The Joy of Pursuing the Prize

Good morning.

I'm so excited about what we're going to talk about this morning.

Just to get everybody caught up and kind of give you a picture of what's ahead.

Most of this year we've been in a series called Unbreakable Joy.

Unbreakable Joy.

We're going through the book of Philippians.

Philippians was written by a man named Paul.

He's one of the leaders of the early church.

And if you read the book of Philippians, you would think this is written by someone who is experiencing the best moments of their life.

Things are going amazing because it is filled with statements of gratitude and wonder and joy.

But if you know the history, Paul wrote it while in prison, awaiting possible execution, but yet he's not bemoaning his circumstances.

He's expressing a kind of joy that most people never express.

Most people never experience.

And it's a kind of joy that you can only truly have when you live your life connected to God, where no matter what your circumstance is, you have this unbreakable, unshakable kind of joy.

We've been exploring that.

Now, today and next week we will end up wrapping up Philippians chapter three, and it only has four chapters, so not much of it left.

But we're actually going to pause this summer.

We're going to hit the pause button on the Philippians series, and for the summer, at least most of the summer, we're going to jump into the book of Proverbs, and we're going to have a summer of wisdom.

If you're not familiar with Proverbs, it is just jam-packed with the most practical take this, apply this to your life, and experience results like now, kind of wisdom.

And so we're going to have a summer of wisdom.

And so this summer, if you don't come here, you'll just be less wise.

And so, I mean, it's up to you.

It really is up to you, I guess.

I mean, if you're wise, I'd ought to be here, but whatever.

Um, no, we're gonna have a great time talking about the wisdom that God has given us, and it's wisdom that works, it's wisdom that has stood the test of time.

So next week, more Philippians, we'll finish up chapter three, summer of wisdom, then we'll jump back into it.

I have greatly enjoyed, and no pun intended, talking about all these ways that we can experience joy through our relationship with Jesus.

It's been interesting.

We talked about joy that's that doesn't really make sense, like the joy of suffering.

If you weren't here for that, Paul writes about how we can even find joy in suffering, we can even find joy in death.

Last week we talked about the joy of unearned status, that we have this status with God through faith in Jesus.

We are included in the family of God, we are friends with God.

We get to be part of God's actual family.

In his eyes, he's our father.

He's not like a father, he is our father.

And we don't have to do anything to earn that.

Jesus earned that for us.

That was last Sunday.

Today we're gonna talk about the joy of pursuing your prize.

The joy of pursuing your prize.

Let me go ahead and read Philippians chapter 3, verses 10 through 16, and then we'll discuss.

Philippians 3:10–16

Paul wrote, I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead.

I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead.

I don't mean to say that I've already achieved these things or that I've already reached perfection, but I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus 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 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.

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

But we must hold on to the progress that we've already made.

We'll unpack this together, but Paul talks about pressing on to reach the prize.

This is language that he uses elsewhere.

For example, in 2 Timothy 4, 7 through 8, Paul wrote, I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, and I have remained faithful.

And now the prize awaits me.

The crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on the day of his return.

And this prize is not just for me, but for all who eagerly look forward to his appearing.

So, what's this all about?

Well, it's it's interesting.

I've spent this whole week thinking about this and thinking a lot about the concept of a prize.

As adults, we probably don't think in terms of prizes that often.

I don't know when the last time you thought about winning a prize.

For me, it was probably like fifth grade.

But as like a kid, if we can all go back in our minds a little bit to when we were younger, and some of us in the room, really close for you.

Prizes were a thing.

Do you remember prizes?

Like how many things had prizes?

Like elementary school, if you had good behavior, you did what your teacher wanted.

Some of your teacher may have had like a prize box, and you got points, and you could come and you can exchange that and get like a bouncy ball or a Jolly Rancher or something like that.

I used to choose cereal.

I remember shopping at the grocery store in southern Missouri that my mom always went to, Food for Less.

That was the name of the grocery store we went to.

And I would choose cereal, not based on what tasted the best, but what cereal came with like a prize, which would usually just be some piece of junk.

But it was just exciting.

It was so exciting.

My dad used to, this is gonna date me a little bit, child of the 80s and early 90s.

My dad used to drop my older brother, my sister, and me off at the arcade at our mall when he would go run errands and he'd give us some money for tokens and just leave us there for a few hours, which was incredible.

I don't know what he was doing.

I don't know what I but it was awesome.

Whatever he was doing, he could stay as long as he wanted because we were in the arcade, and the arcade was such a cool experience because on one hand, there were these like flashy new games that looked cool, but then there's the things that you got tickets.

You know what I'm talking about?

Like tickets.

How many of you remember tickets in an arcade that still exists today?

The economy is still the same.

It takes like 5,000 tickets to get what is the equivalent of something that cost a dollar.

But man, I was like captivated by it.

I even remember as a kid watching like Nickelodeon and kids' TV shows, there would be these commercials for sweepstakes.

And the prizes, if you won these sweepstakes, if you like mailed something in, it was insane.

I remember one time seeing one, and the prize was a shopping spree at Toys R Us.

God rest its soul.

Um but like as a kid, the idea of a shopping spree at Toys R Us, and then the commercial, they said you'd have 20 minutes to just go grab whatever you could.

I had the whole store mapped out in my mind.

I was like, all right, I'm hitting this aisle, this aisle, and this aisle, and we're good.

Never won it.

Don't really know if any kid ever won it.

Maybe it was a huge scam.

But the idea of that prize, as a kid, prizes were often on the forefront of my mind.

I just knew that if you did something and you did it well, you could win a prize.

We don't really use that language as much as adults, but we could maybe, we could replace it with something else that might help it make more sense to us.

Like, like let's just use the word goal.

How many of us right now, you don't have to raise your hands, it's more rhetorical, you can if you want, but how many of us have a goal that we are so passionate about, that we are so focused on, that we are completely and totally re-I see you name, we are rearranging our entire lives to achieve that goal.

I haven't always had goals like that.

Every season of my life has not come along with a goal of that magnitude, but I can remember moments in life where I had one.

I'm gonna use one right now, just as an example, as you're thinking of yours.

Um getting married.

All right, if you don't mind hubering for a second.

Oh, that was faster than I.

Okay, cool.

So Megan and I, this week, this week, we celebrate our 20th anniversary.

I'm so excited about it.

Super cool.

Um got married 20 years ago.

Now, this is a picture of us at our engagement.

Um, a couple things to note.

My hairline used to go straight, and now it's like way, it's way back there, you know?

So that's changed.

Oh, I'm sorry, I almost did backwards hat.

That's what I'm used to doing.

Just so you guys know when I wear a hat on Sunday, it's usually because like I just didn't have a chance to get in the shower because there's six people in our family.

And it's okay to wear hats in church.

Madison has a tattoo.

If he can have a tattoo, I can wear a hat, okay?

I'm just gonna say that.

And for what it's worth, I wear hats every day, but it's always backwards, like this, if you ever come to the office.

So me going forwards is actually pretty formal.

All right, I'm just saying.

All right, let's get this.

But what you can definitely tell beyond the hairline is uh Megan has always been and will always be extremely out of my league.

And I'm not just saying that to earn points.

When I was in college, guys would would like meet Megan, and then behind closed doors, I had this happen once.

A guy went, like, seriously, how is that your girlfriend?

And I was like, What do you mean?

He's like, I mean, I don't know, it doesn't make any sense.

And it's it's fine.

We started dating when I was in high school, and we got married, I was 21, she was 20.

And listen, free advice for any of the the guys out there, you're you're young, you're you're with a girl, you're thinking about marriage.

If she's out of your league, lock her down.

Okay?

Because she'll figure it out.

You just want her to figure it out later when it's way more complicated to get out.

That's that's what you want to do.

But seriously, I I knew Megan was the one, and for years, getting married to Megan was a singular goal that completely determined everything I did in life.

And so I had a checklist of things that needed to happen for us to get married.

I wanted to get married fast.

And I look back at my checklist, and at 19 years old, I can say, man, you had some things in the wrong order, but they all got done.

The first thing I did was I bought a ring.

I bought a ring my freshman year of college.

She was still a senior in high school.

Her dad did not know that for a long, long time, but it's okay.

We're married now.

Um I walked into a jewelry store, I put all of the money that I basically had in my account as a down payment on a ring, and then I went and got a job.

You should probably have a job first, save money, and then get ring, but it's okay.

So I got a job at Chili's, and man, did I milk that?

I told every table that I was engaged or about to be engaged, I was paying off a ring because I wanted like, like ladies, I wanted wives to kick their husbands as he wrote the tip, you know, and be like, give him more money.

Like he is.

He's paying off an engagement ring.

Like I told that story, like, how are you doing?

Um, I'll I'll get your drinks.

By the way, I'm I'm getting engaged soon, paying off a ring.

It's great.

All right, and I would do that.

I'd find a way to work that in because I needed to, I needed to get married.

And so got the ring paid off, but then there were other things on the list, like, where are we gonna live?

Fortunately, our college had a separate set of dorms for married students, which is a weird thing.

It was kind of like a bygone era sort of holdover, and not many colleges had that, but ours did, and they were super cheap and affordable.

So I'm like, man, check that.

We'll there's where we'll live.

But true story, the very end of my freshman year of college, a tornado hit our campus and destroyed my car, it totaled my car.

But it also, let me show you a picture, this is from my college.

That was the that was the marriage worms.

That's where we were gonna live.

Gone.

And the school decided, you know what, college students don't really get married anymore.

We can find better uses for that.

And I was like, oh I'm gonna get married.

So then I had to find another place to live.

And I could have looked at that and said, this is a sign from God that we're supposed to wait, like her father asked us to.

Or, or if you're hyper focused on a goal, you say, I will do whatever it takes, whatever barriers, whatever obstacles, whatever setbacks, we just we power through.

So I went out, found the cheapest apartment that has ever existed, and it was cheap for a reason.

It was not in a safe apartment building, and it was not nice, it didn't even have a bedroom.

It was a one-room, bathroom, little kitchen, 400 square feet.

But we lived there for like a year and a half.

It was great.

It was really good for your first year of marriage just to be cramped together and uh wonderful.

The biggest item on my list was convince her father, who had asked us to both wait until we had both graduated to get married.

And I was like, hey, what if instead we get married when I have one year of college left and she has two?

Let's meet in the middle, which isn't meeting in the middle at all.

But he agreed.

And so for a year, two years, every single decision that I made, every major decision I made was all made with that goal in mind.

What is it gonna take to get married?

To be married to this woman that I love.

And I'm so glad.

I I don't have any regrets.

I mean, looking back, I probably could have done some things differently and I was young, whatever, but at the end of the day, it was worth it.

For Paul, knowing Jesus and being close to Jesus, and experiencing more of Jesus and what he has promised us, that was that was Paul's goal.

That was his prize, that was the thing that he was willing to suffer for, that he was willing to completely rearrange his life around.

To know Jesus, to experience more of Jesus, to experience the things that Jesus had promised, or even to get closer to those things that Jesus has promised that you can't even fully experience until after this life is done.

Whatever that looked like for Paul, it was worth it because that was his prize, that was his goal, that was the thing that he was willing to completely orient his life around.

And with that in mind, with that sort of mindset, I want us to go back and read through this section again and think about that.

Think about that in terms of your life.

What have you valued that much?

And Paul says, I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead.

I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death, so that one way or another I will experience the resurrection from the dead.

I don't mean to say that I've already achieved these things or that I've already reached perfection.

He's saying I'm not at my goal yet.

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

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

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.

If you disagree on some point, I believe God will make it plain to you, but we must hold on to the progress we have already made.

Okay, few things.

One, this can be a little bit confusing, especially when you think about what we talked about last week.

Like, wait, I thought we don't have to achieve anything.

I thought that knowing Jesus is a gift that's given to us, and Paul's talking like he's striving for something, like he's pressing towards something, which is it?

And the reality is it's both.

We don't have to do anything to achieve a relationship with God.

That is a gift.

Jesus won that for us on the cross, our sins have been dealt with, they've been paid for, and we are given this gift of a relationship with the Lord.

But once you have that, once you have that, we do work.

We do struggle sometimes.

We do sort of have to press forward in order to experience the fullness of that.

And and again, just to go back to the marriage example because it's on the forefront of my mind, you know, 20th anniversary week, um, getting married was like way easier than being happily married has been.

I don't know if anyone relates to that.

Like getting getting married in some ways was really hard, it was busy, there was a lot of stuff to do, but the actual, I mean, it was like you, me, yes.

And then we we were married, and we've been married for 20 years, and actually being in a healthy marriage and liking each, we love each other, liking each other takes work.

It hasn't just been all like magic and sunshine and rainbows, even 20 years in, there's there's struggles and it's it's challenging.

And so I I look at my my marriage and I go, What a what a gift.

And in many ways, I didn't really earn her at all.

Like it wasn't like I won some contest or had to beat out, I mean, for whatever reason, she liked me.

And I ran with that.

But the last 20 years have required all kinds of adjustments and changes and conversations and sacrifices and readjustments, and and it's like, and and many of us who are married, by the way, we all have different experiences with that, but I'm sure many of us you got married, and like I've never been more in love, I've never been more happy, and two years later you're fighting all the time, you're like, what happened?

It's hard.

And by the way, if you're in that season, do not be discouraged.

You are not alone.

It's tough.

And and I believe, truly believe, that the Lord will bless you and you will make it through.

Because I've been there.

But my point is, what was easy at first, what came very easily, very naturally, like we just we fell in love.

It then required work to experience the best version of it, the most we can have out of it.

It's like that with the Lord to a certain degree.

Our relationship with God is a gift.

You don't have to do anything to earn his love.

Not at all.

But once you have it, you wanna you wanna work, you want to do whatever it takes to experience the fullness of knowing God.

You want to press forward.

The language that Paul uses is so interesting.

He says, I press on.

He talks about a race, and the actual word that he uses for pressing on, it is a it is a running track type word.

He's using a sports analogy.

Even the see, if I use a sports analogy, it's biblical, okay?

And the language is actually someone's run a race and they've run it well, and that last lap, as they get toward the finish line, they don't slow down.

No, they speed up and they even lean their body forward.

And that's what he's saying.

He's like, he recognizes he's at the end of his race.

As he writes the book of Philippians, he's in prison.

As he writes to Timothy, that would have been the very end of his life.

He's he's about to be executed.

And he's saying, I'm almost there.

I have been following Jesus for years, I have fought the fight, I have run the race, and I am not slowing down.

Now I am I am pressing forward because I am this close to my prize.

He has that level of focus and desire.

He is not striving to earn God's love.

No, he has that.

He's he's striving, he's fighting, he's working to experience every little drop of God's presence and his power, of everything he's promised, and he's not holding anything back.

It's important for us, I think, to understand how this applies in our lives.

I want us to just, if we can, put on like a little theology hat and nerd out for a minute and understand what it really means to be saved.

Because Paul's actually, he's showing us that.

He's he's being an amazing example of what it really means to experience salvation in its fullest.

Now, if you've grown up in church, you've heard the phrase salvation.

Okay?

I mean, just curious, how many of you, when you gave your life to Jesus, that was the language that you used or you were taught to use.

I got saved.

Anybody just want to like, yeah, I got saved, okay.

Some of you were like, I grew up in a different context.

Salvation wasn't the word that I used.

Um, I grew up in a Southern Baptist church and we got saved.

I got saved like four times.

So I did.

You go to youth camp, you get saved every year, and then eventually, after you've been saved four times, you go, I think I'm supposed to be a pastor, and that's how it works.

So that was my story.

Well, salvation is it's a biblical word, but it's it's a word that that is really kind of an umbrella term that includes some other things.

And we've talked about this before, but today we're gonna focus on an aspect of it that we we haven't really focused on because for us to understand what Paul's talking about, this prize, we have to understand what that that really is, that prize, that thing that we are grasping for and not slowing down until we experience.

Okay, so when we say salvation, there's really three words that salvation encompasses.

It's the words justification, sanctification, and glorification.

Okay, justification, sanctification, and glorification.

Now, last week we actually talked about justification.

Like forgiveness is a word that we talk about a lot with Jesus, that we've been forgiven for our sins, but justified, that's even bigger than forgiveness.

It means you've been deemed innocent.

It's not just that God's looked at you and he said, Man, what a mess of life you have made, but you know what?

I'm gonna look past it, we're gonna get beyond this.

No, you he looks at you and he doesn't see anything wrong with you.

Because your sins have been so completely paid for by Jesus.

They are covered.

It's not like he looks at you and and overlooks your sin in his eyes, your sins are gone.

So if our enemy of Satan, who is described in scripture as an accuser, he accuses us, he both tempts and accuses.

If he were to make an accusation against you, it's like the Lord would look at you and say, God the Father would say, No, you're wrong.

They are pure.

They've been cleansed.

We've been justified, we've been declared innocent.

Now, when you gave your life to Jesus, when you got saved, you were justified.

Once and for all.

That wasn't like a temporary thing.

It wasn't like the things you had done wrong up to that point were covered, and then whatever you did after that, you got to get saved again for it.

No, no, it's once and for all, Jesus said, it is finished on the cross.

Okay?

Now, that brings us to the next word: sanctification.

That's this process day by day for an entire lifetime of you becoming more and more like God as the Holy Spirit works in your heart to make you like him.

And as you partner with the Holy Spirit and obey God and do the things that he calls you to do, you become more and more like him.

Okay, so the way we might think about this is that it is finished, but I am not finished.

Right?

It's finished, the whole work of salvation and paying the price for your sins, that's taken care of, done.

Praise God, but you're not finished.

I'm not finished.

There's still so much to happen, and that's what Paul spends so much time writing about.

Like all the stuff that we're being called to do, the way we're called to live, like we're forgiven, we're we're justified, but we are called to live a different kind of life as Jesus followers.

Our values are different than the values of the world.

Our priorities are different, what we care about is different, and day by day, if we live in obedience to To God, and when we don't, we confess and we adjust.

We fail, that's okay.

We get back up and we keep progressing and moving forward and we become more and more like the Lord.

That is sanctification.

That is the process.

And all of us are in that, by the way.

Every single one of us.

Doesn't matter if you're new to Jesus or if you've been following Jesus for decades.

Um, it is this daily process of going, wow, I have more to work on.

And sometimes it's frustrating, it's discouraging, sometimes you think you're further along than you are.

And then other times you might have moments where you go, wow, I a few years ago I would have reacted to this situation very differently.

And you actually see the fruit, you see the results.

So we're all in this process of maturing, of sanctifying.

It's the work of the Holy Spirit, and then we we don't want to resist that work, we don't want to disobey, we try to we go along with it as much as we can, and when we fail, we we figure it out.

But then there's a third word, and it's the word glorification.

And this is the word that is definitely, or the idea at least, that is definitely on Paul's mind as he writes this: glorification.

That is this future thing.

That is this future reality where we actually step into the entire fullness of everything that God has promised us.

Now, I'll be honest, I haven't spent a lot of time, at least in terms of how I've taught or even how I've really thought about my faith, I haven't spent a lot of time focused on glorification.

And there's a few reasons for that.

Number one, life's pretty busy.

I got a lot of stuff going on, I got a lot of things happening right now, so it's like, hey, cool, future glory, yay, awesome.

That sounds fun, but I got stuff to do right now.

So I'm much more focused on what's in the here and now, and that's kind of the stage of life that I'm in with my kids.

But also, life right now is it's not just busy, it's it's good.

I enjoy my life.

I know some of us are in very different situations and life has ups and downs.

I'm in a season of life right now where I'm like, man, my I'm loving my kids, I love my life, I love the way this is going.

It's a lot, it's busy, but I'm enjoying it and I'm trying to enjoy every little bit of it.

So sometimes when you're busy or when things are going well, and I know that can change in an instant, I've experienced that as well, but it's easy in those moments to sort of forget the the ultimate end, the end goal.

And almost, in a sense, take it for granted.

Paul's in a different place.

Paul's in prison, he's not busy.

You're not busy in a Roman prison.

You're just you're there.

And life is not going well for Paul.

I mean, he is in a horrible situation, and he knows that death is right around the corner.

In fact, we just read 2 Timothy, not long after he wrote 2 Timothy, he was beheaded.

And so when you're in that situation, right, life is hard, it's tough, it's not busy, it's not full of blessings, so to speak, like circumstantial blessings.

And you also know that you're at the end, well, that that idea of glorification, that idea of the ultimate prize that Jesus has promised us, that's something that might be a little bit more tangible.

And so, Paul in prison, he's like, Man, I have I have run my race, I have fought the fight, I have stayed true to the Lord, it has been difficult, but I am right there.

I see what's coming, and I am stretching out, I am pr I'm pushing forward, I am running as fast as I can because I know that I am this close to experiencing that.

And he calls it his prize.

So, what is that?

What is that ultimate glorification prize?

I want to read some scriptures.

1 Thessalonians 2.12.

Paul also wrote this.

He said, We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy, for he called you, it's that same language Paul used in Philippians, he said, that we've been called into this.

For he called you to share in his kingdom and glory.

2 Thessalonians 2, 13 through 14.

As for us, we can't help but thank God for you, dear brothers and sisters, loved by the Lord.

We are always thankful that God chose you to be among the first to experience salvation.

A salvation that came through the Spirit who makes you holy through your belief in the truth.

There we see that whole sanctification part, right?

That we were saved, but the Holy Spirit is making us holy.

He called you to salvation when we told you the good news, and now you can share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1 Peter 5 10.

In his kindness, God called you to share in his eternal glory by means of Christ Jesus, so that after you've served you've suffered for a little while, he will restore support and strengthen you, and he will place you on a firm foundation.

So we see in these three scriptures, these are just examples, this idea of being called into something.

Okay, we don't earn it, we don't win it, we don't wow God, and he goes, You've made the cut.

No, he calls us into his presence, he calls us into his family, we respond to that calling, but we see this word over and over, glory.

Right?

I said salvation is it's justification, sanctification, glorification, it's glory.

What is glory?

That's one of those words that we see all the time in the Bible, but it's a word that's kind of hard to define.

If someone said, hey, define glory, I imagine that we would get about as many definitions as there are people in this room.

We'd all be close.

We say, well, something that has glory, it's it's majestic.

You look at it, you're like, wow, that's amazing.

That's incredible.

The first time I saw a big screen HD TV, I was like, glory.

Like this is, you know, first time I ever saw a football game that crisp, like I could read the letters on the ball.

I was like, this is the greatest thing that's ever been.

Like, maybe it's something you probably have a different version of that.

Um my wife once took me to an art museum.

She tried.

She tried really hard to culture me.

And we stood in front of the paintings and she was like, isn't that amazing?

I was like, Yeah.

You know, it's pretty cool.

But but eventually I could see what she was talking about.

Like, there are certain works of art that are just incredible.

But ultimately, glory, it means one very specific thing.

When you read it in the Bible, at least.

In our language, we say glorious to relate to anything that's just really great and wonderful.

But the word glory in the Hebrew language is actually this word kovod, and it means weight.

It means heavy.

So God's glory, it is, it's his weight.

This is important, because this matters for us if we're supposed to share in his glory.

So think about it like this.

I don't know if you have you ever met somebody who is important.

Like just show of hands.

You ever met someone that would be considered a very important person by most people in the world?

Yeah.

Like when you met that person, you probably felt some some weight.

Like it was like, whoa, I'm I'm in the presence of somebody who matters, and you kind of felt it.

You know, it's like uh if you meet a celebrity, someone who's really famous, their fame, their reputation, it kind of goes ahead of them.

And when you meet them, because you're aware of that, you feel it.

You're like, whoa, I'm hello.

I again I'll date myself as a child of the the the 90s and whatnot, but uh the first Waynes World movie, that's a weird connection to make in church.

You get who has seen the very first Waynes World movie?

All right, right, so he he gets backstage passes to this band that he's grown up idolizing, and the the guy in the band just starts talking to him like a normal person, and he's like, uh-huh.

I'm just I'm talking to you.

This is normal, this is great.

Then he falls on his knees and says, I'm not worthy.

You know what I'm talking about?

Like, that's because this person in his mind is weighty, and he doesn't feel worthy to be in that person's presence.

In ancient times, and still to a little bit in modern day, we see this with leaders of governments.

So in ancient times, a king would have all kinds of things around them to add to their glory.

They'd have a palace, this giant building, and it would be gilded, and there's just gold everywhere, and there's statues, or there's giant paintings, and they wear a crown, and they sit on a throne, and they're surrounded by guards, so that when you walked into the room and you saw them, you would just feel the weight of that.

In our day and age, it would maybe be like meeting the president.

Wouldn't matter who the president is.

But the Secret Service rolls up and there's all this commotion, and there's all these guys with sunglasses and earpieces, and there's all this stuff going on, and and the crowd is pushed back, and this person gets out of one of the 17 cars that is in front of them, and you feel that, like, whoa, this is this is something.

Now, here's the interesting thing.

When it comes to human beings, all of that is it's really just show.

It's just for show.

That person, in and of themselves, does not carry weight.

It's just their reputation or the position that they hold.

But if you were to take that person and put them somewhere where no one knows who they are.

Like you take the king of England, you put him somewhere where no one knows who he is, no one recognizes him, you take the crown, you take the fancy clothes, you take the guards away, and he just walks through a store, he just walks through the marketplace, whatever.

He's just a dude.

No one in his presence is gonna be like, whoa.

Right?

People probably be like, hey, move, get out of the way, what's wrong with you?

Like, they'd be rude to him because he's just a person.

So in our human understanding of glory, of weight, it's kind of a manufactured thing.

You know, either someone has an accomplishment, they're famous, they're well known, they have a reputation, or there's all this kind of apparatus around them that makes us feel like they're important.

But if we just bumped into them oblivious to all of that, we we would have no idea.

Because they do not in and of themselves carry glory.

God is different.

God is different.

Once Moses asked to see God's glory.

He was so close to God, he conversed with God.

He was, he and God walked closer than most people have ever experienced, and he said, God, I want to see your glory.

And God said it would kill you.

He's like, I love you too much.

I'll tell you what, though, I'll give you just a tiny glimpse of it.

He knew Moses, you can't handle it.

Jesus is God who became a human, and because he was one of us, that that glory was sort of hidden to a degree.

Jesus could walk around and and people didn't just fall over when they were in his presence.

But there's this one story in Matthew chapter 17, where he takes a few of his disciples up on top of this mountain, and the glory comes out in its fullness.

Matthew 17 · chapter mention

It says in in verse 1 of Matthew 17, six days later, Jesus took Peter and the two brothers, James and John, and he led them to the high mountain to be alone.

And as the men watched, Jesus' appearance was transformed so that his face shone like the sun and its clothes became as white as light.

And then suddenly Moses and Elijah, these two prophets from the Old Testament, they appeared and began talking with Jesus.

And Peter, I relate to Peter so much because Peter's mouth just runs.

And when I'm in an when I'm in a situation I don't know what to do, I just start talking.

It's like, eh, this is a and Peter's just like, oh Lord, it's wonderful for us to be here.

If you want, I'll make three shelters as memorials, one for you, one for Moses, one for Elijah, and then God just cuts them off.

But even as he spoke, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, This is my dearly loved son who brings me great joy.

Listen to him.

And the disciples were terrified, and they fell face down on the ground, and then Jesus came over and touched them.

Get up, he said, don't be afraid.

And when they looked up, Moses and Elijah were gone, and they saw only Jesus.

As they went back down the mountain, Jesus commanded them, Do not tell anyone what you have seen until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.

So they had this experience where they saw Jesus as he is.

By the way, the book of Revelation, when Jesus appears to John, that's the Jesus.

And same thing, like fall down, think you're dead.

If Jesus showed up in physical presence, Jesus, right here in this place, I it doesn't matter if you've been a believer your whole life or if you would even say I'm a skeptic, you would fall down face first.

You couldn't stand in his presence.

Because he in and of himself is glorious.

He has that kind of weight.

And so Paul talks about this idea glory, that God has glory, he has weight.

He is so incredible, so over us, so much greater and grander than us that even being in his presence, like you feel it.

He's not just some dude.

But then he says over and over again that we have been called into that.

And that we, through faith in Jesus, share that glory.

I mean, it's it's crazy to think about Romans chapter 8, verse 17.

Romans 8:17

It says, since we are his children, we are his heirs.

In fact, together with Christ, we are heirs of what?

Of God's glory.

That glory, that weight, that magnitude.

If we're to share in his glory, we must also share in his suffering.

And here's what that means.

Worship team, you guys can make your way out.

He is pressing on toward a prize.

He has a goal in mind, and that goal is to experience every single drop of God that he can experience this side of heaven.

This side of the life to come.

Maybe there are followers of Jesus who are like, man, glorification, that sounds cool.

I got saved, I believe in Jesus, now I'm just gonna live my life and do my thing, and I'll experience that when it comes.

And if that's your attitude, you're nuts.

Like, don't be offended.

I guess it is offensive to call someone nuts, but forgive me.

But that's crazy.

Like, if it would be like, I mean, having something so incredible, so amazing, and not participating in it, not wanting to experience it.

Like, if you know Jesus, if you've given your life to Jesus, you want every single day, you want to be closer to Jesus.

You should.

You want to you want to go deeper, you want to know him better and more, and that's what Paul's saying.

He's like, I am not slowing down, I am pressing forward, I'm going faster.

He knows he's close to the end, and he's not looking backwards and trying to cling to the things of this world.

He's like, no, the closer I get to my end, the faster I run toward it.

I don't care about the past, I don't care about what's happened.

I count all of that as worthless because I'm looking forward, I want to know Jesus, and I'm this close to my prize, to that glory that awaits.

What that means for all of us, and we have to keep this in mind, is that we have to live life with the end in mind.

There is an ultimate end.

And if you don't have an ultimate end, if you don't have a goal, you can't really have progress because you don't know what you're progressing toward.

Right?

If there's no goal in mind, you might think it's progress.

It might just be a bunch of meaningless motion.

But if you have an end in mind, then everything you do is toward that end.

And basically what Paul is saying is he is saying, I want to arrive as close when he when he meets his end, he's like, I want to get to my end as close to that glory that I'm I'm gonna experience as possible.

He's like, I want to close that gap as much as I can.

I want to experience every bit of God, I want to live in obedience to God, I want to be a faithful servant to God, I want to do what he's called me to do, because when I get to that moment, I want it to be like I was already on my way, this was just the next step.

And so he's pressing on, he's running faster, he's leaning forward, he's leaning into it.

And what we all have to understand is that we all have that same ultimate end.

We don't like to talk about the end.

Um, we don't, but our world is obsessed with the end.

You ever notice that?

Like how many movies are about the end?

I'd say like half the movies that come out are about the end of the world or some version of the end of the world.

There's an obsession that our world has with the fact that one day there's an end.

And almost always that end is a bad thing.

Like that end is bad.

It's apocalyptic, it's it's terrible.

But it's funny that word apocalypse doesn't mean terrible ending, it might be a shocker to you.

Before zombie movies stole that, okay?

Apocalypse just means revealing, like a curtain being pulled back.

And in scripture, we have that curtain pulled back for us.

We get to see a glimpse of what's to come, and it is it is not terrible, it is beautiful, it is it is awesome.

It's Jesus, and it's eternity with Jesus and in his glory, and we experience that, and we're part of that.

And so, what that means is no matter how life is going for you right now, maybe it's going awesome, and that's great.

Never forget your ultimate end, that your life is moving toward a destination.

And that destination, if you know Jesus, that destination is glory.

That destination is eternity with God, in his presence, in his in his light, but sharing in that, not just observing it, part of it.

That's what's that's what's waiting for you.

So the question is, if that's really the end, like, do you want to sort of just tiptoe toward that?

Do you want to live your life with your hands in your pockets, just being like, oh, that's cool, glory, all right?

Well, hmm.

Or would you like run toward that?

Would you do everything in your power?

Would you reorient your entire life, make it the ultimate goal of your life to experience as much of that right now as you possibly could, so that that life, that ultimate destiny that you have to be in God's presence, to be in his glory, that that starts to like break into now?

That you begin to experience that closeness with him on this side of heaven.

That's what Paul's saying.

He's like, Yeah, that's what's coming, but I'm not waiting around for it.

I'm moving toward it.

And I'm not talking about Paul being reckless in some suicidal way.

He he recognized that you don't know when the end is coming, but it comes, but I'm moving toward it and I'm looking forward to it.

I'm not looking behind, I am going forward full speed because that is how beautiful and amazing and glorious God is.

There's nothing on earth like it.

So whether life is going well or I'm in prison, I am pressing on toward the ultimate goal, and that is to know Jesus, to experience his power and to experience his glory.

That is what Paul was living for.

And that is what all of us can live for.

Salvation, it is being justified and forgiven, it is being sanctified and day by day growing and getting closer.

And yes, that means failing and realizing that you failed and messing up and making adjustments, but it's also glorification.

There is an end in sight, and it is wonderful, it is a prize, it is the ultimate prize.

And Paul found joy even in hard situations, knowing that he was moving toward that.

And so, my encouragement to all of us today as we close is to run your race.

Run your race.

Whatever is standing in your way of being closer to Jesus, get rid of it.

Move past it, ignore it.

Even if it's something really hard, the right the author of Hebrews, we don't know exactly who wrote Hebrews, but this author said, Therefore, since we're surrounded by such a huge crowd of witnesses to the life of faith, let us strip off every weight that slows us down, especially the sin that so easily trips us up, and let us run with endurance the race that God has set before us.

Even if you have a sin, a struggle, an addiction, do whatever it takes.

Confess it to a friend, get accountability, come meet with someone here at the church and say, Hey, I need some help.

I'm struggling with this.

Whatever it takes, you got to get rid of it because it's slowing you down.

And what Paul or or any of the biblical authors would say is do not be slowed down when you have such an amazing prize, when something so incredible is ahead of you, you want to run to it with speed.

So run your race.

Keep your eyes forward, focused on Jesus.

Forget about your past, it doesn't define you.

Don't cling to this world, but run your race and know that your ultimate end is glory.

And there's nothing like it.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for this day.

Thank you for this amazing opportunity to open up your word.

And Lord, what we're talking about today, it's it's kind of a crazy concept, it's one that we don't think about that often.

Glory.

But that's not a foreign concept to us, that's actually an intimate reality that all of us are going to experience through faith in you.

That we get to be part of your glory, we get to step into your glory, and we can even experience like a foretaste of that on this side of heaven as we grow closer and closer to you.

So help us, Lord, run our race.

Help us run it with endurance, help us run it with urgency.

Lord, help us strip off every distraction, every sin, every struggle, every false way of thinking that would slow us down or distract us.

But help us run our race toward you every single day, growing closer and closer, running faster and faster.

And we pray this in your name, Jesus.

Amen.