Piece of Work: Philippians 3:12-18 (Move Forward with Joy)

Amen.

Come on, one more time.

Let's put our hands together.

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Praise the Lord.

Amen.

Amen.

Well, you look absolutely wonderful today.

Before you have a seat, high five two people and say, God is good all the time.

Go ahead and tell them.

God is good.

All the time.

Now, if you're around somebody who's been in church a while, they're going to say, and all the time, God is good.

They know the script at this point, right?

No, it is so good to see everybody today.

It is an honor to be here.

I see that no one got blown away on the way to church.

The wind is everywhere.

And for those of you who were not quite ready for spring, stop praying for more snow because it looks like we might get some tomorrow.

So stop that.

Just pray for spring.

It'll be all right.

We'll have another winter later, okay?

Yes, absolutely.

But it is good to see you guys today.

Thank you so much for joining us.

And if you have your Bibles, if you have your Bible journals, you got your notes out, you got everything out, we're gonna be jumping right into our series entitled Piece of Work, which is a walk through the book of Philippians.

Look at somebody and say, You're just a piece of work.

Look at somebody else and say, No, you're just a piece of work, right?

Only only at real life church can we say that, and it's a compliment, right?

Absolutely.

For those of you who are joining us for the first time, you're like, I'm not saying that, and I don't know how I feel about this guy anymore.

I get that, okay?

But if you are a first-time guest with us, we'd love for you to fill out your connect card before you leave the service.

We have a free gift for you today.

Just want to say thank you so much for being with us.

And we have a we also want to invite you rather to the craziest party you're gonna be part of all week, or all a month rather, called RLC Connect.

And it'd be an honor to worship with you, and we'll tell you more about what it means to be a piece of work and how that's a compliment because we are all what God is working through in our lives.

Also, I I can't even believe we're doing this, but if you want to look beside you to your left or to your right, if you don't see some of these invite cards, that means you might be sitting on one, okay?

So I'm gonna give you just a minute to kind of find that guy because it seems like just a few weeks ago we were celebrating Christmas, but already Easter is just a few weeks away.

And it is amazing, and we love it, and we love worshiping our risen Savior together, and so we're gonna have a good time.

And so I want you to do two things, and we're gonna talk about this as we get a little bit closer, but I want you to do two things for me.

First of all, I want you to take these home with you and I want you to pray over who you're going to invite to Easter with you.

So I don't mind if you just kind of give them out to random people, but at least one of these, I want you to hand to somebody and say, I want you to come sit with me.

And I want us to celebrate Easter together.

That's the first thing I want you to do.

The second thing is this is the opportunity we take every year to ask a few of you if you'd be interested in taking a missions trip with us.

The reason why I say that is this is a wonderful, wonderful opportunity to do this.

And normally we have two worship experiences every Sunday at 9:15 and 11.

On Easter, we have three worship experiences.

Say three.

Somebody else, say three.

We have people who don't notice this every year.

So we're making sure we have three worship experiences: one at 8, one at 9:30, and one at 11.

Which means if 11 is your normal service, you're good.

You got nothing to worry about.

But unless we ask a few of you to pray and see if the Lord would speak to you, to take a missions trip to the 8 a.m.

service, okay?

I know some of you weren't aware the eight came twice in a day.

I feel you on that.

But it does come eight, uh, it does come around twice a day.

And for some of us, it would be a missions trip to get up and drink coffee and be here at 8 a.m., especially when 11 is your service.

But here's the thing: just for one week, we need to borrow your seat, okay?

We're gonna try to make this room as big as we possibly can.

But every year we start to run out of room in the 9:30 and the 11.

There's plenty of room at the 8.

Can't figure out why, you know.

But I would love for you to pray about it, see if the Lord would speak to you to take a missions trip to the 8 a.m.

service and the Lord is good.

We're gonna have the same service, and there is a rumor Hope Cafe is serving biscuits and gravy because the Lord is good, okay?

So make sure you take a part in that.

All right.

All right, now that we got that out of the way, let's get into God's word.

And I want to ask you a question just to kind of bring us all into the same room.

Have you ever been around somebody?

We've been talking about this the past few weeks, that they are just like the biggest Debbie Downer, the biggest negative Nancy.

They can rain on any parade.

If they had a nickname, it would be Eeyore.

How many is sitting beside that person right now?

I want to admit to that.

I see a few hands.

If you need an extra somebody else to give you a ride home today, that's okay.

Just the Eeyore of the party, right?

How about this one?

On the other side, have you ever known anybody who just brings their own sunshine?

I mean, they they can bring sunshine to any parade.

They are the whatever the opposite would be, they are tigger, okay?

If there's eeyores over there, they're the tigger who's just bouncing around having a good time.

How many would say, I am a tigger?

All right, you got that one?

How many are lying in Jesus' name?

Okay, but you want to be, right?

Here's the thing we got to be careful with is if we're not careful, we can think about these people and we think of them like this.

Like, have you ever known anybody like that?

Like the world can be burning down and they're like, this is fine.

Everything is okay.

And if we're not careful, we can read that into the Bible.

We can read into the Bible and think that the Apostle Paul was this.

That he just didn't have a single problem.

Everything was going fine.

We, if we're not careful, we can think that the apostle Paul is sitting somewhere in a coffee shop where they serve pumpkin spice lattes 12 months out of a year, and he's just enjoying himself writing about the goodness of God.

Or he's on a beach somewhere, sipping a smoothie with an umbrella, and we just go, well, it must be nice for Paul to talk about having joy and all the things, because he's not living my life.

Which is why it's so important to realize that the Apostle Paul was inspired of the Holy Spirit to write the book of Philippians while he's in prison.

While the church was going through a terrible time of persecution, and he is basically on death row.

He is waiting to find out at any given time Caesar could say, I don't want to see this guy, go ahead and put him to death.

He has no idea what the future holds from him as far as in what Caesar was going to do.

Could you imagine living every single day, thinking you might not go to bed that night?

Some of you have been there before.

Paul is definitely there in that moment, and so he is living from one moment to the next, and he's writing back to some of his oldest friends where he planted a church in Philippi 10 years ago, and he knows they're under persecution, they got other kinds of things going on.

And so, what you could think of is what would one Eeyore say to the other?

Because he's got problems and they've got problems, but that's actually not what they were doing.

Instead, he writes this in the middle of the most difficult time imaginable.

He basically tells them over the course of the letter is that you can have joy.

Somebody say joy.

Somebody else say joy.

You can have joy because God is working on us.

That's why we say that we're a piece of God's work.

We are a piece of work.

And where I come from, we didn't know if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

We call you a piece of work.

We weren't necessarily giving you a compliment, but we weren't necessarily giving you something bad.

We didn't know what you were, and that's what Paul is saying.

He's like, I got no idea what God is doing.

I just know that he is.

Therefore, we can have joy.

And the reason why, the Holy Spirit, I think, inspired Paul for many reasons, but one of the reasons because Paul knew something that all of us know, and that is that there are many kinds of prisons.

Only some have walls that we can see.

A famous philosopher once said, everyone's got a private battle that nobody else knows about.

Look at your neighbor and say he's talking about himself.

I wasn't talking about me.

I didn't come up with it, but at some point we're gonna think RLC came up with it because we say it every Sunday and we're gonna keep saying it.

Everybody you know, your neighbor has got a private battle that only they know about.

If there's one thing we all have in common, and that is that we all got the one thing.

But here's the honest truth, and that is that it is possible to live in a world filled with confusion, to live in a world where you have to drive on Scosphore Road every day, to live in a world with toddlers, to live in a world with bosses you don't always like.

It's possible to live in a world filled with confusion, but still have joy.

You say, Well, Pastor, how is that possible?

How in the world can we be so happy in a confusing world?

That's not what joy is.

Remember, joy is a sigh of contentment.

Not because I'm happy, but because I know that God is in control.

It's a sigh of contentment because I know that God is in control.

And that's where my joy comes from, is because I'm not the one who ultimately has to call the shots here.

God is doing more than we can realize.

And that's what Paul has been talking about over the course of the past several weeks.

He's been talking about all these different ways that God is doing more than we can realize.

As a matter of fact, he was talking about how God's work is found in all things, how he heals our perspective, he brings humility, he brings growth, he brings devotion, he guards our joy, just all kinds of things.

And just looking at that, you go, that's exhausting.

I need some joy after looking at all of that because I'm not there on all of that.

And I don't know if you've ever done this before.

You've been reading through the Bible and you go, Well, um, I'm not, I haven't arrived just yet, but we're moving on to the next week.

Okay, fine.

You know, and you just kind of, if you're not careful, you can wonder what's next.

Well, that's why I love what the Holy Spirit inspired Paul to say right here.

He's saying, Listen, here's all these great things that God wants to do.

And instead of saying, so go do them, look at what he says.

The Bible says, I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection.

Thank you, Paul, for saying that.

Thank you so much.

He says, but I press on, somebody say press on.

I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ has first possessed me.

No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.

I press on.

One more time, say press on.

I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.

Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things.

And if you disagree at some point, I believe that God will make it plain to you.

But we must hold on to the progress we have already made.

Dear brothers and sisters, pattern your lives after mine and learn from those who follow our example.

For I have told you often before, and I say it again with tears in my eyes, that there are many whose conduct shows that they are really enemies of the cross of Christ.

They are headed for destruction.

Their God is their appetite.

They brag about shameful things and they think only about this life here on earth.

But we are citizens of heaven.

Somebody say amen.

Where the Lord Jesus Christ lives, and we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our Savior.

He will take our weak mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.

Amazing that Paul is saying, hey, listen, there's all these different things that God wants to do in our life, but I'm gonna go first and say that this stuff doesn't just happen by itself, that there is a process that we have to go through, and that when we take that deep sigh of the soul, it gives us the next step.

I don't know about you, but for me, it's like, okay, after I have taken that deep sigh of the soul, what next does God want me to do?

After I've taken that sigh, if you take notes, this is what Paul was saying, is he is saying God's work produces the joy needed to never stop moving forward.

What comes after the sigh of the soul?

Movement.

What comes after we have noticed that God is in control?

We don't give up, but we determined that no matter what happens in our life, no, I've not arrived yet.

I don't have it all figured out yet.

But I'm gonna never stop moving forward.

Somebody say, Move forward.

Look at somebody and say, you better move forward.

We're gonna have to encourage each other in here today because if there's one thing the enemy wants to do is the enemy can't destroy you, but you know what he can do?

He can distract you, he can discourage you, he can get you so discouraged that you're you don't give up, you're just no longer moving.

You're just now standing in place.

And so for some of us, the number one thing that God wants to say to you today, and if you don't hear anything else, is that God wants you to not give up, but he wants you to move forward.

This is what Paul said.

He said, I don't mean to say I've already attained or achieved things or that I have already reached perfection, but I press on to possess that perfection which Christ first possessed me.

What he means by that is he's saying a long time ago, Jesus reached down and he grabbed me up out of the ditch and he started walking with me.

And now I live the rest of my life holding on to the hand that saved me.

He's saying, I'm never gonna let go of the hand of Jesus.

He has saved me and he gave me a big idea about what God wanted to do in my life, and so now I'm gonna live my life, living out that big idea, that great adventure.

But here's the amazing thing is that we don't realize this because we uh you know we most of us don't follow first century Roman sports.

But all throughout the New Testament, we realize that Paul was a sports fan.

He talks about running, he talks about wrestling, he talks about boxing.

Paul was a sports fanatic, which means that if Paul were living today, he would be getting his bracket ready, okay?

He would be getting ready for March Madness.

And I feel confident that Paul would have put the Crimson Tide Alabama as the winner of the national championship, okay?

That's what he would have done.

And right here, this is actually an exercise, or not exercise, but it is a uh it is a statement for people who are in a race.

He's saying, press on.

It is a it is a term that says that when you are running and when you get tired, it's a refocus.

It's a to see and to look ahead, to not look to the left, not look to the right, but to look forward.

That's why he's saying I press on because I have not yet achieved, but I focus on this one thing.

And he says, this is my one thing, my my running idea of I move everything out of the way so I can see, and that is forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead.

I press on, I clear my vision so I can see, to reach to the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize which God through Christ Jesus is calling us.

And what he's saying is that word forget doesn't mean that we don't remember anymore.

It means that we don't live there anymore.

It means we don't let the past define our future.

And can I tell you one of the things we gotta be so careful about the past is many of us understand we can't live in negative past situations.

We're not gonna live and let what bad people did to us define our future.

But we also can't live in good past situations.

Do you realize that nostalgia can paralyze you as much as bad days?

Because good days will make you not look forward to what God is doing today because you're so busy mourning what God did yesterday.

And there's nothing wrong with what God did yesterday unless it stops us from thinking that God can still do something new today.

And so he's saying, good, bad, indifferent.

I celebrate all of it, but I'm not looking at that as my finish line.

Instead, I'm looking ahead.

And that's what press on means.

It means an aggressive, single-minded pursuit.

Good, bad, indifferent.

I'm thankful for all of it, but it's a single-minded pursuit to move forward.

And that's what it means when Paul says, hey, listen, God's got a big idea for you.

He's got a lot of things that he wants to do in your life and in my life.

And I don't know about you, but I hadn't got there yet.

I'm still working on it.

But the one thing I know is that when I get that sigh of contentment because I know God is in charge, it's not just for me just to stand there, but it's for me to take the next step.

And that next step, that sigh of contentment comes from, as we've been talking about every week.

He said that I know that I am certain that God who began the good work within you will continue his work until it is finally finished.

And so what Paul is saying is, he said, when I realize that God is doing a good work, when I realize that he hasn't put me on a shelf somewhere, but he's actively moving, and when I realize that no matter what that past was, it's not gonna change God's mind about me, that's when I get that sigh of contentment and I have the courage to take a step forward.

Can I tell you once again, the enemy does not have to destroy you, he just needs to discourage you so much that you no longer want to take a step forward.

And Paul's saying, I get you.

I haven't arrived yet.

I still am working on all of this stuff, but the one thing I do is I forget what is behind me and I never stop moving forward.

Look at your neighbor and say, Never stop.

Never stop.

Now look back at him and say, You better move forward.

We need to encourage one another with this one because here's the big question, and that is, how does joy help us move forward?

Pastor, how in the world can we move forward when there's all of these things that are going on, when there's all of these confusions, and it just seems like it's just one thing after another.

But once again, remember Paul.

Paul is sitting in prison, waiting to hear about when he is going to die or if he's gonna even get to see Caesar.

And he's writing back to a church that's also dealing with that, and he's saying, joy is the fuel that helps us keep moving forward.

Well, what does it help us do?

If you're taking notes, here's three things.

It's the joy of the Lord that helps us to never stop moving forward together.

It helps us to never stop moving forward together.

Somebody say, Move forward.

Move forward.

Don't you dare give up.

God's not finished with you yet.

And it's when we take that deep sigh of the soul that we have the ability to move forward.

But the amazing thing is, God wants us to do it together.

He said it like this.

He said, Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things.

And if you disagree at some point, you're stupid.

No, that's not what it says.

That's not what it says at all.

If you disagree at some point, I believe that God will make it plain to you.

But we must hold on to what progress we have already made.

Can I tell you, it's amazing how just about everybody in your life that you can think of and in my life too, God has wired us for a community.

I have had people who have told me before, no, no, he hasn't, Pastor.

God has not wired me for community.

I love being all by myself.

And I found a group of people online that agree with me.

You're doing life with those people, right?

And you're all doing life together, doing life alone.

It's weird, but it works.

It works for you.

We have been wired for community.

And when it comes to moving forward, the Bible tells us we move forward best together.

It reminds me of, especially since Paul's talking about running, it reminds me of several years ago I had an opportunity to uh run a marathon.

And a marathon is 26.2 miles because I'm stupid.

All right.

So I trained like forever to run this marathon.

And it was a race where they had uh two different races happen at the same time.

They had people running the marathon, and then they had people running the half marathon, which is 13 miles.

And it was so much fun for the first 13 miles.

Like we first get started, and there were hundreds of people all around me.

They were they were everybody all around, just hundreds of people just running the first 13 miles.

I mean, it looked like this.

It was in it was in Nashville.

We were having a ball.

There were hundreds of people.

There were people on the sidelines going, you go, you go.

And I didn't know them, but I act like they were talking about me.

I'm going, I'm going.

And because it was in Nashville, every single mile, they had a live band playing.

I'm telling you, it was the truth.

There was one mile that had a live band and barbecue because God is good all the time.

It was amazing.

And so we're grabbing barbecue while we're running.

But we get, we get halfway to where those 13.1 miles is happening, and I noticed that there was a whole bunch of people taking a right-hand turn because that's where their race was gonna be over.

And so they're gonna take a right-hand turn and they're just gonna celebrate all the way the finish line.

Well, this Joker had signed up for the full marathon.

And so I got my friends and they're going, it's gonna be all right, man.

You're gonna have a good time.

And all of a sudden they go, and I go from being around hundreds of people to being all by myself, man.

There wasn't a band for the last half of that.

There wasn't even water for some of those.

They were like, you're on your own joker, right?

You should have prepared better.

I was like, dude, where's my where's my cheering squad?

It was nobody.

And all of a sudden I realized real quick, it is better to be on any journey together.

And that's what Paul was saying is he was saying, man, in this race of life, we got to do it together.

And he said, there's one thing the spiritually mature learn.

He said, We got to do it together.

And that's what he was actually breaking that down.

He said, Let all who are spiritually mature agree on these things.

And what he was saying is that the spiritually mature agree to keep moving forward.

The spiritually mature agree that man, we may disagree on other things, but can we all agree that we've we didn't come this far just to come this far?

That we didn't come this far just to give up now, but rather we're gonna keep on moving forward.

The next thing is he said the spiritually mature, they agree that if you disagree at some point, I believe God will make it plain to you.

In other words, he's saying the spiritually mature agree to trust God to bring clarity along the way.

Do you know when you you talk to a brand new Christian, if they're not careful, they just constantly are dividing over everything.

They're just looking for people, they're not looking for people to do life with, they're looking for people to attack, right?

But the longer you become a Christian, the more you just have people who just say, you know what, God's good.

It's gonna be all right.

As long as we can agree on the essentials, man, we'll we'll get there.

It'll be just fine because they have realized that if I will lock arms with you, and if you'll lock arms with me and we keep on moving forward, that we can get there together.

And then another thing that he teaches us is that we can hold on to the progress that we've already made.

The spiritually mature agree to keep fighting for unity.

Now, if you remember the church at Philippi was full of a bunch of retired military veterans.

And so they would have understood that that word progress, that Greek word, is a military term.

That means when people are in lockstep and they're walking in the same direction.

In a military formation.

And he is saying, man, the spiritually mature realize that we got to stay together, that we got to stay unified in the essentials.

We got to keep fighting for it because once again, the enemy doesn't have to destroy you.

He just needs to distract you.

He just needs to discourage you.

And if you get discouraged, you start going over here and you start going over here.

And before you know it, we don't have an army anymore.

We've got chaos.

And that's all the enemy has to do.

And he said the spiritually mature realize that the only way we can move forward is to do it with somebody, with somebody on my left and somebody on my right.

But here's the thing: that's hard because people are crazy, including the one looking at you.

Okay, we're all a little touched in some kind of way, right?

And that's why it takes work to stay that way.

That's why I love the story in the Bible that teaches us about learning to trust God with others.

There is a story in the New Testament that is probably one of the most controversial stories, mainly because people don't like it.

It depends on which one you identify with in the story.

And it's a story of Mary and Martha.

Everybody who identifies with Martha thinks it's a terrible story.

Everybody who identifies with Mary thinks it's a wonderful story.

And there's so much you can do with it, but I love what Jesus does.

Look at what the Bible says.

It says Martha welcomed him into her home.

Welcome Jesus.

They was passing by and they were gonna have dinner.

His sister Mary, or her sister Mary, sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he taught.

But Martha was distracted by the big dinner that she was preparing.

And I love this.

She came to Jesus and said, Lord, doesn't it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work?

Sounds like sisters, doesn't it?

Tell her to come and help me.

But the Lord said to her, this is hard.

The Lord said to her, My dear Martha, you are worried and upset over all these details.

There is only one thing worth truly being concerned about.

Mary has discovered it, and it will not be taken away from her.

Ow.

That's Jesus saying, Stop complaining.

There's so many different angles we could look at this with, but you know what I love?

Is that when Martha thought that she didn't understand what God was doing in Mary's life, instead of going and talking to the other people in the kitchen, instead of going and grabbing a hold of Mary, she took it to Jesus and said, Jesus, I don't understand this.

I don't understand why while you're doing this for her, but I feel like I'm doing this.

And the Bible didn't say that Jesus said what she was doing was wrong.

What was wrong was that she was trying to define what she was getting based on what somebody else was getting.

And instead, he was saying, This is what I'm doing in her life.

Can you trust me?

Basically, he's saying, Can you trust me?

Can you trust that I'm doing what I'm supposed to do?

Because what we don't realize just yet, but in just about a year after this, Mary was going to become the very first evangelist.

That when Jesus rose from the dead, he appeared to Mary and said, Mary, I want you to go tell the disciples.

Don't you think that the very first evangelist needed to be at the feet of Jesus to learn how to share the gospel?

Neither one of them realized, Mary, Martha, I've got you doing something.

I've got something planned for Mary, so can you trust me?

Can you trust that just because she's doing something different doesn't mean I think any less of you?

And the reality of it is, is that God has called you to do something.

God has called me to do something.

And when we stop, we stop working against one another and we start locking arms with one another, the kingdom of God can move forward.

And so my question for you is who can you lock arms with so you both keep moving forward?

Who is it that if you would just lock arms with them, they would go from being the number one person that gets on your nerves, don't act like they don't exist, and you can start being their number one cheerleader.

Because whatever God is doing in their life has nothing to do with what he thinks about you.

God doesn't look at everybody else to determine his plan for your life.

So you don't ever have to be intimidated by anybody else.

So if God is using them in a different way, you can still lock arms with them and say, God's gonna bless you and God's gonna bless me.

Let's do it together.

And we can only do that if we can take a sigh of contentment because we know that God is in control.

And we need you.

We need you to keep moving forward.

Look at your neighbor and just encourage them and say, move forward.

Move forward.

Don't stop.

That was terrible, by the way.

Look at somebody else.

You don't want to talk to them.

Look at your second choice and tell them, move forward.

There you go, move forward.

You gotta move forward.

Don't give up.

We got to move forward together.

Here's a second one, and that is that we gotta move forward with clarity.

Man, we gotta move forward with clarity.

We gotta know where we're going, right?

How are we gonna know if we're gonna get to the finish line unless we know which way is the way to go?

It reminds me of uh sometimes if you don't know where you're going, it can be so discouraging.

Like, for instance, my my wife, her car, her phone is connected to her car, and so because it like shows up on the dashboard there, I wanna, if I don't know where I'm going, I'll say, hey baby, you put in the address.

And it never fails.

While she is trying to put in the address, you'll get a phone call.

And she'll answer the phone call, and I have no idea where I'm going.

And so, used to, years ago, I would get so angry and I would say, Well, I'm not moving until you put in that address.

Well, now I've got the joy of the Lord.

And so I just start driving, and it gets on her nerves so bad.

I'll be headed this gospel.

We're trying to go to Nashville.

It's like, I don't know where I'm going.

I'll just say I'll get there.

But it is, it is so discouraging when you don't know where you're going.

And that's what Paul is doing is he's saying, You gotta have clarity so you know how to move forward.

That's because you have joy, you can have clarity.

He says it like this He says, Dear brothers and sisters, in other words, everybody, pattern your lives after mine.

Learn from those who follow our example.

In other words, let's have the same mind about this, that we're going to move forward.

And he said, We gotta move forward because as I have told you often, and I say again with many tears, there are many whose conduct shows that they are really enemies of the cross of Christ.

They are headed for destruction.

Their God is their appetite, and they brag about shameful things, and they think only about this life here on earth.

And so what we realize is most likely he's talking about people who have gone too far and they don't see what God is trying to do because they've gotten obsessed with things that have nothing to do with God.

Now, last week we were talking about the Judaizers.

You remember them?

Those are the ones who they were all about legalism.

They were destroying their people's relationship with God because they thought they had to get to God.

So for instance, they thought everything was a sin.

Even breathing's a sin, so don't do it too much, right?

Like they thought everything was a sin, and they replaced relationship with effort.

The only way you can get to God is if you work hard enough, you try hard enough, maybe God will love you.

Well, most scholars think that now Paul is talking about another group of people.

So if the if the Judaizers were in one ditch, these guys are in the other ditch.

And that is, they watched the uh the movie, the Lego movie too much and they think everything is awesome.

If you got small kids, you know what I'm talking about.

Okay, if you don't, don't worry about it.

All right, but they think everything is awesome.

In other words, they've replaced relationship with me worship.

Whatever makes me happy, whatever I want to do.

I'm not thinking about heaven, I'm not thinking about getting to God.

I'm trying to think about what's best for me.

And so, because of that, he is saying that one group of people fell in one ditch, the other ones fell in the other ditch, but it's clarity that brings balance.

And can I tell you when I see that in our world, if I'm not careful, I can get so disappointed because I think we should have clarity.

We should know what is God's will and what's not God's will because it's in God's word, only to find out that this brings me so much peace to realize they were dealing with it in the first century.

They were trying to make sure they knew.

As a matter of fact, in the Old Testament, they had to deal with it.

There was a time in the book of Hosea when they were struggling to know what God's will was, that the people of God didn't even know God.

And it was because they weren't being taught who God was.

And so the Bible actually says there was this place where God is talking to the priest, the one who's supposed to be teaching God's ways.

And he says, Don't point the finger at someone else and try to pass them by.

My complaint is with you.

My people are being destroyed because they don't know me.

They have exchanged the glory of God for the shame of idols.

Other words, he's saying they don't know me.

So they're not running toward me, they're running everywhere else.

And how discouraging that is to live your whole life climbing a ladder only to find out that it's leaning against the wrong building.

And he said, That's horrible.

Don't do that.

He said, But this is what I want to do.

In just a short while, just a short time, God will restore us.

He, that we may live in his presence.

Oh, that we might know the Lord.

Let us press on, let us see clearly and know him, and he will respond to us as surely as the arrival of dawn.

That's one of the reasons why we were able to move forward, is because it gives us an opportunity to take a deep breath and realize that God is in control and it clears up our vision.

We need that kind of clarity because there are many things that some of us we think, well, everybody ought to know, and we really don't.

Because there's so many things that kind of get in the way so we can't see.

It reminds me of several years ago when I used to live in Alabama, we had the opportunity to host a 5K race, three three-mile race, and we decided we were gonna do it back behind our facility.

It was this big loop.

And at one point, like about a half mile in, you had the opportunity to either take a left-hand turn or to go straight.

Well, here's the thing everybody from there knew you had to take a left-hand turn.

If you go straight, you're gonna end up in Georgia at some point.

I mean, just keep on going, it never stops.

And so everybody knew.

So we didn't even think about it.

We didn't put up any signs or anything.

But then there was this one guy who was, when I'm talking about an overachiever, before the race, he walked the three miles, so then he could go and run the three miles.

I was like, dude, take the trophy, go home.

I mean, you're you're you're good.

But he was like, I almost got lost, I didn't know where to go.

I was like, What do you mean you don't know where to go?

Everybody knows.

He's like, I'm not from here.

I have no idea where to go.

And all of a sudden, it it was like, okay, we should put some people over there.

So we actually put some people at the first turn and they were there, and they just kept saying, go this way.

And you know what was crazy?

It's people who had lived there their entire life because they were so distracted thinking about how fast am I going, how slow am I going, if I got enough water, whatever.

They said that almost everybody almost missed the turn.

It wasn't just people that'd never been there, but it was people who were distracted.

People who had other things on their mind, they almost missed what was supposed to be clear.

Do you know why we read God's word?

Like once we read through God's word one time, you know what we get to do?

We get to start over and read it again.

Because life is fuzzy, life lacks clarity.

And if we're not careful, we can lose our way, even if we're supposed to know the way.

That's why God's word says that all scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and make us realize what is wrong in our lives.

It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.

God uses it to prepare and equip his people to do every good work.

The reason why we study through God's word is because we're trying to clarify where we're headed.

We're trying to clarify what God is doing so that when the fuzziness of life happens, when when the kids are acting up, when the spouse is acting up, when the job is acting up, when our health is acting up, and all these different things happen.

We go, listen, I don't have answers for all that, but I know where I'm headed.

And there's encouragement to know that.

Here's my question for you, and that is when the journey gets fuzzy, where do you go for clarity?

Can we get really honest for a second?

Do you go to God's Word first or do you go to TikTok first?

Do you go to God's Word first, or do you go to YouTube?

Or do you go to a podcast you listen to?

I'm not saying those things are bad, I'm saying they shouldn't be first.

Because you know what happens when we go to God's Word?

The first thing it tells us, when we get nervous and we don't know what to do, and we're starting to ramp up those RPMs and we're getting ah, just all this kind of stuff, the first thing God's Word says is take a sigh.

I'm in control.

But God, what about what about I'm in control?

There's next steps, there's things you need to do.

I got many enemies, but I have no rivals.

You know what calms our soul so we can move forward?

The truth of God's word?

To be reminded that God is for us and not against us, and there's not one single enemy we face that makes God nervous.

But we got to get into his word so that we can see it.

And then when we can see clearly and we lock arms with one another, that's how we can move forward.

That's what the joy of the Lord does, is it gives us that sigh of the soul so that when we don't know what else is going on, I know I'm gonna lock arms with my brothers and I'm gonna move forward.

And when we do that, that's how we get there.

That's how Paul is saying, This is how I'm gonna get there.

Not by figuring everything else out, but by never stop moving forward.

There may be somebody in here right now.

You are wondering if you can at all move forward.

Can I tell you you can?

But you got to be careful what you're putting in your soul.

You gotta make sure that before you put anything else in there, you gotta put the word of God in your soul because that's where life is.

One more time, look at your neighbor and say, You better move forward.

You better move forward because we need you to move forward.

We need we need you to never give up because we need you, because God's word says we do it together.

God's word says we do it with clarity.

And then here's one more, and I love this one so much that we never stop moving forward as an ambassador of heaven.

Ambassador is a real long word, so I'm gonna give you a minute to write that down.

An ambassador of heaven.

I love this idea of Paul saying, never forget who you are, never forget your identity.

He started off with saying the idea here is that God has saved you.

He's given you a big idea about who you are.

And then he says, run, run.

Run, forest, run.

Run straight on ahead.

Don't let anything stop you.

And we're not running out of fear, we're running out of freedom.

That we can run forward to all that God has for us because we know where we're going.

We do it together, we do it with clarity, and then he says this he says, and never forget that we are citizens of heaven.

Somebody say amen.

We are citizens of heaven and we are eagerly waiting for him to return as our savior.

And we will take our weak, he will take our weak and mortal bodies and change them into glorious bodies like his own, using the same power with which he will bring everything under his control.

You know what I love about this is this word our savior, we we know that is Jesus is our savior, but in this context, they would call the emperor the savior of Rome.

And so what Paul is saying is he said, we are in a kingdom of heaven, and our king is on his way.

Our king is coming to rescue us.

And if we're not careful, we can get so busy trying to figure out this life that we forget that this life is not all there is, that there's actually a heavenly kingdom.

And when you gave your life to Christ, you bent your knee and made him the sovereign Lord over your life, and you asked him to wash away your sins.

That's when he picked you up, put you on this road, and he said, One day you're gonna be with me in heaven.

One day you don't have to be afraid of death anymore.

And I hope it comes a long time from now.

But when it does, you don't have to be afraid because you're a citizen of heaven.

And I love that so much, and that would have resonated with the people of Philippi because the people of Philippi were 800 miles away.

Now you imagine if they wanted to get to Rome, they couldn't fly unless they had a really fast donkey.

They just just go that way, you know.

Other than that, they walking.

Now, how long does it take to get from point A to point B when it says 100 miles?

Long.

That's that's the mathematical term.

Long time is how long it takes.

And you know why they they would put those people there is actually they would give free land to military veterans because this was an outpost.

This was on the edge of the Roman Empire, and they would give the most loyal people some some land right here because they knew what it meant to be a citizen of Rome.

Back then, you couldn't just be a citizen.

You had to either get born into it or you had to pay a lot of money to earn it.

And so, if you were a citizen of Rome, you wore that as a badge of honor.

You were glad to be a citizen of Rome.

And Paul said, just like that, that's who we are as Christ followers.

That sometimes it can feel like you're on an outpost and that nobody else around you believes the same thing you believe, and you feel like you're out there all alone.

But never forget that it may be a long journey, but you're still connected to the source.

You're still a citizen of the kingdom of heaven.

And what does that mean?

That means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person.

The old life is gone and the new life has begun.

And all of this is a gift from God who brought us back to himself through Christ.

And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation, and we are Christ's ambassadors.

So we have the opportunity of not just seeing the finish line, not just grabbing on to our brothers and our sisters and saying, we're gonna do this together, but we also have the opportunity to tell everybody on the sideline where we're headed and say, you can come and join us.

It reminds me of that same race I was telling you about.

We had this 5K race and we had so many people over here kind of telling everybody where to go.

And then I was the guy who was in the golf cart who was kind of going around, make sure everybody was okay.

And when I got back to the finish line, I looked and there wasn't really that many people at the finish line.

It's like, what are you doing?

And the reason why there wasn't that many people, they would start there, but once people would pass the finish line, they would go to the last turn.

Because the way it would happen is they would we would turn and we would turn and then be one more turn, and it was just a straightaway to the finish line.

And what people started to do is they started to realize that the best place to be wasn't at the finish line.

The best place to be was at the last turn.

Because you would be walking up on people, and I got to see this.

You they would people would be walking or are jogging up there, and you could tell the look on their face was, why did I do this?

Why did I pay money to be tortured like this?

Why did I train for this?

I don't want to be here anymore.

And they're just doing the best they can because when you're running a race, three miles feels like a hundred, right?

And you're just barely making it, and you come around the corner, and all of a sudden you see a whole bunch of people, and they're looking at you and they're going, You're almost there.

Don't give up.

It's just around here.

And you just see them and they're so excited that they give you adrenaline rush.

And then you turn and you see the finish line.

And you know what I saw so many people do?

I saw so many people looking like they were about to quit and they were almost done.

And then all these people started screaming and yelling at them, said, Come on, don't give up.

It's almost there, it's almost there.

And my favorite thing really wasn't the finish line.

My favorite thing was when they would turn and they would see the finish line, watch them stand up a little bit straighter, watch them start to run just a little bit further, and start to make it because they saw the end in sight.

And what was amazing was not even crossing the finish line, it was cheering other people on.

And you know, one of the greatest opportunities that we have at Christ followers is we already know where we're headed.

We know that Jesus is our master and we know that heaven is our coming home.

But what we have the opportunity to do is now get on that sideline and encourage other people.

Don't give up, don't stop moving forward.

It's just over there.

Don't stop.

Can I tell you one of the greatest things we get to do is to be somebody else's miracle?

And sometimes that greatest miracle is encouraging people to never stop.

That's why I love reading God's word.

And if you've been reading God's word with us, we're actually gonna go through the book of Philippians here uh this coming week.

We're gonna finish Malachi and we're going to Philippians, and it's gonna we're gonna read all over again.

We're see it like that as Paul is sitting in prison, yet he is cheering them on and he is saying, Man, I know it gets difficult sometimes.

I know it gets hard sometimes, but never forget that he says, I am certain that God who began a good work within you will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns.

He's saying, I am so convinced that God is working on me and he's working on you.

I'm so convinced that he is actively working.

And I'm so convinced that he's never gonna give up that man, I can go all in and say, Man, let's lock arms together.

Let's get a clear vision of what the finish line looks like.

Let's keep our eyes on heaven and never stop moving forward.

Because here's the truth sometimes the greatest act of faith is faithfulness.

So if you don't hear anything else, keep calm and carry on because the Lord is in control, and this is the promise from God's word.

God's word says, For I have chosen you and will not throw you away.

Can I just say that again?

God's word says, I have chosen you and I will not throw you away.

I'm gonna say it one more time for the people in the back.

God says, I have chosen you.

I have not changed my mind about you.

So don't be afraid, for I am with you.

Don't be discouraged, for I am your God, and I will strengthen you, and I will help you.

I was telling the uh the earlier service to you guys the same thing.

That is that kind of kind of give you some behind the scenes here a little bit.

So um, I have the honor of being uh being a pastor.

I'm telling I'm getting really real for a moment, all right?

So here we go.

Just act like this is not a normal Sunday for just a second.

Um, I have had the honor of preaching for over 20 years at this point in various different ways, and it is just the honor of my life to get to share God's word.

And I uh I've studied preaching for years, and uh one of the things that they tell you when they're saying share God's word is treat it like a flight.

You have to take off, you have the cruising altitude, and then you have the landing.

And they say, Listen, the two most important things you gotta do is you gotta take off well and you gotta land well.

Because once you're in the air, you're in the air.

And I like to think of it as like like once we get into talking about God's word, we're good to go.

I trust God's word, I just don't always trust me.

So I will spend most of my time, a lot of times, working on the takeoff and working on the landing.

Just make sure that we know what we're doing.

It's real as real as it gets, okay?

And I had the best ending to this message.

I was so proud.

I was gonna amen my.

It was about peaches.

Peaches in Jesus' name.

You know, the peaches.

It was so good coming to a sermon near you.

Don't worry, I'm not throwing it away.

I'm just putting it away.

All right.

Some of y'all going, What in the world is he about to do?

He ain't never done this.

I got you.

I got you.

It's okay.

I'm not having to break down.

It's fine.

Okay, it's fine.

Yesterday I was just celebrating that, you know, I love, I love the book of Philippians.

It's one of my favorite books of the Bible.

And I was so excited about peaches.

It's gonna be good.

And I just, but all of a sudden I felt so discontent with the ending of this message.

And I like to very seldom do I like to say, God told me this, because God tells us, God talks to us in God's word.

I'll tell you, I have impressions, I'll tell you that kind of stuff, but be very, very careful with that phrase.

So when I tell you that God told me to do something, just understand that I don't say that very often.

I feel like that God told me to talk about peaches another day.

And really just to tell you one thing to end this message, and I don't I don't know if the whole reason why you were here is for this.

And yes, I'm taking my time for this because I have no idea why you need to hear this, but you just need to hear that some of us need to decide to choose your heart.

I have no idea what you're going through.

But when I talk about moving forward, I talk about how it's hard.

You know, there's like three different types of people.

There, there's people who say, Yeah, it's hard, and I'm here for it.

Let's let's do this, you know, that kind of thing.

Then you got people who just say, you know, we're gonna move forward, and they're like, ah, you know, maybe not, maybe not.

But what I really felt like is there were gonna be people in here today.

So I don't know who you are.

You don't have to tell me who you are, God knows who you are.

But the honest truth is that you're not gonna give up.

Between me and you, you're not gonna give up.

That's not what the enemy is trying to get you to do.

He isn't wanting you to give up, he just wants you to quit moving forward.

Because you're just gonna get satisfied, and this is enough.

This is enough.

And the mental picture that God gave me was somebody who is just moving through quicksand over and over, and you've been strong for everybody else.

You've been fighting what everybody else was given up.

You've been the one picking everybody up, you've been the one who've been holding people and you've been moving forward and moving forward, but life has been more and more confusing.

This has been a difficult season, you haven't known what to do, and you have been trying, you've been trying, and the whole time you're wondering when is somebody gonna hold me up?

When is somebody gonna help me up?

And you're almost at the point where you're gonna say, Well, here's the thing, I'm not gonna give up, but I can't hold anybody else's hands up right now, and so I'm just going to stop.

And can I tell you, the enemy is not trying to destroy you, he's just trying to distract you, and he's just trying to discourage you.

He's just trying to stop you from being able to see that God's doing so much more in your life than you realize, that God is doing so much more through you than you can imagine, that there are way more victories than there are enemies in your life.

How can you be so sad when God is so good?

And it's because all you see right now is the hard.

But can we tell you a secret?

Moving forward is hard.

Pastor, tell me tell me a real secret.

Okay.

Quitting is also hard.

Giving up is also hard.

Watching somebody else do what you know you were called to do, but you didn't hang in one more day, that's really hard.

I know that because I've done that before.

And I refuse to ever settle for anything less than what God wants from me ever again.

And that's my prayer for you.

I don't know who you are, but you ruined my peaches story.

Coming to a sermon near you, but you need to hear this.

During World War II, Winston Churchill, there was a time when the Allied forces had not joined yet, Soviet Union wasn't there, America wasn't there.

It looked like the whole world of Italy and uh Hitler's army was all against Winston Churchill and his country.

And he would get up before parliament, he would say this, he would say, Never, never, never, never, never give up.

I know it looks like the world is against us, but we ain't dead yet.

There's a famous quote he had, I cleaned it up a little bit, and he said this he said, When you're going through something hard, keep going.

I don't know what your hard situation is.

What if you are creating the greatest testimony of your life that is not going to be based on how much victory you achieve, but how much faithfulness you stay with.

And watch what God can do.

Whoever you are, choose your heart.

My prayer is you'll choose to stay in the fight.

You'll choose not to give up.

You'll choose to try one more day.

Because one day will be the final day before the dam breaks, before everything happens, and then you will say, I am so thankful that I didn't give up.

And you'll realize God was there the whole time.

Because God's word says, I am not going to give up on you.

But I'm with you.

In just a moment, the band's gonna lead us in a song of worship.

I don't know how you need to respond to that, I have no idea.

But I know that God does, and I believe that you do.

If you're here, and when I said you got to choose your heart, if God all of a sudden opened up your mind and you realized you're right, Pastor, I do have a valley of decision, I've got to figure out, I've got to do whatever.

Maybe your prayer just needs to be during our time of worship.

You just raise your hands and say, God, I just choose not to quit.

I don't know what to do, I just know I'm gonna do it with you.

Watch what God does.

Watch how he opens your eyes to see things you couldn't see on your own.

Watch the miracles that he starts to work in your life.

Here's the secret: God's already doing stuff, you just don't see it yet.

But in a moment, he opens your eyes to see what he'd already been doing.

You don't get to see that if you give up.

What next step do you need to take?

Maybe you need to find a quiet place down here at the altar.

And you know, symbolically in the Old Testament, they would come to the presence of God, they'd bring an offering.

Maybe your offering needs to be any quit you have left in you.

I'm not gonna quit, so I'm gonna lay it down at the altar and I'm gonna get back up and I'm gonna continue to move forward.

I don't know what next step you need to take.

I just know somebody needs to choose the heart of staying in the fight one more day.

Maybe you're in here and you don't have a relationship with Jesus.

Can I tell you, today's your day?

You've been trying everything else.

Why not give your life to Jesus?

On the back of your connect card is the plan of salvation.

It's talking about how we give all of our lives over to Jesus.

We let him take hold of us, wash away our sin.

He becomes our Lord and our King, and we live for Him the rest of our days.

If that's you, when we stand in just a moment to worship the Lord, your next best act of worship is to step out of your seat, join us at the prayer table, bring this with you.

And we want to talk to you about salvation.

We want to watch you be born into the kingdom of God.

It's one thing to hear about the love of God, and it's another thing to experience God for yourself.

Today's your day.

It's time to come home and let God have his way.

Let's pray together right now.

God, thank you so much for today.

Thank you, God, that you see us and that you are with us and you are for us.

I'm so thankful, God, that in this place there are so many different people going through so many different things that we wouldn't even have time to go over them all, but you know.

You know, you know everything that's going on in this moment right now.

You know those who have dreams that they're so close to giving up on.

You know that there are people who have dreams that are so close to being born.

You know everything, God.

And so I trust you at this moment, I trust you that there is somebody in here today that's gonna choose the heart of staying in the fight, staying on track, staying with it, not giving up, not stopping, but continuing to be that example, to be that legacy builder, to be the one who's never going to let the enemy discourage or distract him, but they're gonna keep on moving forward.

I pray maybe for somebody in here, they don't have a relationship with you, but today's the day.

Today's the day they're tired of running, they're tired of giving up.

It's time for surrender.

It's time to go all in with you, Jesus.

I just, in the name of Jesus, I just bind any voice of the enemy that would say that it's too late, they've gone too far, that you wouldn't want them.

I pray, Holy Spirit, that you will have the only voice in their ear and you will remind them that you love them.

You've not given up on them.

Today is a new day.

The mercies of the Lord are new every single morning.

Today is a day of salvation.

Lord, as you move in our hearts, we give our lives to you fresh.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Man, would you stand with me all over the house this morning?

The band is gonna lead us in a final song of worship.

I don't know what your next step needs to be.

Maybe just right where you are, you just need to lift your hands to the Lord and just ask him to let his presence just overflow in you right now.

Just giving you that grace that you need to keep in the fight.

Maybe you want to find a quiet place here in the altar and you just want to offer the Lord whatever quit you had left in you.

I refuse to give up.

I refuse to ever stop moving forward.

Maybe today is a day of salvation for you.

I want you to join us at the prayer table.

We want to meet with you, talk to you about what salvation is, talk about those next steps.

But whatever you need to do, let's take the next few moments.

Let's worship the Lord together.