Run to Win | Pressing On

Thank you.

We have a very special day I want to get you out to as soon as we can.

So let me begin with, this is such a we day, we're going to think of something, kind of a we thing together, but let me give you a chance to think of something for yourself.

I want you to think of, mentally you can write this down if you want, but what is one goal that you have for this next week, this next year, and then what's one that you have for your lifetime?

Do you have those?

Just try to think about this for a second.

When you think about goals, I was just telling Kim, I said like one lifetime goal that I have is I want to someday before I die, I want to swim with whale sharks.

I want to swim with the biggest fish in the ocean.

And some of you are like, we just did that Jonah talk.

It just says that whales and shark.

But this is kind of like a lifetime goal.

When you think about goals, goals are important because they motivate us.

They focus us.

They kind of put our energy in a direction.

And they'll say that good goals goals are smart goals they're specific measurable achievable realistic they have a time frame so you might think of I'm going to do blank by blank but you know this many of things by this time but there's some way in which you create some specifics to it because we can create actually bad goals we can create things that are and bad goals can oftentimes lead to bad habits for example you can be very very vague you can say I want to read my goal is to read more we'll have if you've read one page, does that count?

Do you get to go back to Netflix?

Like, what do you mean by this?

Like, how can you be more specific?

You could be unethical, right?

You could decide to cheat a client to hit a work goal and get a bonus.

You could be too myopic.

You can hit your fitness goal, but neglect your family.

Most of you, I think, are too young for this.

But if you grew up like me and you were a kid in the 70s, Ford had a dream and it was to create a 2,000 pound car for$2,000 or less.

And so families like mine bought the Ford Pinto that is literally what our car looked like light baby blue Ford Pinto the problem was the gas tank was in the back and they exploded that when you on impact and so a great goal but not great goal at the same time sometimes they are not great but what I want us to think about is you kind of think about the way that even your own personal goals kind of move you in a direction can I give a wee goal for us today think about this is such a day for us, a celebration afterwards and lunch and everything that's included.

But all this is, how do we live in this amazing offer that Jesus has given us?

That we are invited to know him and have everlasting life with him.

It's a life that can be abundant now and it's a life that never ends.

This is an invitation he gives us.

But the question is, how do we live in this?

And so I want to give you a goal.

Think of it for yourself but something I think for us and and we'll look at this scripture to see how the apostle Paul talks about this but what you're going to see him say is this is that our highest goal should be to know Jesus more intimately to know Jesus more intimately and and you might think that doesn't sound like a smart goal it may be a little vague so you might want a little ad put an ad on to this we said this a couple weeks ago but think of a habit a way every every week one way or another I'm always trying to help you think of okay yes I want to do this but how do I do this but I want you to think as we come to the end how what's something some way I can train my life my soul in so that I can know Jesus more intimately this is actually an invitation for you not just that you would know about Jesus and know facts about him or kind of admire him as a historical figure but that you are designed by God to know him that you are made to to have a life with him and all summer long we've been using this kind of run to win series to kind of think about this idea of the race of faith this life of faith is it's a it's a run a walk it's a journey and so we've looked at the ways that we run from God or for God we'll think about the principle of the path next week and how we walk on the path that God has for us how do we run when we're tired and we're weary and then finally we'll talk about passing the baton but today I want you to think about this idea that Paul gives he gives this kind of image of trying to in essence win the race and he's talking about the pursuit what he's going to lean into so that he can this this passion and desire of him to know Jesus more not just to know more about him but to know him more and some of you I'm wondering you might think I just I That doesn't sound possible.

And some of you have lived in this in a while.

Maybe your friends think you're kind of arrogant because you talk about knowing God or knowing Jesus.

It just sounds like something that can't be attained.

But I want to show you a biblical passage that this is what we're invited into.

And so if you want to follow along with us on the Bibles in front of you, Philippians chapter 3.

Philippians 3 · chapter mention

Philippians 3, page 952.

There's Bibles in front of you.

If you don't own a Bible, you can keep that one.

But if you have your Bible, you can turn there.

This is a short little book written by a man named Paul.

Paul was someone who hunted the church.

He wanted to destroy the church, but Jesus appeared to him, forgave him for what he did, and so he kind of turned his life around 180 from being the fiercest opponent of the church to being its greatest ambassador.

And one of the things that he began to do is he began to go into the world as the gospel began to go out into the world.

He came to this place of Macedonia Philippi other areas and establish a church there and this is a letter that he writes this short little letter it's four chapters and we're just going to look at one piece of this but but to simply know that the the kind of the tone of the letter is he's trying to help them understand that God started something in your midst and he's going to complete it and so he's calling them to live what he'll say is to live as Christ like for us what I want us to learn is that the way that we live that our whole life is centered on Jesus Christ and so he's helping them see this and so what you have to listen for today is he's going to help them see two things something to do and something to avoid and so let's read this together and notice how as you listen to this you're going to hear this sense this goal this pursuit of his what he's pressing on towards it's not to know more about Jesus he believes you can know Jesus you can know him And so here's, let's start, it starts in chapter three.

He says this, further my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord.

There's no trouble for me to write the same things to you again and it is a safeguard for you.

Now watch out for those dogs, those evildoers, those mutilators of the flesh for it is we who are the circumcision, we who serve God by his spirit, who boast in Christ Jesus and we put no confidence in the flesh.

Though I myself have reasons for such confidence.

If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in their flesh, I have more.

I was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews.

In regard to the law, I was a Pharisee.

As for zeal, I persecuted the church.

As for righteousness based on the law, faultless.

But whatever word gains to me, I now consider loss for the Because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I've lost all things.

I consider them garbage that I may gain Christ and 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 death and so somehow attaining to the resurrection of the dead not that I've already obtained all this or have already arrived at my goal but I press on to take hold of that which Christ Jesus took hold of me brothers and sisters I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it but one thing I do I forget what is behind and I strain toward what is ahead I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus now this letter is if anyone's ever if you ever studied this you probably have heard that there's kind of this theme of joy that goes all throughout the letter of Philippians four chapters 16 different times he mentioned somehow the idea of joy and here he opens again the idea they should rejoice why because they are in the Lord they rejoice because they are their life their identity is now found in the Lord and so as they are finding themselves in this he says there's reason to think think of what Jesus has done for you.

It has positioned you for something to happen in your life.

He wants them to rejoice, but he also wants them to be careful.

So there's a safeguard.

He warns them, watch out.

And notice, you can see, he calls the people to watch out for dogs.

You can tell he's not pleased.

Now, this is hard because for us, dogs are we don't think of this in this way, but notice he says, dogs, evildoers, mutilators of the flesh.

In their context, dogs were scavengers.

They were, like, it wasn't like you posted a photo of you and your dog on Instagram on National Dog Day, like in a little tuxedo or whatever, you know, cute sweater that you have them in, right?

It's not, there's not something like this, right?

Instead, or it's not like, maybe some of you remember American Idol and Randy would call you my dog, right?

David Ortiz calls you my dog right and it's kind of like this term of affection uh this is not what Paul Paul's not talking about he's not calling hey my dogs like he's calling them dogs because in their culture in their time anyone who didn't trust in the Lord who put their confidence in something else other than the Lord they refer to them as dogs and now Paul's taken the very term that they would use for others and turned it on them and what he's saying is look you You guys have decided that if you do all these things, that will make you right with the Lord.

And he's using kind of an accounting idea with them.

And what he's trying to help them understand is you are thinking in some ways about trying to have goodness.

All these good things go on the right side of your account ledger and the good side.

And instead, what you don't realize is all those things.

This is the wrong way to think about it.

He's now calling them dogs.

And what he wants them to understand is this, that Jesus is worth knowing because of what he has done for us.

He wants them to understand that your life with him, the reason why you can know him is not because of things you'll do, but you can know him because of something he has done for you.

This is what we, this idea of good news that we have, that God in his love sent his son, his son died for our sins, and that because of this we can have life with him eternal life he has done something you are invited to know him so what he's saying is I want you to figure to know that in this present moment what can fuel you in this present moment to know Jesus is stop take time and see the unique way in which Jesus has done something for you and let that that that idea of what he's done let it give you energy as you live in this present moment he's inviting them to think differently.

And notice one of the ways he does this is he gives them a sense of his own personal resume.

He tries to say, look, if anyone has reason to think I've done enough things, I've put enough things on the good side of the ledger, and I have a healthy account, it's me.

And he starts to list all these things.

I was circumcised on the eighth day, the people of Israel.

I was in a convert, right?

I'm from the tribe of Benjamin, meaning he's from King David's ancestral line.

I'm a Hebrew Hebrews he calls himself he says regarding the law as a Pharisee I was the strictest in the strictest group I had the strictest interpretation as for zeal I persecuted the church I hunted them down and then he says I don't know if you caught this he says as for righteousness based on the law faultless he's saying out of the 613 laws I wouldn't break any of them right this is a resume so think about it why do you create a resume you create a resume to you create a resume to to be accepted to be chosen right you hand someone your resume because you're hoping they will choose you or accept you or invite you into something and notice what he's saying he's saying look there's a way in which you have created it's a little distracting Justin is a very impressive candidate, as you can see.

But notice that he's saying, look, he says this, my resume would be all of your resumes.

But he says this, here's what I now know.

Because of what Jesus has done for me, I don't look at these things as gains.

I take all these things out of the positive ledger and I now move it on the other side.

I count them as loss.

He says, I don't look at anything I try to do.

Now, some of you, whether you grew up here or you grew up in another place or any other kind of religious tradition you might have grown up thinking that the way you earn favor with God is by the things that you do right and well that the way that God is pleased with you is if you can build up a good resume of things and Paul's saying look I mine's so much more impressive than yours but you need to understand something we got it all wrong what's happened now is Jesus has done something for us and we don't have to look at all these things we don't do Do these things so that he will love us.

We do them because he loves us.

We don't do those things anymore to be accepted.

We do them because we are accepted, because he's welcomed us in.

And this is what he's saying is that in some ways you can rejoice because of what God has done for you.

And because of what he's done, we can now move into a space of knowing him more.

He's inviting us to know him more.

Verse 15, he then says, all of us then who are mature should take such a view of things.

He's saying, here's what I want you to do.

Grow up and start to believe this way.

he says at some point you think differently that too he prays that God will make clear to you only let us live up to what we have already attained join together in following my example so he's saying look here's what I'm going to do and I'm asking you to do it as well so brothers and sisters just as you have us as a model I keep your eyes on those who live as we do for as I have often told you before and now tell you again even with tears that Let's read it.

Paul has said, look, we look back, we look at the things, we look at the cross of Christ, and we let that transform how we think about every pursuit of life from now on.

What he's done for us can fuel how we live today.

But notice what he also is kind of leaning us towards.

He's trying to help us have this sense of anticipation of we eagerly await a savior.

He's hinting that something is still coming.

We're not gonna just be on this escalator of misery and life and trying and straining.

And then we die and go to heaven.

He's like, no, no, no, this is all moving somewhere.

And he wants you to have some sense of anticipation.

It's that phrase, we eagerly await a savior.

It's like that feeling you have when it's Christmas Eve, right?

That feeling of Christmas is almost here.

Like there's sense of like, I can't wait for tomorrow, right?

Or it's pastors Amy or Jackie who stand up here and for whatever reason need to let you know that it's only 324 more sleeps until the the next VBS and they want you to get excited that you can't wait to bounce on the pews again and dance with all these kids they want you to be eagerly awaiting it's when you finally after all the hemming and hawing you finally hit confirm and boop you just booked that dream vacation and all of a sudden the fear's kind of gone away and now you're just you see yourself on that beach or in that place and you you're like you're you're taken away by it is that sense of watching your kid play in the soccer championship, and you know time has expired, but you know it's injury time.

And somehow, in some way, it's like, when's it going to end?

But you know it's about to end.

You know something's about to happen, and you know you eagerly await for that whistle and to watch them all mob each other.

You cannot wait to see it happen.

He says we have to think the same way about Jesus coming again.

Again, here's the other idea he wants for you to know this, is that Jesus is worth knowing because of what he will do for you.

What he will do for you.

So on the one hand, we let the past motivate us, fuel us, give us strength for this present moment.

On the other side, we let the future motivate us, fuel us, give us passion for this present moment.

He says others, their eyes are on just what is now.

And it's all gonna waste away but we know we will be transformed that resurrection is our hope and our joy he wants us to anticipate this glorious future that awaits us that you you begin to pursue Jesus and know him now because this is what eternity is all about is to know God to be in God will be with us forever So when we think of the past, we think of memories.

But when we think of the future, we actually have to create a simulation.

We have to kind of imagine it in our head.

So I don't know, does anybody have to go to the dentist this week?

Okay.

Oh, sorry, Caleb.

So what happens when you think of going to the dentist, right?

So what do you do?

You begin to create in your mind a simulation of going to the dentist, right?

You start to think, you hear the sound of the drill, you smell the dust of your tooth your rotten tooth being kind of come up in there you you that the exam lights are in your eyes and you even though you're not there now you feel it you're anxious aren't you sorry Caleb but the same thing can be true for positive things some of you I'm guessing got to go back to that favorite camp spot that maybe your family grew up going and right as you were getting close to it I thought about this week middle school when we went to middle school camp, I'm driving up Thousand Pines Road.

And I'm not even there yet, but the moment I turn on Thousand Pines Road, I see the trees, I can hear the birds, I can almost smell kind of Thousand Pines.

There's something that kind of anticipates, oh, I love being here.

And there's joy.

There's joy of anticipating what is to come.

Nothing has even happened yet.

But that joy-filled experience...

And we begin to think in the same way.

There's something positive that can happen in this.

Researchers will tell us that even in difficult situations, we can become more hopeful when we start to think about and anticipate some of those joy-filled things that await us.

And this is what Paul is asking them to do.

He's saying, I want you to also anticipate God has something beautiful.

Jesus, one day, this is all moving somewhere, and we too will have glorified bodies.

We too will have a glorious future with him.

And one of the things to understand is this is a corporate letter.

This is something where he's inviting them to think of together.

So he wants them to think about it individually, but he's, I mean, they're in this kind of worshipful time together as this letter's being read together, and they're thinking about this and he's helping them understand there's something beautiful coming he wants to build in them hope and joy and faith as they are together Use the past to fuel you.

Use the future to fuel this pursuit of knowing Jesus.

So what is the response that he wants for himself?

He says, look, model your life after mine.

And what does he say?

He says, pursue Jesus as he pursues you.

We pursue Jesus as he pursues us.

He says, I am going to pursue Jesus with the same intensity that he has pursued you.

Now, that may sound impossible.

And probably theologically, technically, it is.

But notice Paul has not softened what he said.

He's like, I am going to press on.

I'm going to take hold of him the way he took hold of me.

I'm going to grasp him like he grasped me.

I'm going to pursue him like he has pursued me.

At least in Paul's intention, I'm going to most, as passionately as I can, I'm going to go after knowing him.

I want to know him.

Some of you, you know about me.

You can read a little bio on me on a website or something like that, or you hear stories about me.

You know about me, but you say, as of now, I don't know you.

But a lot of you know me.

You're not very impressed, and that's fair.

But as you've gotten to spend time with me, you've actually, like, we've developed friendship.

We have lunch together, right?

Or we do other things.

We have conversations, and we laugh together, and we joke.

And notice there's a sense of this...

relational dynamic that he's saying, you can know Jesus this way.

That this is possible.

And he's like, this is going to be the most important thing.

So three different times he says, I press on.

This is how passionate he is.

In fact, that phrase, I press on, it's the same idea as what he said in verse six when he talked about, this is how intense his pursuit is.

It's the same word he uses when he talked about hunting the church.

That I pursued them with absolute zeal, absolute passion.

Now he says in the same way, that's how I pursue Jesus.

With everything in me, every fiber in me, I am pressing on, I am pressing on, I press on to take hold of him as he took hold of me.

I pursue him as he pursued me.

This is what he wants.

He knows he has been pursued passionately by Jesus.

And he now wants to pursue him in the same way.

I grasp because I've been grasped.

I press on because I've been pressed on.

This is what he wants.

It's a difference between the laser beam and a flashlight, right?

The flashlight is kind of the, there's a broadness to the light, but the laser beam focus, Paul says, this is it.

I have laser beam focus.

So we asked you, how will you pursue?

What would it look like to pursue?

A few weeks ago, we showed you this.

We talked about this as well.

I encourage you to think about this.

What could you do in the fall of 25?

You might say, yes, I want to know Jesus more intimately.

How can you do this?

By what means?

And so everything we say here is kind of a yes, but how.

We always want to think about how can we train ourselves?

And I want you to think about what it would look like to somehow train yourself to know Jesus more intimately there's a three weeks ago we shared this image of kind of some of the rhythms we have here in our church some of the things that we invite you to and I would encourage you to think through these things and maybe like Kim said maybe the thing you'll do to help you know Jesus more is join a life group we've got a very cool devotional that we're going to launch and we'll give you guys in the first week of September that will take you through one book of the Bible or it might be any of these other things but somehow we don't want to just hope for a goal right we don't just put it on a piece of paper like we actually have to do things towards it to make it a reality and Paul is saying please friends brothers sisters follow my example pursue Jesus the way he pursued you take hold of him the way he took hold of you this is what he wants So Wednesday morning, Kim and I will fly to Florida.

We will drop Becca off on Friday.

We'll kind of spend the weekend with her at her new college, and then we'll say goodbye.

So a week from tomorrow, we will fly to Aruba.

We're going to spend a week together, just the two of us.

First time of kind of doing life alone in 30 years.

So I want you to imagine this, right?

We're kind of settled in.

Thanks.

We're settled in.

We're settled in.

We're settled in.

We're sitting in this beautiful sunset dinner, and Kimberly looks across the table.

She grabs hold of my hand, and her tears are kind of well up her eyes, and she says, I'm so excited about this next season.

Like, I'm scared, but I'm excited.

And I love you, and I can't think of anyone more to spend the rest of my life with, and I can't wait to get started.

And there's kind of this pause, I look back at her, and I go, nah, I'm good.

I kind of like...

how it's been I'm fine with fine I'm good with you do your thing I'll do my thing we both have iPads we can watch our own shows and live in our kind of be in other rooms there's now plenty of rooms in the house we can kind of have our own spaces and like we can coexist together but I don't really need more than this if you had any opportunity to be near it and you were overhearing it if you didn't audibly grasp and come over and beat me like there would be something wrong with you, right?

That is not the right response.

And notice this is, we see very clearly, this is Paul's understanding too.

He knows that Jesus has said to him, Paul, look back at what I've done.

I can't demonstrate to you anymore how much I care about you.

He has experienced forgiveness.

He has experienced just incredible sense of divine love.

And he has been given a vision of what God has in store for him.

And he's like, Paul, I want you just to pursue me every day of your life.

Can you imagine Paul looking back at him and going, nah, I'm good, right?

Paul says no.

And the point is this, how could any of us do the same?

When you look back at the cross and see how loved you are by God, when you look forward to what it is that he has in store for us, how could we say anything less when he says, I want you to know me more, right?

And so we want to press on, press on, press on.

Passion is contagious, and my hope is for us as a church, this will become a contagious passion of our whole church.

I hope people will be a part of this community or come into this community and go, you guys are kind of weird.

Because you're so passionate about knowing Jesus.

Like, just...

Calm down.

But I would say, no, don't.

Press on, press on, press on towards him.

But what I love about the contagiousness is this, is that there's a way in which we can help each other.

Let me close with this idea.

There's a great story.

Some of you might remember this story from about 2012.

There was a race in Spain.

It was a cross-country race.

And there was the two final people coming into the end, a man named Abel Mubal from Kenya and Ivan Fernandez from Spain because it was in Spain all the signs were in Spanish and the Kenyan as he was kind of coming towards the end he got confused by the signs and he didn't know what to do so he stopped The Spaniard Fernandez was behind him.

He began to yell to him in Spanish, telling him where to go and what to do, try to kind of coach him and help him.

But he still couldn't figure it out.

And so finally what happened was this.

Fernandez got up to the Kenyan, and he pushed him through the finish line.

so that he could win and of course reporters were like flabbergasted how in the world why in the world you had the opportunity it was your race to win And Fernandez simply responded, he was a rightful winner.

He created a gap I could not close.

There's no way that I should have won that race.

But here's the kicker.

He said this, what would my mom have thought?

I love that.

This image is a beautiful image because, look, you and I in this race of faith, we're going to get confused, exhausted, weary.

We need each other.

And sometimes we need someone to kind of Call out to us, and sometimes we'll need people to just actually grab us and kind of push us towards the way to go.

But let's live this life together.

As we close, we're going to sing with this last song before we go out on the patio and encourage you to sing with us.

But I want you to sing this way, filled with gratitude.

what he's done for you, filled with anticipation and joy, what he'll do for you, and filled with desire to say, I want to know you more.

What a great song to end on, to think about baptism, baptism, saying goodbye to the old life and saying yes to the new.

If any of you have not taken that step of faith yet to give your life to Jesus, Can I ask you, look back, see what he's done for you.

Look ahead, see what he wants for you.

And offer yourself, even in this moment, to say, Jesus, I want you to have my life today.

So would you pray with us?

So Jesus, we come to you in this moment being so thankful for what you've done.

and filled with such joy for what you still will do.

May we know you more.

Help us through the power of your spirit to press on, to take hold of you as you've taken hold of us.

This we pray in your name, amen.

Let's stand, let's sing this final song.