Rev. David Holwick ZM PHILIPPIANS
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
December 3, 2017
Philippians 3:12-16
FORWARD FOCUS
I. What perfection looks like on the inside.
A. New Jersey is the only state to have freeholders.
1) It is a vestige of our state constitution, enacted in 1776.
2) In the election last month, the winner of the open
freeholder seat for our county was Heather Darling.
Her campaign slogan was "Better With Heather."
Heather is a lawyer, which is typical for politicians.
More unusual, she was once a competitive female bodybuilder.
In her prime, her thighs were 30", larger than Arnold
Schwarzenegger's.
She could bench-press 540 pounds.
Her biceps were ten times the size of mine. [1]
B. Bodybuilding takes discipline but has a cost.
Even if you don't appreciate the aesthetics of the iron woman
physique, you can certainly appreciate their commitment to
ultimate fitness.
What could be healthier or more ideal than a person pumped up
to their prime?
Well, it seems that all is not as ideal as it appears.
Collette Nelson, another competitive female bodybuilder,
says, "You're the most unhealthy the day of a show.
You're dehydrated. You've eaten limited food. You're taking
some type of diuretic.
That day of the show, I've gotta tell you, you look like
perfection, but inside you're just barely hangin' on."
#64562
C. Many Christians are like female bodybuilders.
1) We work on our image as nice, decent, spiritual people who
have everything "together," but inside we far from it
- we are not doing that well.
2) God does not expect us to be perfect in this life, but he
wants us to strive for something higher.
3) To strive God's way, you need to have a focus, a commitment
and a goal.
4) How are you doing?
II. None of us have arrived.
A. Paul is concerned that he has given that impression.
1) He has already listed the brownie points he could claim -
heritage and status and reputation.
2) Then in verse 10 he says his goal is to know Christ and
the power of his resurrection.
3) They may have gotten the impression he claimed to know
Jesus perfectly at this point - but he doesn't.
a) Three times he stresses that he still has a ways to go.
b) All of us do.
B. It is easy to admit imperfection without getting specific.
1) We don't want to make ourselves vulnerable.
a) We are also pretty lazy.
b) William Sloan Coffin once said,
"The church is full of people who are seeking that
which they have already found and only want
to become that which they already are.
#2372
2) It is helpful to face our faults.
a) The longer I grow as a Christian the more acutely aware
that I am of my own inadequacies, limitations,
weaknesses and faults.
b) I have been a Christian 44 years now, but I still have
a ways to go yet - a long ways.
c) Where do YOU need to change?
d) Even so, failure should not be our focus.
III. Don't look back.
A. Forget what is behind.
Back in 1984 I was watching the Los Angeles Olympics and
the 110-meter high hurdles.
The favorite to win was an American named Greg Foster.
"ABC" even did one of those three-minute biographies on
him.
The gun went off and the runners charged toward the hurdles.
Greg Foster was obviously nervous but he kept the lead.
But just as he vaulted over the last hurdle, he turned his
head ever-so-slightly to see where everyone was.
Big mistake.
The move cost him only hundredths of a second, but that was
enough to lose the race to another American, Tom Jefferson.
Foster is the only human to win three world championships
in a row in hurdling, but he never got an Olympic gold
medal.
#4344
B. What we look back at.
1) Past failures.
a) I heard of a woman who went to a lawyer to get an order
against her ex-husband.
She was exhausted with emotion, nervous and upset to the
point that she looked ill.
She went into great detail on how bad her ex-husband was,
how ever since their divorce he had been poisoning
her son's mind against her.
She seemed a bit old to have a young child at home, so
the lawyer interrupted and asked how old her son was.
"He's just turned 32," she said.
The lawyer said, "Really? And how long ago was the
divorce?"
"About 17 years ago," she said.
This woman had made her divorce a career, a way of life.
It was holding her back from joy and peace.
Sermon #26928
b) Some are so conscious of past sins and burdened by guilt
that they are totally useless in the present.
c) Those who are ridden with guilt don't really understand
salvation.
1> We are pure in the eyes of our judge, God.
2> If God has forgiven us, we should forgive ourselves.
A> If we don't, we are putting ourselves higher
than God.
B> Forgive yourself and forget what is behind.
2) Great achievements.
a) It is natural for us to focus on failure, but Paul is
probably referring to his pre-Christ accomplishments.
b) He may also have his triumphs as an apostolic in mind.
c) Philadelphia Temple Church was kidnapped by its past.
Its greatest pastor was Rev. Russell Conwell, who
founded the seminary I went to.
Conwell was a great motivator.
His church began dozens of ministries in Philadelphia,
started a school, and saw many of its young people
go into full-time Christian service.
This was in the 1880's.
90 years later, they were still looking back to their
past.
Not much was happening in the present.
When a new pastor came in the 1970's, he gathered the
deacons in the conference room and shared some ideas
he had for the church.
The deacons squirmed and fidgeted.
Finally one of them pointed to a huge painting of
Conwell on the wall and said,
"I don't think Pastor Conwell would want us to move so
quickly."
The new pastor got up, went over to the painting,
flipped it over and said,
"Pastor Conwell is gone. Let's look to the future."
#4345
d) Don't be defeated by "what-might-have-beens."
1> The job you should have stayed with.
2> The man or woman you could have married.
3> Accept what you've got and move on.
C. What memory do you need to let go of?
1) Make a conscious effort to leave it behind.
2) Reflect on the past, but don't be shackled by it.
IV. Focus on the future.
A. Three times Paul refers to pressing and straining.
1) Straining refers to the stance of a sprinter.
a) They thrust bodies forward for the greatest possible
momentum.
2) The Greek word for "press on" is same as one for
persecuting in verse 6.
a) Paul was now running to grab Jesus just like he had once
tried to grab Christians.
3) Do you expend as much effort into knowing Jesus as you do in
any ONE of your other interests in life?
B. What is Christ's goal for you?
1) Paul knew that Christ had grabbed hold of him.
a) In a very literal way, he had been knocked off his feet
when Jesus appeared to him on the road to Damascus.
b) His conversion gave him a new goal - to reach the
Gentile world for Jesus, which he did with gusto.
2) Has Jesus grabbed hold of you?
a) What do you think your purpose is in this life?
b) Why has God put you here?
1> Are you fulfilling this purpose?
2> The things that will last for eternity - how are
you doing at them?
3) Christians should be:
a) Forward-looking...
b) Positive...
V. A prize is waiting.
A. Olympic wreaths were made out of wild olive branches.
1) They are weeds, really.
2) Even gold medals become doorstoppers after a few years.
B. Paul doesn't say what our prize is, but it is in heaven.
1) Most likely it is knowing Christ fully there.
2) Yesterday we celebrated the heavenward journey of Sharon
Lesko. Someday we will do it for you.
C. Do you know where you are headed?
In 1860, the year Abraham Lincoln was elected President, a
Yankee named Milton Bradley invented his first board game.
He called it the Checkered Game of Life.
Play starts at Infancy, and ends, usually but not always, at
Happy Old Age.
However, landing on Suicide, with a noose around your neck,
is more common than you might think, and means,
inconveniently, that you are dead.
Bradley said the game represented the checkered journey of life.
There are good patches, and bad, in roughly equal number.
Honesty, Bravery and Success are counterbalanced by Poverty,
Idleness, Disgrace.
The Checkered Game of Life made Milton Bradley a brand name.
In 1960, to celebrate its 100th year, the company he founded
released a commemorative version called the Game of Life.
It had little to do with the original version.
It was reinvented to celebrate consumerism.
Teensy plastic station wagons are filled with Mommies and
Daddies and ride the highway of life.
You earn money, buy furniture, and have pink and blue babies.
Whoever earns the most money wins.
35 million copies were sold.
In 1992 the company revised the game again and marketed it
to babyboomers.
Station wagons became minivans and you can have a Midlife Crisis.
A 2007 version was very different.
It was called "Game of Life: Twists & Turns."
It is not a checkerboard of choices or a fixed and fated path.
There is, instead, a multitude of paths.
There is no place on the board called "Happy Old Age" or
"Millionaire Acres" or even "Finish."
This is actually the game's selling point: it has no goal.
Life is . . . aimless.
You get as many points for scuba diving in the Great Barrier
Reef as you do for donating a kidney.
#34724
Christians do not believe this is the goal of life.
It is not about accumulating a lot of stuff.
It is not about wandering aimlessly.
We have a goal - heaven - and a Savior who is waiting for us.
Are you focused on the path that will get you to him?
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
[1] To see a YouTube of Heather Darling in her prime, go to
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GN0bUkEAus>.
Sermon #26928 “Dropping the F-bomb: Forget,” by Rev. Jeffrey Stratton,
American Baptist East Church (ABCUSA); Evansville, Indiana,
March 2, 2008; <http://evvabe.com/>.
# 2372 “Are You Seeking and Becoming?” Dynamic Preaching,
Fall 1992; original source is Newscope Lecture Series,
July 1992, United Methodist Publishing House.
# 4344 “Don't Look Back,” by Rev. David Holwick, June 1, 1988.
# 4345 “Turn the Portrait to the Wall and Move On,” by Rev. David
Holwick, August 12, 1984. Taken from an old sermon; the
original source is forgotten.
#34724 “The Game of Life,” by Jill Lepore (edited by David Holwick),
The New Yorker magazine, May 21, 2007, pages 38-43.
#64562 “Looks Can Fool You,” by staff of Illustration Exchange,
<www.IllustrationExchange.com>; original source is an
interview with Collette Nelson, by Bryant Gumbel,
REAL SPORTS, July 22, 2010.
These and 35,000 others are part of the Kerux database that can be
downloaded, absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html
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