Concordia Lutheran Church
March 21, 2010
What Are You Holding on To?
Phil 3:4-14
As you realize that the things we leave behind, some which brought us pain, and some in which we confidently based our identity, may we intimately know the power of His resurrection, given to us by God our Father, through the grace afforded to us in Christ’s death and resurrection. AMEN!
Robbing Paul’s passion:
In our bulletin today, something is unusual. Three little letters, that follow the identification of where out epistle reading is found in scripture. Anybody remember what translation is abbreviated KJV? Normally, the readings are taken from the English Standard Version, or occasionally I use other modern translations like the NKJV, the CEV, the NJB or the Message. All are accurate, but occasionally, like in this passage, they soften the message a little. They clean it up, so it won’t be as offensive. But sometimes, the message of scripture is offensive.
At the beginning of the chapter we are looking at, Paul refers to those who intentionally require people to do works in order to be saved in a derogatory fashion. Because one of the things they require is circumcision, he refers to them as the mutilation, but even then, that is the clean edition. The Greek is the phrase “cut off” instead of circumcision’s “cut around”.
Similarly, here, in verse 8, the translation is softened. Where the King James uses dung, modern translations clean it up, translating it garbage(3), worthless(3), rubbish (10)and filth (3). One modern translation uses dog-dung. But there is a bit of a difference between dung and trash. For example – some of us have some trash in our car, straw wrappers or napkins, junk mail – right? We tolerate it for a while – but how many of us would tolerate dung, or insert either of our two modern words for it, in your car? We could say the same for kitchens or garages, or college dorm rooms. We will tolerate garbage or trash or rubbish, but how long would someone tolerate “dung” in those places?
Would you agree – that crap is more offensive than “rubbish” or “trash”? That in cleaning up the scriptures, in reality, the translators have weakened how offensively Paul is referring to something?
Paul’s passionate feelings about the topic we are looking at, are diminished in the translation. So I used the old King James, because it expresses what Paul believes so strongly. All that he left behind, when Christ took hold of him, is dung to him.
Paul’s Context
The battle
A little bit of history will help us understand Paul’s position here. Paul was once the prize student of the prize teacher in Judaism. He makes that case here, and in other places. The reason he has to make it is equally clear. There are those people who consider themselves “experts” in Jewish law, who still teach the rules of the Pharisees are binding on Christians. Circumcision is required, as is ritualistic fashion, as is doing good works, and making sacrifices – before one can truly be a Christian. They will claim that their teaching is more accurate, and that Paul just doesn’t understand, and couldn’t understand. They want people to put their trust in their own words, leading them to God.
Paul knows better, and so should those he has taught. The passionate use of terms in this passage show the importance of the matter then, and it is no less important now. It is no less than the difference between viewing God as our father, and viewing God as some hyper-legalistic divinity that wants to crush those who failed Him. It’s the difference between a relationship with God, and seeing God simply as a puppetmaster. It’s the difference between life in Christ, and a dead system.
So Paul fights it on their terms. You want someone who can have confidence in their knowledge – he says – let’s compare and see how I do against these experts.
Are you guys part of God’s people from birth – Paul says “I am!”
What about from God’s chosen people going all the way back to Abraham – I am
I speak the language that God’s scripture was preserved in – for that’s what being Hebrew of the Hebrews means – most scholars used the Greek LXX for their work – but Paul was in the exclusive group that went back to the originals.
He was accepted into the group of men considered holiest – not holier than thou, but truly holy men – that is what the Pharisees were.
As you go through these things, I can imagine the church in Phillipi thinking they are watching a battle between the guys they had confidence in, who has a jackknife, and Paul, who is in a Marine Corp battle tank,
Paul will go on from his genetics and education to his experience – that the top Jewish leaders trusted him with the hardest work – routing out the heretics in their gathering. Everyone who knew him, considered him holy – no one could find anything that made him unholy.
The education, the experience – he had it all. He knew the benefit of all the right connections, all the right training, and used it well. He knew he had the advantage.
He valued it as much as fills a toilet...
Our Old Context
If Paul’s things are skubala
Things we count on confidently
Other dung…
Martydom confidence
We have ways in which we define ourselves, just as Paul had once defined ourselves. We have things we trust in, parts of our backgrounds we have confidence in, just as Paul once did. There are studies out there, more numerous to count that talk of what people trust in to get them to heaven. Some trust in their being this race or that race. Others think that since America is the greatest nation on earth, that good Americans are God’s favorite and will be in heaven. Some talk of the things that they have done, helping people, or going to church, or giving to charities, or being part of the right denomination.
And like Paul’s background, all of this is worth as much as dung.
Others look not to the great things in their life, but the pains. The fact is that they see themselves suffering as martyrs for that, which is right. Using the language of our midweek service – they have unrealized expectations. They can recount all the times they were faithful, and others were not. We can count the number of times we’ve been betrayed, and the sins we’ve forgiven in our mind, yet remember all too well the pain and dwell in those memories.
I asked the question the other day – which is harder – to forgive, and give up such a martyr complex, or to be forgiven, and give up the shame and guilt of not being able to be better, to be holy, to be righteous. Many of the responses talked about the concept of forgiving – not the decision too, but the reality of no longer dwelling with the pain that was caused by forgiving, as being difficult.
It’s all dung…. and there is only one thing that can help us see it as that. Only one thing can show us, that all the things that we hang onto, are nothing but dung.
Our New Context…
Righteous
Symmorphe
Death
Resurrection!
The struggle – realizing Christ has made me His own..
That’s what we press on towards
When Paul talks about righteousness not being ours, he speaks of experience. Even with all of his advantages, he could not meet the standards, and all that he counted on, in his old life, was meaningless.
He must have found something worth more than all that had gone before, he had to have found something incredible, that would not just distract him for the moment, but would be so valuable, that he would never want to let go.
You see, Paul didn’t identify himself by all his credentials, he identified himself as on who Christ apprehended. I love that picture – of God apprehending us, stopping us, interrupting us in this life, that we might be found in Him.
You see, that is what this is all about, not just being identified as being Christians, but knowing Him. That word there is not just the kind of knowledge where I know the details, but it presupposes the most intimate kind of friendship, where there are no secrets, and we are bonded to each other.
Paul is talking here in verse 10 about our being apprehended by Christ when He baptizes us. We know this because the language is nearly identical to passages like Romans 6, and Colossians 2, where we fellowship – that’s the word for commune by the way – with His sufferings, and are being conformed with Him is His death.
3 Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. 6 We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. Romans 6:3-6 (ESV)
This is what it is all about, this incredible relationship that we have with God. We don’t have to identify ourselves as being good, or being perfect, our entire identity is found in the fact that we are His.
That’s what this meal we are about to share is all about. God inviting us to dine with Him. To take and eat, and take and drink and to intimately know we have been made Christ, that we are clothed with Him, hid in Him, co-heirs with Him, transformed into His likeness. A righteous likeness, a complete likeness.
All that other stuff will pass away… this will endure for ever.
Grasping this, understanding this, dealing with the fact that God sees you as His righteous children, now that is worth struggling with. When you come to the table this morning, when you take the Bread and Body, when you drink the wine and blood of Christ. I urge you – grasp on to what it means, what God has apprehended you to,
Hear Isaiah’s words,
19 Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert. 20 The wild beasts will honor me, the jackals and the ostriches, for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my chosen people, 21 the people whom I formed for myself that they might declare my praise.
Isaiah 43:19-21 (ESV)
SO let us realize and inded celebrate that which He has done, the new thing that makes us forget how we identified ourselves before, and know He has formed us, for Himself,.
Stripped of all we have had to maintain, let us live in His peace, the indescribable peace of God which passes all understanding, and guards our hearts, and minds, in Christ Jesus. AMEN?
