Philippians 3:12-14

The year is 1985. The setting is a Castleberry High School track meet. A young Todd Blair is relaxing and laughing with some friends sitting on the grass next to the little concrete circle that we used for the shotput and discus competition. I was never a runner. I didn’t want to run. I wasn’t built to run even forty pounds ago like I weighed then. I enjoyed throwing the shotput and discus even though I wasn’t very good at that either. But that part of the track meet was over and I thought I was done for the day. The next race was what we called the 440. One lap around the track. I think it’s called the 400 meters now but whatever. It was one lap. They announced the race and then announced that there were only five people signed up for the race and there were spots for six people so if somebody else wanted to race, they could. There would be five ribbons handed out at the end. Again, I was never a runner. I wasn’t built for it nor was I dressed for it. I’m in my white, high-top, lace-up canvas Chuck Taylor tennis shoes and over-the-calf multi-color striped socks but nobody else volunteered to run so I thought, why not? I jumped up and ran to the starting blocks.

On your mark, get set, bang! I take off running. About the first turn, I notice that I am in first place. I am winning this race and I feel good. This is great! I am the wind. I am one with the track. I’m getting it! Whew! I’m also starting to get a little winded about the second corner and as I start to feel my lungs, I get passed by some kid. No problem. Second place is still very respectable and I’m still running hard. About half-way through, the second guy passes me. Obviously, these guys are world-class athletes so it’s no shame to come in third to these guys. Wow! My lungs are really starting to burn now. And, uh-oh. Third guy passes me at the third turn. At least I have fourth place. Not bad. But now my legs are getting heavy and my heart is pounding and as we pull into the home stretch the fourth guy passes but I am determined not to come in last. That is not going to be how this story ends! I am running as fast as I can, giving it all I have and now I can hear the last guy behind me. He’s getting closer as the finish line is getting closer. I can hear him breathing as we get closer and closer. Now I can feel his arm glance off mine. He is right beside me at the finish line. As we cross the line I stick my chest out with every ounce of energy I have and he sticks his chest out…just a little bit farther.

Last place. All for nothing. I’m exhausted, embarrassed and I’m done. I got no ribbon. I got no extra points with the coach or extra credit for my grade. How do you think I reacted after this? Do you think I was now more motivated than ever to run faster and get better? Do you think I was motivated to win medals and get glory and become a track star? Of course not. I was done running. What was the point, right?

And that is exactly how some of you feel right now about running the Christian race. That’s how you feel about knowing Jesus better and becoming more like Him. You have your ticket to Heaven. There was a point in your life when you asked God to forgive you of your many sins and to come into your life and change you and you admit that you can’t do it on your own and it is only through Jesus that we can get to Heaven. You did that. You got baptized. You go to church sometimes now. You even give a little moolah when the plate is passed but there’s no sense getting carried away with it, right?

The Apostle Paul would call you a fool; unwise and disobedient and he said the wrath of God will come on you. (Ephesians 5:6) Some of you wonder why your prayers never seem to get answered like you ask and you wonder why you always seem to be fighting some horrible battle. Maybe it’s because you have made bad decisions. Maybe it’s because you are being disobedient by not giving yourself fully to the Lord. Let’s turn to Philippians 3:12-14 and see what Paul says about knowing Jesus better and becoming more like Him.

I believe Paul must have been a sports fan. He uses sports illustrations a lot to help us understand what he is saying. He says we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood in Ephesians 6. He talked about boxing his body in 1 Corinthians 9:26. And he mentions running a lot in several different places and mentions the crowns the winners would get and how they would take the weights off their feet and so on. And it is the running analogy that we see here in this passage. Paul subtly works this running picture into our passage this morning. Let’s read it.

Philippians 3:12-14 says, “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. 13Brothers, 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, 14I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”

Paul was arguably the best, most powerful, most influential Christian to ever live. If anybody had reached their spiritual goals, surely it was Paul but here he denies that flat out. He says in verse 12 that he has not obtained his goal. The obvious question is, if you are just reading this passage, what goal was he pursuing? He told us that in the previous passage that we talked about last time. His goal, as he wrote in verses 8-11, was to know Jesus better. Paul is a Christian writing to Christians. He is not talking about how to get to Heaven. He is already going there. He is talking about the goal of his life now is to just know Jesus better and more intimately. But he’s not there yet. He knows Jesus well but he wants to know Him better.

Some of you are thinking you know Jesus pretty well. You know He was born in Bethlehem, raised a carpenter’s son, started His ministry at about age thirty, did that for three years and died on a cross because He made the Pharisees mad. There you go. Next project. But there is a big difference in knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus. There is a difference in praying to God and hearing from God. There is a difference between spending some time with Him and abiding in Him. Paul wanted to know the feeling John had when John had his head on the chest of Jesus as they finished their meal in John 13. Paul wanted to know what Jesus wanted, what He thought, what He did and even how He suffered. He wanted nothing more than to hear His voice and do what was expected of him.

In fact, not only was it Paul’s goal but he pursued that goal relentlessly. Look at the word “press” or “press on” in verses 12 and 14. I found this fascinating. Paul uses the word twice in this passage but it’s also the same word he uses in verse 6. Look at verse 6. Get your Bible back out and look at verse 6. Paul said he used to persecute the church. It’s the same word. To persecute here means to press on. It means to relentlessly pursue; to go after; to chase. Isn’t that interesting? Okay, it is to me. 😊

He says he is pursuing the intimate knowledge of Jesus but he isn’t there yet. Then he starts with the running analogy. He says, “But one thing I do:” Stop right there for a second. When you watch a good runner, what are they watching? They are looking straight ahead. Are they looking at their watch? Are they waving to their mama? Are they checking emails? Blowing kisses to the pretty girl in row 3? No. They are doing one thing; looking at one thing; concentrating on one thing. All their focus and energy is going toward winning the race.

In Luke 10, Jesus tells Martha who had been complaining about Mary not helping her, “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed.” The blind man healed by Jesus in John 9 said, “One thing I do know: I was blind, and now I see." David said in Psalm 27:4, “One thing I ask from the LORD, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.

That’s what Paul wanted and that’s what we should want. But I hear ya. Sounds like a lotta work and I got stuff to do. I’m all about that Jesus but I have to go to work. I have kids. I have responsibilities. Paul is writing from jail. What else did he have to do? Straining toward the goal of knowing Jesus better sounds hard. Right? Well, let me tell you something. Life is hard. Life is hard for everybody but it’s harder if you are a Christian who is disobedient. It’s hard to be holy. But it’s hard not being holy. It’s hard to give your whole life to God. It’s hard not giving it all to Him. It is hard to go to church. It’s hard not to. What I mean is, there are consequences of disobedience. You remember BOOCOD? Benefits of obedience and consequences of disobedience? We all want the BOO but we don’t want the COD. But there is definitely COD.

So, would you rather live a hard life striving to know Jesus better or live a hard life barely knowing Him? Would you rather have peace and joy in the difficulty or have the difficulty without peace and joy? Would you prefer blessings in Heaven difficult or no blessings in Heaven difficult? It’s your choice. Paul has found that everything in this life and the next is better the better he knows Jesus.

So, at this point you should have one last question. We have seen what Paul’s goal was: knowing Jesus better. We have seen why we should do that as well. Now, let me ask you a question. How? How do we do that? How do we pursue, strain, press on toward the knowledge of Jesus? What does that look like? What can we do specifically to know Jesus better? There are basically three ways. I wish I had some flashy answer that involved exotic locations and lightning bolts but the ways to get to know Jesus better all involve just spending time with Him in prayer, scripture and church. “Oh, the preacher thinks we ought to go to church more! There’s a shocker!”

Well, let’s think about it for a second. Let’s go back to my opening story and let’s pretend that I want to run that race again. You really have to pretend because that’s the last thing I want to do but just use your imagination with me. If I wanted to run that 440-yard race and win it, what should I do? I better start training, right? I better start by getting some running shoes. I’m not going to do very good in these boots. So, running shoes would be a good start. Then maybe some of those shorty shorts all the runners wear. Maybe I’ll wait on those. Anyway, maybe I would subscribe to Runner’s World Magazine. Start hanging out with other runners like myself. Maybe get a stopwatch to time myself. I guess that’s about it, huh? I’ll be winning that race in no time. Oh, yea. I guess I better start running. Now, I could run on the street but the roads around here have a lot of holes plus there’s a lot of traffic and also, I don’t know how far 440 yards is. If I am serious about winning that race, I have to go to the track, don’t I? The track is built for that. It is made for nothing else but for people to run around it.

That’s sort of like if I want to really get to know Jesus more and better and more intimately, I’m sorry but the best place to do that is the church because everything we do around here is done to facilitate your getting to know the Lord. Even when the church is not in this building; when we are in the jail or ministering to the RV park or passing out flyers or anything else we do as a church, the main purpose of that is to help us all get to know Jesus better.

You can and should strive to know Him better on your own. You should, as part of your pressing on toward the goal, have a good quality quiet time every day. You should pray and sing and worship every day on your own but if you are like Paul and truly want to know Him and want to be obedient to Him and you want that peace and joy in this life plus blessings in the next life, you will spend every second you can at church.

Now, I have said many times and will say again that church is not the be all end all. Church attendance does not get you to Heaven. But that’s not what we are talking about. We are talking about how to know Jesus better. Paul says we should strive, press on, pursue relentlessly that goal. It is going to take a real effort and if you are serious about it, act like it. I know you have to work. You have kids. You have stuff to do and responsibilities but everything we do, every day we wake up ought to start, end and include some kind of worship. If you are really striving towards that goal, you will listen to Christian music and even sermons on the radio as you go about your day and evening.

Your conversations ought to reflect your desire to know Jesus better. Do you talk about Him? Do you think about Him? Do your hobbies include Him? Do you have that running conversation with Him as you go about your day? I realize some people can’t make it to church. Some people may read this message from a jail cell and have little or no opportunity to get to church. You are going to have to strive even more, pressing on toward that goal at every opportunity, concentrating more and more on Him and His ways and His desires and being obedient right where you are.

But none of this is even possible if you don’t have that relationship to begin with. You can’t know Him better if you have never truly met Him and given your life to Him. The thing about Jesus is when you realize who He is, you have to make a decision. You have to decide to give Him all of you forever more or none at all. There is no in between. Half-hearted Christianity is not Christianity. But when you truly understand who He is and you understand what He has done for you, you will want to make Him Lord of all you have and are. Ask Him today to forgive you of your sins. Ask Him to come into your life and change you. As Him to have control and you just have to be obedient. Do that right now as we pray.