A Work in Progress | Philippians 3:12-16

Mothers Day  |  Philippians 3:12-16  |  Cody Hale

Transcript

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Philippians chapter 3. Beginning in verse 12, God's word says, Not that I have already obtained this or am already made perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way. And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that to you also. Only let us hold true to what we have attained. Brothers, join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. Let's pray the Lord together. Heavenly Father, this morning we come, we bow ourselves before you, Lord. And God, we are so thankful for our moms, for the way they show us your nurture, the way they teach us about your care, the way they're in every detail, and Lord, pointing us to how you are in every detail. I pray your blessing and your favor over everyone, over each one, over every family. I pray for the mom here that's grieving the loss of her child. I pray for the one who longs to go and see her mom today but can't for whatever reason. I pray, Lord, for the lady here that wants with all of her heart to hold her own little baby, and that hasn't become reality yet. I pray, Lord, that you would let them know in a real and personal way what you say in Psalm 34 that you draw near to the brokenhearted. Gotta open up your word today and inspire us forward with a vision for our lives that is like that of Christ Himself. And we ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. You may be seated. You know, mom guilt is real, isn't it? I mean, you love those little creatures with every single thing that you have, all that you are. You want more than anything for them to flourish, you want them to love Jesus, you want them to become exactly the person who God intends for them to become. But somewhere along the way, if we're not careful, we can tend to take on that responsibility as though everything is all dependent upon us alone. And so you try to thread the needle just perfectly, don't you? Like you have to discipline them, but not too harshly. You have to teach them, but not too rigidly. You have to protect them, but you know, not hover over them, right? You're always threading the needle. Then you have you have organic meals, you have sports, then there's school, there's church, there's family time, screen limits, emotional health, spiritual health. It's a lot. It's a lot. Amen? Let you feel that. And then you look over to the mom beside you, and she seems to be handling everything effortlessly and with maximum grace. Meanwhile, your life feels like it's held together with prayer, coffee, and duct tape, right? You feel that? There's a lot of space there for guilt and for shame, for feelings of failure and inadequacy to creep in. And so here's what all of us have to recognize. Here's what all of you moms have to recognize and believe is that you are trying to raise them while you're still working on you. You have your own story. You have your own stuff, you have your own wounds, you have your own wiring, you have your own fears, you have your your own story. You're shaping a life, but while you're shaping a life, God is still shaping your life. And I think that brings us to the tension that Paul is answering this morning, that he's trying to resolve for us. How do you help someone grow while you're still growing yourself? How do you help these little creatures in your life? How do you help those that are following behind you? How do you help them grow when you recognize that you yourself are just a work in progress? See, the good news of the gospel is that God never asks Finnish people to follow after him. In Philippians 3, Paul is writing to a group of Christians who seem to believe that they have arrived spiritually. They're under the influence of the Judaizers who believe that you could take the Jewish law and add it to the truth about Jesus. And by adding the Jewish law to Jesus, you could actually attain a level of full maturity and even perfection. And so Paul is here and he's writing this and he's and he's pushing back on this. He says, Well, maybe for them, but that's not me. That's not me. I haven't arrived. I know I'm still a work in progress. I know I'm still trying to figure this out. And the point is, in Paul's mind, is that's not a failure. That's actually the way the Lord works in our lives and how he's moving in our lives. That this is actually the point. So in Philippians chapter 3, Paul is showing us how it is that we can keep growing, and how it is that we can keep growing while we're helping others grow with us. In honor of Mother's Day, what I want to do is I want to frame up the three main points that I get from Paul here as sayings that I remember my mom saying to me, because I think there's a lot of overlap here. So first, I think what Paul is saying is that you need to watch what you're doing. You need to watch what you're doing. You know, it's a surreal experience when you begin to hear your parents' words coming out of your mouth, isn't it? It's the beautiful cycle of life. Uh, my youngest Josiah, he's five. He has developed this habit where, like a cat with his kill, okay, after his meal, he will bring his plate, and wherever you are in the house, he brings you his plate to show you how much or how little he's eaten. But when he walks with his plate, it's always tilted downward like this, right? So he's walking through the house, and everywhere that he goes, he's spreading breadcrumbs and food straps as often as he's going, right? And every time I'm like, buddy, buddy, watch what you're doing. Walking carelessly makes a mess, doesn't it? That's essentially what Paul is saying here. The Judaizers were teaching this concept of spiritual arrival. They believed that they had reached maturity, and they believed that if you reach the state of maturity or perfection, then it no longer really mattered how you actually lived. You can essentially go wherever you want to go and do whatever you want to do. But Paul recognizes that this careless living is gonna lead to a messy life. It's gonna lead to a broken life, and it's gonna lead to a lot of problems, not just in their lives and in their families, but in their churches. And so Paul is here and he's saying, buddy, what's what you're doing? Watch what you're doing. That he wants them instead to recognize that they are being called to follow after a focused pursuit. Paul's here and he's using himself as an example. He was the founder of the church at Philippi. He is a spiritual leader for them. He knows that he has influence and credibility there among them. And so he's answering this false teaching on perfectionism by saying, My goodness, that's not me. I am not there yet. I am not yet perfect. You'll notice in verse 12, he uses that not that I have already obtained this. The this that he's talking about points us back to verse 11 when he's talking about the resurrection of the day, of the dead. It's his way of saying, like, one day I'll be resurrected. One day I will be raised out in this glorified body, and I will receive the fullness of who Christ intends for me to be, and in that day I'll become made completely perfect by Jesus. But today is not that day. Today I am still a work in progress. We can really identify with Paul here, can't we? All of us feel the pressure and the tension that he's talking about. Think about the picture. Paul at this point in his life may very well be the single most mature Christian on the entire face of the earth. He is literally in prison because he is a pastor, missionary, and church planner. He's now progressed in age. He's nearing the end of his life. And yet, despite all of that, he says, I press on to make the resurrection and all of its effects my own. The phrase there, press on, it means a relentless pursuit. It's forward movement. It's an active, intentional pursuit of Christ's likeness in his life. That Paul understands something that we too easily forget: that the Christian life is not about maintenance, it's about progress, it's about pursuit. Recently, I had breakfast with Joey Shaw. Uh Joey's one of the missionaries that we sponsor here at the orchard, but he's also the son of our founding pastor, Sam Shaw. And so we were having breakfast, and I asked uh Joey how Sam was doing. He said, Cody, he's remarkable. He said, I went to his house last night. He said, It's late when I get there, and he's in his study and he's reading this thick, heavy, weighty theological book, and he's talking about all the things that God is doing in his life and all the things that God is doing in the church that he's serving. And he doesn't have to do any of that. He's just doing it because he wants to. Y'all, Sam's still growing, and he's a 74-year-old giant of the faith. That's the point. That's the point. The mature never outgrow the need to grow. The danger for all of us is settling into a type of spiritual cruise control where we just kind of get in a groove and move forward, and we we wouldn't say it out loud, but we kind of think I've come far enough, I know enough of the Bible, I've been to enough church services, I've matured enough. But y'all, that's not maturity. That's actually, by Paul's definition, immaturity. Paul says maturity doesn't coast, maturity presses on because the finish line is in front of us, not behind us. And so he's here and he's calling us to a focused pursuit, and he's calling us to a focused pursuit based upon the realization that we have a settled position. When Paul talks about obtaining, that can make us kind of nervous. But what Paul is not talking about is he's not talking about our works-based salvation. He's not saying that we obtain our salvation by pressing on and by putting forth all of this effort. He's talking instead that this is how we lay a hold of the ramifications, the implications, the effects, the outcomes of our salvation. You can think of it like this that salvation is really getting the keys to the house. That it's your house. You possess it. But obtaining, obtaining is learning to live in and enjoy every single room and every single aspect of that house. I say this because of how he grounds his pursuit. You'll notice there what he says. He says, I press on to make it my own because if I was circling, if we had the capability to do that this morning, I would circle because that's one of those words that we look at when we're studying the Bible. I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. This morning, I want you to hear me say this out loud so that you can understand today what Paul realized way back then. Christ Jesus has made you. You. Christ Jesus has made you his own. Do you feel how personal that is? Do you feel how safe that is? Do you feel how settled that is? This is the soul-anchoring, life-stabilizing reality out of which all of us as believers in Christ now live. But there are still places, aren't there? There are still places where our hearts have trouble believing that we're okay. There are still places where our hearts have trouble believing that this is actually true. There are still places where our nervous systems are not yet convinced that we're safe. There are still places in our lives in which we're buying old lies and which we're clinging to old idols. And it's in those places that mom guilt tends to sprout, to spread, and to spiral. It's in those places that old shame shouts its abuses at you. It's in those places that tempt you to jump on that treadmill of trying to constantly make every person that you meet pleased and happy with you, though that is an impossibility. See, all of the research confirms what common sense has been telling us for generations. That the healthiest children come from the healthiest homes, that the securest children come from the safest homes if you are in Christ. If you have turned from your sin and from your self-sufficiency and turned fully to the person of Christ and his sufficiency, that's you. That's who you are. Maybe that wasn't the house that you grew up in. Maybe that wasn't the household that you were born into. Maybe that isn't the household that you married into. But this is the second that you come to Jesus by faith. This is the household that you now are a part of. And so Paul is calling you to press on so that you might become so completely convinced of your position in Christ that every corner of your life and every place in your heart is brought into conformity with the soul-anchoring, life-altering reality of this position. So watch what you're doing. Watch what you're doing. Live in focused pursuit of Jesus and then stop dragging your feet. Stop dragging your feet. My mom grew up on her grandparents' farm. And so work ethic was always like a chief value for my mom. And she to this day is probably the single hardest working individual I've ever known. She was one of these people that she works for fun. Like it's her hobby is work. Like she enjoys work. She really wanted to honor the legacy of her grandparents. And so she was determined she was not going to raise lazy kids. And so she would often say, work first, and then you can play. Like, I want you to have fun. I want you to enjoy your life, but you're gonna go and you're gonna get your work done first. That's what we're gonna do. Now, inevitably, I would get distracted. I would watch, you know, The Undertaker, Tombstone, Razor Ramon, and I would get locked in, right? And so my mom would come back to inspect the work that she had assigned to me, and a lot of the time it wasn't done yet. And you know what she would say? She would say, Stop dragging your feet, man. Stop dragging. If you just get your work done, then you can go and do whatever you want to do. So I love it when Paul says, There's one thing I do. There's one thing I do. He is simplifying and clarifying the Christian life down to a single priority. He's making this clear for us so that we can't miss it. He says, all of life is about one thing: pressing on toward Christ and the upward call of God. He uses two phrases here to help us be able to navigate some challenges to us pressing on. Some some to help us to make sure that we aren't dragging our feet in our pursuit of Christ. First, he shows us that we have to turn off the distractions. I mentioned earlier the biggest problem I had with doing what my mom had put before me to do were all the distractions that I had. And so my mom would come in and she'd say, Turn off the TV, turn off the PlayStation, like, let's get to work. You know, I'm pretty sure that in my relationship with my heavenly father, I have a similar problem. That the biggest obstacle between me and my heavenly father is probably the distraction that lives in my life. And so it's not a stretch to say that what Paul is telling us when he says, forget what is behind, is it's like our mom telling us, put down your phone, turn off the PlayStation, and get to work. Like, pay attention, focus on what you need to focus on. He's calling us away from these distractions. See, there are two temptations when it comes to looking behind us. The first temptation is to look back and to be impressed with ourselves. We look back and we think like Paul did early on, we like, I am a Hebrew of Hebrews, I am a Christian of Christians, right? Like, like I am a man among men, right? Like I look back and I see all the accomplishments and I see how far I've come, and I am so impressed. It is to look at the Christian life in a way similar to a prison sentence. It's like, I have done my time, I have paid my dues, I have put back what I owe. Now I can just coast for a while. Now I can let off the gas, right? It's a temptation to rest on your laurels and to stop your progress. The second temptation is to not look back and be impressed with yourself, but to look back and be ashamed of yourself. It's to look back like Paul could have been tempted to look and to say, I was a persecutor of Christians. I actually stood as an obstacle to the work that God was doing. How could I? Who could I? And to be so paralyzed by what happened before that you do nothing today. That it's the temptation that to be you can be so haunted by your prior life that it renders you powerless and motionless in your present life. So Paul's teaching us what he had to do. Forget it. Forget it. Don't be distracted by it. Turn off the TV. Praise God for what he allowed you to be, and then press on. Praise God that he has canceled your debt, he has removed all of your shame as far as the east is from the west, and then press on. The finish line is in front of us, the finish line is not behind us. No, press on. Turn off the distractions, and then give your all. Give your all. What mom hasn't said if it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. Every mom on earth has been saying that. And this is what Paul is saying when he says, if there's ever been anything worthy of your best effort, it's pressing on. It's straining toward the straining forward for the prize that awaits you in Christ Jesus. The imagery there of straining forward is that of a runner running a race. It's meant to transport us immediately to the Olympic Games, where you have the athlete, and he's been training and training and training, and he's running. And all he's been thinking about for all of his training is the prize that uh awaits him at the finish line. And so he's running and he's straining, and he gets close to the ribbon, and he begins to lean forward with every last bit of energy and effort, every muscle in his body is straining forward and leaning forward to see if he can be the first one to break the ribbon that he might receive the prize. It's literally giving every ounce of strength for every inch of ground. That Paul is teaching us that the Christian life is not a passive life, it is an energetic one, it is an enthusiastic one. Now, Paul is not saying that we are straining to earn our salvation. He's straining because he already belongs to Jesus. He's straining not so that he can earn the prize, he's straining because he is so excited to receive the prize that Jesus has already purchased for him on his behalf. That he's straining because he wants to run a race like Jesus, now knowing that he is going to inherit a prize like Jesus. That's the logic of the Christian life. To press forward toward the upward call of God is to give your all for an upward and a godward life. Again, I mentioned Josiah earlier. I think he has something to teach us about here. Bless his heart. The little guy looks just like me. I was hoping to be able to show you pictures, but if you take pictures of me when I was his age and you take his picture, like he actually will tell you, I think that's me, you know, like it's that, it's that. It's gonna be his cross to bear, really, all of his life, you know. And why is it that he looks like me? He looks like me because he's my son. Because he's my son. Bless his heart, that's his inheritance, and that's about all he's gonna get. You know what I mean? Like, that's the best I can offer him. He didn't earn it, he didn't deserve it. He just received it because he's my son. But he's in a fun stage right now where he'll come out, and I know, guys, I know this isn't gonna last very long, right? But he's in a stage right now where he wants to look as much like me as he possibly can. And so he wants to buy a shirt like the shirt that I'm wearing. And then so we have some matching shirts. You'll see us at the door today. We're wearing our matching shirts today, right? And then he'll come and he'll he'll look at me up and down, and then he'll look at himself up and down and say, Dad, you're wearing khaki pants. I have blue pants. Do you have blue pants? Could you wear blue pants? Dad, I have on green shoes, and you have on blue, where are your green shoes? Could you go get your green shoes right? That he's constantly evaluating me and evaluating himself, and he's always wanting to look more like me. I want you to think about that. Isn't that interesting? He looks like me. Why does he look like me? Because he is my son. He wants to work to look like me. Why does he want to work to look like me? Because he's my son. Both of those things are true. Both of those things are true. That's who we are. That's our position. This is the Godward, upward life of the believer. We are children of the living God. This is an undeniable fact. We have received it by no merit of our own. We aren't working for that. That's settled. But since we are children of the living God, we are constantly looking, the Son of God, up and down and looking at ourselves and saying, I want to look as much like him as I possibly can. I want to resemble my heavenly Father as much as I possibly can. Not so that I receive my salvation, but because I have already received it. Because this is the family to which I belong. So Paul is reminding us of what our mothers taught us. Watch what you're doing. Watch what you're doing. And stop dragging your feet. And then good enough? Well, it isn't good enough. I would say most of the frustration, my love, in our marriage has been in the space between good enough and perfect. Good enough and perfect. I tend dads, if you're like me, to be okay with good enough. The picture is good enough. The car has been packed good enough. The food is good enough. The gift is good enough. But not my beautiful little lady in the house, right? Moms don't like settling for good enough. They want perfect. Let me give you an example for my wife. So Megan, she doesn't just want to cook you a good meal. She wants the meal to be pretty. Because she tells me that the food tastes better when it's pretty. Perfect, right? She doesn't just want to take a picture. She wants to take the perfect picture with the perfect lighting to capture the perfect moment, right? So a picture's not just good, it's got to be perfect. She doesn't just go on a road trip, and this is where most of the frustration has gone come from. She doesn't just go on a road trip and think, yeah, we've pretty much got it all, right? She goes and she plans gets something for every possible scenario that could possibly happen for each one of the five members of our household. Because she doesn't want the trip to be good enough. She wants to make sure that the trip is perfect. Dads, we, I really do believe, make things good and fun. But moms, you make them perfect. You make them perfect. You know, we're tempted to get to a place in our Christian lives where we say that's good enough. That's good enough. I am who I am, I am where I am, I am what I am, and I'm done changing. It's good enough. That you maybe can remember a time in your Christian life in which you were straining ahead in hot pursuit of Christ and experiencing these exciting changes, but now you're more apt to coast than you are to strain, even if you wouldn't say it out loud. Well, Paul's point is that this is not how the mature think. The mature never arrive, the mature never coast, the mature never quit. They press on, they hold true. That the difference, one of the primary differences in the thinking between the mature and the immature is how you understand the importance of progress. The mature recognize that big improvements aren't more precious than small refinements. You see, change tends to start dramatically, doesn't it? You can think of it and compare our Christian growth to the formation of Mount Rushmore, I think. You know, early on, you're in the dynamite phase. That there's just a big block of a mountain, right? All of us look and all we see is rock. But the artist looks, and when the artist looks, he doesn't see a giant rock. He sees the faces of presidents concealed in the rock. And so what does he do? He goes and he places dynamite in the mountain and he begins to blow big chunks of the mountain away so that it begins to take a new shape and it begins to start being in the form and in the shape of the presidents, and it and it looks incredibly productive as giant parts of the mountain begin to fall down to the base. And this is what it feels like when we first belong to Christ, isn't it? We're just a big rock, but but God sees in us, He's the artist, and He sees His image in us, and He sees for what we can be and what we can do. And so what does He do? He takes the dynamite of the gospel and he places it in our life and he begins to blow away all of that old rock as he replaces that heart of stone with a heart of flesh. And it's exciting in the early days. Like, it's exciting when you actually begin to take hold of the realization that you aren't gonna be punished for your sin, that your shame has actually been overcome, that your sins have actually been forgiven, your debt has actually been canceled, and and you begin to realize that God is actually so much better than you ever had heard that he was, that you could have ever believed that he was. And so you find yourself invigorated and changing dramatically. But over time, change slows to gradually, doesn't it? Eventually you put the dynamite up and you begin to get out the jackhammers. And you begin to spread men all over the side of the mountain with jackhammers, and they they start knocking out not giant, giant, uh, giant mountains of rock, but little chunks of rock. But as they're there, you're you're still able to appreciate the progress. As the jackhammer goes and as the big chunks begin to fall, you you begin to see the faces of the presidents more clearly. The the oval of their of their of their facial structure begins to reveal itself. The beard on Lincoln begins to emerge, the outer eyes begin to show. The gradual nature, you can see when Paul says in verse 15, if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal it to you. What he's saying is if you find yourself still in an immature way of thinking and not in this mature way of thinking, that what God is going to do is he's going to continue to progress you, that you're still a work in progress. He's still in the process of changing you ever so gradually, so that eventually your mind is what his mind is and your desires are what his desires are. He's still revealing it in you. This stage, it's not as dramatic as the first one, but it's still quite rewarding. This is probably when you join a community group. It's when you begin to appreciate the perspective and the testimonies of others. It's when you begin to understand the relevance of the Bible and how it all fits together and how it actually does apply to your life here and now in the 21st century. It's it's maybe when you start teaching somebody something. Maybe as a kid, maybe as a teenager, maybe you start leading your own community group. You begin teaching somebody else something, and you see the light bulb go off for them, and it just invigorates and creates enthusiasm for your faith in you. It's gradual, not like it used to be, but it's still very noticeable. But then, eventually, even inevitably, it goes from change is dramatic to change becomes gradual to change becoming more about refining. And I think this is where we lose steam. I think this is where it really gets tricky for a lot of us that we're tempted to let off the gas and say, good enough, when we put away the dynamite and we put away the jackhammer and we have to get out the chisel. Because we get a chisel and a hammer, and that's that's tedious work. Especially when you really consider and you look at the size of the mountain and you recognize how much tedious work there is to do, and you also recognize that most people with a naked eye are not going to be able to appreciate the refined details that are gonna come. But you know, it's in this process of refinement with the chisel that the art becomes most beautiful, isn't it? That the statue becomes most fascinating. Did you know that within each eye of the presidents on the mount on Mount Rushbore? Go home and Google this image so that you can see it, there's actually a raised pupil. So that from down below, you can't tell that it's raised from below, but down below what it does look like is it looks like the eyes are absorbing light. It makes the presidents not look dead, but alive. It's meant to offer the continual fun of fresh discovery. And this is what Paul is after when he says, hold true to what we have attained. He's saying, don't grow weary in doing the tedious work of maturing and refining the image of God in you, the image of Christ's likeness in you. Keep at the chisel. See how beautiful the picture of Christ in your life and in the life of your family can actually become. He's essentially saying, don't settle for good enough. Don't settle for good enough. You know, the root of good enough is too high a view of yourself and too low a view of God. And ironically, this is the same exact root that was at the root of the false teaching in Philippi. You see, if I say that it's good enough, then I say I have all of Jesus that I need. But you need Jesus so much more than you think you need him. That's too high a view of yourself. To say that I have I'm good enough is to say that I have all of Jesus that I want. But Jesus is so much better. No longer how long long you've known him, no longer matter how far you've walked as a believer, no matter how well you know that Jesus is so much better than you believe that he is. It's too low a view of him. See, moms, you're a work in progress. And that's okay. But don't settle for facing this work, for facing your life, for facing all of the pressures that you know without pressing as deeply into the sovereign kindness and goodness of Jesus that you can press. Grandmom, you're still a work in progress, and that's okay. But don't settle for where you are and what you know. Press on with Jesus. Dads and granddads, students and kiddos, keep going, keep holding true, keep pressing on. The prize is already yours, the weight of your life and your mistakes. They've already been placed on the shoulders of Jesus, nailed to the cross. So rest in Jesus. Rest in Jesus so fully that you don't bear the weight of your own life. Rest in Jesus so fully that you don't look back to the shame of a prior life. Rest in Jesus so fully that you don't bear the outcomes of your children. Rest in Jesus fully and then press on in Christ. Can we pray together?