Reaching Forward Spiritually: A Study of Philippians 3

Join Reagan as he delves into Philippians chapter 3, focusing on verses 12 through 16. He discusses the Apostle Paul's message about reaching forward spiritually, emphasizing the importance of single-mindedness, an unbroken focus on the future, intense determination, and continued growth toward maturity. Reagan encourages the audience to reflect on their spiritual journey, pushing forward with purpose and persistence while relying on Christ's assurance of victory. This sermon provides practical advice and scriptural insights to help Christians deepen their faith and commitment.

00:00 Introduction and Opening Prayer
00:34 Paul's Humility and Our Spiritual Journey
03:04 Reaching Forward Spiritually: Four Key Steps
03:22 Single-Mindedness on Spiritual Goals
06:56 Unbroken Focus on the Future
12:11 Intense Determination for Forward Momentum
18:26 Continued Growth to Maturity
23:35 Christ Ensures Our Victory
25:02 Invitation to Join the Race

Transcript

Philippians chapter three beginning in verse 12. Philippians chapter three, beginning in verse 12. It's good to be here tonight. It's good to be here with all of you. And I'm gonna read this evening from Philippians chapter three. I wanna start reading there in verse 12. The Apostle Paul says this, Philippians chapter three, beginning in verse 12,

not that I have already attained or am already perfected, not that I've already attained, or I'm already perfected. Do we really need to be reminded of that? I mean, maybe we have some days of arrogance, right? Where we think you know, I've, I've got this spirituality thing figured out. I've got this Christianity thing figured out.

And there probably is a very, very small, small group of people who are believers who are kind of like, God's lucky to have me. You know, I'm, I'm so great. I'm, and God lucky that I'm on his side. But for most of us. All it takes is a day or two of weakness to realize, yeah, I haven't attained it. I'm not perfected.

I'm not everything that I ought to be in Jesus Christ, at least not yet. And so Paul goes on to say, but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. I haven't laid hold of it yet. And again, we don't have to be reminded of that.

We've not received the spiritual prize. We are not there at the ultimate end of our calling in all of these things. We know that if Paul wasn't there yet, I'm certainly not there yet. And we all know that we need to reach forward spiritually, and that's what I want us to think about for just a few minutes this evening.

And if you turn to Philippians chapter three, it's gonna come straight out of this text and some things that Paul says here. We studied Philippians in the back class a number of months ago, and as we were studying through, I'm like, huh, that would make a pretty good sermon. And so we'll see if it actually does or not reaching forward spiritually as we think about that idea.

My question is how do we do that? That's the question I'd like to let Paul answer for us this evening from Philippians chapter three, verses 12 through 16 and the and the surrounding context. Because I know you people who are here this evening, you are looking to grow. You are looking to reach forward spiritually.

So how does Paul say that we need to go about doing that? There are lots of things that we could talk about if we wanted to just take that topic all throughout the Bible. But I wanna focus on four things that we see right here in the text of Philippians, chapter three, verses 12 through 16, that tell us how we can reach forward spiritually.

So what is required to reach forward spiritually? These four things in the text. One, to reach forward spiritually what is required, single-mindedness on the spiritual read there in verse 13. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended. I haven't laid a hold of it yet, but one thing I do, one thing I do, he says, not a bunch of things I do.

Not a long laundry list of things I do. One thing I do. Well, what was the one thing? What does he mean? One thing I do. We know the Apostle Paul had a lot of irons in the fire. He had a lot of things going on. He was traveling here and there. He was making tents to support himself. He was writing letters to Christians all over the, all over the world.

He was concerned about a number of things and so he spent all kinds of time in prayer. He was under arrest here and under arrest there, and in prison here, and house arrest there. He had a lot going on. He did lots of things. Yes, but Paul says one thing I do, and I think what he means by that is that he arranged his life around serving God, not God around everything else.

He set his priorities the way they were supposed to be and all of those other things going on in Paul's life. Well, those things were all arranged around serving God. The one thing he did. With keep his single-mindedness on what was really important, and that was the spiritual things of life. If you drop down to verses 18 and 19, he kind of gives us the other side of that, those people who don't have this kind of single-mindedness, he says in verse 18, for many walk of whom I have told you often, and now tell you, even weeping I, I mean I don't like it, Paul says, but this is the reality that they are enemies of the cross of Christ.

Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is their shame? Notice who set their mind on earthly things, set their mind on earthly things, both sinful and non sinful things, but all fleshly, carnal physical things. A scattered double-minded life does not give us joy. A scattered, double-minded life is, is just the opposite of this idea of reaching forward spiritually.

And so I ask you here this evening and if you're here tonight, clearly you have some commitment to Jesus Christ. You're here at five o'clock on a Sunday. What is your life about really? Where is your mind really? And I'm not just talking about like, like Barrett encouraged us to do in partaking of the Lord's Supper, you know, leave all of those things out there when we come here.

That's certainly part of it, and we need to do that when we come here. But I'm saying when you go out there too, where is your mind? Where is your. And we have things that we have to do at our jobs and in our families and with our friends, and we have our hobbies and all these sorts of things. And, and again, those things aren't wrong or sinful, but where is our mind?

Where do we set our mind? What are our goals? What are our priorities? What about on those days when I forget that, when I don't have this single-mindedness on the spiritual, when I don't focus like I should, what then? Well, that's the second thing that he says, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.

I might put it this way. An unbroken focus on the future. That's what is required to reach forward spiritually. The title of the lesson is not reaching backwards spiritually. Right. It's, it's on the future. It's on what's ahead of us, not what is behind. You know, those signs in various workplaces. Raise your hand if you've ever had a sign like this in your workplace.

You know, however many days since the last accident, and maybe sometimes that's the way we think about our spiritual life. You know, I haven't had a really big sin or some big problem come up in my spiritual life in this many days. And now, oh, all of a sudden I've gotta erase it and it's zero days since my last big sin, or whatever the case might be, zero days since the last AC accident.

So what I want to live today in service to God? I wanna live today without compromising spiritually only forward, not backwards. Only forward an unbroken focus on the future. How was Rome built? Hadrian said, do you know brick by brick focused on what I'm doing now, focused on what's coming next? And that's what Paul talked about earlier in this same chapter.

If you go back to verse three of Philippians chapter three, Philippians chapter three, starting in verse three.

For we are the circumcision who worship God in the spirit, rejoice in Christ Jesus and have no confidence in the flesh. Though I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so and so He is making this kind of comparison. You know, he's saying we are the real circumcision.

We're the real children of Israel, the true children of Israel in Jesus Christ. Not those who are that fleshly, but he said if that was the basis, then I would've been doing pretty well circumcised the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin. I don't know if he said Tribe of Eng Benjamin, but something like that.

A Hebrew of the Hebrews concerning the law of Pharisee concerning zeal, persecuting the church concerning righteousness, which is in the law blameless. But what things were gained to me, I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed, I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish that I may gain Christ.

Be found in him not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God. By faith that I might know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being conformed to his death. If by any means I may attain to the resurrection of the dead.

He said, I was raised from the dead spiritually there in verse 10, the power of his resurrection being conformed to his death. If by any means I might attain what it is I'm focused on in the future, that final resurrection of the dead where we can go and be with Christ eternally. Paul says all of those things in the past.

All of the things that were gained to me, I count them as rubbish. They're trash, they're dung, they're not worth anything. Why? 'cause they're in the past. It was before I was a Christian. It was before right now in my service to God. And those things in the past, whether they were good or whether they were bad, don't matter anymore.

If I've been forgiven in Christ Jesus, they don't matter anymore. If I still have work to do in Christ Jesus. As Jesus said, sufficient for the day is its own trouble. Now, don't misunderstand me in saying this unbroken focus on the future. This isn't some things that maybe we might misunderstand it to be.

This isn't, you know, not dealing with our issues or baggage in the past. It's not. You know, not repenting of our sins and saying, well, that's in the past. I don't have to repent of that. It's not the idea of, well, we're not gonna learn from our mistakes. That's not what we're talking about. But what it is, is an acknowledgement of this reality.

I can't do a thing in the world to change what's happened in the past. What I can change is today with an eye always on heaven. I'm focused on today and eternity. Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. Number three, what is required to reach forward spiritually?

Well forgive the repetitiveness intense determination for forward momentum. To reach forward, you've got to reach forward, right? He says there in verse 14, I press. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. So I'm a Christian and I'm working as a Christian, and I'm moving toward heaven.

Now I need to press it just a little bit. Sometimes we think of pressing in a negative sense with our kids. We say things like, boy, you're really pressing your luck right now. Raise your hand if you've ever said that to your kids. Yeah, yeah. You're really pressing your luck right now. What does that mean?

Pick, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. Get up to the line. Get up to the line. Get up to the line. Get up to the line. How about this one? Quit pushing my buttons. That's the negative things. Or you pushed it far enough? That's enough, right? Not, no. No. Further. What does that mean? If you were to summarize that? It means quit it.

Stop. That's enough. No more. But I press is just the opposite. Don't stop. Push a little farther, a little harder, a little more. Keep chipping away little by little with this forward momentum toward who Christ has called you to be and toward the prize of heaven. What is the image that Paul is using here?

Well, this idea of reaching forward and pressing toward the goal. Paul loved a good sports analogy, and it certainly seems as though he's using the image of the chariot race that would've been so familiar in Greco Roman culture. The idea is you're leaning forward another degree, you're giving a little bit more, you're letting the horses go.

Just a little bit more. But this isn't something where, you know, you just pick somebody up off the street and you say, okay, David de Young, you look like a handy fellow. Get in this chariot and go on this race. No, it's after training and training and training and training where you're able to press just a little more, where you're able to go a little bit faster without losing control.

And success is built on those kind of habits where we're not content. To just stay wherever we are. But we're insistent on pressing a little more toward the goal, this intense determination for forward momentum. My father-in-law gifted us some volleyball poles. Raise your hand if you've ever played volleyball with our volleyball poles.

If you played with Pat's, those are actually ours. And Pat bars 'em right. And he, he poured these volleyball poles in these tires and the tires are there and they've got concrete in them. And, and really it takes two people to do this. You gotta have one person who's holding the pole out here, and you have another person who's rolling and, and we keep 'em way down by the back of our property, and so you gotta roll 'em up the hill in order to get it into the front yard, where then we play volleyball and there is nothing more frustrating.

When you are the one pushing the tire and the person who's over here supposed to be directing you, runs you toward a tree, or they look off or there's a bee and they get scared by it, like Levi, one time, no, not really. And what happens? You lose your momentum and now you've gotta start over again trying to push that tire up the hill.

Instead, what do you have to do? You have to keep pressing. You have to keep pushing to not lose that momentum that you have. And so I think that's a large part of what Paul is saying here. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Paul says, if I have not attained it yet, I need to keep pushing.

And I don't need to rest on my laurels. I don't need to say I've done enough. I don't need to say, look behind and say, well, look how much better I am than what I used to be. All of those things may be true in some sense, but for the Christian to reach forward spiritually, we have to keep that momentum going.

Wishing to get to heaven is one thing, but going, striving, headed, moving, proceeding in that direction is another thing entirely to be determined. Your mind must be set there already. It has to be in your mind first. If you look there in verse 20, how did Paul think about it? For our citizenship is in heaven, not will be, not, can be, not would be.

It is in heaven from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm already a citizen. I'm pressing to go home even to a place I've never been. So I ask you, what are you pressing in your spiritual life? Come on. What are you pressing in your spiritual life? Does something come to mind?

If something doesn't come to mind, you need to rectify that. Is there a temptation for sin that you need to work on? Overcoming this temptation by working on opportunities and removing opportunities for that sin and working on your heart to desire more what God would have you to be. Are there good works that you know you need to be doing and you can do a little more of those works or do it in a different way?

Is there greater knowledge that you need to have of God's word? Is there a fruit of the spirit or a ba beatitude, like we talked about in the men's class, perhaps that you need to add? Is there perhaps peace and contentment like we've been talking about over the course of this year? That just isn't where it needs to be.

If you don't know, may I encourage you, humbly pick something and press. Press toward the goal by continuing the momentum in those areas, what we might call growth, and that's the fourth and final thing I want us to consider tonight. What is required to reach forward spiritually continued growth to maturity?

Read verses 15 and 16 with me. Then therefore, let us as many as our mature, have this mind. And if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule. Let us be of the same mind. This mind of reaching forward spiritually of consistently and constantly reaching forward spiritually is what spiritual maturity really looks like.

I want you to think of some of the most spiritual people that you know.

Have those people stopped growing? Have those people stopped pressing? Have those people stopped reaching forward? I, I think of the most spiritual people I know, they are constantly growing and they're growing, and maybe they're already mature, but they're continuing to grow in that maturity. This is the goal for all of us to get here in our thinking, to grow into this.

How does that growth occur? Well, there are lots of ways, but let me suggest one way. Now I ask you to think about people you know of who are spiritually mature. I want you another raise your hand thing. Okay? Who here knows someone in your life that is more spiritually mature than you are? Raise your hand.

Okay. All right. If you weren't raising your hand, I was gonna go ask you what your secret is, you know? But we all know people who are more spiritually mature than we are. We walk in the footsteps of giants of men and women who have gone before us, sometimes just before us, with great spiritual maturity who reached forward to the goal, and some of them have attained it in death.

Others are still with us, giving us an example. And so what I encourage you to do is just what Paul says in verse 17. Read this with me brethren. Join in following my example. And note those who sow walk as you have us for a pattern. Paul says, you need to imitate these people as they imitate me, as I imitate Christ.

And so if you wanna answer to this question, what is required to reach forward spiritually? Here are four things that the Apostle Paul says we need to be doing. But may I ask you to do one more thing and go to someone you view as spiritually mature, who is reaching forward and say to them, what are you doing?

And what do you see in my life that I need to be doing as well? And in that way, we can help one another to reach forward toward attaining the goal. So reaching forward spiritually, if, if you're like me and this image of the Chariot race, what comes to mind? For me, and maybe that's because my, my dad especially was like a classic movie buff.

He enjoyed classic movies. I, I think about Ben Hur, right? The, a story of the Christ. Even on the, the poster here, we've got the chariot race right here. You know, Charlton Heston did all of his own stunts in that chariot race. Did you know that? That's pretty impressive, isn't it? He famously trained for five weeks, for many hours every day in order to prepare for that climactic scene with the chariot race, and he became quite good at directing the horses and driving the chariot.

This is a little juxtaposition with the team of horses that he drove and the shades in the jacket and so forth, right? But he got nervous as the scene started to approach. Even with all of that preparation, he was nervous about interacting with the other chariots and the stunt people during the scene, an apprehension.

His trainer who was directing the sequence squashed with a great piece of advice. Anybody in here know what his trainer told him? Okay, good. Because I'm omitting a word. That's not a very nice word. Heston told the story this way of saying to his trainer, all this time it's just been you and me and this one team several hours a day.

When we do this sequence, there'll be eight other teams out there. That's not so easy. What if I don't win? And his trainer looked at him and said, Chuck, you just make sure you stay in the chariot. I'll guarantee you're gonna win the race. Well, I know that's play acting, right? That's a movie. But there's some reality to that statement.

When it gets right down to it, Christ is the one who assures our victory. I want you to keep reading with me there in verse 20 and 21, and we'll read down through chapter four and verse one here at the end of Philippians Chapter three for our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it might conform to his glorious body.

According to the working by which he is able, who is able, he is able even to subdue all things to himself. Therefore, my beloved and long for brethren my joy and crown. So, stand fast in the Lord. Beloved. Stay in the chariot. Jesus will ensure that you win the race. He is the one who will transform our lowly body.

He is the one who is working. He is the one who will subdue all things to himself and what he requires of each one of us. Our job is to keep focusing, to keep pressing, to keep reaching, to keep growing. And to not give up or give in and allow Christ to give us the ultimate victory. Stay in the chariot, stay in the race, and Christ is the one who will carry you to victory.

And so if you're here this evening and you are not yet a Christian, have you gotten into the chariot to begin with? Now is the time. Don't wait a moment longer, get into the race. The starting line to this race, this race that all Christians are running. The starting line is baptism. When you give your life over to Jesus Christ, repenting of your sins, confessing Jesus as Lord, and Christ, and Lord and Christ over your life, you go down into a watery grave of baptism because who you were is dead and who you are is raised up out of that water.

To begin running the race. Well, I'm mixing metaphors driving the race in Jesus Christ, and once you begin that race, the great thing is you have a great cloud of witnesses who are there cheering you on and Jesus Christ himself who has gone on before you and is there to ensure your victory if you reach forward.

Perfection. And if we can help you with that, even this evening, won't you come while together? We stand and while we sing.