WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Philippians 3:1-14
September 22, 2002
INTRODUCTION:
The United Nations complex sits on sixteen acres of New York City’s choicest real estate, bordering the East River and Manhattan. The lean immense Secretariat building rises into the sky, the sun reflecting off its window walls. Bright flags of the nations of the world fly in the breezes off the river, the most prominent is the blue and white UN flag, its two white reeds of olive branches surrounding the world.
A visitor is immediately struck by the grandeur of the building, stirred by the sight of dignitaries stepping out of black limousines to cross the massive plaza. He realizes that if this place represents the powers of the world, one might well want to see the place of worship, where the nations bow before the One under whose rule they govern.
The information personnel are bemused. “The chapel. We don’t have a chapel. If there is one, I believe it’s across the street.” The visitor darts across the thoroughfare, dodging New York’s taxis, and successfully arrives at the opposite building’s security clearance desk.
“Well, there’s a chapel here,” responds the officer, “But it’s not associated with the UN.” He thumbs through a directory. “Oh, I see, all right, here it is. It’s across the street -- and tell them you’re looking for the meditation room.”
Again the visitor dashes across the pavement. An attendant tells him that the room is not open to the public; it’s a “nonessential area,” and there has been a personnel cutback. But a security guard will escort the visitor through long, crowded hallways and swinging glass doors. Again, there is the pervasive sense of weighty matters being discussed in the noble pursuit of world peace.
The guide pauses at an unmarked door. He unlocks it and gingerly pushes it open. The small room is devoid of people or decoration. The walls are stark white. There are no windows. A few wicker stools surround a large square rock at the center of the room. It is very quiet. But there is no altar, rug, vase, candle, or symbol of any type of religious worship. Ceiling lights create bright spots of illumination on the front wall. One focuses on a piece of modern art: steel squares and ovals. Beyond the abstract shapes, there is nothing in those bright circles of light. They are focused on a void. And it is in that void that the visitor suddenly sees the soul of the brave new world. (Chuck Colson, Kingdoms in Conflict, pp. 182-3.)
The United Nations as representative of the world illustrates for us the fact that mankind tends to put too much faith in themselves. George Gordon Liddy, a Watergate conspirator made the following statement shortly after his release from prison: “I have found within myself all I need and all I ever shall need. I am a man of great faith, but my faith is in George Gordon Liddy. I have never failed me.” (The Christian Century, September 28, 1977, p. 836) Can you imagine the arrogance of a man making a statement like that after he just got out of prison? Clearly the pride and arrogance of man knows no limits.
It is this arrogance that prevents man from turning to God in his moment of need. It is this arrogance that causes the United Nations to think it can usher in world peace apart from the intervention of Almighty God. It is this arrogance that causes the United States to think it can continue to stand strong and firm even though it’s Christian foundation is being removed. And it is this same arrogance that causes the church to think that it can keep on being the church when God’s presence and power are clearly absent.
In all of these examples people believe that they can solve their problems without turning to God. It is clear that this same attitude as infiltrated the church. In the church’s case the problem is that the church is not influencing the culture so much as the culture is influencing the church. The problem is that more churches are closing their doors than opening their doors. The problem is that their is little difference in the lifestyle of the average church attender and the lifestyle of the average person who doesn’t attend church. The problem is our churches are shrinking rather than enlarging. All of that is true, however, the real problem is that the church is following the world in looking to themselves rather than God for the solutions. Our solutions go like this: If we work more... If we try harder... If we pray longer... If we do this... If we do that...
Where have our efforts gotten us? We’ve gone from being church with a high attendance average of 86 to being a church of 44. We’ve gone from being a church that was one of the fastest growing Wesleyan churches in North America in 1985 with 30% growth in one year to being a church that experienced a 22% decline in 2001. We’ve gone from being “The Church With A Vision For Today” to being a church with a vision for the past.
The solution is simple: We must stop looking to ourselves and start looking to our God. Or, maybe that isn’t so simple. A school teacher lost her life savings in a business scheme that had been elaborately explained by a swindler. When her investment disappeared and her dream was shattered, she went to the Better Business Bureau. “Why on earth didn’t you come to us first?” the official asked. “Didn’t you know about the Better Business Bureau?” “Oh, yes,” said the lady sadly. “I’ve always known about you. But I didn’t come because I was afraid you’d tell me not to do it.” The folly of human nature is that even though we know where the answers lie we don’t turn there for fear of what the answer will be. (Jerry Lambert) This is the sad state of the church today -- people who shy away from truly turning to God because they are afraid that His answer won’t be what they want to hear. What if we turn to God only to find that his plans for our church don’t match our plans for our church? And so we busy ourselves trying harder to carry out our plans for the church. And when our plans inevitably fail we ask, “What went wrong? We tried lots of things and we tried real hard!” The Bible says, “The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations” (Psalm 33:10-11).
I want us to look today at a passage from the book of Philippians. This passage does not relate primarily to the health of a local church body nor does it primarily relate to the growth of the church as an organization. But the Bible teaches that the church is not so much an organization as it is an organism -- a spiritual organism. And so we can take this passage which teaches about our spiritual development and apply the principles to the spiritual development of our spiritual organism -- our local church. Please turn with me in your Bibles to Philippians 3:1-14.
1. We must stop trying to do it ourselves. (vv. 1-6)
Paul says that true Christians -- the true worshipers of God -- are those “who put no confidence in the flesh.” “Flesh denotes all that man is, or thinks he is, and achieves aside from the Spirit of God” (John Knight, Beacon Bible Expositions, p. 89). Paul is saying that we can never enter into a relationship with God through our own efforts. If we cannot become Christians through our own efforts, what makes us think that we can become the church through our own efforts?
The attempt to get right with God by means of our own efforts always results in legalism. Legalism is when we make up our own rules, follow those rules, and insist that everyone else conform to them as well. Nothing can choke the life out of a church faster than legalism. Consider the story of Hans the tailor. Because of his reputation, an influential entrepreneur visiting the city ordered a tailor-make suit. But when he came to pick up his suit, the customer found that one sleeve twisted that way and the other this way; one shoulder bulged out and the other caved in. He pulled and managed to make his body fit. As he returned home on the bus, another passenger noticed his odd appearance and asked if Hans the tailor had made the suit. Receiving an affirmative reply, the man remarked, “Amazing! I knew that Hans was a good tailor, but I had no idea he could make a suit fit so perfectly someone as deformed as you.” Often that is just what we do in the church. We get some idea of what the Christian faith should look like and then we push and shove people into the most grotesque configurations until they fit wonderfully! That is a wooden legalism that destroys both the soul and the church. We cannot do Christianity our way nor can we do church our way.
We must stop trying to do it our way because our way will never work. Our way will never work because it is God who grows the church not us. 1 Corinthians 3:6 says, “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” From this verse we learn that we each have tasks or responsibilities to carry out in the local church. These tasks are important and they must be done. But these tasks will never grow the church. God is the one who makes the church grow. In the book of Colossians Paul writes about the legalistic person who is trying to do it themselves. He is writing about the person who is judgmental about what people eat and drink and about religious festivals and Sabbath day. About such a person Paul writes: “He has lost connection with the Head [Christ], from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow” (Colossians 2:19). What Paul is writing about here is what I call “spiritual decapitation.” Any time the church gets caught up in trying to grow itself it has in essence decapitated itself. It has cut itself off from the only One who can cause it to grow. We must stop trying to do it ourselves lest we decapitate ourselves.
2. We must start getting to know Jesus. (vv. 7-11)
Paul says that he is willing to give up everything so that he might know Christ. There is nothing more important to the apostle than his relationship with Jesus Christ. Paul says that by comparison everything else is “rubbish.” The literal Greek is even more graphic. The Greek word here translated as ‘rubbish’ literally means dung.
The word ‘know’ was used in the Old Testament of sexual intercourse between a man and his wife. “And Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived, and bare Cain” (Genesis 4:1). This refers to knowledge of the most intimate and personal kind. Paul is using the word not of sexual intercourse, but of spiritual intercourse. The word intercourse means connection and communication or correspondence. If we are to know Christ as Paul is talking about, we must be connected to him and communing with him. Communing with Christ is the work of the church. Growing the church is the work of God. This knowing Christ means much more than knowing about Christ. There is a huge difference between knowing the truth and acting on the truth.
Burghardt DuBois, the great black educator, sociologist, and historian, upon completion of studies at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, was convinced that change in the condition of the American black could be effected by careful scientific investigations into the truth about the black in America. So he proceeded. His research was flawless and his graphs and charts impeccable. After waiting several years and hearing not the slightest stir of reform, Dr. DuBois had to accept the truth about truth: Its being available does not mean it will be appropriated. (Fred B. Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel) Knowing the truth does not ensure that one will act upon the truth.
The truth is your doctrine of Christ apart from your relationship to Christ is something that is dull, lifeless, and unappealing to the world. That reason, more than any other, is why the world is turned off by the church. Without that type of relationship with Christ our church is incomplete. Without that type of relationship to Christ there is a void in our church that makes it cold and dry and hopeless and miserable. Even the greatest of men have been made miserable by the absence of this relationship. H.G. Wells, the famous historian and philosopher, said at age 61: “I have no peace. All life is at the end of the tether.” The literary genius Thoreau said, “Most men live lives of quiet desperation.” Ralph Barton, one of the top cartoonists of the nation, left this note pinned to his pillow before taking his own life: “I have had few difficulties, many friends, great successes; I have gone from wife to wife, from house to house, visited great countries of the world, but I am fed up with inventing devices to fill up twenty-four hours of the day” (Morning Glory, May 29, 1993). A life without a relationship to Christ is not a real life. A church without a relationship to Christ is not a real church.
We must be about the real business of the church -- getting to know Christ. This was Paul’s prayer for the church at Ephesus: “I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better” (Ephesians 1:17). This is of vital importance because the world will never be converted to Christianity through the facts about Christ, but only through the experience of Christ. The world is hungry for something that is real, but most churches can only offer something that is theoretical. We must develop an experiential knowledge of Christ. That is what Paul is talking about in verse 10 when he says, “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead” (vv. 10-11). We need to know the power of his resurrection. The power of new life. The power of victory over temptation. The power to really live, not just exist. We need to know the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings. Too often we are guilty of telling people that if they come to Christ life will be wonderful. Its not true. Jesus guaranteed us that in this life we would have trouble. You can suffer alone pointlessly or you can enter into the fellowship of suffering with Christ for the greatest cause the world has ever known. We need to become like him in his death. This doesn’t mean that we need to die the way he did. It means that we must die to ourselves and to the world so that we can truly live for God. Romans 6:4 says, “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” We need to experience his power. We need to experience his presence. We need to experience his purity. We need to experience his passion. We need to experience his purpose. As Anne Graham Lotz says, “Just give me Jesus.”
3. We must pursue God’s purpose. (vv. 12-14)
In the Phillips translation verse 12b says, “But I keep going on, grasping ever more firmly that purpose for which Christ Jesus grasped me.” Paul is in essence saying, “God’s purposes have become my purposes. I am no longer living out my plan, but am wholeheartedly embracing and going after God’s plan for my life.
We need to make sure that it is God’s plan for our life and for our church that we are pursuing and not our own. Before we come to know Christ we are all pursuing our own plans for our lives. This doesn’t always change immediately after we are saved. Sometimes we want to think that our plans for our lives are God’s plans. And we can also be tempted to believe that our plans for our church are God’s plans. How do we tell the difference? Let me give you a very simple test. If its God’s plan it will work. If its your plan it will fail. Proverbs 19:21 says, “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”
What do we do if we discover that we have been failing because we have been following our plans rather than God’s purposes? Paul says forget about it and move on. “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (vv. 13b-14). We cannot dwell on the failures of the past, rather we must focus on the opportunities of the present. You can never move forward while focusing on your failures. That’s why John Maxwell wrote a book called “Failing Forward.” If you fail, you need to learn from your mistakes and then keep on going.
We need to make sure that it is God’s plan that we are pursuing and then we need to pursue it passionately. The Living Bible says, “I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing” (v.13). I believe that great passion is the result of great conviction and produces great results. A young preacher once approached Charles Spurgeon and complained that no one was saved when he preached the gospel. Charles Spurgeon responded, “You don’t mean to tell me that you expect people to get saved every time you preach, do you?” “Oh, no, I don’t expect that” replied the young pastor. “That is your problem” exclaimed Spurgeon. This young pastor’s problem was that he lacked the passion in his preaching that only the conviction that people would be saved could produce. Do we have that kind of passion in our church? G. Campbell Morgan told the story of a great English actor named Macready. An eminent preacher once said to him: “I wish you would explain to me something.” “Well, what is it? I don’t know that I can explain anything to a preacher.” “What is the reason for the difference between you and me? You are appearing before crowds night after night with fiction, and the crowds come wherever you go. I am preaching the essential and unchangeable truth, and I am not getting any crowd at all.” Macready’s answer was this: “This is quite simple. I can tell you the difference between us. I present my fiction as though it were truth; you present your truth as though it were fiction.” (G. Campbel Morgan, Preaching, p.36) This truth applies not only to preaching but also to everything else the church does. If we do not have great passion, we will never see great results. I believe this is a life principle. I call it The Passion Principle. If you are not passionate about your job, you will never get a promotion. If you are not passionate about your marriage relationship, it will never last. If we are not passionate about our church, it will never grow. If we are not passionate about the gospel message, we will always play second fiddle to Hollywood when it comes to influencing our society. We claim that we want to reach people for Christ. And we claim that we want our church to grow. But our passions betray us. The truth is we are more passionate about our preferred style of music than we are about seeing lost people saved. No one has left this church because nobody was getting saved, but they have left because they didn’t like the music. In the last two years no one has confronted me over the fact that no one is getting saved, but many have confronted me about music style or service time. And so our passions betray us. Until we become more passionate about God’s purposes than we are about our plans nothing will ever change.
CONCLUSION:
I would like to close by sharing with you a story that concerns me greatly every time I read it. Tennessee Williams tells a story of Jacob Brodzky, a shy Russian Jew whose father owned a bookstore. The older Brodsky wanted his son to go to college. They boy, on the other hand, desired nothing but to marry Lila, his childhood sweetheart -- a French girl as effusive, vital, and ambitious as he was contemplative and retiring. A couple of months after young Brodzky went to college, his father fell ill and died. The son returned home, buried his father, and married his love. Then the couple moved into the apartment above the bookstore, and Brodzky took over its management. The life of books fit him perfectly, but it cramped her. She wanted more adventure -- and she found it, she thought, when she met an agent who praised her beautiful singing voice and enticed her to tour Europe with a vaudeville company. Brodzky was devastated. At their parting, he reached into his pocket and handed her the key to the front door of the bookstore.
“You had better keep this,” he told her, “because you will want it some day. Your love is not so much less than mine that you can get away from it. You will come back sometime, and I will be waiting.”
She kissed him and left. To escape the pain he felt, Brodzky withdrew deep into his bookstore and took to reading as someone else might have taken to drink. He spoke little, did little, and could most times be found at the large desk near the rear of the shop, immersed in his books while he waited for his love to return.
Nearly 15 years after they parted, at Christimastime, she did return. But when Brodzky rose from the reading desk that had been his place of escape for all that time, he did not take the love of his life for more than an ordinary customer. “Do you want a book?” he asked. That he didn’t recognize her startled her. But she gained possession of herself and replied, “I want a book, but I’ve forgotten the name of it.”
Then she told him a story of childhood sweethearts. A story of a newly married couple who lived in an apartment above a bookstore. A story of a young ambitious wife who left to seek a career, who enjoyed great success but could never relinquish the key her husband gave her when they parted. She told him the story she thought would bring him to himself. But his face showed no recognition. Gradually she realized that he had lost touch with his heart’s desire, that he no longer knew the purpose of his waiting and grieving, that now all he remembered was the waiting and grieving itself. “You remember it; you must remember it -- the story of Lila and Jacob?”
After a long, bewildered pause, he said, “There is something familiar about the story, I think I have read it somewhere. It comes to me that it is something by Tolstoi.” Dropping the key, she fled the shop. And Bodzky returned to his desk, to his reading, unaware that the love he waited for had come and gone (Signs of the Times, June, 1993, p. 11).
My concern is that, as we endeavor to pursue Jesus and his purpose, we might not even recognize him if he were to show up. Brodzky buried himself in his books to the extent that he forgot that he was missing the presence of his love. What if the church has buried itself in the Bible and other religious books to the extent that we have forgotten that we are missing the presence of Jesus in our services? When his love finally showed up Brodzky mistook her for a customer and offered her a book. What if Jesus showed up one Sunday and we mistook him for a visitor and only offered him a bulletin and asked him to fill out an attendance card? When Lila returned she tried to remind Brodzky of who she was and of the love they shared at first. If Jesus tried to remind us of our first love, would we remember? Could we remember?
PRAYER:
BENEDICTION:
May we passionately pursue the presence and purposes of Christ. Amen.
Steve Dow
Heritage Wesleyan Church
www.forministry.com/80909hwc
heritagewesleyan@hotmail.com
Please email me if you use this sermon or a revision of it in your church.
Study Guide:
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Philippians 3:1-14
September 22, 2002
“The Lord foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.” Psalm 33:10-11
1. We must stop ____________________________.
(vv. 1-6)
“I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow.” 1 Corinthians 3:6
“He has lost connection with the Head [Christ], from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.” Colossians 2:19
2. We must start ___________________________.
(vv. 7-11)
“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better.” Ephesians 1:17
“We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Romans 6:4
3. We must start __________________________.
(vv. 12-14)
Phillips: “But I keep going on, grasping ever more firmly that purpose for which Christ Jesus grasped me.” v. 12b
“Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” Proverbs 19:21
“I am bringing all my energies to bear on this one thing.” v.13 (LB)
