Pressing On Toward The Goal

Well, um what can I say?

I can say today is the eleventh of June, two thousand and seventeen, and God is still on the throne.

He has been all through from before creation.

Our God has reigned and ruled and done all things well.

This last couple of years, this last couple of days, our God is on the throne.

He is on the throne today.

And he will be tomorrow, next week, and for the years to come.

He is good, my friends.

He is trustworthy.

He cares.

He loves you.

He intends our good and our blessing and his glory.

And he uses us for that larger purpose of his glory.

And I am so thankful that we have a God like that.

Two weeks from now, there's going to be an installation service for Jason, and it will be a thrill and a privilege for me to be a part of that.

As then Jason steps in and takes leadership together with the elders, together with the congregation.

And we're praying that the years ahead for Faith Evangelical Free Church will be among the richest and the most blessed.

And our confidence is not in Jason.

Our confidence is in God.

Next week, um next week.

Next Sunday will be Sunday, June 19th, 2017.

And we're going to be having a special service.

It's a sharing service.

I don't know, we've done it two or three times in the last couple of years that I've been here.

We attended a church overseas for 20 years, that every single week there was an opportunity for an open mic and sharing.

And it was wonderful because people had the idea that they were supposed to come and participate.

And they are supposed to be sharing and talking about what God was doing in their lives.

That's not our custom, but every once in a while we have a sharing service.

And I want you to prepare your hearts for next week.

The kinds of things we're asking you to think about is what has God been teaching you and showing you?

How do you see God at work now in your life and around you?

Not just 20 years ago, but now?

What's going on in your life?

What is God doing?

How are you, and what are you trusting God for these days?

And what do you have to share that would be of spiritual benefits for the congregation?

Those are the kinds of things that we want to focus on.

So there will be instead of you know what?

I married a very wise woman.

Next Sunday is not Sunday the 19th, it's Sunday the 18th.

How come computers do what you tell them to do, not what you want them to do?

I have no idea where I was.

Okay, so what I'm asking you to do is just think and prepare your hearts.

Don't assume that everybody else is going to share something.

Think, do you have something to share?

There'll be two periods of open sharing.

We're not interested in a sermon.

You get enough of that for me.

But take a few minutes and share what God is doing, what you're trusting Him for, and what's going on around you.

There is nothing more encouraging than seeing God at work.

So let's encourage one another.

Well, today we're going to turn for the last time, excuse me, while I'm here, to the book of Philippians.

This has been a short series, and it's been an unusual series because I've gotten to choose my favorite passages and what for me are some of the high points of Philippians, my favorites.

We turn to Philippians, which is a book that God led the Apostle Paul to write.

It's a word from God through the Apostle Paul, originally to believers in the first century, but also to believers in the 21st century.

And if we're sensitive to God, if we're open to God, if we're hungry to hear from God, we will find that the word of God is living and powerful and sharper than a two-edged sword, and it penetrates into the soul and spirit and separates bone and marrow and is a living, active word of God, and all we need to do is be open and hungry for it.

And I trust that that's part of what we come for and with as we come here.

So this is the last Sunday that I'm going to be bringing a regular message here.

We've been here about two years.

We came to leave, and we are leaving.

We came to do a task.

And not because we're so great, but by God's grace, when we leave, two weeks from tomorrow, there'll be a sense of accomplishment, a sense that God has done some things.

The work is not over, the work is never finished.

But our particular assignment will have been completed.

And we will leave in many ways with heavy hearts.

We know we need to leave, we know we need to go back.

We have a house that we bought a couple of years ago that we need to make a home.

God has other things for us, but as we leave, we leave a part of ourselves here with you.

We love this church.

We love you.

It didn't take us long to realize how God had wet our hearts together.

So this is kind of a bittersweet uh thing for me.

Um I wondered all week long what I would share this morning.

I knew it'd be one of my favorites in Philippians, and in the first part of the week I prepared a message which I'm not going to give.

So forget the bulletin.

Uh we're going to be looking at a different passage.

Um it was just, I just didn't have liberty, didn't have freedom to go ahead with the message that I'd prepared.

So prepared a different one.

I have no idea why.

I trust that God somehow will use this.

So we're going to be looking at Philippians chapter 3, verses 15 to 21.

Philippians 3:15–21

I believe that in this portion of Scripture, the key thought that God is communicating and has led me to share and communicate with you about is a pretty simple one.

It has to do with pressing on towards the goal, and we're going to read that passage.

But at its core, what I want to emphasize this morning are three simple things.

You and I, we are called to be spiritual grown-ups.

Spiritual grown-ups, spiritual maturity.

That is what God has called us to.

We bear the imprint of Jesus on the soft tissue of our souls, the pattern, the marks of Jesus.

And we begin to realize that we live in this world as citizens of another, as heaven's expatriates.

So let me simply read this passage.

I'm actually going to begin at verse 14 and read through chapter 4, verse 1.

This is a passage, this whole section in Philippians is somewhat unusual for Paul.

Usually you can almost outline Paul.

He talks and thinks like a lawyer very logically.

But in this passage, no one knows exactly where the paragraphs start and stop and so forth, because it's just rich with thoughts, of which I'm pulling three of those out to share this morning.

So follow along.

It's the same page in the Pew Bible that the other passage was on.

So follow along in your own Bible or in the Pew Bible.

Beginning with Philippians chapter 3, verse 14.

Philippians 3:14

I press on toward the goal.

I press on towards the goal.

For the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Let those who are mature, let those of you who are mature, who are adults, who are grown up spiritually, think this way.

And if you think otherwise, that's okay.

God will reveal that to you as well.

Only let us hold true to what we have attained, or let us live up literally to that which has been given to us.

Brothers, join in imitating me.

Join in imitating me, and keep your eye on those who walk according to the example, the pattern, the imprint that you have in us.

For many of whom I have often told you, and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ.

Their end is destruction, their God is their belly, their glory is their shame, and their minds are set on earthly things.

But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and I long for, my joy and my crown, stand firm thus in the Lord.

All right.

Three simple thoughts.

We're called to be spiritual grown-ups.

This involves being imprinted.

There's a pattern to follow, a pattern that is imprinted into our souls, in our lives, and that pattern ultimately is Jesus Christ.

And then finally we learn to live as we grow up as expatriates.

This is not our home.

We are temporary residents in planet Earth.

Temporary residents.

And we're on our way home, though we find ourselves now here east of Eden and very far from home.

But we're on our way home.

And that's not here.

You will uh hear some themes that I have hammered on for a couple of years in this.

All right, let's look at verses 15 and 16 here.

And uh let's look and spend a little bit of time thinking about this matter of being spiritual grown-ups.

Verse 15 and 16.

Let those who are mature think this way, and if any one of you thinks otherwise, God will reveal that also to you.

Only let us hold true to what we have obtained.

Just a couple of simple thoughts about these two verses.

First of all, he begins in a very interesting way.

Paul says, those of us who are mature, and then he goes on with his thoughts, but just stop and think about that for a minute.

That means there are some of us who are not at this point in our lives spiritually grown up.

So he's making a distinction.

All who know Christ have been transformed from within through the power of God, the transforming power of God.

And we are set on a journey of growth towards spiritual maturity, but we're all at different points along the way.

Not everyone is at the same spot.

You might remember Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 3, he talked about some who are still children, babes in Christ.

1 Corinthians 3 · chapter mention

When you first come to know Christ, there's a period of time that just like when you're firstborn, there's a time of infancy.

I remember decades ago now, with Campus Crusade, having come to Christ on the college campus, we were baby Christians.

And I called myself that, and boy was I an immature baby Christian.

But that's the way we begin.

Now, it's not designed that we would stay that way.

Spiritual maturity, not infancy, is God's intent for every believer.

All kinds of ways we could see that in the scriptures, but Ephesians chapter 4, verses 12 and 13 says, it says in verse 11, he gives some to be apostles, prophets, evangelists, shepherds, pastors, and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry.

Ephesians 4:12

And he's talking about what the church is for: that the believers would be equipped for the work of ministry, verse 13, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.

That's what God has for us.

His intention is not that we stay as baby Christians, but that we grow up, that we grow up.

The Hebrews 5 passage, it's very clear that in that particular church, the writer of the book of Hebrews addressed the people and said, Some of you I can't treat as adults, as spiritually mature.

You still need the baby food.

You need the milk of the word rather than solid food.

And that was not a compliment.

That was an appropriate rebuke to believers.

We're not to stay spiritually immature.

We are designed to grow.

It is neither automatic nor instantaneous, but it is obtainable and expected, spiritual maturity.

It doesn't happen just like that.

It's not instantaneous.

And it's not automatic.

We talked last week about work out your own salvation, fear, and trembling, for God is at work within you to will and to do his good pleasure.

There's both sides of it.

We work and God works.

It's not automatic.

And when we begin to think about those of us who are mature and some are not, we have to ask ourselves, which are we?

Which are you?

That's an appropriate question.

You ought to ask yourself.

Are you a spiritual grown-up?

Where are you along the path?

Spiritual maturity is not just a function of time.

Very important.

Physical maturity takes some time.

Personal maturity takes some time.

But boy, just because you turn 21 doesn't mean you're an adult or mature.

Boy, can I think of a lot of nationally known figures.

I'll pick on football players because I sure ain't one.

Overpaid and immature.

And yet?

Overpaid and immature.

Are we immature?

Just because we've been believers for a certain period of time doesn't mean we're grown-ups.

It just doesn't work that way.

It doesn't happen that way.

There's a process of spiritual growth.

On the other hand, it doesn't take years and years.

It shouldn't take years and decades for you to become spiritually mature.

I'm real tempted to do so, but I decided, even though I'm ducking out of here in two weeks, wisdom is the better part of valor, and decided not to.

I was going to simply ask for you to raise your hand if you consider yourself spiritually mature.

Don't raise your hand.

But think about that.

If I ask that, would you say I'm spiritually mature?

Now, somehow or another we would be, we would feel a little bit awkward saying that.

That's wrong.

The norm is not to stay as baby Christians, but to grow and to grow to maturity, to the full measure of the stature of Christ.

That's what the church, among other things, is for, that we would grow.

And although we might be hesitant to raise our hands and say, I'm spiritually mature, how horrible it would be if there weren't lots of people in this congregation who really could raise their hand and say that.

If we have been believers and been studying God's word and seeking to obey and follow God, we shouldn't be like little newborns.

Don't take it away.

A newborn baby is precious.

But a ten-year-old who acts like a newborn, there's something seriously wrong.

So are we still acting like a newborn?

Or are we approaching spiritual maturity?

It shouldn't take decades.

It's not just for old geezers.

In fact, I know some young people who are spiritually mature beyond their chronological age.

And that is cool to see.

Unfortunately, I know too many people who are chronologically adults but are spiritually infants.

That's not the way it is supposed to be.

We are to be spiritual grown-ups.

So this involves a transformation of our mind, our attitudes, and our values.

So Paul says here, let those who are mature think this way.

Now we need to stop with that thought as well.

Spiritual maturity is not the same as having knowledge.

When he's saying think this way, he's not just saying agree with me, agree with my doctrine, memorize Bible verses, get awards in a wana, as great as all of that is, I'm all for that.

But it's not a matter of knowledge.

Knowledge.

It's a matter of life transformation.

When he says if those are those of us who are mature, we should think this way, he uses a word here that elsewhere is translated very differently and actually very appropriately.

It's the idea of having this way of thinking.

It's not the content, it's being, it's thinking the way God thinks, thinking in accordance with truth.

Have this attitude in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, Philippians 2.

Have this attitude, have this mind, have the kind of thinking that was also in Christ, who did not consider equality with God as a thing to be grasped, but gave of himself and submitted himself to the Father.

Have this mind in you.

It's the same word that Paul is using here that has been translated, in my opinion, unhelpfully, as just think, think, think.

And then we immediately, as Westerners, cognitive, we start thinking propositionally, we start thinking theologically.

And I'm all for thinking theologically.

I taught years, I spent years teaching theology overseas, but theology doesn't make you mature.

It's just knowledge.

It's just knowledge.

Now, those who have a deeper understanding of God may find that that transforms their lives.

And that's the whole point here.

It's a matter of life transformation.

Look at Philippians 3, 19, just down further in this passage, talking about bad examples, people who are not marked by Jesus.

Their end is destruction, their God is their belly, their glory is their shame, with minds set on earthly things.

And it's exactly the same word that we have in this verse of think.

They have their minds set in a certain place.

Or look over to Colossians, Colatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, so I go right in my Bible.

Colossians chapter 3, verse 2.

Colossians 3:2

Set your mind on things that are above, not things that are on earth.

That's the same word.

When Paul says, think this way, he's talking about mind, he's talking about attitudes, he's talking about values, it's talking about our worldview, we're talking about, it's talking about where we place our thinking, our values, etc.

So it's actually a very uh this verse, although on its on the surface, you you might think it just means learn more truth.

Well, if you mean by that, learn more information, that's not what he's saying.

He's saying have your mind be remade and your whole nature thus transformed.

Romans 12 verse 2.

Romans 12:2

Uh a wonderful, wonderful verse.

Uh normally we read, don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed, be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Um translation, New English Bible, now the Old English Bible, uh, Romans 12, 2.

Let your mind be remade, be transformed, be renewed, and your whole nature thus transformed.

It's the transformation of our nature that leads to spiritual maturity, not just our intellectual knowledge and our ability to quote Bible verses and to be able to distinguish between sub, supra, and infralapsarianism.

Okay?

I'm not even going to try to tell you what all of that means.

The real question is: are you being more heavenly minded or more earthly minded than you were a couple of years ago?

That's the measure and the pattern of spiritual maturity.

It really, and bear with me with this thought, this matter of life transformation has to do with becoming more and more who God is making us.

In verse, get back to our text here, in verse 16, it says, only let us hold true to that which we have obtained.

The word hold true, the NIV renders it, and I think rightly so, let us live up to, let us live up to, and let's live out that which God has birthed within us.

So at the time of the new birth, you have a new nature.

It's like being born again.

You're a new person.

Oh, well, you're still some of the old, and you're still some of the new, you have new desires, you have old desires, and as we grow, we become more and more in line with that new nature.

That is who we most truly are.

So when we read the scriptures, we realize that we have become partakers of the divine nature.

That's the truest us inside.

We have an old self and a new self, and you can debate that theologically all you want.

The scriptures just make it abundantly clear.

There's a new and an old, and there's a battle between the two.

Okay?

And when God gives us exhortations and commands, I have come to understand those to be strong encouragements to do and be not just what he wants us to do and be, that, but actually that's what I at a deep level want to do and be.

We began this two years ago with the tender commandments.

They're not trying to force and impress from the outside in doing things that you don't want to do.

No, it's getting us in touch.

The commands and the exhortations get us in touch with what we most, as believers, what we most truly desire to do.

So when I hear and read the exhortations and commands in the scripture, then I allow those to nurture and feed my better desires.

It's a little bit like worship.

Part of the benefit of worship is that we start saying things that are true, and at the moment we might not feel it.

By the end of the song, we might actually be feeling it, because that's there inside.

But it needs to be brought out, it needs to be generated, not forced, not manipulated, but getting in touch with who you most truly are.

One pastor whom I highly respect said it this way.

I no longer see preaching and teaching as an attempt to convict and challenge Christians to do what they have no real desire to do.

Did you catch that?

He said, I've come to understand that preaching and teaching is not an attempt to try to convict and challenge Christians to do what they have no real desire to do.

Instead, he says, my role is to cooperate with God in coaxing to the surface their deepest longings and exposing the foolishness of living contrary to God's way.

What a beautiful picture of what we need to do.

If you just go ahead and do whatever you want, but do what you most truly want.

And get in touch with what you most truly want.

Your wants are changed and transformed by the power of God.

And it begins at the time of conversion, you get a new nature.

Silly little thing.

Sitting in my fraternity house, 1967, Bloomington, Illinois.

Somebody told me, if any man is in Christ, behold, he's a new creature.

All things have passed, everything's become new.

So for weeks I had my cigarette pack on my desk in front of me with that little Bible verse saying it.

And you know what?

I realized I really didn't want to smoke.

I mean, even then, in 67, I realized it was just a stupid, dirty habit.

But I began to get in touch with different desires, not because I had to, but because God was changing my desires from the inside.

This takes us in many ways to verse 17, the second point.

First, being mature Christ followers, this happens, as this happens, what transpires is that we get more deeply impacted, more deeply imprinted by who Christ is and by his nature.

Let's read verse 17.

Brothers, join in imitating me, and we will see that can also just as correctly and rightly be said, be fellow imitators with me, literally in the Greek, that is, be fellow imitators with me.

And we'll see he imitates Christ.

He encourages people to imitate himself to the extent that he's imitating Christ.

So Paul isn't setting himself up as having arrived.

None of us have arrived in this life.

But Paul had been deeply impacted by Christ.

So he says, keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example, the imprint, the marks of Christ.

Keep your eyes on them, and you will begin to see Christ.

He uses a phenomenal picture here.

It's the word tupos, typos, in Greek.

It's the word from which we get type.

A type, like a typewriter.

I know some of you have never seen or touched an old-fashioned typewriter.

They were phenomenal clackety instruments.

But the way a typewriter worked, it was amazing.

You would push a key and this arm would come up and it would hit the paper, and between the head of this arm and the paper was a ribbon of ink.

And so it would hit the paper.

And actually, if you can find any old-fashioned typewritten letters, note carefully they're indented.

Every letter is an indentation.

It's been imprinted.

And that idea of a mark or an indentation left behind when something is struck, is what the word example or pattern is all about.

Follow those who walk in accordance with the example that you have in us.

That example was the having been impacted by Jesus.

I'm not much of a woodworker.

I love woodworking.

My only finished woodworking project was a workbench that I built, and then I realized it was too big to get out of the basement of the house, and it was still there the last I knew.

So don't follow my example as a woodworker.

But you know, I'm likely to hammer a nail and be so preoccupied with sub-super and infralapsarianism that I'm likely to have that hammer glance off and strike the wood.

And you know what?

It leaves a ding.

Some of you, when you golf, leaved all kinds of divots on the fairway.

Marks, because something has been impacted.

The marks in Jesus' hands and feet and side were indentations, and Thomas did well when he said, let me touch that, let me get in touch with that.

And there is a sense in which, in the soft tissue of our soul, we become impacted more and more and more by the marks of Christ, by the example of Christ.

Let this mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus.

And then you hang around people who are further down the road than you are, and wow! You begin to see what that looks like in lives of your contemporaries.

But what we see in one another when it goes well is the impact ultimately of Jesus in their life on their soul.

This idea of an example is frequently used in the moral realm, the pattern of an example of a life well worth living.

So when he says in verse 17, be fellow imitators with me, keep your eyes on those who are good examples, those who walk according to the marks, the divots, the impressions in their lives.

That's the picture.

And that is a huge part of our spiritual growth.

The reality is we imitate and we are being imitated.

And the picture here, Paul said, follow my example as I follow the example with Christ.

He didn't set himself out as a perfect example, but he was an example.

Who we are influences other people actually more than what we say or do.

I've come to believe that because I've raised kids.

Parents, have you ever, have you yet had?

Enough of you are gray that you no doubt have.

That moment when you see your kids saying and doing something and you say, Oh my goodness, they are following my example.

They're talking the way I talk.

They're doing what I do, not what I tell them to do.

It's a horrible, important moment because kids follow our example as much or more than they follow what we tell them to do or not to do.

We're always influencing other people, whether we like it or not.

And if we're growing in spiritual maturity, we are being influenced by other people.

I want to conclude with uh with verse 20.

Um spiritual grown-ups bearing the imprint of Jesus on their souls who live in this world as heaven's expatriates.

Philippians chapter 3, verse 20.

Philippians 3:20

But our citizenship is in heaven.

I've talked about this in a dozen different ways over the last two years, and I'm going to talk about it again.

This is just so vital because we miss this.

Our citizenship is in heaven.

One very helpful commentator that I read put it this way: We have our home in heaven, and here on earth we're just a colony, a colony of heaven's citizens.

The word citizens was probably more important to the Philippians than it is to us because they understood very well what this meant.

They were Roman citizens, and Philippi was a Roman colony.

This guy says it better and quicker than I could possibly say it.

Here was a picture the Philippians could understand.

Philippi was a Roman colony.

Here and there, at strategic military centers, the Romans established their colonies.

In such places, the citizens were mostly soldiers who had served their time, 21 years, and who had thus been rewarded with full citizenship.

So Philippi was started as a colony primarily of retired military who, their golden handshake, as it were, were to become full Roman citizens.

The great characteristic of these colonies was that wherever they were, there were fragments of Rome all around them.

Roman-style clothes were worn, Roman magistrates governed, Latin was spoken, Roman justice was administered, Roman morals were observed.

Even in the most remote regions, they retained, they remained unshakably Roman.

Paul says to the Philippians, just as Roman colonists never forget that you belong to Rome, you must never forget that you are citizens of heaven, and your conduct must match your citizenship.

Let me try to say it this way and ask a question.

And we'll close with this.

Might be half hour from now, but we'll close with this.

How do you view yourself here?

I don't mean at church.

I mean in this life, on this world.

And I want to suggest two pictures: expatriates and immigrants.

Jane and I lived overseas for 30 years as we served as missionaries, and we lived in 22 years in Belgium, eight years in Germany.

We learned multiple languages, we worked with multiple cultures, and we had to deal with the fact of what is our identity.

We were required by the Belgian government, I wish I could find it, to carry around identity papers.

I know that would somebody would get shot if they required that in the U.S., but all Belgian citizens carried identity papers, and ours had a big stamp on it that said, temporary residence.

We had a temporary resident permit.

We could be stopped at any moment, and they would ask to see our identification, and smack dab in the middle of that identification paper in big letters was temporary resident permits.

We were not citizens of Belgium.

So there's a difference between an expatriate and an immigrant.

An expatriate is a person who takes up temporary residence in a country that is not their own.

It's not the same as a tourist.

A tourist is just there for a short time.

No, a temporary resident takes up residence, but that is not their home.

That's not where they're going to.

We knew from the beginning that the time would come that we would come back.

Because we were not Belgian, we were not German, we were Americans.

We had a mission.

We had something to accomplish.

And as temporary residents, we could accomplish a certain mission.

We learned the language.

And Jane says, Don't do it.

Don't speak in Flemish.

Okay.

We learned it pretty well, I must say.

Pretty impressive people.

We learned it well.

We really did.

I preached and taught for years in Flemish, and the only place we spoke English was our home.

Flemish, I could give the rest of this message in Flemish, and I would thoroughly enjoy it, actually.

But it's not my mother tongue.

It's not really.

It's not really who I am, though I am totally fluent in it.

We raised our kids in Belgium.

Our daughter was four years old when we got there.

She went through high school, came back, and went to college.

But she wasn't Belgian.

She wasn't American exactly either.

Third culture kids.

Some of you SIL people understand what that's all about.

We learned the culture and the history of the Flemish people.

We adopted some of the quirks of Belgians.

For example, to this day, if we go out to a restaurant, I'm going to ask for mayonnaise for my French fries.

It's the only way to eat French fries.

Amen, sister, preach it.

But good mayonnaise and good potatoes.

But that's just my taste is attuned to French fries with mayonnaise.

So we we were accepted almost like natives.

Now, in Belgium, you look the same, you dress the same.

It's not a matter of how we look, but people treated us almost like one of them.

We had deep friendships.

Most of our friendships and relationships were with Belgian Flemish people.

And yet there was always a subtle difference.

I could understand all of the jokes.

I even knew, could recognize the different regional accents, and and we were welcomed with open arms by them.

And yet, no friendship in those 30 years, I had deep friendships, but there was always a limit.

You always came to an end because I wasn't one of them.

I was an expatriate.

That was not really my home.

Expatriates take up temporary residence in a country that is not their own.

Immigrants, and we're not talking about tourists, we're talking about immigrants, are people who settle down in a country and it becomes their own.

Big difference there.

When Paul says our citizenship is in heaven, he's saying, Let me see your identity card.

Let me see your identity card.

Because you have no right to settle down and make this world your home.

Spiritual maturity involves being spiritual grown-ups, being deeply impacted in the soft tissue of our soul with the imprints and character and mindset of Christ, and finding our way of living as expatriates.

Temporary residents of planet dirt.

No.

Temporary residents.

In comparison to our home, this is planet dirt.

Planet Earth, okay.

Temporary residents of planet Earth.

But this is not where we belong, this is not what we're made for.

We're here for a short time, east of Eden, and very far from home.

We press on towards the goal.

And the goal is to be grown-ups spiritually.

The goal is to be deeply imprinted and impacted by Christ.

And the goal is to live now as expatriates.

Expatriates.

If this is your home, in the sense that I'm talking about, you cannot call yourself spiritually mature.

It's just all part of it.

So let's press on to the mark.

It's certainly my deep desire that somehow or another, in the couple of years that we've been here, I will have contributed a little bit to that.

My goal has not been to keep you happy.

My goal has not been to tell you what you want to hear.

My purpose has not been to hit you over the head, unless God wants to hit you over the head a little bit.

My goal and desire is that we, Faith Evangelical Free Church, will be spiritual grown-ups, that we'll be deeply impacted by Christ, and that we'll increasingly realize we have a mission here, but this is not our home.

Would you pray with me?

Heavenly Father, Lord, I ask that somehow or another we will be taking small steps in this glorious direction.

I pray for Jason as he comes.

How I love and respect my brother Jason.

I am so thankful that he will soon be bringing the word to this congregation.

But there's more than just bringing the word.

We need to respond.

And so I ask, Father, that my dear, dear brothers and sisters at Faith Evangelical Free Church, may we become mature Christ followers.

May we be increasingly marked in the soft tissue of our souls by who Christ is and the mindset and the values and the attitudes of Christ.

And may we be on a mission as expatriates in this broken, needy world that you love so much.

Oh God, help us, I pray, in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let me ask you to stand one more time for the benediction.

Probably the last time you will hear this.

I might say it next week, I don't know.

You can take me out of.

No, I won't go there.

All right.

Now, my friends, go into the world in peace.

Have courage.

Hold on to that which is good and honor all men.

Strengthen the faint hearted.

Support the weak.

Help the suffering.

Restore the wandering.

Comfort the grieving.

And share the gospel.

And may the grace and the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with us all.

God bless.

And amen.