Trying to somehow please God by the quality
and the regularity of your quiet time or
whatever it might be.
I hope you've moved on from that.
I hope that your quiet time, I hope
that the obedience in your Christian life is
a response in love to God rather than
somehow trying to appease God or to make
yourself righteous in his presence.
We have received the righteousness of God by
faith in Jesus Christ.
Paul knew that.
He was able to write to the Romans.
There's now no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus.
I hope you're going to go away from
Motherwell with that ringing reality in your ears
and in your heart.
No condemnation.
Doesn't matter what Satan the accuser of the
brethren says.
No condemnation.
I'm in Christ Jesus.
Sometimes you can come to a conference like
this and you can go away feeling devastated.
That's happened to me a number of times.
Some message you just feel you can't live
up to that at all.
The marvelous experience of some other Christian who's
shared with you and you feel so small
and insignificant and such an utter failure in
comparison.
Maybe the standard which has been proclaimed during
the conference leaves you feeling devastated.
Don't allow that.
That's Satan, the accuser of the brethren.
Paul could say, and I hope you can
say, no condemnation.
I am in Christ Jesus.
But whilst that work of justification can never
be added to, never be subtracted from, Paul
saw the work of sanctification, the work of
becoming holy, he saw that work as being
progressive and continuous.
And so he continues with his testimony in
verse 10, a verse which, probably more than
any other verse in the Bible, helps us
to understand this dynamic man, Paul the Apostle.
If you want to get to the heart
of Paul the Apostle, here it is.
I want to know Christ.
That's not very sophisticated, complicated, is it?
Not very mystical.
Let's keep it simple.
I want to know Christ.
That's what was important to the Apostle Paul.
Oh, he loved to plant churches.
He loved to teach young men like Timothy
and Silas.
But there was one thing more important than
anything else to him.
It didn't matter whether he was preaching or
it didn't matter whether he was in prison.
He could follow this one great desire.
I want to know Christ.
And I'm going to be specific, says Paul.
There are three things I'm looking for.
I want to know the power of his
resurrection.
I want to know fellowship in sharing with
his sufferings.
And I want to become like Jesus in
the way in which he died.
Now this consuming ambition to know Christ continued
with Paul throughout his life.
There is one sense in which Paul was
never a satisfied man.
There's another sense in which he was totally
satisfied.
There's another sense in which he was never
satisfied.
He always wanted to be making further, greater
progress.
He always wanted to be moving on.
When I look at this aspect of Paul's
life, I'm reminding him of the simple epitaph
of a Swiss mountain guide high up on
one of the alpine peaks are these three
words.
He died climbing.
Now I believe that's how Paul finished his
life.
You read his last letter, 2 Timothy.
You read the last chapter of that letter
and you'll see how this man died.
He died climbing.
He was still wanting to go on.
He was still wanting to move forward.
There was still more for him to know,
more for him to experience.
I want to know Christ.
And the biblical illustrations of the Christian life
underline that this should be a principle.
We are described in the Bible as plants
in the field of the Lord, constantly reaching
upwards for more and for more light.
We are told that we've been born into
the family of God where there are babes,
little children, young men, and fathers in Christ
Jesus.
There should be that constant progression in the
family into which we have been born.
We are described as pilgrims, as warriors, as
wrestlers.
All of these words are descriptive of movement,
of progress.
And in this very chapter here in Philippians
3, we have Paul's most common illustration of
the athlete in the race, moving forward with
the tape ever in view.
If the biblical illustrations of the Christian life
call us to constant progress, then the exhortations
do the same.
We are exhorted to grow in grace.
We are exhorted, 2 Peter 1, to add
to our faith.
God has given us, Peter says, everything that
we need for life and godliness.
God doesn't sell us short.
But we have to be constantly adding to
our faith.
We are told in Scripture that we are
to follow on to know the Lord.
And there are many similar examples.
So before we just look at three points
in this passage together, I want you to
accept before God the general overall challenge of
this chapter.
The overall challenge of the chapter is really
summed up in five words in verse 13.
Paul says, I'm straining towards what is ahead.
I want to ask you this afternoon as
we come to the end of this conference,
would that be descriptive of your Christian life?
Not when we're all together in conference in
Motherwell.
But on a Monday morning or a Tuesday
afternoon, would this be descriptive of your Christian
life?
Is this where you're at?
Are you straining forward every day to what
lies ahead?
Saint Jerome used to say, happy is he
who makes daily progress, who does not consider
what he did yesterday, but is always considering
what advances he can make today.
What's your goal for 1989 in your spiritual
experience?
Is it clear?
What's your goal in Bible reading?
Do you have at the very least the
goal to read this book through once a
year?
Surely if we're men and women of God,
we'd want to be men and women of
his word, wouldn't we?
If this is what the living God has
left with us, if this is what he
wants to say to us, then surely we
would read it once a year, minimum.
But I know from past experience, if I
was to ask you to raise your hand,
if you're reading the Bible through every year,
there would be a very small percentage of
you who would raise your hand.
Sometimes I wonder just how serious we are
about this Christian business, or whether we're really
just playing the game.
We come along to conferences like this and
we have a great time and everything looks
great, but I wonder how many of you
are reading this Bible as much as you're
watching your television.
I wonder how many of you do that.
As many hours in the book as you
do in front of the screen.
I think people who've got the balance right
there are at last getting serious about their
Christian life.
That's the overall challenge of the chapter.
Do these five words describe you straining towards
what is ahead?
A.
W.
Chaucer says in another of his works, refuse
to be average.
Do you just settle down to be the
average Christian?
You've got the average number of attendances at
church, and you're involved a little bit in
this and a little bit in that, and
you're even one of those keen ones who
comes to an OM conference.
You're just accepted average.
Chaucer says, refuse to be average.
The Apostle Paul says, I'm straining for what
is ahead.
I hope that's your spiritual posture this afternoon.
Now look here at three things which Paul
says, three things which will help us, I
think, as we press on from this conference
to what lies ahead.
The first thing that Paul does is he
estimates his own present condition.
Look at verse 12.
Not that I have already obtained all this.
I am not perfect.
Verse 13, I do not consider that I
have taken hold of perfection.
Now notice that word in verse 13, the
word consider.
It's a word which means Paul has taken
careful stock.
He has made a careful estimate.
He has come to a considered conclusion.
Please turn the cassette over now.
Do not fast wind it in either direction.
Christian experience.
Now think for a moment of the man
who wrote these words.
He is the man who soon would become
a martyr for the cause of Christ.
He was one of the Lord's great apostles.
He could actually urge others to be imitators
of him, as he was an imitator of
Jesus Christ.
What a man.
And yet when he took stock, when he
sat down and really thought about it, he
said, I haven't arrived.
There's more to know.
There's more to experience.
I have not been made perfect.
Now I don't know about you, but that
motivates me to do two things.
Firstly, it motivates me to do my own
stock take.
And I want to ask you to do
that.
Maybe even as you go home this afternoon,
to carry out your own spiritual stock take.
How are you doing?
Alan mentioned the book by that title to
us this morning.
I would underline his recommendation.
Stuart Dinan's book, subtitled, 24 Checklists on Spiritual
Growth and Service.
Get hold of a copy.
Get away into some corner somewhere and do
a stock take.
Find out where you're really at in your
Christian life.
We don't do very much of this today.
If you read the writings of the Puritans
of a couple of centuries ago, you'll find
that spiritual self-examination was a regular part
of their discipleship.
They would go aside and they would examine
their lives.
They would look before God at where they
were at in their Christian experience.
I challenge you to take a stock take
this afternoon.
But secondly, Paul's testimony should forever deliver us
from spiritual complacency.
If this man did not consider himself to
have arrived spiritually, if he was not satisfied
with his spiritual progress, then how much less
me?
How much less you?
But spiritual complacency does occur, doesn't it?
It comes as a dreadful cloud over us
from time to time.
Where does it come from, spiritual complacency?
It comes when we forget a number of
things.
When we forget, for example, the awful holiness
of God, then we can easily become complacent.
There is a danger in our generation, I
think particularly, to become over-familiar with God.
It's lovely to have that intimate Abba-Father
relationship with God.
That's lovely and that's important.
But at the same time, it is constantly
essential to remember the awesome holiness of a
God who is a consuming fire.
We cannot meddle with God.
We must take God seriously.
Spiritual complacency settles in upon us when we
do not have a biblical vision, a biblical
understanding of the God with whom we have
to do.
Spiritual complacency settles in on us when we
begin to forget the law of God, the
holiness of his law, the stringency of his
law.
When we forget God, when we misinterpret his
law, we are in trouble.
It also begins to settle in upon us
when we forget the seriousness of sin.
Do you realize that every time you sin,
according to the book of Hebrews, you crucify
again the Son of God and you make
of him an open shame?
Repentance, you know, is a very serious business.
It's not just a shrug of the shoulders,
I failed, Lord, help me, forgive me.
Repentance is a serious business.
It's realizing the God against whom you have
sinned, the holiness of the law which you
have broken, the injustice which you have done
against the person of Jesus Christ.
It is to feel that.
It is to turn from it with a
steady, definite determination not to fail again.
These things can cause the dreaded cloud of
spiritual complacency to settle in upon us so
that we will settle down and become average
Christians.
Paul says, I haven't arrived, that's where I'm
at.
And then the second thing is, he tells
us his attitude to his past.
Look at verse 13.
I forget, says Paul, what is behind.
No, he doesn't mean by that that he
forgets the immense mercy of God that he's
enjoyed.
He doesn't mean that he forgets the seriousness
of the sins that he has committed.
Remember the analogy is of the Greek games.
Imagine the athlete.
He's done 600 meters of an 800 meters
race and he knows he's well out in
front.
So he begins to look behind.
He begins to praise himself.
There are three, four, five, six runners behind
him and he's reveling in it.
But what happens?
With the backward look, he loses speed.
Possibly direction.
And if he's not very careful while he's
praising himself, others will sweep past and leave
him totally defeated.
Lot's wife, of course, should remain to every
Christian as a constant warning.
Here she was, escaping from danger, well on
the way to safety.
But she looked back and with the backward
look, everything was lost.
Now the Christian race is just like every
other race.
You can't just settle on your laurels.
You can't just think, you know, I've done
great for the last 12 months.
I've done great for the last 12 years.
And you don't start looking back on all
the achievements that you have so far accomplished.
Forgetting those things, says Paul, which are behind.
The race of life is not complete until
you have breasted the tape.
Just turn back to 1 Corinthians chapter 10,
if you've still got your Bible open.
1 Corinthians 10.
Paul is reminding here the Corinthian church of
the lessons we should learn from the experiences
of the children of Israel.
And what a solemn lesson Paul brings before
the Corinthians from the Israelite experience.
Look at verse 1.
I don't want you to be ignorant of
the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all
under the cloud and they all passed through
the sea.
In other words, God's Old Testament people all
received the blessings of God.
And verses 2 to 4 relate further blessings
which they all enjoyed.
But then read verse 5.
Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of
them.
Their bodies were scattered over the desert.
Now I'm told that that's a very graphic
picture in the Hebrew language which Paul is
explaining to the Corinthians.
He's picturing the wilderness as being strewn with
heaps of corpses of the children of Israel.
A very solemn picture indeed.
Here are a privileged people who are enjoying
the presence of God and the blessing of
God and yet they fell by the wayside.
And Paul is very clear, very clear with
regard to the lesson that you and I
should learn from that.
Look at verse 12.
If you think that you are standing, be
careful that you don't fall away.
Don't be fooled, says Paul.
Here were a nation who had enjoyed the
blessing of God.
They'd actually passed through the sea that God
had divided.
They knew the miraculous power of God in
their own experience.
And yet they fell by the wayside.
There were heaps of corpses throughout the desert.
So if you think you're standing, take heed
lest you fall.
Monday of last week I received a phone
call.
A young girl in a time of spiritual
revival on one of our teams in another
part of the world had come out with
confession of immorality with a Christian leader in
England.
I had the job of confronting that brother
last week about his indiscretion and his sin.
Yesterday afternoon at this very conference I went
to speak to someone who is no longer
here.
I said, how are things at your church?
The church I visited a number of times.
And I knew from the answer things were
not well.
So I pressed a little further.
I said, come on, what's happened?
Three men in the church, one an elder,
two deacons, all gone off with other women
in that church.
Church totally devastated.
God has been doing great things there for
the last ten years.
Maybe those people thought that they were standing.
And they began to look back.
Ten years of great achievements.
One of them particularly is a fine preacher.
And God had used the man to bring
people to Christ that I know personally.
Did he begin to look back and count
his achievements?
His eyes were off the master, off the
finishing tape.
The marathon was not ended and yet he
was relaxing.
Paul says, I haven't arrived.
And I'm not going to look back.
I'll forget those things which are behind because
I know the subtlety of the enemy.
And I know that I can fall just
as easy as those children of Israel who
enjoyed so much blessing were left strewn, heaps
of corpses throughout the desert.
And so we come thirdly and finally to
that statement which I mentioned earlier, which gives
us Paul's present position.
He says, I'm straining towards what is ahead.
Again, the commentators will tell you that the
verb used there in the original is a
very graphic verb indeed.
Picturing the runner straining every nerve and muscle
as he keeps on running with all his
might towards the goal.
His hands stretched out, says one commentator, as
if to grasp it.
I ask you again, does that describe you?
Now let's be honest at the end of
the conference.
When you think of your desire for fellowship
with other Christians, when you think of your
evangelistic involvement, when you think of your prayer
involvement and your involvement with Scripture, is this
descriptive of you?
Are you like the athlete getting towards the
end of 26 miles, 385 yards and you're
straining for the tape?
Is that descriptive of you?
Or are you relaxing, looking around, you're looking
back?
Paul says, I press forward, I strain because
I haven't arrived and I know the pitfalls
and I must move on.
Notice the singleness of mind and purpose.
This one thing I do.
He's got one thing in his mind.
Now he's got these games in his mind
again.
He's got the prize for which God has
called him heavenwards in Christ Jesus.
You see, at the end of the race
in the Greek games, when you crossed the
tape, you kept running.
You ran across the track.
You ran up the steps of the grandstand.
I'm told it was the hardest part of
the whole race.
And there was the emperor or the local
chief and he had his garland of flowers
to put around your neck.
As the athlete came towards the tape, he
may well for one moment lift his eyes
from the tape and look up to the
man in charge who would give him his
garland of flowers.
And Paul says, I've got my eyes on
a reward as well.
The things of this world are secondary to
me, says Paul, because I can see the
prize for which God is calling me heavenward.
In Romans 8, Paul considers something else.
He says, I consider, I've taken stock, same
word, that my present sufferings are not worth
comparing with the glory which will be revealed
in us.
The athlete can accept the pain, he can
accept the suffering of the race, if the
prize is clearly in view.
What are you living for?
What prize do you really want?
Material gain?
Is that what you're after?
You're willing to work day and night for
material progress?
Is that your prize?
Go on, be honest.
Is that your prize?
Is that what you want?
You want to be accepted by the group
in your university or your school or your
church even?
Your business?
You want to be one of the boys?
Is that what keeps you going?
Remember that little story which Jesus told, one
of his great parables.
The story of the man who was digging
a field.
Just a little parable, one verse, Matthew 13,
44.
You think about it.
A man digging a field, he finds some
treasure, covers the treasure over.
He goes home.
This is a modern translation.
He puts the for sale notice up at
the end of his drive.
He puts his Mercedes car into the local
car auction.
It would be a foolish thing to do,
but he sells it in some way or
another.
He gets rid of his video and his
television and so on.
And the neighbours all gather round and they
say, have you seen what's happening to Fred?
Very sad, isn't it?
He must have really gone off the deep
end.
He's selling everything.
It's tragic.
Can't we get him to hospital?
Surely some psychiatrist can help him.
They had no understanding of that man.
Why?
They had no understanding of the treasure.
They hadn't seen the treasure, so they couldn't
understand the man.
Have you seen the treasure?
What are you living for?
This world, 70 years, 80 years if you
have strength.
Is that what you're living for?
You've got your eyes on the grandstand.
You're running the race with the Lord Jesus
in front of your eyes.
The garland of flowers that he will give
to the victors.
It's time to get serious, isn't it?
With God.
Serious about life.
Time to get our priorities clear.
Time to be finished with superficiality.
At the end of this conference, say with
the Apostle Paul, Yes, I used to live
for all the things my peers lived for.
But there's been a transformation in my life.
I've now got one consuming ambition.
I want to know Christ.
I haven't arrived.
I'm not going to look back.
I'm going to keep the tape and the
grandstand in view.
And with every muscle in my spiritual body,
I am going to strain forward until I
breast that tape.
And hear those words, well done, good and
faithful servant.
Refuse to be average.
Let's pray together.
Let's just have a moment of quietness at
the end of this conference.
So that God can write his word, not
just the words I've spoken in the last
half hour, but the words you've heard throughout
this weekend, clearly up on your mind.
Maybe you want to make some response to
him and to his word, just in the
quietness of your own heart.
Father, we have in our minds a picture
of the Lord Jesus with that cross on
his back, struggling through the streets of Jerusalem.
We remember the word that he spoke.
His face was set towards that city.
I must go to Jerusalem.
He knew everything that was before him, and
yet he must go.
There was no way he could turn back.
The goal, the prize was in his mind.
And Lord, we were that prize.
He was going to Jerusalem for me, for
every one of us.
Thank you, Lord Jesus, for going the whole
way for me and for every one of
us.
Thank you for never turning back, not once,
Lord, but you went the whole way.
Lord, how can we ever think of doing
anything else when we survey that wondrous cross
on which the Prince of Glory died?
Love so amazing, so divine, demands our hearts,
our lives, our all.
Help us, Lord, help us to hunger and
thirst after you, to refuse to be average,
but to strain forward with everything that we
have, to know you and to do your
will.
For Jesus' sake we pray.
Amen.
Right, I'd like you to turn to Philippians
chapter 3.
I'm sure when you think of the subject
of pressing on, that's probably where your mind
goes to.
Philippians chapter 3, verse 12.
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 towards what
is ahead, I press on towards the goal
to win the prize for which God has
called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.
All of us who are mature should take
such a view of things.
And if on some point you think differently,
that too God will make clear to you.
Only let us live up to what we
have already attained.
Join with others in following my example, brothers,
and take note of those who live according
to the pattern we gave you.
For as I have often told you before,
and now say again, even with tears, many
live as enemies of the cross of Christ.
Their destiny is destruction.
Their God is their stomach, and their glory
is in their shame.
Their mind is on earthly things.
But our citizenship is in heaven, and we
eagerly await a saviour from there, the Lord
Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables
him to bring everything under his control, will
transform our lowly bodies, so that they will
be like his glorious body.
Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and
long for, my joy and crown, that is
how you should stand firm in the Lord,
dear friends.
Let's pray together.
Father, thank you for the privilege of being
together this weekend.
Thank you for the time and the desire
you've given us to be together.
Thank you for the freedom we've had to
meet and hear your word and sing your
praise quite freely.
Thank you, Lord, for everything you've said to
us.
But, oh God, we appeal to you this
afternoon that what we've been through this weekend
together might not just be an information exercise,
might not just be an academic exercise, but,
Lord, we do pray that it will be
a life-changing experience.
We pray that many of us will look
back to this weekend, later in our lives,
and see this weekend as an opportunity we
took to take a step fresh, a step
of faith, a step of commitment.
Lord, we pray that even this afternoon, in
this final session, you'll help us to seal
some issue with you.
In Jesus' name.
Amen.
Now, this third chapter of Philippians is a
chapter of personal testimony.
The Apostle Paul has explained in the opening
verses, which I'm sure are very familiar verses
to you, how all the things he had
previously considered to be so important, and which
other young men of his generation would certainly
have considered to be highly important, he now
considered as loss or refuse.
And he just had one consuming ambition in
life.
You can read about that in verse 8.
He says, I consider everything else a loss,
compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ
Jesus, my Lord.
There'd been this transformation in the life of
this man, Saul of Tarsus, who used to
live for many things, things which others of
his generation lived for, had become Paul of
Tarsus.
There'd been this transformation in his whole life,
and the one consuming ambition now was to
know Christ Jesus, my Lord.
And verse 9, to be found in him,
not having a righteousness of my own that
comes from the law, but that which is
through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes
from God and is by faith.
Now, I just want you to look at
those two verses, 8 and 9, for a
moment, and I want you to recognize the
spiritual desire that comes through that statement.
I consider everything a loss compared to this,
this consuming, driving ambition in Paul's life, to
know Jesus Christ.
You know, if I pray for anything more
than any other in my life, and if
I was to pray for you, one prayer
request above all others, I think my prayer
for myself and for you would be for
spiritual desire, that I would have a consuming
desire to know God, and that you would
have that as well.
I think it was A.
W.
Tozer who made this simple statement that has
meant so much to me, I suppose, in
the past 15 years of my life.
He said, you will be as holy as
you want to be.
Sometimes we complicate the Christian experience, don't we?
We make it mystical or we make it
technical.
Really, it's very simple.
You will be as holy as you want
to be.
Spiritual desire, wanting God, wanting a closeness with
God, is the key to everything.
The Lord Jesus said in the middle of
that manifesto of his at the beginning of
the Sermon of the Mount, Blessed are they
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they
will be satisfied.
You want satisfaction as you move away from
Motherwell later this afternoon.
You want to be satisfied in your spiritual
experience.
Of course you do.
Of course I do.
Well, here is satisfaction guaranteed.
Jesus doesn't say you may be satisfied.
He doesn't say you'll have an inconsistent experience.
Someday it'll be good, someday not so good.
He says you will be satisfied.
What is the key to guaranteed satisfaction?
Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after
righteousness.
That's the key.
If we know what it is to hunger
and thirst for righteousness, we will know deep
satisfaction in our lives.
Now the image that Jesus had in his
mind, no doubt, as he made that statement
on the Mount, was of the man traversing
the desert and the sandstorm blows up.
And he takes his banus and he puts
it around his face and the sand is
filling his nostrils and his mouth.
There's a dryness, he's lost, there's a hunger.
And Jesus says when you get like that,
in your desire for me and for my
Father and for righteousness, when you become as
desperate as that lost man in the desert,
then you will be satisfied.
And I hope you're going to go away
from Motherwell this weekend with an increased spiritual
desire.
I long for that for you more than
anything else.
That you will go away from this place
with a desire for God and for righteousness.
That's what Paul says here.
He says, I used to live for certain
things.
The normal things that my peers lived for,
those were the things I lived for.
But there's been this total transformation.
Now my one consuming desire is to know
Christ and to know his righteousness.
Now of course there's one sense in which
Paul was entirely confident that he had received
once and for all the righteousness of God
by faith.
He knew that nothing could be added to
that righteousness.
Nothing could be subtracted from it.
And I hope you're resting in that experience
yourself this afternoon.
I hope you're not still trying to achieve
righteousness before God by your own endeavors.
Trying to somehow please God by the quality
and the regularity of your quiet time or
whatever it might be.
I hope you've moved on from that.
I hope that your quiet time, I hope
that the obedience in your Christian life is
a response in love to God rather than
somehow trying to appease God or to make
yourself righteous in his presence.
We have received the righteousness of God by
faith in Jesus Christ.
Paul knew that.
He was able to write to the Romans.
There's now no condemnation for those who are
in Christ Jesus.
I hope you're going to go away from
Motherwell with that ringing reality in your ears
and in your heart.
No condemnation.
Doesn't matter what Satan the accuser of the
brethren says.
No condemnation.
I'm in Christ Jesus.
Sometimes you can come to a conference like
this and you can go away feeling devastated.
That's happened to me a number of times.
Some message you just feel you can't live
up to that at all.
The marvelous experience of some other Christian who
shared with you and you feel so small
and insignificant and such an utter failure in
comparison.
Maybe the standard which has been proclaimed during
the conference leaves you feeling devastated.
Don't allow that.
That's Satan.
The accuser of the brethren.
Paul could say, and I hope you can
say, No condemnation.
I am in Christ Jesus.
But whilst that work of justification can never
be added to, never be subtracted from, Paul
saw the work of sanctification, the work of
becoming holy.
He saw that work as being progressive and
continuous.
And so he continues with his testimony in
verse 10.
A verse which, probably more than any other
verse in the Bible, helps us to understand
this dynamic man, Paul the Apostle.
If you want to get to the heart
of Paul the Apostle, here it is.
I want to know Christ.
That's not very sophisticated, complicated, is it?
Not very mystical.
Let's keep it simple.
I want to know Christ.
That's what was important to the Apostle Paul.
Oh, he loved to plant churches.
He loved to teach young men like Timothy
and Silas.
But there was one thing more important than
anything else to him.
It didn't matter whether he was preaching, or
it didn't matter whether he was in prison.
He could follow this one great desire.
I want to know Christ.
And I'm going to be specific, says Paul.
There are three things I'm looking for.
I want to know the power of his
resurrection.
I want to know fellowship in sharing with
his sufferings.
And I want to become like Jesus in
the way in which he died.
Now this consuming ambition to know Christ continued
with Paul throughout his life.
There is one sense in which Paul was
never a satisfied man.
There's another sense in which he was totally
satisfied.
There's another sense in which he was never
satisfied.
He always wanted to be making further, greater
progress.
He always wanted to be moving on.
When I look at this aspect of Paul's
life, I'm reminding him of the simple epitaph
of a Swiss mountain guide, high up on
one of the alpine peaks, are these three
words.
He died climbing.
I believe that's how Paul finished his life.
You read his last letter, 2 Timothy.
You read the last chapter of that letter,
and you'll see how this man died.
He died climbing.
He was still wanting to go on.
He was still wanting to move forward.
There was still more for him to know,
more for him to experience.
I want to know Christ.
The biblical illustrations of the Christian life underline
that this should be a principle.
We are described in the Bible as plants
in the field of the Lord, constantly reaching
upwards for more and for more light.
We are told that we've been born into
the family of God, where there are babes,
little children, young men, and fathers in Christ
Jesus.
There should be that constant progression in the
family into which we have been born.
We are described as pilgrims, as warriors, as
wrestlers.
All of these words are descriptive of movement,
of progress.
In this very chapter here in Philippians 3,
we have Paul's most common illustration of the
athlete in the race, moving forward with the
tape ever in view.
If the biblical illustrations of the Christian life
call us to constant progress, then the exhortations
do the same.
We are exhorted to grow in grace.
We are exhorted, 2 Peter 1, to add
to our faith.
God has given us, Peter says, everything that
we need for life and godliness.
God doesn't sell us short.
But we have to be constantly adding to
our faith.
We are told in Scripture that we are
to follow on to know the Lord.
And there are many similar examples.
So before we just look at three points
in this passage together, I want you to
accept before God the general overall challenge of
this chapter.
The overall challenge of the chapter is really
summed up in five words in verse 13.
Paul says, I'm straining towards what is ahead.
I want to ask you this afternoon, as
we come to the end of this conference,
would that be descriptive of your Christian life?
Not when we're all together in conference in
Motherwell.
But on a Monday morning or a Tuesday
afternoon, would this be descriptive of your Christian
life?
Is this where you're at?
Are you straining forward every day to what
lies ahead?
Saint Jerome used to say, Happy is he
who makes daily progress, who does not consider
what he did yesterday, but is always considering
what advances he can make today.
What's your goal for 1989 in your spiritual
experience?
Is it clear?
What's your goal in Bible reading?
Do you have at the very least the
goal to read this book through once a
year?
Surely if we're men and women of God,
we'd want to be men and women of
his word, wouldn't we?
If this is what the living God has
left with us, if this is what he
wants to say to us, then surely we
would read it once a year, minimum.
But I know from past experience, if I
was to ask you to raise your hand,
if you're reading the Bible through every year,
there would be a very small percentage of
you who would raise your hand.
Sometimes I wonder just how serious we are
about this Christian business.
Or whether we're really just playing the game.
We come along to conferences like this, and
we have a great time, and everything looks
great.
But I wonder how many of you are
reading this Bible as much as you're watching
your television.
I wonder how many of you do that.
As many hours in the book as you
do in front of the screen.
I think people who've got the balance right
there are at last getting serious about their
Christian life.
That's the overall challenge of the chapter.
Do these five words describe you straining towards
what is ahead?
A.
W.
Chaucer says in another of his works, refuse
to be average.
Do you just settle down to be the
average Christian?
Or you've got the average number of attendances
at church, and you're involved a little bit
in this and a little bit in that,
and you're even one of those keen ones
who comes to an OM conference.
Have you just accepted average?
Chaucer says, refuse to be average.
The Apostle Paul says, I'm straining for what
is ahead.
I hope that's your spiritual posture this afternoon.
Now look here at three things which Paul
says.
Three things which will help us, I think,
as we press on from this conference to
what lies ahead.
The first thing that Paul does is he
estimates his own present condition.
Look at verse 12.
Not that I have already obtained all this.
I am not perfect.
Verse 13, I do not consider that I
have taken hold of perfection.
Now notice that word in verse 13, the
word consider.
It's a word which means Paul has taken
careful stock.
He has made a careful estimate.
He has come to a considered conclusion.
Now think for a moment of the man
who wrote these words.
He is the man who soon would become
a martyr for the cause of Christ.
He was one of the Lord's great apostles.
He could actually urge others to be imitators
of him, as he was an imitator of
Jesus Christ.
What a man.
And yet when he took stock, when he
sat down and really thought about it, he
said, I haven't arrived.
There's more to know.
There's more to experience.
I have not been made perfect.
Now I don't know about you, but that
motivates me to do two things.
Firstly, it motivates me to do my own
stock take.
And I want to ask you to do
that.
Maybe even as you go home this afternoon,
to carry out your own spiritual stock take.
How are you doing?
Alan mentioned the book by that title to
us this morning.
I would underline his recommendation.
Stuart Dinan's book, subtitled, 24 Checklists on Spiritual
Growth and Service.
Get hold of a copy.
Get away into some corner somewhere and do
a stock take.
Find out where you're really at in your
Christian life.
We don't do very much of this today.
If you read the writings of the Puritans
a couple of centuries ago, you'll find that
spiritual self-examination was a regular part of
their discipleship.
They would go aside and they would examine
their lives.
They would look before God at where they
were at in their Christian experience.
I challenge you to take a stock take
this afternoon.
But secondly, Paul's testimony should forever deliver us
from spiritual complacency.
If this man did not consider himself to
have arrived spiritually, if he was not satisfied
with his spiritual progress, then how much less
me?
How much less you?
But spiritual complacency does occur, doesn't it?
It comes as a dreadful cloud over us
from time to time.
Where does it come from, spiritual complacency?
It comes when we forget a number of
things.
When we forget, for example, the awful holiness
of God, then we can easily become complacent.
There is a danger in our generation, I
think particularly, to become over-familiar with God.
It's lovely to have that intimate Abba-Father
relationship with God.
That's lovely and that's important.
But at the same time, it is constantly
essential to remember the awesome holiness of a
God who is a consuming fire.
We cannot meddle with God.
We must take God seriously.
Spiritual complacency settles in upon us when we
do not have a biblical vision, a biblical
understanding of the God with whom we have
to do.
Spiritual complacency settles in on us when we
begin to forget the law of God, the
holiness of his law, the stringency of his
law.
When we forget God, when we misinterpret his
law, we are in trouble.
It also begins to settle in upon us
when we forget the seriousness of sin.
Do you realize that every time you sin,
according to the book of Hebrews, you crucify
again the Son of God and you make
of him an open shame?
Repentance, you know, is a very serious business.
It's not just a shrug of the shoulders,
I failed, Lord, help me, forgive me.
Repentance is a serious business.
It's realizing the God against whom you have
sinned, the holiness of the law which you
have broken, the injustice which you have done
against the person of Jesus Christ.
It is to feel that.
It is to turn from it with a
steady, definite determination not to fail again.
These things can cause the dreaded cloud of
spiritual complacency to settle in upon us so
that we will settle down and become average
Christians.
Paul says, I haven't arrived, that's where I'm
at.
And then the second thing is, he tells
us his attitude to his past.
Look at verse 13.
I forget, says Paul, what is behind.
Now, he doesn't mean by that that he
forgets the immense mercy of God that he's
enjoyed.
He doesn't mean that he forgets the seriousness
of the sins that he has committed.
Remember, the analogy is of the Greek games.
Imagine the athlete.
He's done 600 meters of an 800 meters
race and he knows he's well out in
front.
So he begins to look behind.
He begins to praise himself.
There are three, four, five, six runners behind
him and he's reveling in it.
But what happens?
With the backward look, he loses speed, possibly
direction.
And if he's not very careful while he's
praising himself, others will sweep past and leave
him totally defeated.
Lot's wife, of course, should remain, to every
Christian, as a constant warning.
Here she was, escaping from danger, well on
the way to safety.
But she looked back, and with the backward
look, everything was lost.
Now, the Christian race is just like every
other race.
You can't just settle on your laurels.
You can't just think, you know, I've done
great for the last 12 months.
I've done great for the last 12 years.
And you don't start looking back on all
the achievements that you have so far accomplished.
Forgetting those things, says Paul, which are behind.
The race of life is not complete until
you have breasted the tape.
Just turn back to 1 Corinthians chapter 10,
if you've still got your Bible open.
1 Corinthians 10.
Paul is reminding here, the Corinthian church, of
the lessons we should learn from the experiences
of the children of Israel.
And what a solemn lesson Paul brings before
the Corinthians from the Israelite experience.
Look at verse 1.
I don't want you to be ignorant of
the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all
under the cloud, and they all passed through
the sea.
In other words, God's Old Testament people all
received the blessings of God.
And verses 2 to 4 relate further blessings,
which they all enjoyed.
But then read verse 5.
Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of
them.
Their bodies were scattered over the desert.
Now I'm told that that's a very graphic
picture in the Hebrew language, which Paul is
explaining to the Corinthians.
He's picturing the wilderness as being strewn with
heaps of corpses of the children of Israel.
A very solemn picture indeed.
Here are a privileged people who are enjoying
the presence of God and the blessing of
God, and yet they fell by the wayside.
And Paul is very clear, very clear, with
regard to the lesson that you and I
should learn from that.
Look at verse 12.
If you think that you are standing, be
careful that you don't fall away.
Don't be fools, says Paul.
Here were a nation who had enjoyed the
blessing of God.
They'd actually passed through the sea that God
had divided.
They knew the miraculous power of God in
their own experience, and yet they fell by
the wayside.
There were heaps of corpses throughout the desert.
So if you think you're standing, take heed
lest you fall.
Monday of last week I received a phone
call.
A young girl in a time of spiritual
revival on one of our teams in another
part of the world had come out with
confession of immorality with a Christian leader in
England.
I had the job of confronting that brother
last week about his indiscretion and his sin.
Yesterday afternoon at this very conference I went
to speak to someone who is no longer
here.
I said, how are things at your church?
The church I visited a number of times,
and I knew from the answer things were
not well, so I pressed a little further.
I said, come on, what's happened?
Three men in the church, one an elder,
two deacons, all gone off with other women
in that church.
Church totally devastated.
God has been doing great things there for
the last ten years.
Maybe those people thought that they were standing.
And they began to look back.
Ten years of great achievements, one of them
particularly is a fine preacher, and God had
used the man to bring people to Christ
that I know personally.
Then he began to look back and count
his achievements.
His eyes were off the master, off the
finishing tape.
The marathon was not ended, and yet he
was relaxing.
Paul says, I haven't arrived.
And I'm not going to look back.
I'll forget those things which are behind because
I know the subtlety of the enemy.
And I know that I can fall just
as easy as those children of Israel who
enjoyed so much blessing were left strewn, heaps
of corpses throughout the desert.
And so we come thirdly and finally to
that statement which I mentioned earlier, which gives
us Paul's present position.
He says, I'm straining towards what is ahead.
Again, the commentators will tell you that the
verb used there in the original is a
very graphic verb indeed.
Picturing the runner straining every nerve and muscle
as he keeps on running with all his
might towards the goal.
His hands stretched out, says one commentator, as
if to grasp it.
I ask you again, does that describe you?
Now let's be honest at the end of
the conference.
When you think of your desire for fellowship
with other Christians, when you think of your
evangelistic involvement, when you think of your prayer
involvement and your involvement with Scripture, is this
descriptive of you?
Are you like the athlete getting towards the
end of 26 miles, 385 yards and you're
straining for the tape?
Is that descriptive of you?
Or are you relaxing, looking around you, looking
back?
Paul says, I press forward, I strain, because
I haven't arrived and I know the pitfalls
and I must move on.
Notice the singleness of mind and purpose.
This one thing I do.
He's got one thing in his mind.
Now he's got these games in his mind
again.
He's got the prize for which God has
called him heavenwards in Christ Jesus.
You see at the end of the race
in the Greek games, when you crossed the
tape, you kept running.
You ran across the track.
You ran up the steps of the grandstand.
I'm told it was the hardest part of
the whole race.
And there was the emperor or the local
chief and he had his garland of flowers
to put around your neck.
As the athlete came towards the tape, he
may well for one moment lift his eyes
from the tape and look at the man
in charge who would give him his garland
of flowers.
And Paul says, I've got my eyes on
a reward as well.
The things of this world are secondary to
me, says Paul, because I can see the
prize for which God is calling me heavenward.
In Romans 8, Paul considers something else.
He says, I consider, I've taken stock, same
word, that my present sufferings are not worth
comparing with the glory which will be revealed
in us.
The athlete can accept the pain.
He can accept the suffering of the race
if the prize is clearly in view.
What are you living for?
What prize do you really want?
Material gain?
Is that what you're after?
You're willing to work day and night for
material progress.
Is that your prize?
Go on, be honest.
Is that your prize?
Is that what you want?
You want to be accepted by the group
in your university or your school or your
church even.
Your business, you want to be one of
the boys.
Is that what keeps you going?
Remember that little story which Jesus told, one
of his great parables.
The story of the man who was digging
a field.
Just a little parable, one verse, Matthew 13,
44.
You think about it.
A man digging a field.
He finds some treasure.
Covers the treasure over.
He goes home.
This is a modern translation.
He puts the for sale notice up at
the end of his drive.
He puts his Mercedes car into the local
car auction.
It would be a foolish thing to do
but he sells it in some way or
another.
Gets rid of his video and his television
and so on.
And the neighbors all gather around and they
say, have you seen what's happening to Fred?
Very sad, isn't it?
He must have really gone off to the
deep end.
He's selling everything.
It's tragic.
Can't we get him to a hospital?
Surely some psychiatrist can help him.
They had no understanding of that man.
Why?
They had no understanding of the treasure.
They hadn't seen the treasure so they couldn't
understand the man.
Have you seen the treasure?
What are you living for?
This world, 70 years, 80 years, if you
have strength.
Is that what you're living for?
Or you've got your eyes on the grandstand
and you're running the race with the Lord
Jesus in front of your eyes and the
garland of flowers that he will give to
the victors.
It's time to get serious, isn't it?
With God.
Serious about life.
Time to get our priorities clear.
Time to be finished with superficiality.
And at the end of this conference say
with the Apostle Paul, Yes, I used to
live for all the things my peers lived
for.
But there's been a transformation in my life.
I've now got one consuming ambition.
I want to know Christ.
I haven't arrived.
I'm not going to look back.
I'm going to keep the tape and the
grandstand in view and with every muscle in
my spiritual body I am going to strain
forward until I breast that tape.
And hear those words well done good and
faithful servant.
Refuse to be average.
Let's pray together.
Just have a moment of quietness at the
end of this conference so that God can
write his word not just the words I've
spoken in the last half hour but the
words you've heard throughout this weekend clearly up
on your mind.
Maybe you want to make some response to
him and to his word just in the
quietness of your own heart.
Father, we have in our minds a picture
of the Lord Jesus with that cross on
his back struggling through the streets of Jerusalem.
We remember the word that he spoke.
His face was set towards that city.
I must go to Jerusalem.
He knew everything that was before him and
yet he must go.
There was no way he could turn back.
The goal, the prize was in his mind.
And Lord, we were that prize.
He was going to Jerusalem for me for
every one of us.
Thank you Lord Jesus for going the whole
way for me and for every one of
us.
Thank you for never turning back not once
Lord but you went the whole way.
Lord, how can we ever think of doing
anything else when we survey that wondrous cross
on which the Prince of Glory died.
Love so amazing, so divine demands our hearts.
Our lives are all.
Help us Lord, help us to hunger and
thirst after you.
To refuse to be average but to strain
forward with everything that we have to know
you and to do your will.
For Jesus' sake we pray.
Amen.