Ridiculous Joy #9 - In Striving
Message Description
Dr. Kurt Bjorklund continues the 'Ridiculous Joy' series looking at Philippians 3:12-16 teaching about the joy experienced when salvation is not up to one's self-assurance.
Message Transcript
We began a few weeks ago a series that we've called Ridiculous Joy. We've been working our way through the New Testament Book of Philippians. It's a letter that the apostle Paul wrote to the church at Philippi. As we've talked about this, I have a guess about many of us, and that is, that for many of us, we equate joy with the absence of restraint. What I mean by that is what we think is that I'll have joy when. And then we believe that the way that I'll have joy is when there are no constraints on my life, nobody will tell me what to do. I offer as my support for this, when do you think that you have the best day? It's usually when you say, "I have nowhere to go and nothing to do except what I want to do when and how I want to do it. Nobody's speaking into my day." That's a good day, right? That's one of those days where you're like, "This is a day that I'm going to enjoy."
But restraint or having something around our lives can actually produce joy. As we come to Philippians 3:12-16, we see that Paul talks about this idea of pressing on. Twice in these few verses, he says, "I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus has taken hold of me. I press on that I might win the prize." And here's another guess that I have about some of us who are gathered here in Wexford in the Chapel, the Strip District, in Butler, and that is that some of us have had moments of spiritual awakening or clarity or passion in our lives followed by a season in which maybe that passion had waned. What I'm talking about is whether you've been around the church a long time or not, some of us had a moment maybe when we were a kid where church or God seemed real to us, alive to us. And then through a series of events, it became not that important. We may still believe, but it's just not something that's a priority in our lives.
Some of us have had times in our lives when we could say, "I used to really enjoy worship and singing, and now it's not the same." Some of us had moments in our lives where we couldn't wait to look at the Bible and try to learn what it had to say. And maybe through a series of events and seasons of life, now we're like, "I've been there, read it, kind of don't need it anymore." So, some of us had a season when we couldn't wait to serve or to do something to contribute to the way that God is working in the world, and now other things have become a bigger priority. Or we had a time when we loved being part of a group and now not so much.
As we look at this section of the Bible today, what I'd like to suggest is that Paul talking about pressing on is saying, in essence, because of the context of all the Philippians about joy and how the book is saturated with joy, he's saying that it's in pressing on and in pursuing God that you will find joy even though at times it may feel like a constraint. And so, what I'd like to do just to help us think about this passage is give us four words to consider. The first two words are opposites, and the second two words are opposites. And so, they kind of lead us in different directions. But taken together, I think they help us understand what this passage is about.
Here's the first word. The first word I'm going to say is the word remember. I get this because in verse 12 here's what we're told, it says, "Not that I've already obtained all of this or have arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus has taken hold of me." This word in the NIV that says, "Not that I've arrived at my goal," in the English standard version is translated, "Not that I've become perfect." In the original language, it's the word teleos, it's a Greek word, and the word is often translated perfect or complete or mature in different places in the Bible. The reason this is important is that it's used twice in this passage, it's used in verse 12 and then again in verse 15. And this is a concept that has caused some people to come to the belief that they have attained or gotten everything that they need to get in their spiritual life therefore they don't need to press on.
And so, one of the things that we need to remember is that no matter how far we've come or how much we've learned, we haven't attained or reached the maturity or completed state that God has for us. To understand this, we need to understand that there are three different ways that this word is used in the Bible. One way is it's used to speak about a positional status, and we see this in Hebrews 10:14. Here's what we read in Hebrews 10, it says this, "For by one sacrifice, He," speaking of Jesus Christ, "has made perfect," made teleos, "forever those who are being made holy."
And so, what this is referring to is that when you or I come to faith in Jesus Christ, God makes us teleos, makes us mature, makes us perfect so that we have a standing, a status that's unchangeable because it's based on what Jesus Christ has done not on what you and I have done. But when we come to Philippians 3, we see this word use differently. It's used in verse 15. It says, "All of us, then, who are mature," teleos, "should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, then God will make that clear to you."
What he's talking about here is how he's used teleos just a few verses earlier when he said, "Some of us are maturing, becoming complete, becoming perfect," and then he says, "but we're not there yet." What this means is there's this status, this positional aspect to the idea, you have it when you believe in Jesus Christ. There's a lived-out practical aspect that you grow in throughout your life, but you won't attain it until the end of your life. And then there's an ultimate sense in which this becomes true of you and me when our lives on this earth are done if we are in Christ Jesus.
And here's what this means, it means that no matter how many Bible studies you've been to, no matter how far you've gone, that there is still room for you to continue to pursue Jesus Christ, to understand who He is, understand what He has in your life, and to be conformed into the image of Jesus Christ in your life. I don't know if you've ever met one of these people who’s kind of, "I think God is like this guy." Have you ever met one of these people when you start to talk to them, they're like, "Yeah? I think God's like this," and then they'll fill in the blank with their version of God? Usually, that version of God is not necessarily a version that you might say, "Oh, that's based on something." What it is, is it's somebody who said, "I've found an answer, and this is how I conceive of God. Therefore, I don't need to think about God or how God has any implications for my life beyond what I've already thought about because God is like this. And I have my answer."
Sometimes even people who've been around church for a while start to get to a point where they say, "I think that I have figured out God, and my life is on the trajectory that it's had to be on. Therefore, I don't need to go any further." Paul is saying, "I want you to remember you haven't reached it all. I haven't reached it all. Therefore, there's still room to continue to press on." And then the second part of this remembering is when he talks about this prize, is to say, "Why would you want to press on?" Because one of the things that I'm confident has happened to some of us who are gathered this weekend is we have said, "Well, I tried to follow God for a season of my life, and then something didn't work out. I was praying and going to church and singing songs. Some people didn't seem to follow God that got better jobs, that got married, and had a baby. And then I couldn't seem to meet somebody, or I met somebody, and it went wrong, or this happened. I lost my job. Where is God?"
And so, there's a piece of us sometimes that says, "Does this work? What I really want is not the prize of following and becoming like Jesus, but what I want is I want God to help me have my life work out here and now." But what we need to see is that when Paul talks about a prize, "I press on to win the prize," that he's using athletic imagery, and he's saying that even though there's hardship along the way, when you press on, there will come a day when you will say, "I am so glad that I pursued this, that I followed this because this has shaped my life in the best possible way."
You understand this from other parts of your life. If you've ever gone to school, high school, college, grad school, trade school, there was a day somewhere along the way where you said, "You know what? I don't want to get up and go to school. I do not want to take this exam. I do not want to finish this project." But you generally do. Why do you keep pushing through? Because there's a piece of you that says, "I want the result on the backend, and it's worth the effort that I put in now even if it doesn't feel like it today." And so, we need to remember that no matter how far we've come, we haven't reached perfection. And no matter how it feels in the moment, it's worth pursuing.
So, that's the word, remember. Here's the opposite word, and I'm going to say this is the word forget. You may say, "Remember, forget, how does this work?" Here's where we see this. This is in verses 13 and 14. He says "Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." And so, what he's talking about here is he says, "Because I haven't attained it yet," he said, "here's the one thing that I do, I have to forget what's behind and press on."
And so, in this concept of pressing on, he says, "I have to forget." Now, what does he have to forget? If you read Philippians 3:1-11, what you would see is that Paul talks about his spiritual journey, and he says, "I have more reason to boast than all of you." He was talking about his spiritual achievements. He says, "I was a better Pharisee than all the Pharisees. I was a Hebrew of the Hebrews. I followed everything to a T." Sometimes what we need to forget is our past successes so that we can reach forward today. Again, to use athletic imagery, you can't win tomorrow's race based on what you did three years ago.
But then he also talked about persecuting the church. When he talks about this, I'm guessing that part of his forgetting what is behind him is having to forget the things that he did that he would like to forget. I don't know what your past has been, but I'm guessing that whatever your past has been, it did not include killing people simply because they were Christians. That's where Paul was. And so, when Paul says, "I want to forget. I have to forget the past," probably part of what he's saying to himself is, "I have to forget the things that I don't feel very good about in my life." Sometimes one of the reasons that people don't want to press on spiritually is they look back and they say, "God can't forgive me for what I've done, for the things that I've thought, the things that I've done, the mistakes that I've made along the way."
To forget sometimes, we have to be aware of how God views our sinful things from our past. In Psalm 103 we're told this, verse 12 says, "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us." This is a beautiful picture because if you head east and you keep heading east, you'll never start to head west. If you head west and you keep heading west, you'll never head east. You'll just go on. And so, the image here of east from the west isn't just saying far apart, it's saying, "These two will never come back together. God has so far taken your sin through Jesus Christ, if you believe in Jesus, that that sin will never come back." And some of us need to hear that because we have a little piece of us that says, "But I knew better, but I did this when." And it's a little piece of us that says, "That's keeping me from really pursuing God today."
I'm not much of a golfer. I golf about twice a year. That's why I'm not much of a golfer, you have to golf a lot. But one of the things I've learned from people who golf well is that if you want to golf well, one of the things you have to do is you have to be able to forget your last shot very quickly, especially if it's a bad shot. Because your tendency is, especially if you're playing well, is to say, "Oh, I'm playing fairly well," and you start to put a little pressure on yourself. And all of a sudden, you shank a shot, and it goes off, and then you're like... And then you start to press and try to make it up. But what you have to do, I'm told, again, bad golfer, so this is not golf advice from me, this is from people who actually know how to play, is you have to refocus and just say, "Forget what I just did," and go back to my simple swing.
And that is exactly what it means to forget, is to say, "Wherever I've been, if Jesus Christ has forgiven it and it's not in His mind, it doesn't need to be in my mind. I can say now I am going to pursue Jesus Christ." One of the things I've learned in years of being a pastor is that sometimes people think that if they do something that isn't great and some people know about it, then what they need is a fresh start. What they do when they think that is they decide that their fresh start means that they'll move to a new town, maybe get a new job, maybe go to a different church. And that if they do those things, then they'll be able to put this behind them and forget it. There may be a time for a fresh start, I'm not saying there never is. But here's what I've observed. What usually happens when somebody does that is they think, "Well, if I go over here where nobody knows, then I escape what happened back here."
But that's the opposite because what the gospel means is it's known by God but forgotten by God. And when you can say, "Even though this is known, I believe the gospel fully enough, the message of Jesus Christ and what He did, to say it's forgiven and forgotten. And if you knew all about me, what you would think would be even worse than what you know." That helps you escape shame because when you say, "I'm going to go get a fresh start," what happens is you go get a fresh start somewhere, and then somebody says in your mind, nobody says it to you, but in your mind, you're like, "Well, if they really knew." Way better to be where somebody already knows, and the gospel is celebrated among us forgets. Remember and forget.
Here's the third word, I'm just going to say the word reach. We see this in these phrases where he says, "But I press on to take hold of that for which Jesus Christ took hold of me." And then he says this, "But one thing I do: Forgetting what's behind and straining toward what's ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize." Again, his athletic imagery here of straining toward the goal was probably a sprint image saying, "I'm straining," like I'm reaching, trying to get across the finish line. And so, he's using this image of saying, "I'm reaching for something that's ahead. Sometimes what happens in a church like Orchard Hill where we talk about the grace of God and the gospel message regularly, is people start to get the idea that as a church we're against effort. But the Christian message is not against the effort, it's against the idea of earning. And there's a big difference between those two.
The idea of earning is I do something, God owes me, I do something so that I fulfill the law of God. Effort says, "I understand that it's Jesus who's done for me that I can't do, but it is worth pursuing because there's something in the pursuit of God that will be good in my life." One of the reasons many of us don't pursue God is we don't have much of a plan. What I mean is if you were to, again using his athletic imagery, if you were to join a gym and say, "I'm going to go to a gym or a workout place, and I'm just going to go and do whatever I feel like doing on the day I walk in there," I guarantee you, you will not have as solid a workout as if you go and you have a trainer who says, "Here's what you're doing, and here's how you're getting better." What some of us do spiritually is we open up our Bible when we feel like it, and we go, "Oh, yeah, this is a nice thought today," instead of saying, "I have some kind of a spiritual development plan that I'm willing to work at to let God work in my life."
I heard years ago somebody put the analogy this way, and like any analogy, it breaks down, but they said, "If you're trying to go somewhere spiritually, you have three options." And they're options on the water. You can get in a rowboat, and you can try to row. Don't think of Lake Moraine but think of a great lake, trying to go across a great lake. It would be pretty hard; you may not make it. You could get in a raft and just say, "I let go. I let God," and float. But your best chance to get to the other side, and again, it breaks down because the spiritual journey I don't think is getting to the other side, if you're in Christ, you have the status already, but in terms of growing in your spiritual life is probably better thought of like a sailboat where we say, "My role is to put myself in a place where the wind can be caught or the sail catches the wind."
So, it's the Spirit of God that does the work. My job is to put myself in the place. That planning, that kind of thinking for many of us, what that will mean is that we say, "Where is it that I'm likely to encounter God and be drawn to God?" And that'll impact our decisions about engagement in public worship and church, about groups, and serving. It'll impact our Bible reading. It'll impact our prayer where we say, "I am wanting to experience who God is." And it's not that I do it to row closer, it's that I do it to set my sail so that the winds of the Spirit can come into my life, and I can be transformed to God's image as I encounter God in different places.
That leads me to one last word, and this again is the opposite of reach, and it's the word relax. You may say, "This really is the opposite." But let me show you again in this text why this word is the opposite. He says this, he says, verse 12, "Not that I've already obtained all of this or have arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me." The reason that I use the word relax here is sometimes when we look at a passage like this that talks about pressing on and straining toward the prize, we start to say, "Everything is up to me." But I love that right here in this passage again we get the image of this being God's deal more than it's our deal. He doesn't say, "Don't take hold," but he says, "God has already taken hold of you." And it's the same thing that he says earlier in the book in chapter one verse six, where he says that God will complete the good work that He began in you.
Here's what I think of when I think of taking hold of. If you've ever been in a crowded public setting with a little child, you know a little bit about this, if it was your niece, your nephew, your son, your daughter, maybe you were babysitting a little brother, sister, kind of a thing. What happens is you get into a crowded space and some kids are like, "I'm running off." But there are other kids who, if it's intense, will hold onto you very tightly, because they'll be nervous. But what do you do if you're the adult in that situation? You reach down, you hold the kid's hand, maybe you put your arm on their shoulder, and you hold onto the child in such a way that no matter how hard they hold onto you or don't hold on to you, that they're not going to get lost in the crowd.
I think that's the picture that's here. Take hold of Jesus Christ for which He has taken hold of you. The implication of this is that you and I don't need to be obsessed with how well we're doing or how poorly we're doing. We don't have to beat ourselves up when we're not doing well. Because if we have come to faith in Jesus Christ, then God, like the parent, the older sibling, has taken hold of us and is moving us toward the goal that He has for us. If that is true for you, that you've trusted Jesus Christ, then that means you can reach while relaxing simultaneously.
But here's what I want to leave you with, and it's kind of where we started. And that is if you think that your joy is saying, "I don't want to strain toward anything. I don't want any restraints. I don't want God or anybody to tell me what to do," that your greatest joy will be found when you say, "I will choose to pursue who God is and what God wants in my life while being able to relax because I know that He's taken hold of me." But for most of us, what that means is bringing some intention to our spiritual life so that we don't simply coast through the days in which we live prioritizing whatever comes to the surface, but instead say, "This is one of the things that really matter to me. To do that, I have to forget my past and remember that this is a worthwhile pursuit where I will encounter God even though my future is already secure."
Now, some of us may be here today and can be in a couple of different places. Some of us are the people who say, "I used to have this be something that was important to me, but it hasn't been important to me." And maybe that's true because of some pain, some disappointments in life, just busy-ness, maybe you feel crushed under just by the demands that are on you, and you say, "Right now, I need margin from anywhere." All I'd like to say is that the joy of knowing the God of the universe, His heart for you, and His desire for you will outweigh whatever you put into that.
Some of us are here and we're saying, "Well, I've always thought that the way that I became right with God was by doing certain things that allowed me to feel good about myself." But the message in Philippians, this repeated theme of the gospel, the word that he uses in the first couple of chapters, he doesn't use it in this passage, but of pressing on toward the prize and the idea of God taking hold of us is, ultimately, that our way of being right with God is not about us earning something, but about what Jesus Christ has done. You today can say to God, "God, I know that I can't earn it, but I want to trust what Jesus Christ has done on my behalf. I acknowledge my sin to you."
In doing that today, then you can enter into that relationship where God takes hold of you and will bring you to His eternity and to that place of perfection, completeness that He talks about here. It doesn't mean there won't be hardship along the way, but it's a starting point to a journey that will bring ultimate joy in the future and even joys along the way when you say, "I know that God's engaged in different parts of my life." And so, you can do that even today right where you are just by acknowledging your sin to God and saying, "God, I trust Jesus Christ."
Father, I thank you for each person who's gathered. And God, I ask today that you would use this passage to encourage each one of us in our journey, our spiritual pathway to identify some ways that we can set our sails so that you can work in our lives, and then arrange our lives in such a way as to make that true. God, I pray that in the midst of wherever we are in our journeys, pain, disappointment, hardship, that you would bring some joy and solace and comfort because of your love and your goodness and your promises to each of us. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.
Thanks for being here. Have a great week.
