THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
“The Comparison Trap”
Philippians 3:12-4:1
One of my heroes in the NT is the apostle Paul. If anyone had the right to brag, it would be him. Think about it...
• Jesus appeared to Paul when he was traveling on the road to Damascus. They had a conversation and then Paul was saved and the entire direction of his life was changed. He met Jesus personally.
• On another occasion, Paul was called up into the third heaven and given a chance as to whether he would go home and be with Jesus or stay and help others who needed him. But the point is Paul actually had a brief glimpse of heaven.
• Then God used him to write one half of the NT.
Now I don’t know what all you might have that you can brag about in your past but I do know that none of us hold a candle to the apostle Paul. This passage is basically a biography, a spiritual biography of Paul’s life. I think it would begin with a statement like this----
I am absolutely satisfied with Jesus but in no way am I satisfied with myself.
For many of us we live a life of comparison. We constantly compare our lives with the lives of others and depending on who the person is, how much the person has and how successful they may seem, once we make the comparison we either feel much better or we feel much worse.
For instance in our area we have a large homeless population. Did you know Pasco County has the second highest population of homeless in all of Florida? Our church attempts to help the homeless. If I compare what I have with what the homeless have I might feel like I have a lot and I am blessed. But if I drive through some of the wealthier communities look at the waterfront properties others have I could begin to think-my house, my lifestyle doesn’t compare to this. And I might begin to think I don’t have that much.
You see, comparisons are a trap. And they are trap that most of us find ourselves in on a regular basis. But here’s the truth you will need to recognize.
1. We cannot find happiness in this life as long as we carry around envy and jealousy.
So the answer is this.. Stop comparing your life to others. Paul was saying several things here.
1. I am not perfect.
2. I have not arrived.
3. I am a work in progress.
So stop making comparisons to other people. Jesus is the standard to measure life by… not other people.
2. We are products of our past but we do not need to be a prisoner of our past. Verses 13-14. You and I cannot change the past but we can change our perspective. Though Paul says that he chose to forget the things that were behind him, by no means did he mean that he chose to forget everything. What Paul chose to do was to learn from his mistakes and move forward. Too many of us choose to focus on the past and whether your past is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy, you need to know-you can’t live there. Some of us have not learned to leave the past behind-instead we have basically set up a tent and said, I think I will just camp out right here. And if you’re one of those I challenge you to pull up stakes, tear down the tent and move forward to the future God has planned for you.
A thunderstorm ripped through southern Kentucky years ago doing great damage to a farm that had been left in the family for over six generations. Lots of memories there. The wind destroyed a pear tree that had been there for about as long as anyone could remember. The oldest living relative said he could remember climbing that tree as a child, picking the fruit and he had eaten fruit from that tree for most of his life. A neighbor came by and said I’m really sorry you lost your pear tree. He said, yeah me too—it was a really important part of my past. I grew up with it. The neighbor asked so what do you plan to do? He said well I plan to pick the fruit that’s left and then burn the rest. And that’s the way to deal with the past. Keep the best and burn the rest.
Paul said this is the one thing I do-forget what lies behind, look forward to what lies ahead. If Satan has any desire for your life I believe it is to hold you as a prisoner of your past. You see that’s all he has. Satan has no future. Revelation tells us that in the end, Satan will be thrown into the fiery pit where he will spend all of eternity. He has no future and he wants to take away yours as well and make us prisoners of our past. The good news is, we have an option. Pick the best and burn the rest.
Verses 15-16. Paul is telling us this... There is a time to grow up and that time is now. Paul wrote earlier, “when I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.”
There is nothing more beautiful than a newborn baby. The things they say and the things they do are just so cute—you know what I mean? Makes us laugh but if 20 years later they still talk like a baby; if they choose to crawl rather than walk, if they choose to act like a child for the rest of their lives, it’s just not funny anymore is? Unfortunately, maturity doesn’t automatically happen with age. So Paul gives us some advice here. Grow up. He says if you are mature or if you want to be mature, this is the way you should learn to think.
3. Listen, it is a fact that the more you mature, the more you will realize how much further you have to go to become like Christ. The Bible says, “Be ye therefore perfect as my father in heaven is perfect.” The more I grow, the more I recognize, man I have such a long way to go.
As Paul describes this process of growth, he seems to compare the Christian life to that of running a race. And it goes something like this.
A race has been set before me. It has a starting line and it has a finish line. But there is also a whole lot in between. The goal is to reach the finish line at which time I will be awarded a prize. That prize is Jesus Christ. Paul says, that prize, Jesus Christ has taken hold of me (which he did on the road to Damascus) but I have not taken hold of him, completely. I’m learning to, but I have quite a ways to go. As a result, Paul says, press on. Keep going. Keep pressing. Don’t give up. And never look back. Many a runner has lost a race because of a very simple mistake. They looked back to see where the other runners were. And when they got tripped up or became afraid, someone was going to catch up-for a runner that’s a mistake and it is for you and me as well—our eyes are to be pointed forward, not behind, looking to the future, not the past.
4. No matter how successful we may look in the eyes of men, we will not receive our reward until we take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of us.
• Jesus did not take hold of us for us to stay where we are.
• He did not take hold of us for us to suddenly run in the wrong direction.
• He did not take hold of us so that we would just suddenly drop out.
• He did not go all the way to the cross for us to quit in the middle of the race.
Last, Paul leaves us with this reminder and he says it with all the sincerity and emotion he has; in fact weeping as he wrote these words. He says, join others in imitating me and keep your eyes focused only on those who are doing the same. Paul was doing everything possible to protect the gospel message from those who are trying to change it.
Who were these people? Earlier in verse two he calls them dogs. He calls them “evildoers.” They were those who said grace was not enough. Jesus was not enough. You must add something.
Jesus + the law of Moses =salvation
Paul was saying, let me tell you what salvation is based on.
It is Jesus + nothing.
It was a foggy morning in 1952, when a young woman named Florence Chadwick waded into the water off Catalina Island. She intended to swim the channel from the island to the California coast. Long-distance swimming was not new to her; she had been the first woman to swim the English Channel in both directions.
The water was numbing cold that day. The fog was so thick she could hardly see the boats in her party. Several times sharks had to be driven away with rifle fire. She swam more than 15 hours before she asked to be taken out of the water. Her trainer tried to encourage her to swim on since they were so close to land, but when Florence looked, all she saw was fog. So she quit. . . only one-mile from her goal. Later she said, “I’m not excusing myself, but if I could have seen the land I might have made it.” It wasn’t the cold or fear or exhaustion that caused Florence Chadwick to fail. It was the fog.
Many times we too fail, not because we’re afraid or because of the peer pressure or because of anything other than the fact that we lose sight of the goal. Maybe that’s why Paul said, “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:14). Two months after her failure, Florence Chadwick walked off the same beach into the same channel and swam the distance, setting a new speed record, because she could see the land. If you are not where you need to be today in your walk with Christ it is likely because you have your eyes placed in the wrong direction.
