Pressing On for the Prize
AI Summary
In this sermon, Pastor Mark Oshman explores the themes of righteousness, the pursuit of knowing Christ, and the importance of spiritual growth through the lens of the Apostle Paul's teachings in Philippians. He emphasizes the difference between trying and training in the Christian life, advocating for progress over perfection and the necessity of community in spiritual journeys. The sermon culminates in the understanding of our citizenship in heaven and how it shapes our lives as believers.
AI Transcript
Hey, I'm glad you're here. My name is Mark. I'm one of the pastors. If you have a Bible, we're in the Book of Philippians. Philippians chapter three is where we're at this morning. It's my joy and privilege to open that up with you. When I first preached this book, it was back in 2011. And when I was assigned to preach this passage, I received an email from a friend of mine. She was a member of our church back in Japan. And it was just, hey,
it said this, hey this article that she sent me, this article is about my grandfather. I thought you might be interested in it. And so I was like, okay, let me see what it is. I clicked the link and I pulled up the article and here's how the article started. I actually wish I had the whole article. I couldn't find any more. just have the first sentence of the article. But here's how it read. On June 4th, 2011, during Gold Hill's annual Gold Dust festivities, Peter Fish,
a 75 year old resident of that city will begin a 24 hour run in the hopes of running his age in miles.
Let me just read that again. Because I did. It's like, wait, wait, back up. Peter Fish, a 75 year old resident of that city, will begin a 24 hour run in hopes of running his age in miles. And he did it. And he did it. Again, do the math in your head. 75, 24, 75. This is crazy. That definitely got my...
attention. How is that even possible? I've heard of ultra runners, but 75 year old ultra runners? And you think about that a little bit and you realize there's more to the story, right? There's more than what the article is saying. There's a whole backstory there, but more than that, I thought if we understand that, if we can begin to understand that.
then you can begin to understand what the apostle Paul is actually trying to communicate in our passage today. That what seems impossible is possible. It is possible. So let me just recap where we're at because if you weren't here last week it's very important that you have that foundation before we go to where we're at today. And the reason I say that is because last week the apostle Paul was
was writing to the church and he was confronting some false teaching that had infiltrated the church known as the Judaizers. These Jewish people that would come into a church and say, glad you got the Messiah. Now follow all the law and do all the things to get your spiritual resume. Remember your spiritual resume really good. So God will accept you. And last week and the reason is very important because Paul says no that's not the case. The Judaizers loved resume building.
And Paul says, if you want to play the resume game, remember I could play the resume game. I have more than they have, at least in my pre-Christian life. I have the right rituals, the right ethnicity, the right rank, the right tradition, the right rule, the right zeal, the right obedience. He said, I have all of that. But here's how Paul concluded that just as by way of recap in verse seven, he says, but whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss.
Because of and this is the key phrase the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my lord whatever I had in my credit category move my debit category and only Jesus is to my credit now for the for his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish or scabula or crap is what he said in order that I may gain Christ and then he got to it he got to the heart of it
It says, be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith. Now, why do I recap that? Because this is the doctrine of justification. But I said last week, even as Christians, that we can lose the narrative, our hearts can wander, and there is always this pressure to kind of prove ourselves again, to kind of show to God and to others that
We're serious that we have a righteousness of our own. if you just weren't there last weekend, you just heard what I have to say this week where Paul shifts his attention from justification to sanctification. You could mishear this message. You could say, see, it's about trying harder. It's about building a resume. It's about that's not the case at all. It is by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. But that grace alone that works in justification, it works
differently in sanctification. It's still grace alone, but Paul says in light of the grace that he received in Christ, remember having known Jesus, the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus, it caused something in him and should cause something in us. And I call that a holy angst. If that's how good God is to us in the gospel, there is a kind of holy angst. I want more. I want to know him.
more. I want to experience more, not less of God, but more of God. And so for 30 years now, the Apostle Paul has been going hard after Jesus, not to build a resume, but to pursue his joy in knowing and experiencing Jesus. It's a holy angst. But the Apostle Paul was clearly an intense dude before he became a Christian and after he became a Christian.
So is this just a Paul thing? Like, he's just another level. Like, he's kind of, probably to some degree, yes. He is on another level. But what does a holy angst for you look like? What does it look like for me? How do we, by the grace and mercy of God that we receive, live a life of just pursuing our joy in knowing and becoming more and more like Christ? What does a holy angst look like? And I'm glad you asked the question.
because the apostle Paul wants to answer that for us in our passage today. So then we pick it up in our passage. He says, not that I have already obtained all of this or I've already or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own. What is he talking about? Not that I've already obtained all of this, all of
What? Well, he's referring back to the immediate context. Verse 10. He says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and share in his suffering. He says, I want to know him. And again, we're like, Paul, you've known him for 30 years. What are you talking about? What do mean you want to know him? I had a friend.
that was part of our church. I remember one time he said, Mark, I want to know what Jesus' favorite ice cream is. I was like, what are you talking about? He's like, well, I know my wife's favorite ice cream because I've gotten to know her. And I want to know Jesus like that. I want to know what's your favorite flavor of ice cream, Jesus. And I was like, yeah, that...
That's good theology actually. This is what Paul is getting at. There is a vast difference. I said this last week at least in the second service between knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus. And you should never settle for knowing about Jesus in place of knowing Jesus. Knowing about Jesus as knowing a lot of things about him maybe even appreciating those things but
simply a set of facts and truths about Jesus. Now, the Christian life is not less than knowing the right facts and truths about Jesus, but it is more. It is a knowing. There is a difference between knowing and knowing, if that makes sense. In fact, the Bible makes this clarification. I mean, the old King James, Adam knew his wife. Well, we know what that means. That's it. That's an intimate knowing. In fact, in this passage, in
In verse 10, when Paul says, want that I may know him, the word he uses and the context he uses, he could have picked other words. He could have picked the word oida. I want to know about Jesus. I want to know all the things he did and all that, but that's not the word he picked. He picks this Greek word and it's an important word. I'll put it on the screen. And the word is gnosko. So gnosko, to know, but it is a knowing by.
relationship and experience. So Paul says, I want to know. I want to know by relationship and experience. want more. And if Jesus is infinite, there is more to know about Jesus. He is pressing. I want to know. But notice what he says. Not that I've already obtained all this, all this knowledge, this exhaustive depth of knowledge of Jesus, or am already perfect or complete or whole.
says, but I press on to make it my own. Now, the Judaizers had this perfectionist theology that had come in. And throughout church history, this has sometimes creeped in. And it's this idea that you can get to a state in your Christian life where you are perfect and sinless and you've arrived and the Apostle Paul, who is the Apostle Paul, by the way, who's been going hard after Jesus for 30 years.
I think says something tremendously comforting to the Philippians and to us because deep down we all know we all know we're not where we want to be we all know we're in progress process but maybe there was some insecurity amongst the Philippians with this false teaching like we're not there yet no we're not far enough are we far enough for God to accept us we don't know and Paul's like listen I'm not there I've been going for 30 years
I'm not there for Paul it was progress not perfection. Progress not perfection. See in justification in the moment you trust in Christ by graceful and through faith alone. We saw this last week you are found in Christ he has credited to your account. You have perfect righteousness positionally in Christ but practically we are in process. Practically we're not perfect. Sanctification is the
the confluent operation of the Spirit of God working in your life and you submitting your will to His to make you more practically what you are positionally. Paul's like, I'm not there yet. And I don't know about you, but I breathe a sigh of relief because I know I'm not there yet. And yet that's not my hope. Paul is pursuing Christ, not for his righteousness. He already has it. He's pursuing Christ for his joy.
And this is the whole point of the book. so progress, not perfection. And then he doesn't get far from from the gospel. Again, we said the gospel is the A to Z. He just wants to come right back to it. He says, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. I'm not there yet. I'm in process. But Christ Jesus has made me his own. Again, just a reminder, I didn't make Jesus my own. Christ made me his own. So I can rest in that.
And then Paul goes to his favorite analogy throughout many, many of his letters. The apostle Paul loved sports. I mean, you find it in many of his letters. Historians tell us that Paul was probably in Corinth when the Isthmian games came to Corinth. The Isthmian games were this major sporting event, second only to the Olympic games in the ancient world.
And we know Paul, when he was in Corinth, his side hustle or the way that he provided food for himself was to be a tent maker. And so he would set up these tents for the games and he would observe the crowds come in and the fervor of it all. But he would observe the events. And more than that, he would observe the athletes, how they prepared for...
the events what they ate and how they slept and how they trained and how they ran and he looked at it and he said that's like the Christian life.
If we understand that and you can translate that to our pursuit of Jesus. And so Paul will constantly come back to this theme of sports and athletes. says this in verse 13, brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. And he goes to this running analogy. He said, but one thing I do as I'm in process, as I'm pursuing progress and not perfection, one thing I do straining forward
I forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead. He's like, I've seen that's how runners run, at least the ones who win, right? No marathon runner at mile 13 is thinking, man, mile one was awesome. No, they're thinking, what do I need to do to do the next 13 and a half miles as fast as I possibly can?
They're straining ahead. think what Paul's getting at is he's not going to live in the past both in his victories and his failures. Right. Like we shouldn't like we shouldn't be like well I remember five years ago when God really did some awesome things in my life and it was amazing. I'm just going to kind of dwell on that. Paul's like no I forget that because I want more of God. I want to live on past grace. I want future grace. He's
pressing into that. And more than that, he's also like forgetting what's behind. I think it's about our failures too, right? It's like, man, I wish back then I was more mature. I wish I didn't make these mistakes. I wish I didn't. Like some of us can live so much in our past failures that we think God would never use me. God would never grow me because I've messed up so bad in the past. And Paul says, forgetting what lies behind. Victories and the failures.
I am pressing on just like the runner to Jesus. I saw this video this week. It's about three or four years old now. Three years old. Heather Dorndon, she was a mid distance runner for the University of Minnesota. She's the best of the best. It was a 600 meter indoor on a 200 meter track. So it's three times around the track and watching the race and she's leading the pack as expected and the announcers are like, yeah.
This is what's expected. She's that good. But as she's coming around and comes to the 400 meter mark, the runner behind her clips her heel and she hits her leg. She falls and falls way to the back with one lap to go. Right. And I love the video. It's one of those things you could put, you know, inspirational music to it. You can start crying because she just gets up and she just starts running and running and running.
forgetting what lies behind and she passes one after the other and at the very end she strains to just get her chest across the line before the next person she wins. I'm like that's what Paul's talking about. Forgetting what lies behind it, straining towards what lies ahead. Again, we've also all seen the opposite, right? The runner who is so happy about how they started, maybe so confident, so...
cocky that they're looking around only to be passed at the last moment because they've let up and Paul says I don't want to let up I want to press on I want to go hard after Jesus in this moment he says so forgetting what lies behind and straining towards what lies ahead verse 14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
His desire and his life were aligned. He wanted more of Jesus. He wanted more joy. He wanted to know, gnosko, know Jesus. And so he's pressing on toward the goal for the prize.
I think there's just some consistency in his life that I want to see in my life. Because I have a lot of good desires, but a lot of times my life doesn't reflect that those are true desires. Right? Like I want to have financial freedom, but I also want to go out and eat every night.
And I don't want to contribute to my Roth IRA because that's no fun. Right? There's a disconnect. Here's what I want. Here's what I do. You know, I want to be in super good shape, but I like chocolate cake also. So it's going to conflict. Right? I we could go on and on. I want to be this kind of husband. I want to be this kind of father, but I also want to just spend time on my own hobbies, pursuing my own thing all the time.
There's a disconnect.
We know that we'd actually have more joy as a good husband and father, but in the moment, we might just kind of give ourselves to ourselves and there's a disconnect. But here's where Paul gets at. He's like, no, if you understand the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, there won't be a disconnect. You will pursue progress over perfection. Paul, again,
he was in Corinth he probably observed all this and got a ton of sermon illustrations out of it but in 1st Corinthians 9 here's what he says about again another sports analogy verse 24 do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one receives the prize like okay we get that so Christian run that you may obtain it
Every athlete exercises self-control in all things, in what they eat, in how they sleep, in how they train, in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box as one beating the air. It's kind of haphazardly, but I discipline my...
body and I keep it under control lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.
What's your relationship to spiritual discipline?
I think if you don't understand the gospel of grace, that you are saved by Christ alone, faith alone, grace alone, then your relationships to spiritual disciplines can be kind of a begrudging one. Man, I need to pray more. I should fast. I know I should be more generous. I should be spending more time in this Word.
I should be memorized because if your relationship to spiritual disciplines is to prove yourself or to build your resume or to be self-righteous, it's always going to be a begrudging relationship. But notice how the apostle Paul talks about discipline. It's like, want as much.
joy as I possibly can. So I'm willing to discipline myself now for the sake of a greater and deeper joy. See the world of difference that is? See how prayer is a pathway to joy rather than an obligation that you must do? See how all the disciplines are really so that in the end you have an explosive joy that changes your relationship to spiritual joy.
Discipline. This is not about self-righteousness or working for your own glory or showing, proving to God how serious you are. This is about you pursuing your highest joy. And so he says, discipline yourself. Discipline. D.A. Carson, who I think I quote every week, I'll quote him again. He says this. He says, we need what he'll call grace driven
Listen to what he says.
People do not drift toward holiness. You're not automatically just going to become more holy.
Apart from grace-driven effort, confluent operation with the Spirit in your life, apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, toward prayer, toward obedience to Scripture, to faith and joy in the Lord. It's not just going to happen.
This is we drift toward compromise and call it tolerance. We drift toward disobedience and call it freedom. We drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation. We slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism.
We slide toward godliness, godlessness, and convince ourselves we have been liberated. No, church, we pursue the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord with a purpose, with intentionality. So let me see where I'm at. yeah. It says, let those of us who are
mature think this way and if anything you think otherwise God will reveal that also to you only let us hold true to what we have attained. Verse 17 we talked about this a couple of weeks ago. Brothers join in imitating me and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. Look for worthy models to follow in your pursuit of your joy and knowing Christ.
knowing Christ. See I think let's go back to our boy Peter Fish. 2011, 75 years old, 75 miles. Again we know inherently Peter didn't wake up on his 75th birthday and he's like hey Liz I think I'm gonna run 75 miles today for 24 hours. You're like no that's that's not how it works. Listen we could all we could all try
We could all try today to run 75 miles. And some of us, like Josh back there and others, might go pretty far.
michael could you get seventy-five miles today
So if the two most athletic people in the room right now, between both of them can't go 75 miles, it doesn't matter how hard you try. And I think sometimes we think, well, if I try, then I'm just, I'm faithful. At least I tried, Lord. And we miss the idea. No, it's not about trying. There's a world of difference between trying and training. So we know Peter Fish didn't wake up.
that June morning on his 75th birthday and tried to run 75 miles. Now I found another article about him this week and it was just an interview about his running journey and he said, he said, well, I've kind of been athletic my whole life but I didn't pick up running till 1984. So if you do the math, he had been running and had become an ultra runner and he had 27 years of training before his 75th birthday. With training.
I don't know if any of us could do 75 miles, but we could all do more than we could do today. We could all go further. And maybe some of us could. But you get it. There's a world of difference. And I think we settle in the Christian life for just trying. I'm going to try to be a better husband. I'm going to try to be a better evangelist. I'm going to try to pray more this year. I'm going to try to be more generous. And we try and we fail and we're like, well, I tried.
That's all that the Lord cares about. No, Listen, if you are serious about your joy, your eternal joy, an imperishable wreath, then you start training. You start training. You pursue progress over perfection. When the Apostle Paul is watching these athletes run around and train and do all these things to get better and prepare for the games,
in Corinth, I think he realizes that every athlete, every Olympic athlete has to answer or continually answer three questions. I I love the Olympics, right? The Olympics are the only time I'll watch any sport and be like, yes, let's go. Skeet shooting's on. This is amazing, right? I'm not watching swimming any other time, no offense to the swimmers in the room, but like, if it's Olympics,
Forget about it. The 100 meter last year, Noah Lyle, talk about forgetting what lies behind and straining towards what lies ahead. He's running in that and looks like Kishane Thompson of Jamaica wins the race to the naked eye. And then there's this pause, this long pause. Who won? Who won? And the photo finish shows that at the very end he strains ahead. So five one thousandths of a second faster than Kishane Thompson, he wins the gold. He wins the gold.
He didn't just try to do that though, he trained. His whole life came to this moment. This is why if you ever watch the Olympics with my wife, be prepared to give her some Kleenex. She cries all the time. She's overwhelmed by just the skeet shooters have tried so hard or trained so hard. It doesn't matter what it is. Like man, there is just something admirable. Someone whose whole training has come to this moment to win the prize.
So I think athletes ask three questions. First one is, where am I at right now? In light of where I want to be and I know I'm not there, where am I at right now? Because I can't try right now to run 75 miles, but where am I at right now? Am I a seven yard person or a seven mile person? Like you got to know where am I at right now? So just take some honest self assessment. I every athlete does that. Number two,
that they asked this question. Well, what's the next step in my journey? Well, what's the thing in my sport or in my development? Where am I weak? What's one thing I can do? What's what's the next step? Not I know there's 10 million steps, but what's the next step as I pursue progress over perfection? And then finally, I think every athlete asked, who do I need to invite into my journey to help me get there? What coaches?
or coach do I need to surround myself with to get their experience, their insight have gone further than I have and what other athletes, what other athletes can I train with so that as we train and I get tired, they push me further faster than I would ever go on my own. I think every athlete understands this, right? So it's a rare athlete who's just a total isolation person and they can do it on their own, right?
I think these are good questions for the Christian. If Paul's metaphor that the athlete is a metaphor for the Christian life, then we should be asking the question, well, in light of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus as my Lord, where am I at right now?
Do I desire? I have a desire for desire? Then I just bring that to the Lord. Well, like none of us are perfect. None of us have arrived. If the apostle Paul can say that, surely all of us can say that. So where am I at right now? What's the next step in my journey? Yeah, I would like to do 10,000 more things better in my life today, but what's one? What's the area? Is it in my marriage? Is it in me being a father? Is it in...
my loving the saints is it in my evangelism to my neighbors loving my neighbors it is in my just heart of generosity is in my like again there's ten thousand things that I need to improve.
but rather than just trying to be perfect at all of them, how can I train one? And then the last question, well, who do I need to invite into my journey to help me get there? As I say all the time, this is good news because we kind of organize our church this way so that you can get other people in different areas of your life and your marriage or just life together in gospel communities or intense.
training discipleship environments like our core groups for our members or so on and so forth. Like who do you need to invite? Who can you train with? Who will push you further faster? The other thing that is important in this whole athlete analogy, Paul gets to it at the end of our passage here in verse 20. He says, citizenship is in heaven.
Our citizenship is in heaven. Remember, Philippi is this Roman colony about 800 miles away from Rome. But they loved the fact that they were an outpost of Rome. Not necessarily the Christians, but the Philippians in general. And so if you were in the first century traveler and you had been to Rome, then you go to Philippi and you look around and like, the architecture, this reminds me of Rome. the worship, they did that kind of worship in Rome.
customs, the culture, the food. This is like a little Rome. But Paul says, no, no. You Christians, you're citizens of heaven. So that when others come into your community, they should be like, I bet this is what heaven is like. Look at how they worship. Look at how they love one another, serve one another, care for one another.
This gives me a thought of heaven. This is our citizenship is in heaven and from it we await a savior the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only is our citizenship in heaven with this sports analogy the beautiful transformational inspirational thing about the Olympics is the runners don't really run for themselves do they. They run for their country.
This is again why my wife cries about this because there's something when you're running your race and it's not just for you, there's something that is of a deeper joy in that, right? I think of Andre Agassi's biography and the whole book he's like, I hate tennis. It's just crazy. I hate tennis. I've always hated tennis. There's one time, one time where I loved tennis when I went to the Olympics.
I played for my country and I got the gold medal. That's when he had joy. The only time in his life he had joy playing tennis. But there is something joyful to know that we don't just run for ourselves, we run for our citizenship that is in heaven. And so we train ourselves because the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord is worth it. Amen. Amen. Let me pray for us.
