INTRODUCTION
Last week we spoke about leaving the past in the past.
We said that past obstacles, past sins and even past successes can keep us in the past and keep us from completing our journey and receiving our crown.
It can keep us from reaching the goal God has set for us to obtain.
The scripture that we used can be found in Philippians 3:13, which reads, in partial, as follows:
Philippians 3:13a KJV
(13) Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind …
We need to ensure that the things in our past, our past failures, our past sins and our past successes, do not stand in the way of us reaching our goal.
Now today we move from the past to the future.
We all have a path and a calling that we have to travel and fulfil and the successful completion of our journey depends on us reaching towards the future and not staying in the past.
If you are not reaching towards the future, how can you ever think of completing the race, of getting to the end, of reaching your goal?
That said let’s read our scripture for this morning, which is Philippians 3:12-14.
You will see that it is the exact same scripture that we read last week.
SCRIPTURE
Philippians 3:12-14 KJV
(12) Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
(13) Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
(14) I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us pray
SERMON
Introduction
Our verse for this morning can be found in the latter part of verse 13, which says that we should be “reaching forth unto those things which are before”, and verse 14 that states that we should “press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus”
You would agree with me that this has to do with the future.
Paul is not speaking about our past here.
He is not saying that we should reach backwards or press away from.
He is saying that we should reach forth and press towards.
That, in my understanding, is a forward movement.
That is something that is deliberately done towards the future.
That is an action into the future.
But before we continue, let us first read some of the preceding verses.
Story
This past Friday I was driving to work.
Everything was going smoothly until I turned into one of the smaller streets close to where I work.
There, in front of me, was the thing that most drivers hate and fear.
Slow traffic...
The cars were going extremely slow and I must admit I was a little, if not a lot, frustrated.
Then I saw some of the cars making a u-turn to take another road.
This was obviously the quickest road to their destination, but they were not willing to wait just a little bit longer in this traffic.
They were not willing to stay the course, to stay in their position.
So, because of their condition they chose to change their position.
I chose to stay the course for it was only a 1Km piece of road that I had to endure.
You see, because we were going so slow we were able to give cars coming from the side roads a chance to also enter the road we were on.
Usually we would just drive past them, not giving them even one eye lid.
But this day we gave them an opportunity to get in front of us on this road.
It’s actually ironic if you think of it.
Here we are going super slow and still we give another car an opportunity to go before us.
When we were going fast we did not even realise they were waiting, the less of a thought to give them an opportunity in front of us.
Then God spoke to me.
He has placed us on our road for a reason.
He made us who we are and he gave us what we need in order for us to stay on the road and stay the course.
But life is not always smooth sailing.
Sometimes it slows down.
Sometimes things happen on this road that changes your condition.
Maybe you fall into financial problems or marital problems or work related problems.
Whatever it might be, it has to do with your condition.
And the thing is, many people on the road, when they start experiencing problems, choose to change their position.
They choose to take another road.
And the problem with this is that it is not the road that God chose for them.
And, instead of receiving blessing as a result of this, they lose out on the blessings.
Just as I had an opportunity to get people on the road because of the condition I found myself in, so also you can get an opportunity to bring someone to Christ as a result of what’s happening in your life.
So rather than allowing your condition to influence your position.
Rather than changing your position because of your condition, you should change your condition and stay in your position.
Condition vs. Position
Now, before I continue I believe that it is important to understand what I mean by condition and position.
So therefore the first question to ask is what is my position?
Well, the Bible makes it very clear.
We are in Christ.
He is the tree and we are the branches.
Therefore we are spiritually fed by His blessings, by His Grace, by His life.
If we are not connected to the branch then we are not in Him and He is not in us.
Then it means that there is something wrong with our position.
Our condition is the state of our spiritual life.
Are we new believers, are we mature believers?
It is the Spiritual growth you find yourself in.
It is also that what is going on in your life.
It is the problems you experience on the road.
So, when I say that your condition should not be the cause of you changing your position, I am in fact saying that, it does not matter what happens in your life, stay in Christ.
Stay connected to the branch.
Stay connected to God’s blessings, to His Grace, to His power, to His life
Because the moment your position as a Christian changes, that is the moment you are in serious trouble.
That is the moment you not only get disconnected to the source of life, but you also lose out on His blessings.
For example where you get the opportunity to help others find their way onto the road.
So you should never be content with your condition.
Only with your position.
Your condition should constantly change
Let me make a statement this morning:
Your condition should constantly change
Sometimes we find ourselves content with our current condition, so much so that we do not move any more.
We stay in one place.
There are some people, some Christians, that believe that, when they have reached a certain age, or have been saved a certain number of years, or have gain a certain amount of knowledge, or have done a certain quantity of work for the Lord, that they have reached the pinnacle of their condition.
They believe that, when they reach that point that they can now stop and relax.
Let’s find out what Paul has to say about this.
Paul’s Qualifications
In the preceding verses Paul tells us how qualified he was:
Philippians 3:4-6 GW
(4) …If anyone else thinks that he can trust in something physical, I can claim even more.
(5) I was circumcised on the eighth day. I'm a descendant of Israel. I'm from the tribe of Benjamin. I'm a pure-blooded Hebrew. When it comes to living up to standards, I was a Pharisee.
(6) When it comes to being enthusiastic, I was a persecutor of the church. When it comes to winning God's approval by keeping Jewish laws, I was perfect.
Paul writes this letter to the church of Philippi.
He is in jail, but still very positive.
It is also about 30 years after his conversion that he writes this letter.
So here, in the verses we just read, Paul tells us that he did everything expected off him and more.
I believe that, from a human perspective, we could say that he made it.
He attained the perfect position.
He did it.
He reached his goal.
He reached the perfect condition.
But then Paul continues…
Everything is worthless in comparison to Jesus
Philippians 3:7-9 GW
(7) These things (he is talking about the thigs he mentioned in the preceding verses) that I once considered valuable, I now consider worthless for Christ.
(8) It's far more than that! I consider everything else worthless because I'm much better off knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. It's because of him that I think of everything as worthless. I threw it all away in order to gain Christ
(9) and to have a relationship with him. This means that I didn't receive God's approval by obeying his laws. The opposite is true! I have God's approval through faith in Christ. This is the approval that comes from God and is based on faith
So let’s be clear.
Paul is not saying here that everything he did and everything that he accomplished is worthless?
He is not saying that everything in life, his education, his spiritual accomplishments, his faithfulness, his obedience, his enthusiasm, is worthless?
No, I do not believe that this is what Paul is saying here.
When we read the KJV it reads as follows:
Philippians 3:8 KJV
(8) Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
The KJV use the English word “loss” instead of “worthless”, which comes from the Greek word “zēmia”, which comes from the base word “damazō”, which means “tame”.
So we could translate that verse as follows:
Yea doubtless, and I count all things but tame for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffered the tameness of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ,
What Paul is saying here is that, compared to Jesus Christ, everything else is tame.
Everything else is meek, submissive, and docile.
Paul is not saying that everything is a waste of tame.
No!
He says that, in comparison to Jesus, everything else is tame.
He says that he considers it as dung, (“and do count them but dung”) which, when translated from Greek, means “that which is thrown to the dogs.”
In other words, He placed Jesus above all else.
Above his linage, above his education, above his spiritual accomplishments, above his lifestyle, above his enthusiasm.
He placed Jesus above everything else and that makes everything else look worthless in comparison.
It made everything else look like scraps you would throw to the dogs.
Paul is writing to the Church
Another important thing to remember here is that Paul was not writing to the lost.
He was writing to Christians.
He was writing to people who are converted to Christianity.
So if you are a born again Christian then this applies to you as well.
This is important to understand in the context of my sermon title which is CHANGE YOUR CONDITION, NOT YOUR POSITION.
If you are a Born Again Christian, then your Position is right.
But if you are not, then your position is wrong and only then should you change your position.
But the moment you are born again your position is right and should never change.
Let me explain this quickly
If you are an athlete and you were selected to run the 1200m, you would be in a specific race, in a specific position.
You will not be placed in the race to run the 100m for example.
You are a 1200m athlete.
Therefore your position should be on the course to run the 1200m.
If someone should change your position and place you with the athletes running the 100m, how would you perform?
Depending on the circumstances I don’t think you would be doing very well, because your position has changed from the one you are intended to be in.
You will be out of your depth in the 100m.
But if you were to run the 1200m race you would feel that you are at home.
You would feel that this is what you were born to do.
This was the race you were chosen to run.
This is your position.
If this is what you are good at then you would, naturally, have all you need to perform well in this distance, in this position.
But say you run this race and at the 1000m mark you are out of breath and you feel you cannot continue any more.
You have not taken the effort to train and condition yourself to run this race.
You have given up training 6 months prior to this race because; at that time you were in great shape.
You WERE in great condition.
Would you then place the blame on your position or on your condition?
You would place the blame on your condition.
As long as you are in the race, as long as you are competing, you need to ensure that your condition is changed continuously.
If you neglect to change it then you will not be able to finish the race and get the prize.
So, we need to change our condition, not our position.
At this point I want to explore our position a bit further at the hand of our scripture this morning.
What is our position as Christians?
As Christians we need to ask ourselves what our position are.
Verse 12 gives us an explanation:
Philippians 3:12 KJV
(12) … I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.
I must confess that, at first this piece of scripture was very difficult for me to understand.
“That I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.”
I then looked at the ESV translation, which opened it up a bit:
Philippians 3:12 ESV
(12) … I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own.
Immediately we are confronted with a new challenge.
What is it Paul is talking about here?
What does he press on to make his own?
This is where it becomes very important to understand that we should not read scripture in isolation.
Let’s look at the next 2 verses:
Philippians 3:13-14 ESV
(13) Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,
(14) I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Paul is saying that he presses on to one day receive the prize, the crown, in heaven by pursuing the perfect condition of Christlikeness.
He is saying that Jesus Christ, through grace, changed his position to be in Christ, but that his condition has not reached that place yet.
Therefore, his position cannot and should not change, but he needs to pursue the goal of becoming just like Jesus Christ
In other words - Christlikeness.
He has not yet reached his goal
Then he makes another statement.
He states that, in spite of what he has accomplished and in spite of where he comes from, he has NOT made it yet as we as humans would like to belief.
He says the following in verses 12 & 13 and I will read from the God’s Word translation:
Philippians 3:12-13a GW
(12) It's not that I've already reached the goal or have already completed the course. But I run to win that which Jesus Christ has already won for me.
(13) Brothers and sisters, I can't consider myself a winner yet.
Paul, in all that he has accomplished, in everything he went through for the Gospel, for everything he has done, says that he has not yet reached his goal.
If Paul says this, how can we ever say that we have reached our goal?
How can we ever say that we have made it?
We reach forward to the future to reach our goal, yes, but we will never reach it until the day we die or Jesus comes to get us.
You position in Christ is secure by the grace of God.
It is your condition that needs to be developed.
You are not yet who you are supposed to be.
I do not care if you are 90 years old and have been serving the Lord for 80 years.
You are still in the race.
You have still to reach your goal.
You need to be aware of the need to chase after a better condition
If you believe that you have reached spiritual perfection it means that you will not belief that there is anything to pursue.
That means that you have either jump out of the race or you are stuck at the last position in the race before you believed that you have made it.
If you are content with your current spiritual position then you have fallen out of the race.
Paul makes it perfectly clear that he has not yet made it.
So we can make the following statement:
You need to be dissatisfied with your current condition
If we read the letter it becomes apparent that Paul is discontented with his current position.
It has been 30 years after his conversion and yet he is not content with his position.
He hasn’t arrived yet.
What should our goal be?
To be like Christ, in other words Christlikeness.
God has a perfect standard and no human on earth has reached that standard ever.
You are still in the race, pursuing the prize.
Pursuing perfection.
F.B. Myer, an English Baptist preacher in the early 90s, said the following:
"Self-dissatisfaction lies at the root of our noblest achievements."
Example - David
David, when he heard Goliath mocking God, did not change his position.
All he did was change his condition.
If he took on Goliath with his own strength;
If he took on Goliath from a positon outside Christ;
Do you think he would have been able to defeat him with a small stone?
I don’t think so.
But David changed his condition, he did not run, he took on the problem face on, and, from his position in Christ, he defeated the giant.
The rest of the Israelites, when they were faced with Goliath, ran away.
1 Samuel 17:24 ESV
(24) All the men of Israel, when they saw the man, fled from him and were much afraid.
They changed their position because of their condition.
Remember what David said to Goliath just before he killed him?
1 Samuel 17:45-46 GW
(45) …"You come to me with sword and spear and javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of Armies, the God of the army of Israel, whom you have insulted.
(46) Today the LORD will hand you over to me. I will strike you down and cut off your head. And this day I will give the dead bodies of the Philistine army to the birds and the wild animals. The whole world will know that Israel has a God.
Did you see this?
Despite the problem that David faced he faced it from the right position.
What do you do when you are facing problems, troubles, bad things in your life?
Do you change your position and run away or do you take a stand and say:
I come to you in the name of the LORD.
I come to you because of my position in Christ.
I am sitting in higher places with Christ in heaven and therefore I operate from there.
CONCLUSION
If you want to achieve anything in your spiritual life then you have to become dissatisfied with your current condition.
If you are content with your current condition then you are in danger.
You might find that you have become unresponsive to sin.
You might find that you defend yourself from your sins when, in fact, you should be admitting that you are weak and searching for spiritual strength.
If you wat to grow spiritually you have to recognize that you are not yet where you ought to be.
You have to run the course.
You are not yet perfect.
Paul accentuates this statement when he wrote the following to the church of Corinth as documented in:
1 Corinthians 13:12b KJV
(12) …now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
We all sin and therefore we can never be perfect.
If you find that you have come to a place where you have had enough church, enough prayer, enough teachings from God’s Word, enough of fellowshipping with God’s people, enough of reading God’s Word.
If you find yourself at such a place then you are in danger.
If you find yourself at such a place then you have become as perfect as you believe you can and should be.
That means you believe that you are as perfect as Jesus Himself because, after all, that is the ultimate goal – Christlikeness.
Before you are able to reach out to the future, you have to realise that you have to pursue a better condition.
And never ever allow your condition to change your position.
Change your condition not your position.
Let us pray
