Download - Trinity Lutheran Church and School

Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church
Kiel, Wisconsin
October 26, 2014
Pentecost 20
Text: Philippians 3:12-14
"Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for
which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13 Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I
do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, 14 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for
which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."
A while ago I stopped in the church office of a friend. On the wall in his office was a plaque carrying a slogan I
thought was a good safety measure for anybody in the ministry: “Be patient! God’s not finished with me yet.”
The plaque in his office -- and maybe you’ve seen the same thing on the bumper of somebody’s car -- points out
something both true and important in our Christian lives. On the one hand, God looks at us as perfect and perfectly
forgiven people. He looks at us that way because His Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus, was perfect for us. But on the
other hand, we never are perfect. There is no such thing as a finished product or a finished Christian among us, so long
as we live and breathe in this world, and anybody who thinks he is a perfect, finished product is probably just that -finished! -- as far as being a Christian is concerned.
Martin Luther described this by saying, “The Christian is simul iustus et peccator,” good Church Latin: “The Christian
is at one and the same time a sinner and a saint.” He said, “Even though I am indeed a sinner, yet I am not a sinner.”
“No Christian has sin; every Christian has sin.”
Another saying that I have seen in a classroom at an area Lutheran High School says, “The ideal Christian is constantly
aware how far from ideal he is.” How true. Let’s admit it about ourselves, but let’s also make sure we’re moving in
the right direction.
This Scripture text shows us the same thing those two slogans do:
God’s Not Finished With Me Yet
1. He daily moves me forward.
2. He’ll finally call me upward.
1. He daily moves me forward.
If you’re a football fan, or if you’re a football widow married to a football fan, you know that today is one of those
days when he will be glued to the tube for most of the remaining daylight hours, and then well into the evening. If you
don’t understand football, it may strike you as a highly complicated game. Alistair Cook, long-time host of PBS
“Masterpiece Theater” once said something like “football is like playing chess, only using people.” But even if you
are not a fan, you realize that the basic point of the game of football is simple: you want to move the ball down the
field across the goal. You get more points if you carry it across than if you kick it across. The team marks the forward
progress down the field by moving the ball at least ten yards in four chances. Obviously, every inch of forward
progress counts. If there’s any doubt you made the full ten yards in your four chances, the measuring chain -- exactly
ten yards long -- is brought out on the field to measure, and either you’ve made enough forward progress or you
haven’t, and the difference might be inches. All the team has on its mind is to move forward.
The game Paul had in his mind wasn’t football, but track. The Christian life is like running in a race. Paul used the
picture in other places, too. Our whole business is to run the course as its laid out for us. I have never yet seen a
sprinter stop in the middle of his race and take a gander backward, admiring the view of where he’d just been running.
His eyes are aimed ahead; every muscle strains to move forward. Paul said, “I press on . . . Forgetting what is behind
and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal.”
If you and I would guess the name of anybody who was perfect, I’d guess that St. Paul would be near the top of our
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list. And Paul said that much himself. In his past, if anybody could have conceived of himself as a finished product
for Jesus, it was him: "circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of
Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; 6 as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness,
faultless." (Philippians 3:5-6) A finished product, he thought. Wouldn’t God be lucky to get him. But then God
showed him he wasn’t, hadn’t been, couldn’t be perfect: "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the
sake of Christ. 8 What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ
Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ 9 and be found in
him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ--the
righteousness that comes from God and is by faith." (Philippians 3:7-9) Well, now, in Christ he must be a finished
product! But, he says, God still was not finished with me. "Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already
been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me." (Philippians 3:12) The
forgiveness was finished. Jesus had said, “It is finished,” but Paul wasn’t. He knew he was still living in a fallen
world; he knew the devil hadn’t gone on vacation, and once he put it another place, "I know that nothing good lives in
me, that is, in my sinful nature." (Romans 7:18) He said, "Therefore I do not run like a man running aimlessly; I do
not fight like a man beating the air. 27 No, I beat my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others,
I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." (1 Corinthians 9:26-27) God’s not finished with me yet, Paul could
well have said. He daily moves me forward in my faith and life.
How do you mark your forward progress? Are you still moving forward? Are you still facing the right direction? Or
have you started backing up? Are you gaining ground or being thrown for a loss? I remember once seeing a
construction worker standing on the tread of a bulldozer while it was moving, talking to the driver. He had to continue
to walk just to stay in the same place. If he stopped, he’d be thrown off into harm’s way. He had to keep moving
forward just to stay even. He had to walk faster in one direction than the tread was going in the other direction to
make any forward progress.
Life is like that. You have to keep moving to make progress. We like to call it the “confirmation complex,” you
know, thinking that you reach the height of spiritual knowledge and spiritual life when you are fourteen years old. We
sometimes sell people on the idea that if you just come to confirmation class, we’ll turn you out as a finished product.
Can a Christian ever get to the point where he says, “I am as trained in the Word of God as I can be?” Well, I’m not
aware of any hymn in our hymnal that begins, “Chief of sinners though I be, I am content.” Is your communion
attendance better than it was the first year you belonged to this church? Do you read your Bible more than you did
five years ago? Are your home devotions more a part of your life than they were when you first got married? Do you
find it easier to pray now than in 1999? Do you find that you can hold your temper longer than you used to, or do you
bite your tongue a bit sooner before letting out too much of a damaging piece of gossip? Are dirty jokes still funny to
you? Are you learning how to be content with what you have more than you once were? Do you see progress in your
life? Or are you going backward?
St. Bernard said, “A Christian is like the moon. Either it grows bigger or it grows smaller.” I hope you too can say,
“God’s not finished with me yet. I can see how he daily moves me forward.”
2. He’ll finally call me upward.
And yet, for all the forward progress, we’ll still never get to be perfect in this life. God will never get finished with us
here. "If we claim to be without sin”, the Apostle John said, “we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." (1 John
1:8) There is only one time that we can ever be finished products, when we can say, God’s finally finished with me,
and that’s when he finally calls us upward to himself in heaven.
Like any good football player, Paul never forgot where the goal line was. "I press on toward the goal to win the prize
for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus." (Philippians 3:14) I don’t’ know if Paul ever said, “Heaven
is my home.” Heaven was his goal. And Paul frankly admitted that heaven wasn’t everyone’s goal. There were
people who were living too hard and too much only for what was down here on earth. Paul knew how that story would
end. "For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of
Christ. 19 Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on
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earthly things.” But how different it is when God gets finished with me. “ 20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we
eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, 21 who, by the power that enables him to bring everything
under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body." (Philippians 3:18-21)
There’s where God will be finished -- in the resurrection. No more sin dragging around on us. No more Satan
walking around roaring at us, looking to see who to have for lunch. No more race to run. No more fight to fight.
Across the goal. He’ll finally call you and me upward to heaven.
What does it mean to you and me now that we know where we’re going? What does it mean to us that God will
finally call us upward? It means that you and I aren’t wandering around in the dark trying to find some answers to
those three basic questions: “Where did I come from? What am I doing here? Where am I going?” He made me; He’s
remaking me and has redeemed me; I’m going to be with Him. It means that when it happens, as the hymn verse puts
it, that “change and decay in all around I see,” and even when I know I’m getting steadily older and each day a day
closer to the grave, it doesn’t get to me because, after all, I’m going to live forever. It means that I can be honest with
myself, and look myself square in the face, and say there are things I don’t like about myself, and things about myself
I’m not proud of, and things I can’t seem to be able to change, but God sent His Son for me, and God’s not finished
with me yet, but when He is, in the resurrection, then I’ll be the way I want to be, and , even better, I’ll be the way He
wants me to be.
And since you and I know that, perhaps it will be easier for us to follow the advice I saw on the plaque in the office of
my friend: “Be patient! God’s not finished with me yet.” I can be patient with you, and you can be patient with me,
and we can be patient with bosses or teachers or workers or parents or children because we know that for those who
are Believers in Jesus Christ, God will some day make them perfect too, and for those who don’t believe, that’s a good
reason to do what we can so they will.
“The ideal Christian is constantly aware how far from ideal he is.” God’s not finished with me yet. He daily moves
me forward. He’ll finally call me upward.
Amen.
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