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Philippians 3:12-14
One thing in the midst of a thousand
Finger Eleven and the feast prepared for you
This morning it is my privilege to speak to you about one thing.
One thing.
That’s my topic this morning: one thing
That’s the sermon title in your bulletin: one thing
That’s the line in the verse we will look at this morning: one thing
Kind of makes me want to sing [track in the background]
If I traded it all
If I gave it all away for one thing
{This is why Kyle does the sing…ing}
Just for one thing
If I sorted it out
If I knew all about this one thing
Wouldn’t that be something
I want to talk about this song, but I am not here to give you cool songs. I am here for one reason this morning. You might say I am here for one thing: I am here to spread a feast for God’s people.
I am here this morning for God’s people. God’s people who spent entirely too much on Christmas this year. . . God’s people who have had dagger thoughts towards some of their extended family. . . God’s people who didn’t have either personal or family devotions even once during this last week of hecticness. . . God’s people who so seldom seem to get it right.
Life is hard sometimes and for many this time after Christmas is one of the hardest of the entire year and you are starving for approval and love and grace. And my task this morning is to present to you a feast. It won’t happen through the cleverness of my speech. It won’t happen through singing with Finger Eleven (I promise you that). You will only be satisfied by one thing.
I must give you the words of God.
Turn in your Bibles to Philippians 3:12-14. Hear Gods word and be filled:
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.
13 Brothers, 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,
14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
Pray
Two simultaneous calls
Just like the book of Mark, Philippians 3 has two glorious sides to it.
One is what you should be doing, and if you are anything like me, you are failing all over the place.
The other thing is what He already did
One thing is convicting and maybe even a bit troubling
The other thing is encouraging and makes you want to scream out Hallelujah
One thing is a push to be better
The other thing is a reminder that you can rest.
As Christians, we need both of those things don’t we? If you are a non-Christian visitor you may not know this about us Christians—we are messes. Sometimes we’re proud and haughty and holier than thou, but it’s mostly a sinful game we play. In truth, we are pretty big failures. We need to be pushed to accomplish more. And we need to know we can rest in what he accomplished.
We must be both wounded and healed. We must hear both a call to discipleship and a reminder of grace.
Do you see both sides?
12 Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on . . .
13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: . . . straining toward what is ahead,
14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize. . .
There is a real call to do something. To press on, to take hold of something, to win something.
But this is not said at the expense of some key phrases.
12 . . . Christ Jesus took hold of me.
13 . . .Forgetting what is behind
14 . . .God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.
I think verse 12 perfectly encapsulates what I will try to get across
I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me
I am trying to get hold of something
Jesus already got hold of me
What is the one thing I do?
So back to the title and the song and the text here: One Thing
One thing I do, because of one thing he did.
Now this one thing I do comes in a context. Paul is looking forward to the resurrection from the dead. And he says in verse 12, not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect.
I don’t know about you but I am looking forward to the resurrection from the dead as well. I can’t wait for a perfected body. I can’t wait to shed this life of sin. I told you non-Christians that we Christians are huge messes, sin factories. But we don’t want to be. True Christians don’t want to be this way. Their sin grieves them.
They hate the fact that they have accomplished so little for the kingdom. They recognize their guilt, they repent of it, they begin to live a new life and then sometimes a full two minutes goes by and they are again forced to recognize their guilty sin and repent again and start over again. And then three minutes goes by. . . At least that’s what it feels like sometimes. The whole family praying on their knees one minute and 30 seconds after the Amen, there is mass chaos and one kid did his “fake karate kick but accidentally connected” again and you find yourself furiously wrenching his arm almost out of the socket and spanking him and screaming at the other kid to pick up the stinking towel that you told him to do 4 times already since his bath and then yelling at your wife that you can’t do everything yourself. And everyone crying and dad is fuming and… well you probably have a clue what I am talking about.
Now that particular scenario was completely hypothetical. I know nothing about that, but we pastors sin every once in a while too.
My point is that we are all messes. We have not obtained perfection yet. “But,” verse 12 tells us, “we press on to make it our own.”
We have a goal. Holiness. A God-pleasing life. Days spent glorifying our creator and not grieving Him.
We haven’t gotten there yet, verse 13 says, “but one thing I do”
Here it is—One thing.
One thing I do
One thing I do
So Paul has one goal. He has only one thing to do.
Don’t you wish you had only one thing to do?
Its nine days after Christmas. You have been rushing for the last 5 weeks and you just had to make it to Christmas. Then you could relax. But now there is more to do. You have to take down the Christmas tree and clean up all the needles and get the ladder out and take down the outside lights and the manger scene and santa bobble heads and go return those 3 items at Target and Kohls and Toys R Us, and get back to church tonight and that darn car is making a clunking noise which I need to look at and I took work home with me on Friday and I still haven’t done it and it is due tomorrow. And this all on my day of rest.
Lets be real Paul. One thing? I wish I had one thing. Do you remember the days when it felt like you only had one thing to do?
Before kids all you had to do was work and enjoy your spouse
Before marriage you could spend all your time studying and the enjoying the nightlife
Before college every night was me time hanging out at Cuginis new hugely improved
facility and doing slurpee runs
Before school years, just watching super hero cartoons and playing with star wars figures.
But now, life is insanity. Families to manage, bills to pay, ministry to be done, garages to be cleaned, traffic to sit in.
And youth, I made it seem like your life was easier, but I am not stupid. We all look back on earlier years as easier, but they weren’t. You guys have it hard. You don’t just study. There are two a days and side jobs and dating fiascos and friends gossiping about you and chores and homework and watching siblings and doing ministry and paying bills.
So you have a thousand things to do and Paul says “one thing I do.”
One thing
What is that one thing?—pressing on toward the goal.
The goal is the fullness of blessings and rewards in the age to come, most especially being in perfect fellowship with Christ forever (ESV study notes).
How do we do that?
1) We develop a holy dissatisfaction
Paul's pursuit of Christ rises out of a profound dissatisfaction with the way he is. Could it be that there is a connection between how little earnest pursuit of God there is today in the church and how much we are told to think well of ourselves? It is a wonderful thing to have been taken possession of by Christ. But it is a thousand times more wonderful when we realize that he has taken possession of people who remain sinful.
We can not be satisfied. Read the word and look at yourself. We have not arrived.
I know some people think guilt is unhealthy. You might say, Pastor, we don’t need a negative appeal for people to think more about their guilt. We already think too much about this.
I am not convinced actually. I think most of our bad feelings about ourselves are rooted in pride.
For example, suppose you go to a dinner party and find out when you get there that you are dressed wrong; and then you spill your coffee; and then you don't know which fork to pick up first; and then the joke you attempt falls flat; and when you are leaving, you call your hostess by the wrong name. How do you feel about yourself when you get home? Rotten. You hate yourself. You're depressed. You don't want to show your face. You feel like quitting your job. What's the use when you're such a klutz? Now I ask, where does all that low self-image come from? Whence all these depressing, immobilizing, self-denouncing feelings? Is the answer: God's offended glory or your offended pride? People who are depressed and immobilized and angry because their behavior has injured the glory of God are very, very rare. But people who are depressed and immobilized and angry because their behavior has prevented them from having a reputation of being cool and competent are very, very common. (John Piper, Following hard after God)
Holy dissatisfaction with our godliness is not a common thing. We must feel terrible that we possess so little of Christ.
2) Forget the things which lie behind
Forgetting what lies behind does not mean we should block all things from our memory. In fact, in a minute I am going to concentrate our entire focus on something that happened in the past and I am going to say this should be in the forefront of your mind every moment.
But we should not look back on our failures. That is, recognize them as such, feel terrible guilt and then stop dwelling on them. We may look back but only for the sake of pressing forward.
3) Strain Forward to What Lies ahead
Then strain forward. Like Paul says to the Corinthians. "Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified."
We are athletes and we plan and we strive. No one reaches the goal without a plan. If you want joy, it comes through discipline and self denial.
Here's an example of how Jonathan Edwards followed Paul's example. Sereno Dwight writes,
He carefully observed the effects of different sorts of good, and selected those which best suited his constitution, and rendered him most fit for mental labor . . . In this respect he lived by rule, and constantly practiced great self-denial; as he did also with regard to the time passed in sleep. He accustomed himself to arise at four or between four and five in the morning: and in winter spent several of those hours in study which are commonly wasted in slumber. In the evening he usually allowed himself a season of relaxation in the midst of his family.
Now you don’t have to be like Jonathan Edwards but you need a goal. You need a plan. You must plan to know more the will of God and word of God and the wonder of God. You must plan to spend time in prayer and study and worship and you must strain to make it happen.
Just a quick aside. I have guides on the back table that I would love you to pick up to help you read through the Bible in a year. After all it’s the new year. Make a resolution that you will read the whole bible in a year.
Are you straining after him? Christian, are you seeking him?
In 1949, A. W. Tozer said in his fantastic book the Pursuit of God
How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of 'accepting' Christ . . . and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the worshiping, seeking, singing church on that subject is crisply set aside. The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture which would certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutherford or a Brainerd. (pp. 16–17)
Great book on the back book table.
The point is that Grace begets a desire for more grace
Tozer rejects the idea that if you have found God in Christ, that you don’t have to seek him anymore.
We find God and we still pursue him.
St. Bernard sang it:
We taste Thee, O Thou Living Bread,
And long to feast upon Thee still: