Paul tells us in Philippians 3 that he focuses on one thing. But in order to do it well, we must know how to forget what is behind and focus forward rightly. How does God view our past? And how can we forget well? What does God have for our future, and how can we run after it with passion?
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Jon Stallsmith
Series: Philippians: The “What Ifs” of Faith
November 17, 2013
One Thing
Philippians 3:10-21
Jon Stallsmith: As I was thinking this week, I got a text from Matt Davis. Matt, why don’t you come on up here? I got a text from Matt and been walking with Matt the last couple of weeks. He’s a regular 5:15 guy. Everybody, welcome Matt Davis. I know some of you tonight are coming just specifically to hear from Matt, so it’s really exciting.
As I was working through this passage, I felt like your story illustrates that double reality, how we really know Jesus both in the times of the fellowship of suffering and also in the resurrection power. So you’re from around here. You’re a South Gwinnett man. A couple of weeks ago, I got to see you in the hospital. Why don’t you share with everyone why you were in the hospital?
Matt Davis: In 2005, I first went into the hospital with congestive heart failure. I found out I’ve got dilated cardiomyopathy, which is an enlarged heart. Like when you hear about the football player or somebody who just kind of falls out dead on the field and they say they had an enlarged heart; it’s the same thing.
So from 2005 I was going through all different types of fun heart-related activities. I got a defibrillator implanted in 2008, which was fun. The morning my doctor told me he had to do that, he said, “I want you to get this in because I think you could die at any moment.” He left. My mom, sitting there, not looking real happy, says, “Well, how do you feel about that?” I hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours, so I said, “Well, either kill me or feed me. Let’s do one. I’m hungry.” I got that put in.
Jon Stallsmith: They fed you. They gave you some food? Okay.
Matt Davis: They did feed me. That was very kind of them. Grits and eggs and other types of yummy…
Jon Stallsmith: Hospital fare.
Matt Davis: …with no flavor whatsoever when you’re on a low-sodium diet. So then in 2011 I ended up having a stroke. I didn’t know it was a stroke as I drove myself to Saint Joseph’s, which was a little fun parallel there with Buddy.
Jon Stallsmith: We’ve had some experience with people driving to Saint Joseph’s.
Matt Davis: They should not be in a car in any sense.
Jon Stallsmith: True.
Matt Davis: But that was fine. That wasn’t a major issue. Then on September 30 I went into Gwinnett Medical in the middle of atrial fibrillation and with rapid ventricular response. I don’t know if anybody has a clue what that means. Basically, my heart rate was anywhere in the 110s to the high 140s and was hitting any number in between, kind of like a keynote. Just hits all different numbers.
Jon Stallsmith: Just random numbers popping up.
Matt Davis: Yeah. So they gave me a medicine in the emergency room to bring my heart rate down that really almost killed me because it dropped my heart rate and my pulse so low. They couldn’t find a heart rate. They couldn’t find a pulse. I couldn’t move. It was not a real fun experience. That put me in ICU.
I got out a few days later, and then on October 16, I went to go see my cardiologist. I said, “Doc, I don’t feel good.” He said, “You didn’t have to tell me.” So he had me admitted to Saint Joseph’s to start an evaluation for a left ventricular assist device and a heart transplant. I got to go into Saint Joseph’s for about 10 days. I was in the cardiac ICU. I had a neck catheter that comes in through here, goes all the way down to your heart. That was in for about a week, which is not the most comfortable experience. You can’t really turn your head or sleep real well.
But then in the hospital, I just started getting real down. I went in on Wednesday afternoon. Come Monday, I was just really getting real rebellious, just real angry. Just kind of like, “I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to do this junk.” One of the chaplains from Saint Joseph’s came in. I was just able to lay everything out, just put all my fears and all my worries and all my frustration and everything.
She prayed for me after we talked. It was a long conversation, a long prayer. I just had this overwhelming feeling of peace. I’ve never felt that peaceful. It was like, “Oh man, this is that peace.” Then later on, another chaplain came, and my friend Tim and I took Communion with him. It was really the first time that Communion really hit me what it meant.
As we were taking Communion and as we were praying, I just saw Jesus on the cross, and he was just hanging there. He was just bloody and beaten. You could just see the strips of skin gone. You could see the bruises. He was very hairy. But he looked up at me. I’m just standing there looking at him. He looked up at me, and with just this face of love and compassion, he said, “I did this for you. This is for you because I love you.”
When he says, “Remember. Take of this. This is my body. This is my blood,” it was like he really broke himself so my body didn’t have to be broken. His blood is replacing whatever else has gone on. It was just really powerful. It was really cool.
Jon Stallsmith: That’s the fellowship of the suffering. Somewhere connecting with Jesus in that moment. It’s beautiful. But then this week you sent me another text…very much power of the resurrection. So, do you want to tell that story?
Matt Davis: Yeah. This is one of the happiest things I think that could happen to anybody. As part of the workup for a heart evaluation and the left ventricular assist device, they check you for everything. They run every test. They filled up a thing full of blood to send off to get tested extensively.
One of the things they have to do is they also have to check your mouth. Tooth problems are never the most fun thing to get fixed. The back left tooth on the very bottom here had been a problem tooth. It had been like that for awhile. So I went to my mom, who is a dental hygienist, and got an x-ray. You could see on the x-ray where there was an abscess and there was some infection in there. I went like, “Okay, well we have to get this taken care of.”
I was going to go see my friend Jason, who has been my friend since I was 5 years old. His dad is a dentist just right over there. So he gets to verify this story, which his really cool. I was going to go see him and have him look and see just what needs to be done, but I lost that x-ray. That x-ray is gone. It is not on this planet anymore anywhere. I’m telling you, that thing is gone.
So called Tom. I called Dr. Van Galder, and I said, “Hey, here’s what’s going on, and I lost the x-ray.” I called him. This is this past Sunday night. So a week ago today. He said, “That’s fine. Come in tomorrow. I’ll take some better x-rays. We’ll get a good look. I want to make sure everything is good before you have to go through anything.”
So I go in Monday, and he takes all the x-rays he needs to take. He’s looking at the new x-ray. He had an x-ray from February he took that shows an infection. It shows everything. I’m talking to him and I said, “This is so crazy,” because like a week ago the Lord spoke to me and said, “Matt, if I can heal your heart I can heal your teeth. You need to pray over your teeth.” I thought, “That makes good sense. Certainly, if you can do this thing, you can fix anything in here or anything else.”
As Tom was looking at the x-ray, he said, “Matt, there’s no infection here anymore. There’s nothing. There’s nothing wrong at all anymore.” He had the x-ray from February that showed it and had a new x-ray. He was like, “Buddy, you’re healed. That’s that.”
So I go home and tell my mom about it. She had cleaned my teeth just a few months ago. I had one tooth in that area that was loose. So she goes, “I’m going to wash my hands. I want to feel that tooth.” Being the good son I am, I let my mom just stick her hand in my mouth. She touches the tooth, and she goes, “Oh wow. That tooth is firm. It is set in there. It is not moving.”
Jon Stallsmith: Amen. Resurrection power breaking into your mouth. That’s amazing. Excellent. Now you’re also a big Boston Red Sox fan. Would you categorize that fellowship of suffering or resurrection power?
Matt Davis: Pre-2004? Fellowship of suffering. My friend Jason is in the audience. We were up there in ’04 when they won that.
Jon Stallsmith: No way.
Matt Davis: Let me tell you. You do not want to be Southern and lost in Boston on a busy night like that. When you walk up to one of the police officers and you go, “Excuse me, sir. I don’t know where to go,” and the directions are then spoken rapidly and with a Boston accent, you just go, “I’ll just get a taxi. Thank you, kind sir.”
Jon Stallsmith: Amen. Well, I wanted all of you guys, especially kids even, to be in here for that just to hear it, because sometimes we think, “Oh yeah, I want the resurrection power, but the fellowship of the suffering I wouldn’t mind passing.”
But there’s something sweet about that moment when you’re with the Lord even in a broken place praying for your life, literally, your heart, and God shows up, and Jesus ministers peace to you. So we want to pray for you right now. I’m just going to put my hand on you and pray for your body again just as your heart journey continues, and then we’ll carry on.
Lord, thank you for Matt and for what he shared. Thank you, God, for the way you have worked in his life. I love his humble heart even tonight as we’ve been talking about this saying, “Man, I just am excited to tell stories about what God is doing, how he’s speaking, how he’s showing up, and how he’s working his power in my life.”
So, Lord, we ask you would continue to be faithful to your promises. May you continue to work your power. I pray you would touch his heart and you would heal it, in Jesus’ name, completely that he might have a strong heart and live fruitful days, many more fruitful years on the earth with us. I pray you’d bless his family who has walked through this with him, his friends who have faithfully supported him and prayed for him. God, I pray you would work not just in Matt’s life but in all of that whole community’s life in wonderful ways. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Amen. All right, now kids, if you are in fifth grade and under and you want to hang out with your groups, K and first go out the back to the left, and to the right, second and fifth. Next week, just so you know, is All Family Week, so we’ll all be together in here. That should be really fun for the whole time.
You have to love when God heals dental pain. I would think if there were any physical pain the Lord would heal I would prefer it to be dental pain. I remember one time several years ago we were with a group of college students and we were praying God would heal a few different ailments. One of the young ladies there had a dental issue in her mouth, and so we were praying for that. We just gathered around her. A couple of people had hands on her shoulder praying for her.
Then all of a sudden, one of the very young and zealous college students (I was watching as we were all praying) reached around, and I don’t know if he felt motivated by great faith or just felt like this was what God really wanted him to do, but he started to stick his hand in her mouth. I was like, “Stop that! The Lord can heal her mouth without you laying hands on her gums.” I’m really grateful the Lord healed Matt without us having to lay hands on his gums.
If you need a Bible, slip up your hand. We have Bibles here. It’ll be really handy today. We’re going to be spending some more time in Philippians 3. I also have note sheets in case you want to follow along with the notes.
As we mentioned, we followed up last week with Paul sharing about his past really and the time he spent growing up in a Jewish community and so valuing both his status and his achievements and how he was so convinced in his life that his status and his achievements were going to make him right with God, and how that all shattered when Jesus appeared to him and transformed his entire view of the world.
We remember that story in Acts 9 on the Damascus road as he was going to persecute the Christians there in Damascus, Jesus showed up. He said, “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?” He fell to the ground and his eyes were blinded for several days before the Lord healed him, and he came to faith dramatically. His goal, his purpose in life was so transformed from this constant striving after status and constant striving after achievement to one simple focus, knowing Jesus and living his life focused knowing Jesus. So he’s going to develop that thought.
I’m going to read verse 10 down through the end of chapter 3, and then we’re going to talk about that a little bit. Paul says, “…that I may know [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death…” That share his sufferings literally in the Greek is the fellowship of suffering. “…that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.
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. Brothers, 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, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained.
Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” (Philippians 3:10-21)
It’s a rich, powerful passage. I was reading through this, and I think one of the things that really stood out to me about this whole passage is that Paul is, without question, a sports fan. Throughout his letters, if you look at his writing, he makes all kinds of references. In Corinthians, he talks about boxing. In several places he talks about running, gaining the prize.
Here, this whole passage is full of the imagery of running. Paul was a sports fan, but unfortunately in the ancient world, one of the only sports was running. I personally do not like running whatsoever. Are any of you guys runners? Some of you guys find great pleasure in running. Yeah, I don’t know why we took an activity that was primarily reserved for when you were being invaded by armies or chased by bears and turned it into a pastime.
I particularly don’t like the idea of ancient running when Nike was much more of a Greek god than a shoemaker. If you know your mythology, that makes sense. Maybe it was just a bad joke. I’m not sure. When I was at Furman playing baseball, as a pitcher they don’t know what to do with us. It’s a three- or four-hour practice and two-thirds of it is batting practice. So if you’re a pitcher, you can catch fly balls, but then after that, what else do you do? So they just tell us to go run.
They’d always send us out running. I’d be out running. This was really where I developed my dislike of running as a thing unto itself, because as soon as I would start running (I’d be out on the road and the rest of the guys were with me) the very systems of my body would submit very urgent complaints to the management to try to get me to stop running. My joints immediately, “Stop it! Stop it! Don’t you know the damage you’re doing to me? The cartilage is wearing thin down here. Stop it! You can feel it right now.” So I’m logging this in my mind.
Then my digestive system begins to be involved. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience running. It’s like some burbles and some rumbling that weigh in. It says, “If you don’t stop running right now, we are going to explode everywhere.” Lungs. That’s an easy one. Right from the get go the lungs are saying, “Stop suffocating me!”
I remember there was this one guy on the team. He was a high school cross country runner. He was much faster than all of us. He would stay with us out of pity for the first five minutes and then he would just take off. I was complaining to him one time, and he said, “Man, you just need to experience a runner’s high.” Have you guys ever heard of this?
I’m convinced the runner’s high is like the Bigfoot of cardiovascular activity. Lots of people talk about it. Some scientific studies suggest it might be true. Certain people have even claimed to have seen or experienced a runner’s high. “I was out in the mountains. It was late sunset. I heard it before I felt it, before I knew it was really there, but there’s no doubt in my mind it was a runner’s high.” I have yet to ever experience a runner’s high. It might be because I never run.
Paul here spends a lot of time using the imagery of running a race with us here. He’s unpacking for us how he sees the world and how he pursues his faith. He says two words that really stand out to me as he’s talking about this. In verse 13, he says, “I do not consider that I have made it my own.” (Philippians 3:13) I love this. He says, “I haven’t already obtained everything. I’m in process. I’m on the journey. I’m not already perfect.”
That word in verse 12, perfect, it literally means fully at the goal. I haven’t arrived at the destination yet, but I’m pressing on. I’m pressing on. That’s another running word. I’m working hard to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Then he says, “I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do…” (Philippians 3:13)
This is amazing. In the original language, it doesn’t even say, “I do.” It just says, “But one thing.” After all of this, in the first half of chapter 3, he’s saying, “Yeah, I piled up status. I piled up achievement, but really that’s not what it’s all about. This is it. Here it is. The one thing. It’s not all that stuff. Here. One thing.”
“…forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14) So he talks about forgetting and then he talks about looking forward, pressing on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Sometimes we read that, the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, and we get an image like, “Okay, maybe that means as he’s living his life at some certain point God is just going to go, ‘Okay, you made it,'” and like suck him up into the sky or something like that. But actually again, this is like Olympic athletic imagery because in the ancient world when you would win a race at an ancient stadium, often the governor or the king or the emperor or whoever was putting on the whole festival after you had won would say, “You, come up here.”
You would get to go up in the amphitheater to spend time with the king, with the emperor, with the governor. It all comes back to Paul’s thing earlier where he’s talking about, “I just want to know Jesus.” Now he has in his mind himself as a runner pressing onward. He’s going toward the goal, and he knows when he crosses the finish line Jesus, the true King, is going to say, “You, come up here. Spend time with me.” You get to hang out in that eternal King’s box at the amphitheater. Trust me, it’s a good time up there.
This is what Paul is talking about when he says, “Okay, in order to do this, focus on this one thing. First, I have to forget what’s behind, and second, I have to be able to look forward.” So let’s just spend a couple of minutes talking about that because forgetting is an interesting word. Again, it fits into the running picture he has here because he’s talking about, “I’m running, and I’m not looking back. There are other people maybe in the race and other people have taken some turns along the way. Maybe others are right behind me.”
You know if you’re running as a racer, if you start looking back over your shoulder, that’s the end. You have to just focus forward. He’s saying, “I’m not looking back.” When he uses that word forgetting, it’s not like a soft word. It’s a pretty strong word. He’s saying, “I am completely forgetting what was behind.” It’s the same word in Mark 8 used to describe the disciples. They go across the Sea of Galilee. It says when they got across the Sea of Galilee they realized they had forgotten bread. They did not have a loaf in the boat with them.
It wasn’t like they brought a little bit of bread and they forget most of the bread. It’s like they totally forgot the bread. It’s not there. It’s not with them anymore. This is the same word Paul is using. He’s saying, “I’m forgetting what lies behind.” All of that stuff, the status and the achievement we talked about last week that he had been relying on that compared to knowing Jesus smelled like a heap of garbage. He says, “I’m just leaving that behind.”
But this is interesting because what does Paul really forget? If Paul is saying this is his one thing, that he’s forgetting this and can go forward, that raises another question for us too…What should we forget about our past? Because I don’t know about you, but it’s kind of hard to forget something intentionally. We forget things unintentionally all the time, but to try to forget something actually does the opposite, doesn’t it? It brings it to mind. It’s almost impossible to make ourselves forget anything.
So what does Paul do? When we look at Paul’s example in the way he reflects on his past, he had a very interesting past. In his other letters, in 1 Corinthians 15, he talks about himself, and he says, “For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” (1 Corinthians 15:9) Even though he’s talking here about forgetting what lies behind, he still remembers he persecuted the church of God.
In 1 Timothy 1:15, he says to Timothy, “The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.” (1 Timothy 1:15) He knows that in his past he did some things that were wrong. He was a pretty big sinner. He persecuted the church of God he was now working so hard to plant and to preserve.
So Paul, even after he experiences the grace of Jesus, still knows that stuff happened back there in the past, and yet somehow he’s able to forget it so he can move forward. It’s amazing because what grace has done to Paul’s past is redeemed it. Redemption is not denial. It’s not like saying, “Oh, that never happened.” Redemption removes the stink of it.
Here’s an example. My parents just recently moved into a new house. They were renting a little town house in Charlotte. It was a great house and they got to check it out and everything. But after they’d stayed there for a few days, they realized there was something that smelled funny with the house. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a house that smelled funny. They came to find out there was a poorly sealed toilet, so there was sewage smell just wafting into the house throughout the day.
Where the house is located, they also came to find out that it was located right over the main sewer pipe that serves the entire area. So the smell in the house would actually get a little bit worse at peak times, they observed. This was between 6:30 and 7:00 a.m. and also 6:30 and 7:00 p.m. This was when it was really strong.
It was funny too because my mom was describing it to me and she was like, “Yeah, for the first couple of days, I just thought your dad was sick or something, and he was looking at me weird. We’re walking around the house like, ‘Are you okay? Seriously? Really?'” because it smelled so badly in the house.
It’s amazing because those first few days they were just confused. They weren’t really sure what to do about it. So they were thinking. My mom, because she has a hyper-powerful superpower smell she has exercised ever since I was a young boy… Whenever I’d take my shoes off in the house, even if it was the other side of the house, I’d hear, “Jonathan, are your shoes off?” “Yes.” So either my feet really stink or she has an amazing sense of smell.
Anyway, she exercises it. She figured out where this thing was. They got the plumber to come out and reseal the toilet. They put some things around it. It’s still not 100 percent perfect yet, but it’s amazing because that house that they were living in, when the stench is there, it’s almost intolerable to live there, and yet once you deal with the source of the stink, it’s a pretty good house. You can reflect on it. You can live in it. It’s a good place to be.
This is similar to our past. When we look back on our past, it’s not uniformly evil. It’s not like every decision in our past has been wrong, but there usually are some things that stink back there. Even if we’re not aware of it, as we’re living now walking through life, there is some stuff even about our own faith and our relationship with God, our relationship with others and our families and everything else, it’s just kind of stinky, and we’re not exactly sure what it is.
What we need to do is go with God into our past so he might exercise grace on those areas and take the stink out of them. That’s what it really means to forget what lies behind. It’s to go with God and let him remove the stink. What does that mean? Let me give you a couple of more biblical examples.
Sarah is one of the great mothers of faith in the Old Testament. Of course, she’s married to Abraham. They’re on this long journey, and she is 90 years old. Still has not been able to conceive. They’ve been trying for a long time. In Genesis 18, God visits Abraham where he used to hang out at the oaks of Mamre. He starts talking to Abraham and he says, “I’m going to come back in one year’s time, and when I come back, your wife Sarah will be pregnant.”
Sarah was listening through the flap of the tent, and she hears this promise, and she knows, it says in the text, that the way of women has departed from her. Her body no longer can even conceive, and she just laughs. “This visitor who’s sitting in our tent is so crazy.” Genesis 18:12 is there in your notes. It’s worth looking at. “So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?'” (Genesis 18:12)
She’s laughing at God. She’s laughing at the promises of God. The Lord says, “Why did Sarah laugh?” Sarah is like, “I didn’t laugh,” and then the Lord says, “But you did.” This is Sarah’s story. She’s a great woman of faith, but in the moment when God is making a promise, she’s like, “There’s no way.”
But then we come forward into Hebrews 11. In the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews is reflecting on the great fathers and mothers of faith. This, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is what the author of Hebrews has to say about Sarah. He says, “By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised.” (Hebrews 11:11)
Wait a second, if we read these two verses next to each other, they don’t seem to jive, do they? In Genesis 18, it says Sarah laughed at God, “No way!” In Hebrews 11, she considered him faithful who had promised. Do you see what happened here? God exercised grace in Sarah’s story, and even though in the moment she first heard that promise she had no faith, God came in, took the stink out of her past and removed it, and now the story that is told of Sarah in heaven is that she is a woman of faith.
David is another example of this. We know David made a lot of mistakes in his life. Psalm 32 is one of the most beautiful psalms he wrote, in my opinion. We don’t exactly when he wrote Psalm 32. It may have been after he had Uriah the Hittite killed so he could marry Bathsheba after he saw her bathing on the adjacent rooftop.
It may have been after one of the other great mistakes of David’s life, when he decided he was going to count all the people in his kingdom and thousands of them were killed because of his pride. Or maybe it was another time when he was out just massacring people. There were all kinds of examples from David’s life when he could’ve reflected back and said, “Whoa, that activity stinks!”
But this is what he writes about in Psalm 32. He’s talking about this experience when he knows he has made a mistake. He says, “Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide my guilt. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the LORD.’ And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.” (Psalm 32:4-5) This is God coming into David’s past, journeying with David, forgiving him, and taking the stink out of it.
I remember when I read this passage I had been working at Grace about two years. We were in this room. There was a worship night. Aaron Keyes was leading worship, and we were just blessing God together. It was a really sweet time. It was two years into my own ministry, and I just felt like I could really identify with David. I hadn’t had anyone killed or committed adultery with that guy I killed’s wife or anything like that really, but I’d just had some stuff in my past. You guys know the feeling.
Here I was ministering and leading in the church, and I was thinking, “Man, I have no place being a spiritual leader in this church. I’ve made mistakes.” I was smelling the stink of my own past. I had heard Aaron say one time that his favorite activity during a time of worship was while the people of God were just worshiping, if he wasn’t leading musically, he just loves to sit and read through the Psalms. It was one of those nights for me.
So I had just opened up the Psalms and I was reading through and I was feeling this weight. I was smelling the stink of my past, just feeling like I was in that place. I came across that phrase where David says, “I confessed my rebellion to the Lord. You forgave me and all my guilt is gone.” It was like something tangible happened. It was like Matt described when he was taking Communion and he just knew it was real. It was like God just removed the guilt. I still know my past. I know the events, but it was like somehow the stink has been forgotten. It’s so powerful.
What about you? If you think about your past, is there anything that stinks back there? Regret is one of the words that often applies. That’s one of the words that indicates we have some stink from our past working its way into our present. “I regret this. I wish I would have. If only I had.” Often it’s not even so much the things we did; often it’s the things we didn’t do.
I love the language of the Book of Common Prayer, those confessional prayers when he’s asking God, “Forgive us for the things we have done and for the things we have left undone.” Often we look back on our past and we smell stink there because we feel like we should have. If only we would have. We regret not just the things we’ve done but also the things we didn’t do.
This is the truth of the gospel. This is what Jesus came to do. This is why he died on the cross, so the stench of our past, the things we’ve done wrong, the things we’ve left undone that continue to torment us, that that stink could be removed. This is absolutely essential. As Paul is calling us forward to focus on Jesus, he’s saying, “This one thing. Forgetting what lies behind. Until this stench is gone, my faith is always going to stink a little bit. Until this is fully dealt with, I need to…” We have to deal with this. That’s what he’s talking about.
This is the Scripture. It says over and over again. It’s not just Paul’s story. It’s not just Sarah’s story. It’s not just David’s story. It’s all of our stories. In Psalm 103, the Word says, “…as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us.” (Psalm 103:12) That’s a huge distance. He’s taking the stink out.
In Colossians 2:13-14, Paul says, “And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.” (Colossians 2:13-14)
That record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. The mistakes, the sins we had committed that put us guilty before God, he cancelled. We owed a massive debt, and he dealt with it. Yet when we live redeemed, knowing Jesus, yet still carrying the stench of our past with us, regretting it, feeling rotten about it, it’s like making payments on a credit card that has already been cut up. Does that make sense?
Most of us probably have credit cards unless you did the Dave Ramsey thing or just deal with envelopes and cash. Probably the green envelopes really speak to you then. You’re like, “Oh, I know how to put cash in envelopes.” But our family is a credit family. It’s just convenient. Over each month you run up this tab, and we hopefully pay it off every month. Some months better than others.
Can you imagine paying your balance down to zero? That’s what Jesus did. It’s like Jesus came along. He saw our great infinite record of debt. It’s a debt that could never be paid back. He said, “Hey, let me pay that.” And he did. He died on the cross and he paid it entirely. The Scripture here says in Colossians that that record was nailed to the cross and it was taken down. It was dealt with 100 percent, totally cancelled. That debt is gone.
And yet rather than living that way, each month we still make a minimum payment on that debt by regretting it, by feeling rotten about it, by saying, “I have to work harder now to make up for that,” or, “I have to serve here to make up for that,” or, “I have to really feel bad and make everybody around me miserable because of that back there.” You’re just making payments on a debt that has already been cancelled.
What we have to realize is that when Paul says, “Let’s forget completely what has been behind us,” he’s calling us to really understand how grace works. It’s not denial; it does remove the stench of the past.
Then he tells us to look forward. Not just forgetting but then looking forward. How do we look forward? Once this has been dealt with, how do we look forward at Jesus? How do we focus? Sometimes looking forward for us is challenging. I don’t know if you guys have ever taken the Myers-Briggs test. It’s one of those personality things.
All these tests are okay. Sometimes you take one, and it’s like, “You are high on influence,” and other times it’s like, “You are an otter,” or, “You are a golden retriever.” It’s like, “Thank you, I guess. That doesn’t really give a ton of insight. What does an otter do except sit on its back and crack shells or something? Is that what you’re saying I do?”
But the Myers-Briggs is a helpful test because one of the categories talks about the way we perceive the world. This is the intuition versus the sensing thing. Somehow you answer some questions, and after you answer these questions they tell you whether or not you are an intuitive person or a sensory person.
It really doesn’t have that much to do with the words themselves, but the basic difference is that intuitive people love to look forward. The future is exciting. The present is okay. The past is particularly boring. But the future, the new thing, the next thing is awesome. Maybe you guys know this in your lives. You know those kinds of people who just get settled, just get moved in, just get everything set up, and they’re like, “Ah, that was so invigorating,” and then like two days later, it’s like, “Let’s do the next thing!” and they’re looking at that.
That’s a good thing. That’s a classic “N” in the Myers-Briggs test. An “S” is very different. “S” stands for sensing, and the way people who are in that “S” category… They love to know what’s real and what’s around them. Tradition, things just so, living in this house for a long time. “We love this house. This is very real.”
The most real interpretation of reality is what’s right around us, what I can see and touch and feel and smell right now. If this reality around me is in flux, where am I going to go? Not forward. I don’t know what’s over there, but I do know what’s behind me. So someone who is an “S” lives very much in the present and also tends to really love the past and feel deep attachment to the past. Sometimes it’s interesting when and “N” and an “S” get married. There’s this tension. “Let’s go!”
“No, I loved it.”
“No.” Like that.
Here’s the interesting thing. Statistically, about 70 percent of people who have taken this test (this big sample pool) fall into that “S” category. So about 70 percent of us, even here tonight, more or less, probably love this present reality and feel deep connection to the past, but pressing forward, looking forward, the future, is a little bit more intimidating.
That’s not all of us. Some of us are like, “Yeah, get me there. I want to go.” But a lot of us feel like, “Man, what do I look at up there? How do I press forward? What am I focusing on to get there?” Paul gives us three examples as he’s talking to us about going toward the prize. He gives us three things. I’m going to share them with you really quickly.
He says, first, “As we’re pressing forward, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.” Once God has dealt with the stink of the past and we’re looking forward, what are our models? Where do we go? How do we do this? Paul says, “Imitate the right people.”
Who do you imitate? Who are your heroes? Who do you learn from? We all learn from someone. We have people who we absolutely love being with. We have people who we emulate. Sometimes it’s people in our culture. Sometimes it’s godly people. Paul is giving us some absolutely golden advice.
He says, “As you’re looking forward and you are trying to follow after Jesus and know Jesus, imitate the kinds of people who are also running in that direction,” because (this is what he continues with) he says, “For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things.” (Philippians 3:18-19)
He says, “You can learn from, you can follow, you can imitate people whose god is their belly, who idolize their appetites, just do whatever feels great right now, whether it’s food or sensual pleasure or whatever it might be.” We all know especially in our culture there is such a strong, “You only live once. YOLO!” culture thing. We hear this all around and we see people who are embracing this, doing crazy things.
Paul uses this phrase, “They glory in their shame.” They celebrate what really should be shameful, what should be hidden. We can look even in our own culture and go, “Whoa!” There are plenty of examples of models of people we could imitate who glory in their shame, who idolize their appetite. But the question is…Where does it end up? Where does this lifestyle end up? The things we think are so glorious and fun, it looks like it’s just going to be a total blast, how does that turn out for those people? That’s a great question.
If you can identify the people you really value, imitate, and model your life after, then you should really always ask this question…How is that working out for them? How’s that going? To be really honest, the people you want to imitate are the people whose marriages you actually would like to be a part of, or whose families you’d like to be a part of, or whose lives, whose way in the workplace. When you see people and you’re like, “Wow, that’s really solid. That’s wholesome,” those are the people to imitate. That’s what Paul is saying.
As you’re looking forward, pick the right people to imitate. Know where your citizenship is. That’s the second thing he says. He says, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior…” (Philippians 3:20) It’s interesting. When he talks about this citizenship in heaven, remember he’s in Philippi, which is a Roman colony, and the goal of Roman citizens in a colony was to recreate… As citizens of Rome, their goal was to recreate the culture of Rome in this new place in Greece, in Philippi.
So all their decisions, their architecture, the way they did life, their writing, all of these different cultural things, they were taking the life of Rome and trying to transplant it to Philippi. So when Paul writes to them and says, “Your citizenship is in heaven,” they understand what that means. They go, “Oh wow, my goal, my job is to bring that culture of heaven to earth, to represent the way of heaven here in the midst of this broken place.”
As you’re looking forward, “What’s my life supposed to look like?” Well, imitate godly people. “What’s my life supposed to look like?” Well, be a citizen of heaven. Live to see the ways of heaven working in our midst on earth.
Then finally, he says, “…from it [heaven] we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.” (Philippians 3:20-21) The last question as we’re thinking about looking forward… Who am I imitating? Who am I modeling my life after? What kind of citizen am I? Am I a citizen of some other culture? Am I a citizen of heaven, like really pursuing the love, and the mercy, and the excellence, the forgiveness, the joy, the hope of heaven?
The last one is…What are we waiting for? What am I waiting for? Paul says, “We await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” Why? Because he will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body. Man, you could think about that for a long time. Here we all have these bodies that are breaking down. Some of us, like Matt, have challenges in the way our physical hearts beat. Others of us have all sorts of other challenges. There are times when it just feels like, “Man, this body is betraying me.”
Paul says, “We await a Savior, One who will save us.” When he comes, it’s not that he’s going to just suck us up into some heavenly cloud of spirit existence. He’s going to transform. He’s going to give us new bodies. He’s going to transform this lowly body to be like his glorious body. What he’s talking about here is Jesus’ resurrection body.
Every Easter, when we celebrate the resurrection, we don’t just remember that Jesus was raised from the grave. We also need to remember that our future, the thing we are waiting on is the day when we receive bodies just like Jesus got, when we too who are in Christ will be resurrected, living in spirit-powered physical bodies, eating amazing meals, living in perfect community with the people around us, doing meaningful work.
This is so important because in this life when we’re in these lowly bodies and we often find ourselves doing lowly things… Some of us are unemployed or underemployed or working on trying to find a good job or we hate our jobs. What are we waiting on? We’re waiting on the day when Jesus will return and we get a new body, and the work that will be before us will be glorious and delightful. We’ll just every day be, “Yes! I want to do this.”
Some of us are living in these situations in our homes or in our families or in our relationships where it just feels like it’s breaking down and it’s lowly. What are we waiting for? We’re waiting for the day when Jesus returns and restores that beauty of the family where there’s no more jealousy or shame or guilt mongering within the family.
So this is what Paul is telling us to do. He says, “Like a runner, like a racer, this is my one thing. Forget what’s back here. Grace removes the stench. What Jesus did on the cross allows me to look at my past and forget everything that stinks. No regrets. I can run, sprint, forward toward the upward call of the goal, the prize with Jesus, the day when I cross that finish line.”
And he says, “Come, be with me.” As we run forward, the questions to ask are, “Who do we imitate? Of what kingdom are we citizens? What are we waiting for?” If we hold onto those three questions and answer them well, answer them biblically, answer them wisely, we will find that when we cross the finish line, it will be glorious. So let’s pray.
Father, we thank you for this great passage of Scripture. Thank you that you’ve made a way that we really could know you both in suffering and in the power of the resurrection. Lord, tonight some of us know there is some stench in our past. Some of us, Lord, we come to you now just like David said in Psalm 32, that we need to confess that to you, just tell you, “Yeah, that’s there and that stinks.”
So Lord, would your Spirit gently come now and bring to mind things we have done or even things we have left undone that stink? Lord, let us do some kingdom business with you. Lord, come now and apply the truth that the debt has been cancelled. Lord, come convict our hearts that we no longer have to pay a guilty tax, we no longer have to make monthly deposits to pay off what happened back there, but that you’ve dealt with it, and like David said, all of our guilt could be gone.
Come, Holy Spirit, minister now in our hearts. As we turn toward you, remove our guilt. Lord, as we look forward, convict our hearts with the magnitude of your love, the beauty of our future. Lord, the people we are called to imitate, bring them to mind. Who are the godly ones around us? Who are the ones whose lives are worth imitating, truly? Lord, give us a picture in our minds of what the kingdom coming, the citizenship of heaven worked out around us, what that could look like.
Lord, just flood our hearts with joy and anticipation of what it’ll be like when you come back and you set things to right. You wipe the tears from our eyes and you lift up the heads of the lowly, and those who’ve been in the dust are resurrected into bodies just like your glorious body. Yes, Lord, come now. Help us to see the past clearly as you see it. Help us to see the future clearly as you see it that we might live each day now in the fullness of joy whether we’re suffering or we’re feeling the power of the resurrection. In Jesus’ name, amen.