Finally, my brethren, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things again is no trouble to me, and it is a safeguard for you. Beware of the dogs, beware of the evil workers, beware of the false circumcision, for we are the true circumcision who worship in the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus, but no confidence in the flesh. Although I myself might have confidence even in the flesh, if anyone else has a mind but confidence in the flesh, I far more. Circumcised the eighth day of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to the righteousness which is in the law found blameless. But whatever things were gained to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ and may be found in him. not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith, that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death in order that I might attain to the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize. of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are mature, have this attitude, and if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you. However, let us keep living by the same standard to which we have attained. Brethren, join in following my example. Let's pray together. Father, we ask for the Holy Spirit, who inspired Paul to write these words, to come and work in our midst. Help us to see that you have been feeding your church with the word that proceeds from the mouth of God over all these centuries and years, and that you continue to do that even today. We pray that you transform us as we consider what you have said through these, your very words. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. One of the tremendous benefits of having a word from God that is God's word, though written through inspired men, is that we have In a sense, two different perspectives going on. We have God himself declaring what is true, absolute truth, the truth of God. He's the ultimate author. But we learn all of these things about people who are sinful like us. And when it comes to the Apostle Paul, I think that's so critical because not only does he give us over and over an understanding of all of Scripture that focuses on grace through faith, but we know that Paul himself was one who needed to ask for forgiveness. Paul did things for which he needed to repent. In Acts chapter 14, there is a very wonderful account given to us. I suppose in some ways it's not wonderful because it's about idolatry, but it's an account where Paul and Barnabas are ministering and working miracles. And the people see these miracles and say, the gods have come. Look at these miracle working gods. Look, that's Zeus and that's Hermes. And this is what's beautiful. Paul and Barnabas are dismayed over this. They don't commend it in any way, shape, or form. They're not interested in starting a cult. They're not interested in being spiritual gurus. What they're interested in is representing Jesus Christ. So they say to these people who are worshipping them, and just think about how many people even today would love to be worshipped and do everything they can to get the worship of other people, but it happens to Paul and Barnabas, and they say, why are you doing these things? We are men of the same nature as you. In the King James Version, we are men of like passion as you are. We put one pant leg on at a time like you do. All of the weaknesses familiar to men are familiar to us, and that includes sin. You cannot worship us. In ourselves, we are sinful. We are defiled. We are men of like passion. And it's, as I said, beautiful to see that, but then to also realize if all we had was Jesus, I think maybe it would be overwhelming to only see perfection, to only see the sinless man, to see a man who never had to repent, who never needed to ask for forgiveness, to see a man who is not of like passion as we are because he was the perfect God-man who never sinned in anything. Instead, we have the Apostle Paul who declares in Acts 14, I'm like you, I'm a sinner like you, I need forgiveness. And he's the one who writes to us about the grace he's found in Christ. And so I appreciate this, that we have the gospel coming to us. It is the word of God written through a sinful man, Paul, a man of like passion. And if you notice, in the last three verses we read, verses 15, 16, and the beginning of 17, this Paul, man of like passion, sinner like us, He's giving commands. He's saying, do certain things. Verse 15, let us therefore. That's instruction. He sees himself as part of the group, a member of the church, a sinner in need of a savior. So he's addressing himself and everybody else. Let us therefore. And then again in verse 16, however, let us. Again, instruction. command he sees himself as a part of the whole but he's saying this is what we need to do and then very very explicitly at the beginning of verse 17 brethren so brothers and sisters join in following my example the example of a man of like passions as you the example of a sinner like you the example of somebody who needs God's grace and forgiveness as you do follow his example And those commands in those three verses are helpful because before that, Paul summarizes it all into one thing. He says that, again, explicitly. One thing I do. Look at the middle of verse 13. One thing I do. To follow Paul's example, there is one thing to do, at least in this context. And that one thing is to pursue the prize or keep your eye on the prize. A term that's familiar to us from all sorts of competitions and Olympic efforts and sports and everything else, eye on the prize. But for Paul, the prize is Jesus himself and being found in him, having that union with him. And the Christian life is keeping an eye on that prize, the prize of Jesus himself. But he does, of course, as you know, open up this one thing that he does in a way that enables all of us to access it and apply it to our own lives that resemble Paul's in that they, too, are lives in which sin is present. To do this one thing, we're going to look at the prize itself, and then the pursuit of that prize. The prize and the pursuit. So let's look first at how Paul speaks about this prize. And you notice in verses 12 through 16, the entire text, that Paul uses pronouns in a sort of interesting way. Not that I have already obtained it. Well, what? What? What is he speaking about? Not that I have already obtained it, or I've become perfect. Okay, maybe that's part of what he's speaking about. I haven't obtained it. I haven't yet become perfect. Then he goes back into pronouns. So I may lay hold of that, for which also I was laid hold of. Verse 13, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it. He writes in a way that makes us say, what? What? What is the it? And we could look for antecedents, the things that come before the pronouns that refer to what it's speaking. And I think Paul has done that. Back in verse 8, he said that I may gain Christ. So yes, you could replace the it with Christ. Verse 9, that I may be found in him. that it can be being found in Christ. In verse 11, in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead, the it could be the resurrection from the dead that will only happen in Christ when we are found in him. All of those are appropriate antecedents to the pronouns it and that. But then in verse 14, he uses this interesting term. I press on, I pursue toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. The goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. The upward call What do you think the upward call is? If you sort of stop and again think about Paul being a man of like passion as we are and realizing we can learn from his autobiography because he's a sinner saved by grace, that upward call has just tremendous significance. Of course it is related to resurrection from the dead, right? I mean, if you're called to resurrect from the dead, that in itself is an upward call. When Jesus said, Lazarus, come forward, Lazarus got up and walked forward. But there's more to that when it comes to the Apostle Paul, because he actually heard a call from above. Jesus rose again from the dead and then ascended up into heaven, And when Paul was converted, when he was still called Saul, he heard an upward call, a call from above. Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? A literal call of God through Jesus from above. And the rest of Paul's life, which so much of is actually documented for us in Acts and all the different letters he's written in the New Testament, is him sort of working out how he is still responding to that upward call. And his desire, his great desire, his passion in life, what he sees as the goal of the race of life is to be found in Christ at the end, to be raised in Christ, to hear all over again an upward call of God, not just calling him into faith, but confirming him as a good and faithful servant. The ascended, resurrected Lord calls us into union with him, it in itself being something of an upward call that will result in resurrection from the dead and the new heavens and the new earth for all eternity. I certainly think heaven is in view here, but even more. Did we not just sing, arise, my soul, arise, shake off your guilty fears? Is that not a response to the upward call of God through the Lord Jesus Christ? So Paul's saying, yes, that's it. That's the that. That's the it. That's the pronoun I keep speaking of. That's the goal which I look to attain. And all we've said about Paul and being a man of like passions as we are, a sinner, We also recognize that he was a remarkable saint. We call him Saint Paul for a reason. Not the same reason a Roman Catholic would, but for a reason nonetheless. In Christ, he understood that he had righteousness, the very righteousness of God, apart from the works of the law that made him a holy one. And he demonstrates it through his life. It's unbelievable. You read of the accounts he gives, and his tenacity, and his ongoing effort, and his almost inability to see things in a negative light, but to instead even see his imprisonment for the furtherance of the gospel, the furtherance of the kingdom that will have no end. And it's helpful for us to read that he's a man of like passion as we are, because he seems to do remarkable things. In fact, he does miraculous things. And he writes under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. He wrote a third of the New Testament. He wrote the book of Romans. But look at how he talks about himself in these verses. Not that I have already obtained it. Not that I have already become perfect. Verse 13, I do not regard myself as having lay hold of it yet. I still haven't arrived, says Saint Paul, who wrote 1 3rd of the New Testament. Brothers and sisters, there cannot be a more foolish wind of false doctrine. than the idea that sinners on this side of heaven, like me and you and the Apostle Paul, can become perfect in this life. That we can somehow attain to perfection before being once for all purified by grace in Christ at death or at the second coming. If the Apostle Paul was willing to say, I haven't arrived yet. I'm still a work in progress. Jesus isn't finished with me yet. And we have to understand that that's exactly where we are too. The Lord's at work. He's brought us into his saving grace. He's brought us out of darkness into his marvelous light, but he's not finished with us yet. Paul wrote scripture and he still hadn't obtained that perfection and neither have you. But we have Paul saying, this is what I do. I don't fixate on all of my imperfections. We'll get into that in a moment. I don't convince myself of some false heretical doctrine that somehow I'm actually perfect in this life. I acknowledged that I haven't obtained it yet, but I pursue it. You know, the difference between running and a race is a goal. You could just run forever indefinitely and continue running on and on, but a race inevitably includes some sort of a goal. And Paul says here, verse 14, I press towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ. I think he's saying, when I think of how I was converted in Acts chapter 9, when there was light from heaven and I was down on the ground and heard a call from above, from that point on my life has been a race. And when I reach that goal, I will be found in Christ and I'll receive Christ himself as a prize and his righteousness in totality and perfection. I'm not there yet, but I'm still running the race. And he says, this one thing I do, I pursue that. I pursue that goal. I look forward to that prize. I see God at the finish line. I acknowledge where I am. The word we're given is press on. I keep saying pursue for a reason I'll point out at the end of the sermon. But look at verse 14. I press on toward the goal. And he's already said that he presses on. Back in verse 12. I haven't yet become perfect, but I press on. Same word. Press on so that I may lay hold of that. I press on so that I reach the goal. I press on so that after reaching the goal, I'll receive the prize. This is the one thing I do. Now, it's so very Pauline, right, in verse 13. But one thing I do, and then he immediately gives two different things. The one thing I do is forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, pressing on. The one thing he does is press on towards the prize, but the way he does that one thing involves forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward, pressing on to what lies ahead, the goal, the prize. Could there be any better instruction for you and your life in Jesus Christ than to call your attention to that one thing that involves looking back and looking forward, or as it were, not looking back so much, forgetting what lies behind? We kind of spoke about this last week, right? The rear view mirror and your life before Christ. It's always behind you, but it's always in front of you. It's always a reason for Thanksgiving. But you can't become obsessed with the rear view mirror, because then you'll crash, because you actually are going somewhere and need to pay attention to where you're going. And we see that in the life of Paul. Oh, wretched man that I am! Not, oh, wretched man that I was. I am the chief of sinners, not I was the chief of sinners. No, Paul's saying, I thought righteousness was murder. I thought righteousness was persecuting the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know, in some sense, he hasn't forgotten his past. It's before him. But look what he says there. This one thing he does. forgetting what lies behind. If your eye is on the goal of finishing a race. You have to forget what lies behind. You can't be obsessing over your finances, over your work situation, over each last step that you've taken and whether or not it could have been more swift and perfect. There's a beautiful illustration of this in the movie Chariots of Fire that shows something of the life of Eric Little. And in one of the races, it's a short race, one lap. And you can look at the clip on YouTube if you don't want to watch the whole movie. But you should watch the whole movie. The YouTube clip of the whole race is only two minutes and 11 seconds. And it's mostly in slow motion. So the race happens a lot faster than that. But in that race, Eric Little, at the very beginning of a very short race, he completely wipes out. He falls out. He falls out of bounds, even, of the race. So during a very short race, he's not running at all. He falls down to the ground as everybody just takes off past him. And then the rest of that scene in drama and slow motion is Eric Little getting up and running so fast that he wins that race. achieves the goal. Now, in a second, I'll tell you why I hesitate to give that example and illustration. But for now, let's look at it as the metaphor for life that it is. If he wiped out, if he fell down to the ground at the beginning of a short race competing against great, great, fantastically fast runners, and then on the ground said, oh, man, I scratched my knee. Oh, I bruised my leg. Oh, man, there's so much left to this race. You know, I'm just going to get a soda. I'm done. There's no way. He wouldn't be forgetting what lied behind. He'd be reminiscing about it all there, and he would have never won the race. But instead, he wipes out, he gets up, and he sets his eye on the goal all over again, and he wins the race. And at least that part is so appropriate. Forget what lies behind. Continue the race. Get up. Move on. Here's why I hesitate to give that example. Life is not a short sprint. Some of the best advice you're ever going to get is that life is not a sprint, but a marathon. And there isn't one wipeout at the beginning that you get over. You wipe out day after day after day after day. And those wipeouts don't just look like things out of your control, like somebody tripping you, or somebody making you have a car accident, or a teacher failing to teach you as well as it takes to actually do well on the exam. And those wipeouts involve not only your accidents, not only where you haven't done as well as you should have, they include your sins. You wipe out because of your own sin. Falling into something you thought you had conquered long ago, shocked that you would lose your temper the way you did 20 years ago. Shocked that you would speak to your wife like that again. Shocked that you could be so harsh to a child, so tender. Shocked to realize you gossiped all over again. Shocked to realize you're greedy, you're envious. Whatever it might be, even that, Paul's saying, remember, he takes your sin, but you also gotta lay your righteousness before him at the cross. You look to Him for forgiveness and you look to Him for righteousness. You lay your sin and your righteousness down at the foot of the cross. And you forget what lies before you so that you can press on towards the goal. And you do it over and over and over and over. Pursuing. Pressing on. reaching forward. Do you know what that is? It's hope. It's not just self-help, pull yourself up by the bootstraps and carry on. It couldn't be further from that. It's saying, in myself, my sin deserves damnation, and when I look at my righteousness again, I realize at every point it was mingled with sin. I claim neither of those things. Instead, I look towards the goal and the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Arise, my soul, arise. Shake off your guilty fears. The bleeding sacrifice on my behalf appears. I look to Christ. It's all about being found in Him. It's all about gaining Him. It is so much about gaining Him that I do indeed apply myself to forgetting what lies behind, not to become cavalier and nonchalant about sin, but so that I'm not mired in it, despairing because of it, dragged down over and over as I think about it. I pursue. I endure. I reach forward. We already looked briefly at Acts chapter 9, which is where you can read about the conversion of Saul, where you can literally read an upward call from God through Jesus Christ. If you remember that, Jesus says something really fascinating in Acts chapter nine. Maybe we would expect him to say, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting the church? But he doesn't say it like that, although he does have the church in mind. He says, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? And in that question that God used to convert the Apostle Paul, Jesus Christ was saying something remarkable, that the church is united to him, that Christians are in him, that he is the vine, we are the branches, he's the chief cornerstone, we're the spiritual stones built up upon him, he's the head, we're the body. Why are you persecuting me? Jesus Christ was in heaven at the right hand of the throne of God the Father Almighty, but he says, Saul, you're persecuting me. in so much as you're persecuting those who are in me, my church, you're persecuting me. And Paul uses that exact same word in verse six of chapter three in Philippians that we read, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church. You could see that upward call from God through Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus was perhaps emblazoned on Paul's mind. Can't ever get away from this fact that he persecuted Jesus Christ by persecuting the church and thought that's what righteousness was. Well, he uses that same word two more times, both in the text that we've covered, It wouldn't rightly be translated persecuting. But the word for persecuting can also mean pursuing. And while you can't have persecution without some measure of pursuing, you can pursue without persecuting. And that word in verse 12 is translated, I press on. I pursue. Verse 14, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. I pursue the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Four Greek words. Translated the first two times I mentioned in Acts chapter 9 and then here in Philippians 3, 6 as persecute. And then used by Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in verses 12 and 14. Brightly translated, I pursue. I pursue. Do you see the gospel in the use of those words? That's a sermon in itself. Paul is saying, I thought righteousness was persecuting Jesus Christ. I thought righteousness was persecuting the church. In myself, left to my own, in my own self-righteousness and unrighteousness, I was so warped and broken, I thought persecution was what righteousness is. And God spoke to me through an upward call. And he changed me a hundred percent, brought me from persecuting the church to supporting the church, working for the church, laboring for the church, writing to the church, devoted to the church, because being devoted to the church was how I was devoted to Jesus Christ. And now I am no longer a persecutor of the church, but a pursuer of Christ himself. I've laid aside my unrighteousness, I've laid aside my righteousness, and I'm delivered from persecuting, instead being one who pursues, one who pursues so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. You see that? The Lord reaches into your life, upward call, effectual call, and he brings you to pursue what he has secured for you through Christ Jesus. Father in heaven, we pray that we would rejoice in having scripture written by sinful men, men of like passion as we are, to see in scripture reason to repent, to forget what lies behind, to pursue the goal, to pursue the prize, to pursue the upward call of God in Christ Jesus, to pursue the resurrection that comes in Christ Jesus, to live in this hope by which even sinful men and women can be saved through faith and not the works of the law. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.