FILLING IN PHILIPPIANS…AM I RUNNING WITH YOU, JESUS
Philippians 3:12-16
06/24/12 © Dr. Ronald W. Scates
Back in the 1960s, an Episcopal priest, named Malcolm Boyd penned a best-selling volume of prayers entitled Are You
Running With Me, Jesus? Now, when you stop and think about it, that title sounds a little bit arrogant—kind of like—Hey, Jesus! I’m
over here. You think you can keep up with me?
Humility ought to drive you and me more toward, well, Abraham Lincoln, the real one, not the vampire slayer, who when one of
his aides said to him, “President Lincoln, do you think God is on our side?” during the War Between the States. Here’s Lincoln’s
response. He said, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side.”
Now you can quickly see where my sermon title came from this morning, not just a contra-Malcolm Boyd but because the text
we are about to look at is the Apostle Paul using some of his favorite imagery to describe the Christian life as I said in the Time For
Young Disciples, he describes the Christian life as being like a race, complete with finish line and a prize. During the months of June
and August, I’m off in July, I’m preaching a sermon series entitled “Filling in Philippians…” because you see, back about 10 years
ago, we did a sermon series going straight thru the book of Philippians but I didn’t get to preach all the texts because all the
associates helped me with that series and so I decided I’d this summer fill in those texts that I never got to preach. And so I invite
you to put your track shoes on, put your feet in the starting blocks as we take a look this morning at Philippians, chapter 3, verses
12 through 16. Please pray with me before we read.
Holy Spirit, open our hearts and minds now to Your Word that we might clearly understand it, that we might gratefully receive it
and that we might faithfully apply it to our lives. For Jesus’ sake! Amen.
And now, if you’re able, please stand for the reading of our New Testament lesson this morning, beginning to read at verse 12
of Philippians, chapter 3. This is the Word of God.
The Apostle Paul writes:
12 Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made
me his own. 13 Brothers (and sisters), 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, 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. 15 Let
those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. 16 Only let us hold
true to what we have attained.
Please pray with me again. And now Father, as my words are true to Your Word may they be taken to heart but as my words
should stray from Your Word, may they be quickly forgotten. Through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Amen. Please be seated.
Is there ever a point in your life and mine, our Christian lives, where we have arrived? Where we’ve made it? Where we can
stop and pat ourselves on the back and say, “Wow! We did it!”? Where we can be, well, sort of like Calvin Coolidge, remember him?
The 30th president of the United States! He made a speech one day, where he said he was not going to run again for president and so
the reporters were hounding him. “Why are you not going to run again? Why are you not going to run again?” He said, “Because
there’s little chance for advancement!”
My friends, the paradox of the Christian life is when you and I think we have arrived, we haven’t. The paradox of the gospel of
grace is if you and I are mature Christians, most likely we don’t think we are. Now, if there’s ever been anybody in the history of the
church that could have thought they had arrived, it would be the Apostle Paul. This guy is a poster boy for Great Preacher, a
Wonderful Missionary, Tremendous Church Planter, a Stupendous Theologian and yet he’s adamant—adamant in verse 12 of our
text that he has anything but arrived, that he is far from being perfect.
Now that ought to liberate you and me. Especially those of us who live amidst the pressures of Park Cities perfectionism,
which, by the way, is not allowed on this campus. You see, the important thing, Paul says, is that despite our imperfections, despite
our failures, our sinfulness, we are to press on. Press on! Not because we have such a great hold on Christ but because He has a
perfect hold on you and me. In fact, Paul says, in the text, because we belong to Him. Christ has actually purchased you and me for
Himself through His perfectly sinless life, His perfect sacrificial death, His bodily resurrection, belong to Christ. And that is why we
can press on. And my friends, that is the gospel of grace. It’s not about our being perfect. It’s not about our always getting it right.
It’s about Christ’s unconditional love for you and me and that He never releases His grip on you and me, even when we stumble and
fall.
Now, I don’t know about you but as Christian, I rarely feel, if ever, qualified to run the Christian race. I’m always getting off
course in my life and here I’m talking about my sin. Just this past week, I can name at least two grievous sins that I committed. Now,
before you get all upset and nervous, they’re not so salacious and scandalous that they would be of any interest to you. But they
were of great interest to Satan and he immediately came alongside me and began to whisper in my ear and then he kept turning up
the volume until he was finally shouting at me, “So, you call yourself a Christian! You are a pastor. What a failure you are! You ought
to give up. Throw in the towel! Drop out of the race! Look how you have violated your relationship with Jesus Christ. You ought to
quit the race. In fact, Ron, you ought to just omit the ministry. You ought to just get out and do something else.”
The Apostle Paul himself was no stranger to hearing that kind of tripe from the mouth of Satan. Listen to Paul describe his own
struggles with his sinfulness in Romans 7 and Satan is at him all the time about this. Listen to what he says. He says, “For I do not
understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with
the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me,
that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want but the
evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”
Now what was Paul’s answer to Satan in that and what is his word of encouragement to you and me when we’ve blown it as we
try to run this race called the Christian life? Well, he gives us His word of encouragement there in verse 13-14 of our text. He says
don’t quit the race. Don’t drop out. Strain forward! Press on! Keep your eye on the finish line and keep looking to the prize, which is
Christ Jesus. We’re not to throw in the towel, folks. My friends, the gospel of grace is that when you and I stumble and fall in the
Christian life, guess what, Christ never leaves our side. He’s right there with us. And in our repentance, he picks us up, dusts us off,
and says, “Come on, get back in the race with me. Get back in the race with me!”
We never arrive, on this side of eternity you and I are still going to bumble. We’re still going to fall. We’re still going to sin.
Martin Luther said this. He said, “As Christians, you and I are simul iustus et peccator, that’s Latin for “simultaneously justified” in
the sight of God through Christ’s sacrifice. Yet we’re still sinners so we’re still going to blow it when we try to run this race called the
Christian life. And Satan is always saying, “Look what you’ve done. Look at this!” He’s always telling us to look backward, to
concentrate on how we’ve failed rather than looking forward. But did you hear what Paul said? He said, “Move forward. Look
forward. Keep your eye on the prize.” Satan said, “No, no, no, no! Look at you. You need to dwell on how you failed.” He wants us to
keep looking back. Keep looking back. Get out to the race.
On May 6th, 1954, Roger Bannister ran the first ever sub-4 minute mile but it was only two months later that a man named John
Landy eclipsed Bannister’s world record. He took a 1.4 seconds off Bannister’s record and then on August 7 th, 1954, those two men
went head-to-head in a historic showdown. Into the last lap of that mile, Landy was leading and it looked like he was about to win. As
he got almost to the finish line, he was haunted by the thought, “Where’s Bannister? Where’s Bannister?” And so he took just a split
second to turn and look back and Bannister won in a split second. After the race, Landy was interviewed by a Time Magazine
reporter and he said, “If I had not looked back, I would have won.”
You see, Satan always wants you and me to keep looking back at how we failed, to concentrate on our sin, to marinate in our
guilt, get bogged down to the point where we slow down in the race, finally take ourselves out of the race and allow ourselves to be
crushed by an ungodly perfectionism.
Let me give you another strategy. A better strategy! In 1519, the great explorer, Hernando Cortez, landed in what is now
Veracruz, Mexico and he established the first ever Spanish colony. And then he said to his men, “Now men, we are going to march
inland and take on Montezuma,” who was the local ruler, and so that there will be no misunderstanding whatsoever about what they
were to do, Cortez issued his now-infamous orders, “Burn the boats.” Burn the boats that they came to Mexico in. Burn the boats.
And you know what, they did! And Cortez’s men, they literally had no way to go backwards, they had to forget what lay behind them.
There was no other option. My friends, running the Christian race is all about stumbling and falling in that race but then getting back
up and pressing on in that same race. Christ looks at you and me. He knows our sin. He knows our unworthiness to run the race. But
He says I unconditionally love you. I want you running with me. I don’t want you out of the race. Don’t drop out. Don’t quit. Don’t
throw in the towel. I died for you so that you could run this race with me. I know you’re no perfect but one day you and I will together
cross that finish line but only do I want to cross that finish line with you by my side. We’re going to do it together. My friends, that is
the gospel of grace that despite our sins and warts and everything else that Christ never lets go of us. He always, always, always
invites us back into the race, no matter how grievous, no matter how weighty our sin is, he says, “I’ve covered it. Get back in the
race with me. I want you by my side.” Now, this does not mean that you and I are to acquiesce in our sin and just take it lightly. On
the contrary, in verse 15 of our text, the Apostle Paul says, “Yet we haven’t arrived on this side of eternity but we can become more
mature in our faith.” And being mature as a Christian means staying in the race. No matter how you’ve blown it in the past, you stay
in the race. That’s maturity.
You know the fancy theological term for that is sanctification. Here at HPPC, in our Core 4, if you pull out that insert in your
bulletin and look the back panel at the Core 4, if you look at the upper right one, the green one, Grow In Christ—that’s another way of
saying sanctification. To be in the race is to grow in Christ. It means that everyday you and I are being transformed by the Holy Spirit
more and more to look like Christ. I mean if you graphed out your life the next 5 years, it would be ups and downs but it ought to be
making some headway but if not, you’re really not maturing in the faith. You’re not growing in Christ.
You know, if you’re a 40 year-old man or woman and you’ve got a 7th grade faith, you’ve basically dropped out the race, you’re
not growing in Christ. And you never arrive to a point, this side of eternity, where you’re finished growing in Christ. You and I never
reach a point where we don’t need a small group bible study or a Sunday School class or to learn how to pray better or to go deeper
in theology. We never reach that point.
My friends, running the race, growing in Christ is really about deepening your personal relationship with Jesus, along this
marathon called life. I could even argue that we never arrive even in eternity because Jesus is absolutely inexhaustible. I believe,
every day in eternity, you and I are going to learn something new about Christ. In that sense, we never ever arrive. That’s exciting!
We’re going to be growing forever. Don’t ever drop out of the race. Christ wants you by His side.
Let me leave you with two assurances in light of the gospel of grace. #1—it means the HPPC’s best days lay ahead of her as we
as a congregation press into our calling, that upward calling, that Christ is calling this church to as becoming an ever-more
globalized biblically-orthodox, missions-driven renaissance congregation to the glory of God. And secondly, be assured that if you
stay in the race, if you grow in Christ, if you press on, then your best days are still ahead of you as well. Oh, you’re going to blow it.
Satan’s going to come alongside you, “Okay! You call yourself a Christian! You’re not worthy to run the race. Drop out! Throw in the
towel.” When he does that, remind him of this text. And when he ups the volume and tries to drown that out, well, you might even
quote a little Winston Churchill to yourself. 1941, during the blitz, London is getting blasted to shreds. Churchill goes on the BBC,
some of you know these words. Here’s what he says, “Never give in. Never give in. Never! Never! Never! Never!” In nothing, great or
small, large or petty, never give in.
A man went to see a neurosurgeon, he was having memory loss. The neurosurgeon put him through a battery of extensive test
and said, “The good news is I can help you. I think I can reverse your memory loss but the operation is going to be a delicate one.
I’m going to be operating around your optic nerve and you need to know that if I restore your memory, it could result in you
becoming blind so you’re going to have to make a choice—what’s more important to you? Your eyesight or your memory?” So the
man went home and agonizingly thought about it and then he called the neurosurgeon and he said, “Cancel my surgery. I’d rather be
able to see where I’m going than merely remember where I’ve been.”
My friends, that is the gospel of grace to you and me today. We’re to keep looking forward. We’re to press on. No matter how
we’ve blown it in the race—get back in! Christ invites you and me back in. Never give in. Never give up!
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.