I Want to Know Christ

We're going to be looking at Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 through 14,

Philippians 3:7–14

and Dave will read that for us.

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 that I may gain Christ, may 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.

Not that I have already obtained all this or have already arrived at my goals,

but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

Brothers and sisters, I do not concern myself yet to have taken hold of it, but one thing I do,

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.

In writing to the Christians at Philippi, the Apostle Paul makes some pretty

astounding and amazing statements.

He says, but whatever was to my profit, whatever was to my benefit,

whatever was to my good, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.

What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ.

Waste when you find yourself forgetting

things it can prove to be

embarrassing having grown up as

a child in our conference this conference which

at that time was called the illinois wisconsin conference now it's called the

north central conference we became larger by encompassing minnesota and south

and north dakota and part of iowa

and part of well all of iowa and part of Missouri and part of Montana,

even though we don't have any churches out there.

So we've enlarged, but as part of growing up in conference, many people knew

my parents and me as you guys did.

Many of you did when we lived here before.

So when we moved back from Michigan after pastoring in Michigan for five years,

people would approach me at churches and conference meetings and ask me,

Do you remember me? So it's kind of like.

When I went to my own class reunion here a few weeks ago and I met all my classmates

and I told you that it's amazing that I grew up with so many old people,

but it was just interesting.

And then last night I went to my fake 50th reunion.

That's what my wife calls it. I went to the Richland Center class of 1975,

50th class reunion with Terry.

And I saw a lot of people. And do you remember me?

Of course, the one person that didn't remember me was the one girl that gave

me a kiss on the playground at Lincoln Elementary.

And she didn't remember that, but I didn't raise the question anyway.

You know, it was scarring apparently to her to have been my first kiss,

other than my sister and my mom, you know.

Anyway, so every girl, they would ask, do you remember me?

And I could look at their faces and know that I should know them,

that I'd probably met them before.

But at that moment, I just couldn't remember their names, couldn't remember who they were.

There have also been times when I was preaching that I forgot where I was going

and what I was going to say next or where I was in my sermon notes.

And so then I would just kind of have to start all over. So hopefully I won't

have to do that today and get lost and have to start all over.

But at times like that, you sometimes grope for words until your memory comes

back to you and you remember what you intended to say.

Stories told about a young preacher who went to hear an old and well-known preacher

thinking that maybe he could pick up a few pointers on preaching.

As he listened, the old preacher in his sermon and made this amazing statement.

He said, some of the most meaningful moments of my life were spent in the arms of another man's wife.

Well, that's kind of the look you had. They had the look on their face like he did.

You could imagine instantly the old preacher had the attention of the entire congregation.

Everybody was on the edge of their seat. And so the young preacher thought,

wow, that's really an interesting attention getter if I've ever heard one.

So the old preacher knew that he had their attention, so he repeated the line

again, just to make sure everybody got it.

He said, some of the most meaningful moments of my life were spent in the arms of another man's wife.

And then he went on to explain that the woman he was talking about was his father's

wife, in other words, his mother.

The young preacher thought, that was really great. I'm going to try to remember

that and use that in one of my sermons soon.

So a few weeks later, he was preaching along, and he made the statement,

some of the most meaningful moments of my life were spent in the arms of another

man's wife, and then it happened to him.

Everybody was on the edge of their seat, and they were wondering,

are we going to have to get rid of this guy and get a new pastor, or what's going on?

He wasn't used to having that kind of attention from his audience,

and so basking in this undivided attention, he decided to try it again with

a little more fanfare and a little more flair.

He's gesturing with great flair and emphasizing his words.

He repeated, some of the most meaningful moments of my life were spent in the

arms of another man's wife, and then it happened.

His mind went blank.

He stumbled around in his words for a few minutes and then said,

and for the life of me, I can't remember whose wife she was.

When I read these words in Philippians chapter 3, I get the feeling that the

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

Apostle Paul is paused in the midst of his writing.

He leans back in his chair and begins to remember how and why he became a Christian

and what has happened to him since that day.

It almost seems as if he forgot what he was saying before and forgot what he

was going to write and went off

on a tangent on a rabbit trail in another direction. I've never done that.

And yes, what he was saying, what he wrote next was very appropriate to the occasion.

Once he was looked upon as a man of great influence among the Jews,

a member of the ruling aristocracy with wealth and fame, soldiers and servants

followed him wherever he went and did his bidding.

They heeded his every order. He seemed to have life and possession and power at his fingertips.

But Paul had given all of that up to follow a man known as a carpenter,

an itinerant preacher, who didn't own anything except the clothes on his back.

And when asked why, Paul asked, I look at all that I once have and consider it rubbish.

The version we read says garbage, but one of the other versions reads rubbish

or trash. In a sense, he is playing on words he spoke earlier about the Judaizers,

who he'll be called dogs.

They looked at their confidence in the outward manifestations of the flesh like

circumcision as righteousness.

The Greek word that was interpreted and translated here as rubbish really means dung, dog crap.

Because these were dogs, as he was referring them to. And so what Paul was saying

is that all of that confidence in our own flesh is really as worthless as poop from those dogs.

And Paul had come to realize that if you have all of the things of this world,

but you don't have Jesus Christ, you are poor indeed.

You have lost everything, or you might as well have lost everything.

But if you have Christ, you are wealthy indeed. He had come to realize that

Jesus is the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in a field.

He is worth selling everything you have in order to gain Christ.

It seems that is a message that this world needs to hear more than anything.

There aren't any Rolex wristwatches in this passage of Scripture.

No big fancy automobiles or speedboats or yachts.

No custom-made Lincoln Town cars are here. No million-dollar mansions are found

in this passage of Scripture. Only humility.

Paul is giving up everything he once had, and he considers it joy to be able

to give up everything he once had, he counts it as trash to follow Christ.

A few years ago, the religious community was being rocked by one scandal after another.

Headlines featured sexual exposés and monetary manipulations by ministry leaders.

Oh, by the way, it's still continuing in the religious world.

But the problem was not simply lust.

The problem is that there is a large segment of Christianity that has ignored

the biblical structure of the church.

They have left themselves unprotected.

When I was assistant superintendent in the northern Illinois area,

I counseled the pastors, oftentimes,

you have got to guard your heart in whatever situation you are.

In fact, the first thing I did when we moved to Peoria, Illinois to the church

there is I had them take the doors off my office and put windows in the door

because there were no windows in the door.

And I said, I don't want these doors in my office to be blank and closed.

I want people to be able to see in so they can see everything that's going on in my office.

So I cannot be accused of doing something I shouldn't.

We need to have everything out in the open. And I talked to pastors about this several times.

Do not counsel with a woman by yourself.

Guys, that's dangerous, and you won't believe how many pastors over the years

have done the very same thing and fallen into lust and extramarital affairs

and destroyed their ministry,

destroyed their churches,

but even more importantly, destroyed their families and their future.

God never intended for one man to have unlimited power and control over multiplied

millions of church dollars because, as 1 Timothy 6, verse 10 says,

1 Timothy 6:10

the love of money is still the root of all kinds of evil.

You can take the most well-intentioned disciple of Jesus and fill his pockets

with too much money from sources of others, and sin will come knocking at the door.

Every one of my churches, wherever we've been, I will refuse to have any signatory

opportunities on any checks of the church.

That's what we have treasurers for, and that's what we have others.

As director of finance of the conference, I do not have any access to any of

the money in our conference. That's all done through bookkeepers and others.

And we need to keep it that way. That's why we have checks and balances in any

of our church structures, beginning with a budget that's set and approved by

the board of administration and continuing through the need for verification on expenditures.

We even have a minimum of two people present when the offering is counted every Sunday morning.

So there's no hint of impropriety. When someone stands up with the supposed

authority of God behind him and says,

I just heard God's voice and God said, you're supposed to send me lots of money,

it's time for them to re-examine Scripture and it's time for you to look at it too.

I'm sure all of you have received those letters saying that God has prophesied

to them that if you send them so much money that you will be prosperous.

Well, that should throw up a red flag to us.

I remember when Y2K was happening in the 1999 going into 2000.

And I think I've shared this before. We were in Michigan at the time.

We had a pastor in Lansing, Michigan, not our free Methodist one, but another one.

It said he wanted people to be ready, take all of their cash out of the bank,

and have all of their liquid assets because as soon as year 2000 hit January 1st,

everything was going to collapse and they would be able to go and buy up people's

homes for pennies on the dollar, and they would become wealthy after that. I...

You know, and I told people in our church, I said, you know,

if this really happens and utilities are cut and all that stuff,

we're going to invite people into our home and we'll have them stay with us.

We're not going to be buying their homes on pennies for the dollar.

I'm very cautious when someone tells me the Lord has told them something when

several other Christians have sensed something different.

Especially if what they are telling me causes conflict with the Word of God.

If something they're telling me causes me to think I'm not sure that's biblical,

I search the Scripture and say, is there anything in here that says this is

true, what they're doing?

I really have not found any Scripture in the New Testament that speaks about

us receiving vast monetary wealth and amassing every earthly pleasure we desire.

Instead, the word of God expresses like this one today, that the life of the

Christian is a life of service, humility, and sacrifice.

That's why Paul's words are so important.

Paul says, you want to know why I became a Christian?

He says, you want to know why I follow Jesus? It's because I looked at all of

this other stuff that the world seeks so fervently, and it's like dog poop.

The only thing that really counts is Christ. Now, look at the last part of that.

Paul says, I consider them rubbish that I may gain Christ.

And in verse 10, he says, I want to know Christ.

So two people are getting married. They love each other as they have never loved anyone before.

And then they begin to understand a bit more about God's love for us.

You have a baby and you hold that baby in your arms.

And I've heard young parents say, I think I understand the love of God better now than I ever have.

We go through many experiences in life, victories and defeats.

Troubles and trials, problems and heartaches, but every time we turn a corner,

there is Christ, and we get to know him better as we rub shoulders with him. So let's look at this.

Number one, I want to know Christ in the power of his resurrection.

This is what Paul says in verses 10 and 11. Paul begins with the resurrection.

He doesn't end with the resurrection. He begins with it.

That's the beginning of all of our faith. It's not Christmas.

It's not Good Friday. It's not Silent Saturday. The beginning of our faith is the resurrection.

And he begins there because that's where he met Jesus.

At one time, he had learned some facts about Jesus.

He had studied hard to get all the facts together.

His conclusion was that Jesus was an imposter and that the greatest service

that he could render to God was to destroy this man, Jesus, and his church.

And so he set out to persecute the church, thinking that he was doing exactly what God wanted to do.

And then one day, on his way to Damascus, he met the real Jesus,

the risen Jesus, the resurrected Christ.

Wonder how many of us have had that Damascus Road experience where we've met

Christ face to face, and we've understood that he is the King and the Lord and

the one who's guiding us through it and making everything worthwhile.

Through the power of Christ's resurrections, you see that all of us have been

in the same place that Paul was in.

We were lost, we were hopeless, and we were headed for a Christless eternity

with no hope for eternity.

My own experience was 17 years old.

I was out at a camp in Estes Park, Colorado with our church team quiz team.

I was a great imposter of the faith.

I acted like I knew what I was doing. I could quote some scripture a little

bit, but I could also fake it a lot.

And I remember coming face to face with Jesus at that time, and he said,

listen, all that you're doing is junk.

I don't care what others do. I want you. I want you to follow me.

And I realized that everything that I had been doing was leading me in the road to hell.

And if I wanted to be in heaven, I need to follow Christ.

But through the power of his resurrection, God lifted each one of us and is

giving us new life inside out.

And for that, we can thank the Lord.

And we want that power. We want to know this kind of power that the world doesn't understand.

Power not to rule over people, but power to have joy in all circumstances and

to revel in the love of God even in the midst of difficulties.

I want that too, don't you?

And then second, we see Paul didn't stop there. He went on to say,

I want to know Christ and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering.

Okay, Paul, you should have stopped with the resurrection.

I mean, this is kind of foolish, the idea of wanting to share in sufferings.

Which one of us really wants to share in suffering?

This has gone a bit too far, Paul. Sharing Christ's resurrection is okay,

but it's not very natural for us to want to share in suffering.

A veteran of World War II proudly proclaimed that he was a member of the Survivors

Club of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

There are not very many of them left, but he was one of the few.

And as he spoke, you could tell that he and his brothers had suffered together,

and because they had suffered together, a unique fellowship and friendship and

brotherhood existed between them.

Alcoholics go through that as well. Those who have overcome their alcoholism

can understand it better than

anybody else because they have suffered the same pain and the same hurts.

So when alcoholics who are by being free, understand that.

They know that there's a brotherhood, sisterhood in that, that they can share

in the suffering that they had and understand that they've come out on the other

side and are doing better.

People who have lost little children can help other people who are coming through

that same experience in life because they have been there.

They hurt the same hurts. I hear all these people talking about empathy.

Empathy is not the same as pity or sympathy.

Empathy is knowing by experience and having gone through the same things that

you can experience with somebody else.

So we can't empathize with somebody unless we've gone through the same thing

they have. This is what Paul's saying.

I share in his sufferings.

And so it is with all suffering. Christ knows what we go through because he's been there.

So there's a fellowship and suffering. Look at Paul's life.

He was beaten, stoned, shipwrecked, thrown into prison, and finally,

we understand from the records, he was beheaded for Christ. He suffered.

And when he looked at the scars on his body, the scars inflicted by the whips

and stones and lashings of the very people that he once was in their midst,

he called them the marks of Christ.

I bear on my body the marks of Christ, he said, was not just that he was suffering

for Christ, that he found joy.

It was because he was suffering with Christ to make Christ known, and that made him happy.

Why? Because now he was a brother with Christ and a co-worker in the cause of the gospel.

Do you want to suffer with Jesus?

Probably nobody's going to raise their hand and say, yeah, yeah,

I can't wait to suffer with Jesus.

But yet that's what God is calling us to do. We may have to go through those

situations as the world races toward its final end.

I think that happens in a lot of different ways, though.

The root word of suffering here includes a sense of deep compassion and angst.

Have you ever felt such agony and such sorrow that it makes your stomach sick?

That's kind of what Paul is talking about. We suffer with Christ when we have

compassion for the world that we suffer such a way.

Jesus suffered when they brought sinners to him. He looked over the city of

Jerusalem and he cried. He cried because that city had been offered forgiveness, and they refused it.

The city had been offered the way that was right, the godly way,

and they turned their backs on it and went into their own way.

When was the last time when your heart was broken and your stomach stirred,

and when you were at the point of death for the lost in your neighborhood?

I remember when we moved to Peoria.

You know, it was a hard decision to make that move there.

And I remember praying, I said, you know, Father, we're coming into this inner

city of Peoria, and we don't know anybody here in this area.

Help us. Help me to see the lost.

Very interesting, because we did. But the very next day after we moved there,

I had gone up to the local gas station, and on the window in the gas station

was a picture of a girl who was lost.

She had run away from her parents and she was lost and they were looking for her.

And I thought, okay, God, this isn't exactly what I meant, but apparently there's

somebody else we need to be seeking for.

We need to be looking for those lost all around us.

When was the last time when your heart ached for those.

Sin causes our hearts to be broken. We suffer with Christ when we look at a

world that is caught up in all of its sin and selfishness.

I confess to Thomas Raimondo, I said, you know, I said, when we've been praying,

you know, we're supposed to have this gut prayer for people and this deep faith

in Christ that God wants this.

And I said, I have to confess, I said, I find myself thinking of some people

and thinking their hearts and minds are so hardened that they can't possibly repent.

And then I get checked in the spirit, who is greater, your beliefs or God?

And then I told, and I've confessed this to you guys, I've thought,

at 9-11, I thought, I'm not even sure I want these Muslims to be saved.

Who am I to think that I have any control over that?

Who am I that I should think that I'm better than anybody else?

Who am I to think that somebody else should not be saved?

I think we need to have the compassion of Christ and have our hearts broken for those who are lost.

We should weep over it, and we should share in the suffering of Jesus by throwing

everything else away except serving Christ to a world that desperately needs Jesus.

And then finally, Paul says this, I want to know Christ by being like him in

his death and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

I want to share in Jesus' death.

Okay, Paul, enough already.

Resurrection's fine. You're starting

to meddle when you get into suffering like him. Now you want to die?

I'm not sure I want to, but what Paul was talking about is we need to die to

Christ, die to sin and live for Christ.

I don't know about you, but wanting to die is not my first thought when I get up in the morning.

My first thought is when I get up in the morning is, I hope I can walk when I stand up.

My first thought is, wow, this is great. Another day, another day to get up.

My next thought then is, I've got to get that coffee.

But all of us are moving toward that moment in time when we will finally lay

down this earthly body and take up our new existence with Christ.

Paul literally died for him by being headed for the cause of Christ.

If history is correct, the other apostles did as well, except maybe John the

Beloved, who wrote Revelation. We don't know exactly what happened to John.

He was exiled to the island of Patmos, and we don't know what happened to him.

But we have records of all of the others.

They gave their lives for Christ, and in a sense, we do too.

We live our lives as living sacrifices to Jesus, and still, too,

we must be willing to sacrifice even our very lives for the sake of Christ.

You know, Peter was crucified, too. Others were crucified, too.

But Peter was crucified for the gospel of Christ, and Peter says,

I don't deserve to die like Jesus.

So he had them crucify him upside down on the cross.

Because he couldn't possibly bear the idea that he was enough like Christ to be crucified like him.

There's something precious, isn't there, about being able to say,

I've lived out my moment on earth for Christ. I have given him my time,

my energy, and my talent, and I'm willing to become like him even in death.

Adam was teaching, talking to the kids about cross-country race,

and I know a little bit about that 100 and, well, about 100 pounds ago.

But when you come to the end of the race, there's nothing more exhilarating.

Than when you know that you have put every last ounce of energy into that race,

and you fall across the line, collapse, unable to move.

I told people when I got saved, I owe Christ so much.

I want to die in this race for Jesus, totally exhausted.

I want to be burned up, not physically burned up, but I want to get to the end

of my life totally exhausted with nothing left in me to be able to live for

him because I want to give everything I can for him.

There's something precious about being able to surrender everything to him.

And in a time of materialism, in a time of corruption in religion,

it seems to me that there's not a passage in the Bible that has more to say

about the church than this one that we've read.

You see, we don't offer an invitation that just promises the power of resurrection.

We offer an invitation that includes fellowship of suffering and the promise of death.

Doesn't sound like an exciting thing to follow. It's probably not something

you can go out in the billboard on the front and say, come die with us.

Probably not wise to do that. But that's what we're doing.

We want to live our lives in such a way that everything we do is pointed to

Jesus, and we die at the end of our race, exhausted, being totally given up for him.