| |
November 30, 2003 |
"Philippians"
Know Him, Knowing Joy |
Pastor Brian Shimer
| |
"Letting It Go ..."
Philippians 3: 1-11
| I. |
How can your life count for God? What can you do so your life matters?
| |
How can you please God? Or Can you?
These are life questions that drive people's thinking and their choices.
These questions kept Chuck Holton pursuing his career as a special service agent. In '94 he was assigned to the President's private quarters. He was there when there was an assassination attempt. He knew he was just where he wanted to be, but then began to wonder about the amount of time he had to be gone from home. He knew his family was paying the price for his success. He worked 3 out of every four weekends, missed his wedding anniversary while riding camels around the Egyptian pyramids protecting Tipper Gore and missed his daughter's birthday while protecting the President in Hawaii. Was this a life that counted for God while his family suffered?
Chuck heard Dr Dobson on the radio saying, "Men, if your career is causing you to miss out on your family, you need to pray and ask God to provide you a job where you can be a true husband to your wife and a good father to your children." He began to weep and sought God for that very thing. Now he is a Senior Department of Homeland Security Liaison to the FBI and home every weekend while working to help safeguard our country. He says that one of the best days of his life was when his son asked if he would be his best man at his wedding. He changed his pursuit and has discovered meaning. (excerpted from an article by Chuck in Focus On the Family Dec 2003 Family magazine, p 18-20).
"God," I wrote on the yellow piece of scratch paper, "I want my life to count for you." The date was February 1st, 1983. I was sitting at the front desk as a travel agent at Adventure Travel in Montecito, California. I had been working with the agency for nearly 2 years. I had worked my way into that world, was good at my job, but felt like it was increasingly meaningless to my heart. Did it accomplish anything for the Kingdom?
It could have, but it was not where God wanted me at that point. That prayer led to my call into the ministry. And I spent years in this office seeking to "make my life count" for God by my diligent service, by long hours of prayer, by reading chapters of the Bible everyday, by memorizing, by serving, by pleasing people. I tried to please God by all those methods but was doing it to earn His love not because I was assured of His love already and so, I failed.
What does Paul say about all this to the Philippians?
|
| II. |
Paul says to the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord - in other words | |
rejoice in the intimate faith communion they have with Jesus, not
rejoice in their works and warns them about those among them who are seeking to make them rejoice in the wrong things. Paul called the Judaizers -- who wanted everyone circumcised -- mutilators of the flesh. And Paul said he was just as bad as them, trying to make his life count for God by his pristine background and his religious service. He had a great job working for the high and mighty Jewish leaders. He had hot credentials. Paul had had the best teacher in Jerusalem. Were he alive today he would have had a PhD in Religion from the most prestigious of universities. But, Paul says with all that he lacked life.
| |
A. Life does not count more because of works. You cannot earn
God's love, you already have it. You had it before you even converted for God so loved the World that he gave His Son. God is love, love is not something you earn but receive.
Paul did not learn this until he was en route for Damascus. Jesus knocked him off his horse and blinded him before Paul SAW the truth that he had been spiritually blind all along. Paul had missed the boat on truth. The truth is that life counts because of Jesus.
When Paul met Jesus he laid down all the works. How does he say it?
Look with me at verse 7: "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ." And then in verse 8 Paul says it again, "what is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ…"
Pursuit of houses, lands, machines, identity in relationships or sin, stocks and bonds, jobs, or even good religious works - What would be on your list? - it is all empty without Jesus.
Is it as amazing to you as it is to me that so many passages in the Bible focus us upon this very basic theme? All of us have trouble here. We work hard to impress God, to earn His love, to have God like us, when all along the Father is saying, I sent my Son, he paid the price, don't seek to earn what you have all along! Instead, child, walk in the works I have created for you to walk in, works that will fulfill you, that will express the love you have experienced and have already, works that will give you joy!
B. Life counts when we have a single focus -- to know Jesus. Then life will not be wasted . Once Jesus is in the life equation, everything counts. Secular employment becomes ministry, family becomes church, and relationships have life. Paul wrote to the Roman Christians: "There is only one God, and there is only one way of being accepted by him. He makes people right with himself only by faith…"
The key that changed Paul's life was Jesus. "I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing value of knowing Christ…"
C. The surpassing value of knowing Christ.
1. To know Jesus that was Paul's ultimate goal. What did Paul mean by "Knowing Jesus?"
Paul has just said that he is a Hebrew of Hebrews. Anyone remember what I said that meant back four weeks when we began this book?
I had to look it up too. It means that Paul grew up speaking Hebrew, his family had not lost the "mother tongue" as so many Jews had. Paul's understanding of the Scriptures would then be from an intimate understanding of the Hebrew language and culture. And Paul would know that "knowledge" in the Old Testament "tends first of all to be personal."
"Many people focus on knowledge about something, and there is objectivity, detachment, and separation in this type of knowledge. The word know is used in another way in the Old Testament. Genesis 1-3 tells the story of Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. In order to understand that word knowledge, one must read Genesis 4:1: "Now Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain." The kind of knowledge indicated here is deeply personal and reciprocal. It is easy to understand why God did not want His people to have this intimate understanding of evil. A man's knowledge of his wife is infinitely different from his knowledge of physics or history. Knowledge of those things is to be used, but knowledge of another person is a knowledge of identification and reciprocity. In that relationship your life becomes mingled with another's, and the two become one."
"Paul's desire to know Christ is a desire to have his life merged with Christ's in such a way that he cannot be separated from Jesus and Jesus cannot be separated from him." (above 3 quotes: D Kinlaw, this Day with the Master, Feb 18 reading, FAB 2002, ubp)
When Jesus becomes inseparable from the many parts of our lives, we will be experiencing more of his life in our lives - we will have his perspective on problems.
2. Paul wants to also know His power. One of the most amazing experiences I have had in years was when we were in Peru watching as hundreds of people were responding to our simple and honest presentation of the good news! We were all staggered. But what amazed us more was the power surging through our weak and often sick bodies to carry on the Work.
It is the supernatural power to do what we cannot do, it is the ability to stay in the conversation when everything in you wants to run; it is the courage to stand for the truth when people are shouting lies. Paul said he had experienced his power made perfect in human weakness.
God does not give us a spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind. The kingdom of God is not a matter of talk, but of power. When I counsel people, most of the counsel is in prayer. I listen and pray. This helps the most, because in this way I assist them in gaining access to Jesus and His power. The same power that raised Jesus works in you and me. Do we lack anything then for life? Do we lack anything then for our lives to count for Him? No we lack nothing -- "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want…" David penned.
3. If the Lord is My Shepherd, then we know that "even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me…"
Such a valley is a place of suffering.
Paul says he wants to Know the fellowship of His sufferings. When we walk through suffering times we know His presence so much more than when we are in easy times. It is then we draw closest to Him. When Jeanne Guyon was imprisoned for her faith in the Bastille in France for 30 years in the late 17th Century, she discovered such joy not despair. From prison she wrote "Oh, the unspeakable happiness of belonging to Jesus Christ! Belonging to Jesus Christ is the true balm which sweetens all those pains and sorrows which are so inseparable from this earthly life" (Experiencing the Depths of Jesus Christ, Publ by Gene Edwards 1975, ubp, p. 139)
Nothing draws us closer to Jesus than suffering.
4. So Paul wants to know Christ, His resurrection Power, the fellowship of His sufferings so that he can attain to the resurrection. That is to know the HOPE offered in Jesus. Hope the beginning of advent. Hope through which the relationship we have with Jesus shines.
I received an email recently telling of four businessmen in Chicago whose meeting ran late, taxi got stuck in a traffic jam, and arrived at the airport with minutes before their flight was due to depart. The guys raced through the airport, made it through security, but in their hurry past the stands along the corridor, bumped into a table displaying bags of apples. The apples flew all directions and they ran on. One stopped, yelled to his friends to tell his wife he would be on the next flight and raced back. There he found the girl who had been selling the apples, was blind and in tears as she tried to collect her lost goods. He apologized to her, and helped collect all the apples, restoring her stand. He put $20 in her hand and told her he was sorry again for their clumsiness. As he walked away, the girl having said thank you already, said, "Mister?"
He stopped and turned, "yes?"
"Are you Jesus?" She asked.
Make Paul's goal your own if it is not already - to know Christ. For then you will see and hear with His perspective. Then you will know the power, the fellowship, and the hope as you show forth Jesus to others.
|
|
|