©1998 Larry Huntsperger
Peninsula Bible Fellowship
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10/4/98
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That I May Know Christ Pt. 2
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Phili. 3:10
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10/4/98 That I May Know Christ Pt. 2
Phil. 3:10
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 so 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.
Last week we reentered a passage
from the writings of Paul
found in the 3rd chapter of Philippians.
It is a passage that we actually began studying more
than a year ago.
It is a letter written by Paul
from Rome.
He is under house arrest,
as he waited for his trial before Caesar
on charges of treason
against the Roman government.
This is Paul the power-house,
Paul the dynamic,
Paul the blast-ahead-at-any-cost
suddenly forced to sit,
to go nowhere,
to do nothing,
to just wait,
and think,
and put his life on hold.
It is a time
when Paul slows down enough
to look back over where he has been
and what he has done,
to look at the choices he has made with his life.
This is Paul sharing not just his ideas
but his heart.
He's not teaching
so much as he is allowing us
to look inside his soul
and see what's really there.
And in that process
we see Paul looking honestly
at what he could have had in life,
and in the Jewish community
had he not submitted to Christ,
and then setting that next
to what He has gained as a result of
his union with Christ.
And with power,
and passion,
and clarity he proclaims
how deeply satisfied he is
with his past,
his present,
and his future with his Lord.
This is Paul telling us,
"No matter what happens,
I WIN!"
Then, to help us better appreciate
the truth of what he is saying,
he takes the concept of gaining Christ
and breaks it down into seven statements
that help us to better understand
what he's talking about.
The first two statements,
1. That I my be found in Him,
and 2. that I may obtain
the righteousness that comes from God
on the basis of faith,
we looked at before we left this passage
a year ago.
The 3rd, "that I may know Him"
we started to look at last week.
I also mentioned last week
that one of my great concerns
as we study our way through this passage
is that the power of Paul's overall
message to us
may be lost in our efforts to dissect the passage
and look at it phrase by phrase.
We are going to continue to do that,
but in the process I also want to offer us
repeated reminders
that the overall statement Paul is making
is in no way obscure
or complicated.
He is saying simply,
"What we are looking for in life
we will find in Christ."
In fact, he says anything else
we might achieve or obtain in life
is like a little pile of dung by comparison.
Rather vivid language
even for the Apostle Paul,
but language that communicates well
the message he wants us to hear.
Now, with that reminder,
lets pick up where we left off last week.
We saw last week
that one of the reasons Paul values
his knowledge of Christ so highly
is because the knowledge of Christ
is the key,
the doorway through which
we are able to gain true,
accurate knowledge of ourselves.
Funny how it is -
high on the list of the reasons why
people avoid God
is the fear that the knowledge of God
will bring the knowledge of our sinfulness.
Now stay with me here,
because I find this fascinating,
and if I can communicate it correctly
I think you will too.
One of Satan's chief lies
is his creation of a caricature of God
in which God is a righteous deity
who is deeply distressed
with the amount of sinning people are
doing,
a deity whose chief concern
is to find some way of decreasing
the amount of sin in the human race.
In this caricature
the good boys and girls in the world
will be loved and accepted by God,
but the naughty ones
will do well to stay away from Him
unless or until they clean up their act.
And the underlying message in all of this
is the assumption that
the one thing drawing near to God
is certain to produce is GUILTY
FEELINGS
and a sense of SHAME.
That caricature could not be
farther from the truth.
Not only does the knowledge of God
not bring guilt,
it is the only thing
that has the ability to
cleanse our guilt
and our shame
and bring us true peace
with God
and with ourselves.
Paul says in Romans 5:1
Therefore having been justified by faith,
we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ...
And we saw last week
that so much of what we are seeking to achieve
through our positions
and possessions
and power
can only be obtained through Christ.
Do you know what we really want
when we get out of bed
and look in the mirror?
We want to like the person we see there.
We want to be at peace with ourselves.
And so we frantically spend our days
attempting to achieve things
that will coax some word of affirmation and
approval
from the people who surround us.
But what we really long for
is the voice of our Creator
saying to us personally,
"I love you,
you are my treasured child
and I have removed your shame
and your guilt forever.
You are carefully designed
and created by Me
for Me
and I am well pleased with who you are.
"For I know the plans that I have for you,
plans for welfare and not for calamity to
give you a future and a hope."
Satan says to the world,
"Stay away from Christ! He came to bring you
feelings of shame and guilt".
Jesus said,
"... I came that they might have life, and
might have it abundantly...John 8:32 and
you shall know the truth, and the truth shall
make you free. "
And John says,
John 1:12 But as many as received Him, to
them He gave the right to become children
of God, even to those who believe in His
name...
Only the voice of God
has the ability to silence the voices
of guilt,
and fear,
and shame within.
Now, we are going to take two more mental steps
in the business of knowing Christ
before we close for the morning,
but before we take that next step
I just want to state the obvious:
knowing Christ is not a point,
it is a lifetime calling.
In 16 years of pastoring this church
I have never offered you
a memorized prayer
with the suggestion that you pray it each
day.
Never, that is, until this morning.
Only, before I do this
I have one request of you -
use it only if it genuinely expresses
your heart desire
each time you pray it.
I share it with you
because it has become a part of my own life
and because it helps me refocus each day
on the one thing that matters most.
The prayer is this:
"Lord, I pray that I may know you this day."
I have been in the kingdom of God long enough
to have learned that
when I am seeing Him correctly
everything else in my world
is also in focus,
and when the world around me
begins to look terrifying
or senseless
or chaotic
or hopeless
I can be certain
I am not seeing my Lord correctly.
But my point here
is simply to state
that knowing Him is a continual,
active,
ongoing, daily process.
And so, "Lord, I pray that I may know you this
day."
Now, we've spend quite a bit of time
on one of the results of knowing Him,
and that is that
knowing Him is the only way
to true personal identity.
The second result I want to mention
is that knowing Him
is the only way
to true personal security.
Our Lord has chosen to allow us
to live in one of the most affluent nations
in the history of humanity,
an affluence that the overwhelming majority of
Americans share in.
We are surrounded by comfort,
entertainment,
and a surplus of goods far beyond our basic
necessities of life.
When we receive what we have been given
with a heart of gratitude
and thankfulness to our Lord
we're on solid ground.
But it is very difficult
for the human personality
to have access to possessions
without facing the temptation
of allowing those possessions
to become our source of security.
And you don't need me to tell you this,
but I'll say it anyway -
there never has been
and never can be
any true sense of security
in anything we possess.
Can our possessions give us one more day of life?
Can they guarantee our health?
What do we possess
that cannot be threatened
by one major earthquake?
or by a prolonged power outage?
or by the continued disintegration of
the Dow Jones average?
The kind of security our spirits long for
can only be found
in knowing Him -
knowing His love for us,
knowing He will never leave us,
never forsake us,
never remove us from the palm of His
hand.
When Sandee and I got back
from dropping our daughter, Joni, off at college
in British Columbia,
I half-jokingly told you
that Sandee and I had chosen to divide up the
areas of worry
because there were so many of them
and one person just couldn't cover them all
adequately.
Sandee was going to focus on the dorm and campus
concerns,
while I would handle the fiery crashes on the
freeways,
the muggings,
and other life-threatening disasters.
Its not that we doubt our daughter's good
judgment.
It's just that,
for 18 years we lived with the illusion
that we could somehow help protect her
from bad things happening.
But in the end
the true sense of security
can only be found in the knowledge of our
Lord.
Does He love our little girl?
Even more than we do.
Does He know her future,
and hold that future in His hands?
Ps. 139:16 Your eyes have seen my
unformed substance; And in Your book
were all written The days that were
ordained for me, When as yet there was
not one of them.
The only source of true security
-for my daughter,
for my wife,
for myself,
is found in the knowledge of my God.
That does not mean
that we will not hurt.
It doesn't mean He will deliver us
from the effect of every evil.
In fact,
this is jumping ahead a little,
but as Paul progresses in his list
of the things he gains
when he gains Christ,
the 5th one on the list
is what he calls,
"the fellowship of his sufferings".
Now doesn't that sound fun!
We may spend more time on this
a week or two down the line,
but for now let me just state the obvious,
that there is a unique quality of fellowship
both with God
and with our fellow Christians
that can only be ours
through pain,
through whatever suffering
God allows into our walk with Him.
And sometimes there will be pain.
There have been some bumpy places
in Joni's first few weeks of college.
There has been some pain.
Having a natural aversion to pain
for both myself
and those I love
I could have wished that
that pain would not have been there.
But I'll tell you
I love what I see happening
in our little family unit
as a result of that pain.
I love the kind of communication
and closeness
and unity
that we have shared
as a direct result of the suffering.
The security that comes
from the knowledge of our God
does not mean
that we will not hurt.
It doesn't mean He will deliver us
from the effect of every evil.
But it does mean
that nothing touches the child of God
without God's knowledge
and His involvement.
And we have His certain pledge
that whatever we go through
we go through with Him.
That is security.
I wanted to also talk a little bit
about the effect the knowledge of Christ
has on our behavior,
but it would be best
if we save that until next week.