07-07-13 That I May Know Him Pt. 1

Paul wrote the book of Philippians

in what, on the basis of his circumstances,

should have been a very dark time in his life,

sitting in prison

very possibly waiting

for his own execution.

And in it he shares with us

the attitudes that equipped him

not only to survive

but actually to thrive

in the midst of the darkness surrounding him.

It is a remarkable letter

not only for what it says,

but all the more for what it says

given where Paul was at when he wrote it.

At least 16 times in these 4 chapters

Paul uses the words “joy” and “rejoice”.

And even more important,

he gives a basis for it.

Most of the books in the Bible

I read for information,

for knowledge,

for truth.

The book of Philippians

provides all of those.

But that’s not why I read it -

I read it for encouragement.

When my daughter was heading off to college

she wanted to know

if she could take with her

the down quilt from off of her bed.

This quilt had been in our family

for more than 20 years.

It had gone through several generations of new covers being sewn on it.

It weighed a ton.

We told her we’d get her a new quilt if she wanted,

but she said she liked that old one

because she loved the feeling of its weight

pressing on her,

surrounding her,

hugging her when she crawled into bed.

The book of Philippians

has some things in common

with that quilt that Joni took to school with her.

It has the ability to surround us

with a sense of security

and warmth

and protection,

the kind of security

and warmth

and protection that can only come

from discovering

that the arms of our God

are wrapped around us,

holding us,

protecting us,

sharing His love with us.

The world in which we live

is an intensely hostile place to live.

We cannot change that.

This is the world

and the time

and the place

in which our Lord has chosen to place us.

But in such a time

and such a world

it is easy to get confused.

It is easy to fall into the trap of believing

that what we need in order to endure

is more and more knowledge

about what is happening

in the world around us.

If only we had more accurate news reporters,

more reliable news sources,

then we would be better equipped to cope with what’s coming...and what is.

But the truth is

what we need most of all

is not more accurate information about the darkness,

what we need is more accurate knowledge about the light.

What we need is more accurate knowledge

about our God

and about His sufficiency for us

no matter what may come our way.

We left off our study

of the book of Philippians

in the middle of one of the most wonderful passages in all of Scripture.

The passage begins in Phil. 3:8

and runs through verse 14.

We had studied our way through

Philippians 3:9

and I want to read the passage as a whole once again

before we resume our study

where we left off.

Phil. 3:8 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 in order that I may gain Christ,

Phil. 3:9 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,

Phil. 3:10 that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death;

Phil. 3:11 in order that I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.

Phil. 3:12 Not that I have already obtained it, or have already become perfect, but I press on in order that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus.

Phil. 3:13 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,

Phil. 3:14 I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

We spent 4 weeks

looking at that one phrase in which Paul talks with us about

the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith...

Obviously,

I thought it was an extremely important phrase.

Now, I know there is a danger in dissecting this passage

and examining it phrase by phrase.

It is the danger

of losing sight of the power

and the passion with which

Paul wrote the passage.

During the past nearly 50 years

I believe I have spent

more time studying the writings of Paul

than I have with all the other New Testament writers combined.

I believe this passage,

these 7 verses better express

Paul’s heart philosophy of life

than any other passage he ever wrote.

These words are intensely personal.

He isn’t teaching

he isn’t preaching,

he’s simply sharing himself,

allowing us to look into his soul

so that we can see him at the deepest level.

To take a statement like that

and turn it into an academic exercise

is a dangerous thing to do.

It’s a little bit like

a young man

at a crisis point in his life

saying to the young lady he has been dating,

“Listen! I don’t know what the future holds for me.

I don’t even have a clear idea

what kind of work I want to do,

or where I’ll end up living.

I just know I need you,

and I can’t face the future without you by my side.

I love you.

I want you with me forever.

I want us to share the good times

and the bad times,

I want my future to by our future together.

Will you marry me?”

And then the young lady

responds to what he has just said

by saying,

“Now, let me see if I have understood

what you just said correctly.

You began by stating 3 areas of ignorance:

1. You don’t know the future.

2. You don’t know what career field you will enter.

3. You are uncertain as to where you will establish a permanent residence.

Then,

following those three areas of ignorance,

you expressed love for me,

and then submitted a request

that I give consideration

to the possibility of marriage.

Does that correctly summarize

what you have just said?”

And technically yes, it does.

But in another sense

breaking the message into tiny pieces

and examining each piece individually

runs the risk of destroying

the very heart of what is being communicated.

The central message Paul wants to communicate in these verses is clear.

There is nothing we can ever pursue,

ever attain,

ever possess,

ever achieve

that can even remotely compare

with the value of gaining Christ.

In fact,

he says that, by comparison,

anything else I might have obtained

or achieved

when set next to the value of gaining Christ

is like rubbish by comparison.

The King James version

translates that word “rubbish”

in Phil. 3:8

with an even more descriptive word.

It uses the word ‟dung”.

What is it you’ve set your heart on right now?

To be one of the starting 5 in basketball this next year?

To achieve a 4.0 average?

To be class president?

To make that great career change you’ve been striving for?

To get that certain person to notice you?

To get that new car,

or that new house,

or that new snow machine?

Paul says that,

if we saw correctly what it meant

for us to “gain Christ”,

all those other things we think we want

would be about as valuable to us

as a little pile of poop by comparison.

We don’t believe it, do we?

And the reason we don’t

is because we have no idea

what it really means

for us to gain Christ.

Now, at the risk of destroying

the power of the whole,

I want us to drop back into

the list of seven elements Paul offers

in his attempt to describe

what it means to gain Christ.

We have looked at the first two:

1. That I may be found in Him,

2. and that I may obtain

the righteousness that comes from God

on the basis of faith.

And I want us to pick up with #3

which is found in the first phrase

of Phil 3:10: that I may know Him.

Now we’re just going to start this today,

but I do want to leave you

with at least one aspect

of what’s really going on in this phrase.

Paul has just told us

that he would gladly exchange

anything else he could ever possess

for the privilege of knowing Christ.

And I really do not want you to do

what I think you may be doing right now.

When we don’t understand

something that our Lord has said to us

rather than wrestling with it

we will sometimes tend to spiritualize it.

We turn it into “God words”,

religious babble

that has no real contact with practical living,

but sounds good in a mystical, religious sort of way.

“Oh, yes! Just to know the blessed Savior is worth all that I’ve ever possessed and more!!”

That is not what Paul is doing here.

He is not just offering God-words,

he’s communicating a practical,

foundation principle of human existence,

and also sharing with us

the one truth that is the most difficult for any human being ever to fully grasp.

Do you know what our relationship with our God is like when we first come to Him?

I want you to imagine that you are about 10 years old.

When you were less than a year old

your parents went through a brutal divorce

that left your mom deeply bitter and resentful against your dad.

She received full custody

and shortly after the divorce

she took you and moved out of state,

refusing to allow your father

to have any contact with you

or access to you.

During the past 10 years

several things have been going on.

Some of them you have been keenly aware of,

and some you have not.

Though you haven’t known it,

during the past 10 years

your dad has been absolutely faithful

in meeting all of your financial needs.

He has supplied far beyond what the courts have required of him,

always making certain than any additional medical

or school

or other financial needs were met.

He always sent appropriate and carefully selected gifts on Christmas

and your birthday,

gifts your mother never told you about,

gifts she intercepted,

and then gave to you as if they were from her.

Your dad has also established

and regularly contributed to a college fund for you,

making certain that, when the money was needed, it would be there.

Each week he wrote to you,

telling you about himself, his life,

his love for you,

and his longing to one day be with you and see you again.

But they were letters you never saw,

never even knew were written

because your mom destroyed them

before you had a chance to see them.

During the past 10 years

your mom has also been doing something else.

She has been carefully creating for you

a mental image of what she wants you to believe your father is like.

She has told you often what a harsh,

cruel, demanding man he is.

She has told you how

he tolerates no mistakes,

no silliness,

no foolishness of any kind.

She has told you he has a terrible temper,

and described how he is quick to lash out and beat any child who doesn’t obey him instantly.

She has told you how he quickly tires of children,

how they irritate him and how he prefers to not even have them around.

For your entire life

she has vented all of her bitterness against her former husband

by creating for you

a mental picture of a father who is a horrible,

severe,

terrifying man to meet.

And then you learn

that he’s coming to town

just to meet you

and spend time with you.

With that background,

how do you think you would go into that meeting?

Blinded your entire life

to his true heart attitude towards you,

fed a twisted, distorted concept

of who he really is...

there is no way you could not go into that meeting

fearful,

and constantly misinterpreting

what he does,

what he says,

and the way he acts toward you.

I think that is not unlike where we are

when we first come to God.

Like that 10 year old child

we think we know a great deal about our Father God.

But our concept of Him

is one that was built

when we were living in open rebellion against Him,

when Satan and his world system

fed us constant lies about our God,

telling us that He is the One to be avoided at all cost.

And then we come to Paul’s affirmation here in Philippians

that knowing Christ

is of greater value to him personally

than all the other things

he had been pursing in life.

And to the degree that our response to God differs

from what Paul says in this passage,

to that degree we know that we have bought the lie.

Now we are going to stay with this whole thing for a few weeks,

but this morning let me just offer one step toward the truth.

Paul makes that statement, in part,

because knowing Christ

is the only accurate way

we will ever have

of knowing ourselves

and finding true peace with ourselves.

Now look at this...

everything Paul had attempted to achieve

in the Jewish community

outside of Christ -

the status, the recognition, the credentials -

he had sought all of them

for the same reason we want to be one of the starting 5 on the basketball team,

for the same reason we want that 4.0,

or we want to be president,

or salesman of the year,

or the strongest or funniest or sharpest person on the crew or in the office.

We want those things

so that we can feel good about ourselves

and secure about our future.

Apart from Christ

the only way we have

of figuring out who we are

and whether or not we have value

is through listening to the voices of those around us.

Do they like us?

Do they cheer for us?

Do the applaud us?

Do the envy us?

Do they wish they had what we have?

If they do, then surly that proves we have value.

The problem, of course, is that it never works.

It can’t work

because no other human being

or group of human beings

can ever provide us with an absolute reference point

by which we can know ourselves

and our own value with certainty.

But when we begin

to know Christ, our Creator,

we also begin to know ourselves.

When we begin to hear Him say,

“I formed you in your mother’s womb,

I carefully designed you and you are fearfully and wonderfully made by My hand.

I know you totally,

and love you eternally.

You are my son, my daughter,

and you possess great worth,

great dignity,

and great significance to Me, the Creator of all that is.”

In other words,

when we begin to know our God’s heart attitude toward us,

for the first time we are freed

to begin to find peace with ourselves,

and all those other things

we were clinging to so desperately,

trying to prove our worth to ourselves

suddenly can be seen as nothing

compared to the sure and certain voice

of God Himself.

Phil. 3:8 More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord ...and count them but rubbish in order that I may gain Christ...