One Thing! Series

Technicolor JOY: Philippians 3:12-17

Pastor Jefferson M. Williams

Chenoa Baptist Church

08-20-2023

Mile 9 (Part 1)

My first half marathon was in November. First mistake. At the start of the race, it was about 34 degrees. At mile two, it started to rain. Not sleet. Not snow. Cold, cold rain. My shoes filled with water, making squishing noises with each step I took.

As I ran past the elk, (did I mention that the race went through an elk preserve), I wondered out loud why I chose this race.

At mile seven, my right knee started to throb. At mile nine, my left knee started to hurt. I slowed down to a painful hobbled waddle.

I wondered if I was going to be able to finish the race. I was discouraged, waterlogged, and tempted to just go sit down and pet an elk for a while.

What happened? Stay tuned at the end of the sermon for the rest of the story.

Review

Two weeks ago, we watched as Paul engaged in some spiritual trash talk with the false teachers.

“If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for righteousness based on the law, faultless.”

This is Paul’s spiritual resume. It is the top of the stack, the cream of the crop, and can’t touch this resume of resumes.

He presents this to the Judaizers to show them that if anyone thinks they are good enough to get into heaven, he beats them on every count.

Yet, what Paul does next is mind-blowing - he rips up his spiritual resume!

“But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage..”

Paul is using the word picture of a ledger sheet that accountants would use. On one side are gains and the other column includes losses.

Paul looks at his spiritual resume, all the things he thought made him good enough for heaven and he realized that he is spiritually bankrupt! None of those things - the right birth, the right nationality, the right upbringing, the right parents, the right standard, the right passion, the right morality, gets him any closer to heaven.

In a shocking twist, he moves them all to the loss column. Notice the word gains is plural and the word loss is singular. What remains in the gains column? Only one thing - Jesus!

This is past tense. But thirty years later, he reevaluates this decision. Someone might wonder if he still thinks that decision was worth it.

He then writes nearly the same thing again, except this sentence is in the present. He doesn’t regret his conversion at all.

And yet, he looks at the things he used to be so proud of and calls it “scubula.” This word can mean garbage but it can also mean poop. He says those things are like garbage scraps that you would throw to the wild dogs, or like dog poop that you get on your shoes, or like the smell of a day-old dirty diaper.

I love the way that Eugene Peterson paraphrases these verses:

“The very credentials these people are waving around as something special, I’m tearing up and throwing out with the trash—along with everything else I used to take credit for. And why? Because of Christ. Yes, all the things I once thought were so important are gone from my life. Compared to the high privilege of knowing Christ Jesus as my Master, firsthand, everything I once thought I had going for me is insignificant—dog dung. I’ve dumped it all in the trash so that I could embrace Christ and be embraced by him.” (Phil 3:7-8, The Message)

Everything can be moved to the loss column because the only thing that is worthy of the gains column is the “surpassing worth of knowing Christ.”

“…that I may gain Christ and 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 on the basis of faith. I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”

Knowing Jesus was Paul’s greatest desire. Is that your desire as well?

Martin Lloyd Jones wrote:

"I am not asking whether you know things about Him but do you know God, are you enjoying God, is God the centre of your life, the soul of your being, the source of your greatest joy? He is meant to be."