Download - Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church

Lent 5
March 21, 2010
Philippians 3:8-14
The next time you sit down for a personal devotion or listen to a reading from God’s Word, I’d like you to notice a pattern
that runs through the entire Bible. Notice what kind of word so often follows God’s name. “In the beginning God
created…” “God said…” “God made…” “God formed…” “God blessed…” “God caused…” “God called…” “God
saw…” God’s name is most often followed by an action word, a verb. He’s always doing things. God is so busy.
Then notice a second pattern. Who, in most cases, are the ones for whom God acts? “God called to the man…” “God
said to the woman..” “God remembered Noah…” God is always doing things for humans. He’s so busy on our account.
This is why God protects his place in our lives in the First Commandment. He tells us to have no other gods because no
other god exists except in the mind of sinful man. There is no god who creates, speaks, forms, blesses, and remembers. To
have another god is to say to the True God, “I don’t want you to act on my behalf. I don’t need you. I’d rather pretend that
an idol in my imagination does these things for me. Or I’ll just imagine I can do it myself.” It’s unthinkable to say to God, “I
don’t need you”, isn’t it?
Yet it happens all the time. Paul, formerly known as Saul, is a prime example. “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; as for zeal,
persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.” Saul didn’t need God to bless him because in his
mind he’d already blessed himself. He didn’t need God to adopt him into his family because he was born a Hebrew of
Hebrews. He didn’t need God to forgive his sins or renew him. “As for legalistic righteousness” Saul once believed he
was “faultless.” If ever there was anyone who’d done enough to walk right into heaven, Saul was sure he was the one.
But no can walk into heaven on his own merits - not by a long shot. Not ever. It was all a figment of Saul’s imagination.
During the Sundays in Lent we’ve been focusing on the theme, “Christ in Us; Us in Christ.” We need all the verbs that
follow God’s name or we cease to exist. Even more, we need all the verbs that follow Christ’s name or we have no life, no
forgiveness, no salvation, no heaven. But believers in Jesus will enter heaven because Christ is in us and we are in him.
“In Him We Have The Prize.” Today we hear Paul rejoicing in his prize. Will you not also rejoice in yours? Today we hear
Paul eager to take up the cross that comes with the prize. Will you not also take up yours?
Part I: An eternal righteousness
Before Saul became a believer in Jesus he was busy putting verbs after his own name. He thought he was offering God a
life of obedience and purity. He thought the prize of heaven was his by his own merit. He was blind to the fact that one can
offer anything to God that God should repay him.
One day, while he was on the way to Damascus to persecute and imprison people who dared to believe in Jesus, Jesus
taught him that he could not win the prize on his own. In fact, instead of pleasing God, Saul was actually dishonoring God.
He was walking right into hell! What a shock it must have been to realize that! All his life he’d been telling God, “I don’t need
all those verbs that follow your name.” Now, for the first time, he realized how desperately he needed everything God did for
his salvation! And God graciously gave Saul all the blessings he’d been rejecting all his life.
Jesus turned Saul’s life upside down. “I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of
knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things,” He said: “I consider them rubbish.” Paul
emptied his trophy case of everything he prized about his own righteousness and replaced it with one new prize, the “…the
righteousness that comes from God and is by faith.” He was able to take hold of that new prize because “…Christ
Jesus took hold of [him].” And there’s another example of God’s name being followed by an action done for humans.
Christ Jesus took hold of Paul, and Christ Jesus takes hold of us.
After Paul tasted the righteousness that comes from Jesus he wanted nothing to do with any more attempts to earn heaven.
In fact, he despised such thinking and set it out on the curb for the garbage truck. The Holy Spirit gave him a new look at all
those Bible passages he’d heard and learned from the time he was a child, and Paul rejoiced in those verbs he’d
overlooked or ignored all those years. God loved, God promised, God redeemed, God forgave, God saved!
Do you have the same joy in the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith? Do you say each day, “Let everything
else be gone! I have the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith! Take the world but give me Jesus.”
Jesus also told Paul that with the prize comes a cross. He tells us the same thing. Those who have God’s Word must also
bear the suffering that accompanies God’s Word. It is often difficult and painful. Parents will experience the cross when
they stand up for what is right when their children say, “But everyone else is doing it.” Children will experience the cross
when they are called names on the playground because they don’t curse or gossip like everyone else. Your circle of friends
will shrink when you hold to God’s Word as others drift farther from it. The cross is hard. Yet Paul didn’t focus on the cross
he was carrying as a disciple of Jesus. He focused on the surpassing greatness of knowing Jesus as his Lord.
Part II: A temporary cross
Because he had the prize of eternal life in Christ, Paul said, “ I want to know Christ… and the fellowship of sharing in
his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…” That’s sounds strange doesn’t it? So often we think of the cross as
something unwanted, something we avoid, something we must grin and bear. But Paul accepts the cross with open arms,
even joyfully. This is nonsense to the world, but it makes perfect sense to those who are in Christ.
By nature nobody wants a cross, including you and me. Our sinful flesh is satisfied with all the joy it can dredge from this
earth. Our sinful flesh, like every other sinner in the world, is convinced it does not need God or the verbs that follow his
name. Like the seed in Jesus’ parable, which fell on the rocky soil, quickly sprang up, and then withered when its roots hit a
hard spot, many Christians are tempted to turn away from Jesus when they hit a hard spot in their life – when Jesus asked
them to bear up under a cross for him. “No blessing from God is worth the cross,” the Old Self says.
Our sinful flesh is quite satisfied to nestle down with the things of world, but once God has shown you the true prize of
heaven you see how futile it is to chase after the blowing chaff of this passing life. How fleeting life’s beauty and riches can
be! How much time and energy it takes to hold onto it all! It’s something like playing a video game. In every video game
there is what’s called the “space of possibility.” That’s the sum of all the possible moves within a game. A game can be very
fun and exciting until the gamer reaches this limit of possibility. Then the game is boring. He’s done all the game will allow.
King Solomon did this in real life. He could afford to explore all the possible ways to find enjoyment in life until he finally hit
the “walls of possibility”. In the book of Ecclesiastes he wrote: “Everything is meaningless.” Solomon discovered what
our sinful flesh does not understand. We chase after the things of this world thinking this is what life’s all about and that
there are endless possibilities. But chasing after the things of this world only leaves you empty. It’s all meaningless.
“If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come.” Our new man – our God-given in
Jesus – knows this and chases after Christ and his prize instead. Our new man knows that the Christian’s life will include a
cross. Just as the unbelieving Saul persecuted Jesus by persecuting Jesus’ followers, so it is today. We will suffer on
account of Christ and his Word. Satan and the world hate Jesus, his Word, and his followers. But Paul calls this suffering a
“light and momentary trouble” compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ and the eternal prize we have in
him. “Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for
which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” May you and I forget what is behind, too. Forget selfrighteousness. Forget chasing after the things of this world. Fix your eyes on the prize. Strain toward what is ahead.
Imagine the verbs that will follow God’s name in eternity! He gives us peace now, but he will give us everlasting peace in
heaven! He gives us joy now, but unending joy in eternity. We have our eyes on the prize from God today; in heaven we
will lay hold of the prize and enjoy its victory forever.
Christ in us. So busy - so busy for us. Us in Christ. So blessed – now and forever! Amen.