Philippians 3:12-21

No matter which service or which campus you go to, here at the Village Chapel, we study through books of the Bible.

And we always have extra copies.

If you didn't bring one with you, we've uh got one we can loan you, or if you don't own a Bible, you can take one of these home with you.

It's yours now.

And uh we love for you to open the pages of the book, or if you uh if you like to uh look it up on a device, there's the the uh password for the network here in the building.

We're studying the book of Philippians, and our theme has been the hope of joy, as we looked at this.

Uh four chapters mentioning joy or some form of that word, about 16 times, so it's quite prominent as a theme.

Uh part of the uh vision here at the village chapel uh is not only to feed uh the flock spiritually, but to also inspire or stir up hunger, more hunger, increasing hunger for God.

So don't just go to a church because it feeds you, go to a church because it makes you hungry for more of God and more of his word and more of uh his ways, and it it points you to want to know him better, not just know about him, but to know him better.

We had, I don't know if any of you fellows were with us yesterday morning at uh Radner, about 20 of us guys, uh 20 some, and we went on a uh on a walk uh and we we we stopped three different times around the lake trail.

And uh Tony Higebotham, Tony Saboto, and uh Chip Arnold each had a uh a little uh kind of a sharing time uh with us.

We talked about waiting on the Lord, watching for the Lord, and walking with the Lord.

It was really amazing, great time.

Uh men watch out.

We'll do that again.

Be you don't want to miss the next one.

Ladies, I believe that that is also gonna happen.

Uh another walk will be planned for you as well, but just a great time together.

And that's the kind of stuff that our text today really is all about.

It's it's about making progress in our Christian pilgrimage.

So um, as we turn to Philippians chapter 3, and I hope you'll turn there with me, I want you to know uh this last half of this chapter is really all about uh answering that kind of a question.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

How do we make progress in our Christian pilgrimage?

Um, John Owen, the great English Puritan, said, the growth of trees and plants takes place so slowly, it is not easily seen.

Daily we notice little change, but in course of time we see that a great change has taken place.

So it is with grace.

Sanctification is progressive, lifelong work.

It is an amazing work of God's grace.

And as it is a work to be prayed for.

And so as you come to this study this morning, I'll be praying that.

I've been praying all week long.

I've been praying that for myself.

I hope you'll pray that for yourself as well, that God will open your eyes and uh and draw you closer and nearer to him, give you a greater hunger for him.

The problem with a lot of us, though, is we come to this passage, it's thinking about someone else.

Now, how many of you know somebody that you think their progress in the Lord is just a little too slow?

You were wise, you did not raise your hands.

Okay.

I even saw that at TVC East.

They did not raise their hands in the camera there either.

So that's good.

Yeah.

We're uh interestingly, we're gonna hear from the Apostle Paul, no less a significant person in the history of the Christian faith than the Apostle Paul.

And he's gonna, he's gonna, in just his expression to this ancient church at Philippi, uh, in this letter written around 62 A.D.

to a church he established 10 years earlier, he's gonna tell them about his own spiritual progress and lack thereof as well.

Uh and so I think it's a fascinating thing to look at something like that in his life.

If we have a passionate desire for God, if we truly desire to grow and increase in our experience of God's grace, mercy, and love, the apostle Paul has some thoughts here.

And I think for those who have chosen to follow Jesus on a narrow road, uh uh it's it leads to a flourishing life, and I think we'll see that in this passage.

Uh that kind of flourishing life that is unaffected by either success or failure in social life or political outcomes or any of that sort of thing.

It's the kind of flourishing life that is unaffected by those kinds of things, financial losses or successes.

The right road that the Lord wants us to be on in our spiritual pilgrimage, our Christian pilgrimage is one that leads to Christ.

And it's all about Christ.

And so we'll see that as we go along.

Look with me then at chapter three of Philippians, and I'm gonna back up two verses so that we have the context.

The intent or the desire or the goal is that I may know him, Paul says, and the power of his resurrection, talking about Jesus and the fellowship of his sufferings, being conformed to his death.

In order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

There can be no resurrection if there has not been a death.

Resurrection power works best in graveyards.

Um, that's where it manifests itself.

That's why it's so glorious, because there actually was a death.

And so he's been talking about that kind of thing and reckoning ourselves dead to sin, alive to Christ in many different ways throughout his writings.

But he begins, verse 12, this way: not that I've already obtained it, in other words, the resurrection for the dead, or have already become perfect.

The word could be translated, mature.

But I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

Notice the divine initiative that preceded his response to God.

God is always the initiator, we are always the responders.

Christ laid a hold of him, and now he is interested in laying hold of Christ and getting to advance or progress in his spiritual pilgrimage, his pilgrimage in Christ.

Verse 13, brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet.

This is the Apostle Paul talking, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Look at all the action that he takes there.

He's not passive, he's not unengaged, he's active.

He's responding to what Christ has done in his life.

Christ has laid hold of him, he wants to lay hold of Christ, and this one thing I do, forget what lies behind.

Not marked by it.

That's not my identity.

And that might be a success or a failure.

It could be either one.

But none of those things own us in our past.

Why?

Because we belong to Christ.

Pressing on, that's effort.

Okay.

Grace is opposed to earning, but grace is not opposed to effort.

Effort, pressing on, uh, we seek to lay hold of Him, reaching for the prize, which is the upper call of God in Christ Jesus.

Let us therefore, as many as are mature, have this attitude.

And if anything, you have a different attitude.

If any of you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you.

When I read that little little phrase there, God, if you have a different attitude, God will reveal this to you.

He's basically saying, you're in process too, you're progressing too, especially if you're hearing from the Lord from time to time.

And it's kind of an eye-opener occasionally.

You know?

In other words, it's not just bland and beige the whole time.

You're actually learning.

God's opening your eyes to see things.

Some of those things are your own failures or your own dependence on your successes or your own addictions to your failures.

And he's trying to open our eyes to see that our new life is found in Christ.

And we're not defined by those things in the past.

And we're pressing on.

We're engaged, we're active.

You cannot run a race unless you enter the race.

I could not walk yesterday with the men if I didn't start moving my feet on the trail.

But the trail was already carved out.

The trail was there.

I had brothers to help me along the way.

It was awesome.

So I like it that he's in the plural, you know, because he's he's in he begins in the singular, I press on, I do not I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it, but then he moves right to the plural, and that's part of the secret, isn't it?

I'm not alone in this, you're not alone in this.

See, let us, therefore, as many as are mature, have this attitude.

And God, if you need, God's, you will need, God will reveal things to you along the way.

However, let us keep living by the same standard to which we have attained.

Uh, brethren, join in following my example.

Observe those who walk according to the pattern you have seen in us.

For many walk, of whom I often told you, and now tell you, even weeping, that they are unfortunately enemies of the cross of Christ.

There are those that are walking, and the way they walk in their faith or their understanding is to be rule followers.

And they end up working at odds or against the cross of Christ, where the price for all my sin was paid, the price for all your sin was paid at the Christ, at the cross.

And so he says, you become an enemy of the cross, that is, you're fighting against it, and the glorious uh uh uh effect that it has in our lives of Christ having paid the price for our sin.

You don't want to be an enemy of the cross.

A lot of us believe in the doctrine of grace, but live functionally like we don't.

And we end up being enemies of the cross in our own life.

We're fighting against it, we're not receiving his grace.

We went to the cross to get salvation, but we didn't go to the cross to get be loved by God.

And that's one of the beauties of the cross.

At the cross, we see the justice, the mercy, the wisdom, and the power of God all intersect at the cross.

And this powerful display of God's love towards sinners like me and like you.

And that's there for us.

Our salvation is accomplished there, that's right.

But we are also loved by God in the most beautiful way, there, at the cross.

Don't be an enemy of the cross in your own life and short circuit the power of it.

Verse 19, whose end?

The folks, when we do that, the end is destruction, whose God is their appetite or their bellies, some of your translations will say, and whose glory is in their shame, who set their minds on earthly things.

So there are people that are wired this way.

They might even attend church, they might even dress up really nice and go to church and everything like that.

But in their deepest parts of their of their of their lives, while they might uh have a sentimental uh uh uh romantic sort of notion about God, and they drape that over their lives a little bit on Sunday morning from you know 10, 10, 15, whatever.

If in reality you look at their whole week, that drape comes off and they live as if God doesn't matter.

And it's just part of a sort of a cultural thing for them to go to church and to hear this kind of stuff and feel good as we sing songs and all that.

But don't let that be.

Don't limit yourself to that, Paul says.

You want to make progress in your Christian pilgrimage.

You don't want to be an enemy of the cross.

You don't want to end up living a life that is self-destructive.

We can all think of someone who lives a self-destructive life.

We may, most of us, be able to think back on some things that we've done where you're thinking back and maybe even wake up in a night terror dream and you go, I can't believe I I made it through that.

I can't believe I was that foolish when I was a kid or last week or whatever it might be.

I can't believe I was like that, and that God preserved me in some way.

Or you may have actually experienced some consequences from mere foolishness and found that some of your self-destructive thinking and living as if God doesn't matter has actually resulted in some kind of consequence or some kind of self-destructive thing.

Whose God is their appetite?

In other words, they're they're worshiping desire.

They're marked by their identity as wrapped up in their appetites, in their bellies, is what's said.

And it just means it's sort of the ancient way of thinking of all your desires, all of your passions.

It's one of the reasons why in this modern world in which we live right now, there are so many people that are literally allowing themselves to be defined by some passion, whether it's work or play or pleasure or whatever it might be, and they're finding their identity in that, and it's to their own self-destruction that they do.

Why?

Well, because those things weren't really created to bear the burden of your identity.

Those things cannot bear the weight of your identity.

Your identity, you're created in the image of God, and that is a glorious thing.

And it cannot be reduced to what you happen to want.

You know?

It can't be that, it can't be done that.

So the way we see the human person from a biblical perspective sets us free to be who God designed us to be.

Not to bear the burden ourselves of having to recreate or redesign ourselves.

Again, we are not God.

We can't bear that burden.

And he knows that as well when he says, You're an enemy of the cross, if you're living a life of self-destruction, a life where your gods are your belly, your appetite, and his glory is in their shame, literally rejoicing in their shame.

That happens in our day and time too.

People are, you know, I mean, language started changing and being deconstructed.

And you know, I'm not down on this song or that song or whatever, but when bad became good, you're turning the whole thing upside down, you know?

I think that thing's got a great groove, that song.

I love that.

But bad means something, and good means something, and God's the one that defines those terms, not us.

See?

And so our bellies can't be our appetite, our bellies can't bear that weight.

Um the things that we pursue that end up, we think that's where glory is, that's not where glory is, and it ends up being shameful in some way.

And then we have our minds on earthly things.

Verse 20, our citizenship, isn't that interesting, is in heaven.

And he opens this talking to the saints in Philippi, the saints who are in Christ Jesus in Philippi.

So we have, we have two addresses, each and every one of us, that follow Jesus.

Your first address is as a citizen of heaven.

You're in Christ Jesus.

Then we happen to live, most of us here anyway, in Nashville, Tennessee.

You know?

And you can broaden it from there.

But these people, he's, as he speaks to them, he goes, your real citizenship is in heaven.

From which we also eagerly wait for a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

He's coming back.

I love the number of times the Apostle Paul talks about the return of Christ.

We don't talk about it nearly enough in our day and age.

We've all read the book, you know, or seen the kind of people that come up and say, 88 reasons why the Lord's coming back in 1988.

And what year is it?

And then the sequel, 89 Reasons Why Jesus is coming back in 1989, and on and on and on.

And so some of us go, well, I don't think he's ever coming back.

No, the Bible talks about it, and there's almost 200 allusions to the return of Christ in the New Testament.

And that's one of the things we hope for, because he's coming back to set things right.

And there's enough wrong, there's enough that's off-center, there's enough that's twisted and distorted.

I'm eager for him to come back.

Yeah.

And the older you get, I've realized that, you know, if you're here in your 20 or whatever, you're going, yeah, I'm not ready for him to come back yet.

I haven't experienced all life has to hold or whatever.

Oh, let me just tell you.

I've I I've I've had a great life.

I I continue to have a great life, I really do.

And and I'm experiencing it in its fullness uh in a lot of ways that I never did before.

Uh but I could really see it, and I imagine sometimes what would fall look like in a restored creation.

I mean, if it's this beautiful in a distorted creation, oh my goodness, can you imagine the colors, the shapes of leaves?

Can you imagine the night sky in a restored creation?

And for those of us a little older, can you imagine waking up without a stiffness in your back?

Can you imagine your eyesight getting clearer?

You know, and really seeing things again.

You know, so he talks about the Lord coming back.

It's really beautiful.

And uh, our citizenship is in heaven.

So we wait for Christ Jesus, the Lord, who will transform the body of our humble state, this all this brokenness and all that, into conformity with the body of his glory by the exertion of the power that he has, even to subject all things to himself.

There's some power in those words right there, folks.

If he can do that, if he's the one that created everything out of nothing, he's reminding us that he can restore everything as well.

And we can look forward to all of that.

So I don't know about you, but I'm a little bit excited.

I like this kind of stuff, and I want to make progress in my spiritual life as well.

If the Apostle Paul uh could say that kind of thing, I think that I need to be able to say that kind of thing as well and ask myself the question: do I is that what I want?

Is that what I really want?

One of my favorite sages of the last few years is a guy named Eugene Peterson.

He has a memoir called The Pastor.

And uh I wanted to read this one little excerpt because I read it this week and I thought that's so perfectly in line with our with our uh our study today.

Uh Eugene says, I grew up in a Pentecostal culture that was quite wonderful in many ways.

The music, a mix of country and folk, with all the old standards worked in, was full of energy and emotion.

A remarkable number of people in our small congregation were surprisingly accomplished musicians.

My aunt on the piano, my good friend on the violin, his father on the flute, my dad with his tenor saxophone, and my mother with her accordion.

You guys don't know this, but Kim plays the accordion.

So everybody ask her to join the worship team soon.

Okay.

Eugene goes on to say a strikingly statuesque young woman played her large bass fiddle with dramatic flair, slapping and spinning it.

An elderly man who had spent his life as a logger, his finick, his fingers still agile, picked up his banjo.

I played the cornet, Eugene said.

That's a horn for those of you who don't know that.

There were always impromptu trios and quartets.

The preachers were great storytellers.

A succession of missionaries on furlough entertained us through each year with heartbreaking stories out of Africa and Brazil.

I was never bored.

I loved it, he says.

But pastors were in short supply, Eugene says.

These preachers were great at the big picture and the great challenges ahead, but they didn't have any time for ordinary people devoid of drama.

I liked the preachers.

They were never dull.

Most of them were larger than life.

As I entered adolescence, teenage years, I began to get the feeling that God, except for the time they talked about him on Sunday, was not high on their agenda.

They were pretty full of themselves.

And by this time I was getting interested in God.

Brother Herman, for instance.

All our preachers were either brother or sister in this particular strain of church.

And by the way, you'll hear from Sister Kim next week.

Her favorite Bible passage is the first eight or nine verses of Philippians chapter 4.

Philippians 4 · chapter mention

So I've asked her to bring our study next week.

Brother Herman was much larger than life, he says.

He was never larger than on one Sunday Saturday afternoon at a Mennonite wedding.

This is so good.

There was a Mennonite community ten miles or so east of our town, nestled against the mountains.

One of the young men from our church courted and proposed marriage to one of their girls.

The wedding date was set, and all of the young people from our congregation were invited to be to the wedding.

Our preacher, Brother Herman, was invited by the bride's pastor to share in the marriage service.

It was late spring.

I remember the lilacs and the apple trees were in blossom.

The wedding and the reception took place on the family farm.

A Mennonite feast was spread.

After the wedding ceremony, we all fell to at the tables of fried chicken and potato salad and coleslaw and deviled eggs and punch.

I love this.

This is so good.

Brother Herman remarked at how good the punch was.

And he kept going back for refills.

He kept saying that it was the best punch he had ever had Mennonite punch.

And to be sure and give him the recipe when it was all over.

Meanwhile, the rumor was circulating among the younger set that one of the Mennonite kids.

Kids had spiked the punch.

With vodka.

We could hardly contain ourselves watching to see when the effects would take hold.

For one of the subtexts in virtually every one of Brother Herman's sermons was Liquor Has Never Passed These Lips.

Eugene says, We heard it every Sunday.

Now we had a ringside seat, watching it happen, watching Mennonite punch in considerable quantities pass his lips.

It took about 40 minutes for the vodka to make its presence felt.

Brother Herman spent the rest of the afternoon under an apple tree, but not quietly, his loud snoring announcing the cancellation of his proud years of teetotaling.

Twenty seven years later, Eugene Peterson says, I was speaking at a gathering of Mennonite pastors in Indiana.

And I told that story by way of introducing my first encounter with Mennonites.

After my lecture, one of the pastors came up to me and said, I was at that wedding, and I was the kid who spiked the punch.

So look, whether you're brother Herman, teetotaling, following the rules, being all religious, strict in every way, proud of it.

Or whether you're the kid who mischievously fell into some kind of whatever and then later became a pastor, here's what's true.

Both people need redemption.

Both people need Jesus.

Both people need God's grace.

Now we could probably stop there, but you know me.

So we all want progress.

All right?

What does it make this passage teach us about making progress in the Christian pilgrimage?

But if you're on the wrong road, Lewis said, progress means doing and about turn.

Walking back to the right road.

In that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

That's so true.

How can we know which is the right road?

Can we find it?

And if we were to find the right road in our pilgrimage, what would keep us on it?

What would keep us from deviating and going the wrong way or being distracted or in some way leaning too much into being Brother Herman?

Too much about rule following, too much about self-righteousness.

Or the other direction, too much about antinomianism, lawlessness, recklessness, just being whoever we want to be, and with no regard for how it affects and impacts the rest of the people, even though we find that story a bit humorous.

Here's what I think we see in this particular passage, verses 12 and 13.

Humble assessment of the self.

Paul uses several Greek words that would have been used in speaking about athletics.

He says, press on.

He says, the goal.

He says, the prize.

These reflect a runner's energy, focus, and reward.

You want to press on.

You can press on in a number of different directions, but you're pressing on toward a goal.

And that goal is Christ Jesus.

If you want to grow in your relationship with Christ.

And he's saying, be intentional.

Don't just be passive.

Be intentional.

In spite of all the ways that God had used him, the Apostle Paul always was quick to remind others that the Christian life is a process we grow in.

It is described variously as a walk, a race, a journey.

And the more we grow in Christ, the more we realize that we need to grow.

Anybody in here, any of you gentlemen, especially use magnetic collar stays?

Raise your hand.

Admit it.

Come on.

Nobody.

I'm so alone in the world.

At East, I think one person raised his hand.

And I use these little magnetic stays.

You stick the little flat piece up in your collar there, and then you put a little teeny magnet right here.

I don't have them on on this shirt, but but they work together.

The bar kind of is sort of what it is, but the magnet comes in with the power, and it's awesome.

But they work together, it's got concurrence, right?

I washed that shirt the other day, and I forgot to take the stays out, and the magnets were missing.

And I thought to myself, there goes the wash machine.

I mean, those magnets are gonna find their way into the machinery of that washing machine or the dryer for sure.

And I fortunately found them.

They had found each other in the shirt as it was being washed, and the two powerful magnets found themselves, and the metal stays were already there.

But it illustrated for me this thing that you need both of those parts to have your collar stand up, but the only one that has any real power is the magnet.

And God's like that.

He's the only one with the power to transform me.

You see?

But I gotta be in that place where he's doing the transform, the transforming and the changing, where his power is at work in my life.

So I gotta be there.

I gotta enter the race, respond to his first having laid hold of me, respond to that, and then he begins to change me.

And it's his power that does all of that.

It's a bit interesting the way this all works, but it begins with this humble assessment of the self.

Interestingly enough, if you read across the corpus or the body of work of the Apostle Paul, here's what you see.

In one of his earliest letters, uh, the letter to the church at Corinth, 1 Corinthians 15, 9, he says, I'm the least of the apostles.

This is his humble self-assessment.

And he means this.

He's not just saying it to be, look at me, aren't I humble?

No, he actually means it.

He recognizes, he he calls himself the least of the apostles.

Interestingly, in Ephesians, which is one of his, if you take his ministry, it's a little bit later, in Ephesians he says to me, the very least of all the saints.

Ooh, so now he's not just the least of the apostles, he's the least of all the saints.

Not just the least of the elite leadership group, but the least of every saint in Christ Jesus.

And then fascinating, even more so to me, is toward the end of his life, writing to his young protege Timothy.

In 1 Timothy 1.15, he says this Jesus came into the world to save sinners, among whom I am the chief.

You see what's happening?

He's making progress in his humble assessment of his self.

He's going from being the least of the apostles to the least of the saints to the chief of sinners.

That's progress.

It doesn't, you know, in some ways people might think, oh, he's going down the hill.

No, no.

He's actually making ground and seeing how beautiful God's grace is as he sees how much he needs it all along the way.

I saw this quote on Twitter the other day by this gal who used to be, I think, involved in the music business.

I don't know her, but I thought it was very succinctly put, only when we grasp how treacherous our sin is can we recognize how beautiful the gift of God's grace is.

For Paul and all who believe the gospel.

No achievement in our past, no failure in our past.

Either qualify us or disqualify us from receiving God's grace.

Why?

Because grace is for the guilty and undeserving.

Mercy is for the helpless and the needy.

I'm all four of those.

I'm helpless and needy, I'm guilty and undeserving.

So are you, whether you admit it or not.

And so grace is on offer to you, mercy is on offer to you, and grace is on offer to me, and grace and mercy is on offer to me as well.

How will we respond?

So, humble assessment of the self is one of the beginnings of making progress in our pilgrimage.

Secondly, increasing Christ-centeredness or Christocentric thinking, if you will, or Christ-focused, I think I have up on the screen.

For Paul's Christocentric thinking, just from Philippians, he says this in 1.21, he says, for me to live as Christ, to die is gained.

That's very Christ-centered.

In 2-5, he says, having this attitude in yourselves, which also wasn't Christ Jesus.

In other words, we should adopt the mind of Christ.

Philippians 2.5, okay?

Philippians 3, 7 and 8.

Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord.

I'm sorry, that's that's 3.1.

And then 3, 7, and 8, whatever things were gained in me, to those things I've counted lost for the sake of knowing Christ.

More than that, I count all things to be lost, and viewing the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord.

And 13 B through 16 is a culmination of that.

We just read that.

Forgetting what lies behind my past failures, my past successes, reaching forward to what lies ahead.

That means step up, enter in, run the race, begin with an eternal perspective, press on toward the goal, persevere.

You're gonna grow weary at times, you're gonna be distracted at times, you're gonna feel like there's a setback.

You're gonna face a storm, you're gonna face a giant at some point.

That's true.

He's not hiding any of that.

He's riding from prison.

He knows this.

He's not presenting Pollyanna Christianity.

This is no mere sentimental romanticism, which is really what, unfortunately, permeates the church right now.

A lot of people think this is just about feeling good on Sunday and a God that sort of orbits around us, whose only job is our happiness.

And that's not true at all.

That's not what this is.

See, He's come to redeem us, to restore us, to renew us.

And that's so much bigger than mere shallow happiness.

Respond to the upward call.

There's a lot of voices calling you in your life here, in my life here.

Every song, every TV show, every movie you go to is calling you in some way.

The question is, whose calling are you responding to?

All of these things are shaping and forming us.

We have to do this with our eyes wide open.

We need to, if we're going to make progress in our Christian pilgrimage.

And thirdly, he says in verse 17, imitation of godliness.

He literally says to them to imitate me.

Elsewhere, he uses it very, he says it very clearly in 1 Corinthians 11 1, be imitators of me just as I also am of Christ.

So the point there, folks, is look for godly mentors.

That doesn't mean you worship them.

That doesn't mean you set them up on a pedestal.

We've all, probably here in this room, all had people we know who have fallen.

You know, who we we thought, oh man, their faith is rock solid.

I can think of several in my own life, in my own journey.

So we don't ultimately put our faith and hope in them, but I'm looking to them to see what the multifaceted jewel of holiness looks like.

Look at the way he is so patient.

Look at the way that person loves others.

Look at the way that person cares for people who don't, he doesn't even agree with, or people that think he's bad in some way.

Look at the way the church responds in the community at large.

Are we a part of the river of rancor?

Just the flow of sewage in our culture, or are we lights in a darkened world?

Are we salt making people thirsty and for the living water of the gospel?

Imitation of godliness.

We need to do that.

We need to be an example, we need to follow an example.

We need to have people we can lean on and trust in.

And fourthly, here from this passage as well, heavenly aspirations, verses 18 to 21.

It's really beautiful.

Do we have heavenly aspirations or all of our allegiances or all of our desires or all of our priorities wrapped up in finite things?

My life would only be meaningful, we think, if I get this finite accomplishment or that finite experience.

Now the Apostle Paul says, our citizenship is in heaven.

We are to be heavenly minded.

We're to have our we have to have a much bigger picture of this life, because this life is just a vapor, he says.

And it passes quickly.

I don't know how many years any of us have.

But we need to have a much bigger and the eternal perspective.

And that's where we start to find ourselves trusting in the Lord and knowing the Lord.

There are characteristics of people who are enemies of the cross, they're in his destruction.

Every now and then it's important.

You ought to check the results.

What fruit is this bearing in your life that you spend so much time doing that, or so much money doing that?

What fruit is this bearing in your life?

Their God is their stomach, whether for fitness or for indulgence.

Their glory is their shame, whether for religion or rebellion.

Their focus is on earthly things, unable to gain an eternal perspective.

How do we make progress in our Christian pilgrimage?

Very important question.

I'll give you a couple quotes and we'll close.

William Hendrickson, one of the really great New Testament scholar and Bible commentator of the 20th century, died in the 80s.

But he says this when this perfection is called goal, this maturity is called goal, it's viewed as the object of human striving.

When it's called prize, it's viewed as the gift of God's sovereign grace.

Though it is true that this believing and striving are from start to finish completely dependent on God's grace.

Nevertheless, it is we who must embrace Christ and salvation in him.

It is we who must strive to enter in.

God does not do this believing and striving for us.

I think he's right about that.

John Stutt, there is perhaps no greater secret of progress in Christian living than healthy, hearty spiritual appetite.

Again and again, Scripture addresses its promises to the hungry.

God will satisfy him who is thirsty, and the hungry he fills with good things.

If we are conscious of slow growth, is the reason that we have a jaded appetite.

Is that you?

It is not enough to mourn over past sin.

We must hunger for future righteousness.

The Apostle Peter knew this as well.

He said, in challenging those who were reading his letter, prepare your minds for action.

Keep sober in spirit.

Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Always looking forward, the New Testament is.

Always having an eternal perspective and calling us to have the same.

How do we make progress in our Christian pilgrimage?

All four of those things up on the screen for you there.

It's so important.

Think of yourself and your own where you're at, yourself.

Make some kind of assessment where you're at with God and how what your level of passion is for Him this morning.

Ask yourself how often you consider Christ.

How often are you bringing every thought captive to Christ and every decision you make, every choice you make, every reaction or response you make to others?

This is not, by the way, I'm not stirring these questions up just to shame anybody.

That is not it at all.

I've been living with this all week long and just praying, Lord, open me up.

Set me free.

I've been bearing the burdens of trying to be either Brother Herman or the mischievous little kid all week long, all my life long.

Set me free from both.

And give me this imitation of God.

Let me start to see that.

And I love that with the men on Saturday when we were walking.

I was looking to different age groups, and I was thinking myself, man, I can learn from that young guy, I can learn from that older guy too.

That's one of the reasons the Christian community is so important.

It's why we come together to inspire one another, to encourage one another, and uh and to learn together in the Lord and to uh gain some bit of a heavenly aspiration and heavenly inspiration along the way.

As many of you know, my uh my father-in-law passed away uh this past week.

Uh he was a he was a good man.

He loved the Lord, um uh really uh uh uh especially in the last couple of decades of his life, uh he was really in pursuit of God.

And I remember as I shared at the uh uh celebration of life service this past week, which was hard to do, but it but at the same time a great privilege and a joy and an honor to do.

Uh Kim and I had talked before, and one of the things that that dad always used to talk about was he was in the form of a question.

And it really applies well to our passage today.

He he used to ask this question all the time.

You almost got tired of hearing it.

But he used to say, but how do we make it real?

How do we make it real, this Christian faith?

Is it is it just doctrine?

Is it just stuff up here in our heads, you know, about believing what Jesus did or whatever?

Or how do we make it real?

He used to ask.

And I think he was reaching for uh what's at the heart of uh a lot of us.

We're longing for more authenticity and less hypocrisy.

Uh or are we?

I hope we are.

Um we're longing, we're also longing for ways to put into action this grace of God and be ambassadors of God's grace, agents of his grace out there in the world in which we live.

There's so many people that need it.

You can you can tell people are hurting out there, people are afraid, uh, people are confused, and they need this.

How do we make it real, you know?

And this week, as I was getting ready, I remembered the little children's story, some of you know it.

And maybe have it memorized.

Some of your parents, because you read it so many times, the Velveteen Rabbit, where all the toys in the nursery wanted to become real.

Um, as a relative newcomer, the Velveteen Rabbit was not sure what it meant to be real, so he decided to ask the skin horse, because the skin horse always seemed to be a wise uh, you know, sort of a veteran in the nursery.

What is real?

asked the rabbit one day when they were laying side by side in the nursery.

Does it mean having things that buzz inside of you and a stick-out handle?

Real isn't how you are made, said the skin horse.

It's a thing that happens to you when a child loves you for a long, long time.

Not just to play with, but really loves you.

Then you become real.

Does it hurt?

asked the rabbit.

Sometimes, said the skin horse, for he was always truthful.

When you are real, though, you don't mind being hurt.

Does it happen all at once?

Like being wound up, he asked, or bit by bit.

It does not happen all at once, said the skin horse.

You become.

It takes a long time.

That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily or have sharp edges, or people who have to be carefully kept.

Generally, by the time you are real, said the skin horse, most of your hair has been loved off.

Your eyes have dropped out, and you get loose in the joints, and you start to feel very shabby.

But these things don't matter at all.

Because once you are real, you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand.

Your life and my life are significant because the God of all creation has set his love on you.

The ultimate validation that you long for and that I long for in this world that we live in, and we keep pursuing validation in so many directions, but the ultimate validator is God Himself, your creator, the one who wants to be your redeemer, your savior, your rescuer, the one who wants to make you real in that way.

Along with Paul, I encourage all of us to receive God's love.

And then press on to walk in that, that we might lay hold of that for which also we were laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

Press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Amen?

Amen.

Let's pray.

Thank you, Lord, for this.

Encourage us.

Awaken us, some of us, Lord.

Some of us have fallen asleep.

Stir us, Lord, to see you in your beauty and your glory and your majesty.

And fill us with wonder and awe because of how you have set your love on us, sinners that we be.

May the good seed of your word find fertile soil in our hearts, Lord.

May the Holy Spirit use our study of it today to transform our hearts and minds.

May it take root and bear fruit in our lives, in our relationships, and through the testimony that we have before the watching world as a church, we pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen and amen.