10/6/19 Philippians 3:4b-14 “You Can Be Perfect!”

04 Oct 10/6/19 Philippians 3:4b-14 “You Can Be Perfect!”

10/6/19     Philippians 3:4b-14     “You Can Be Perfect!”

Every year many congregations celebrate world communion Sunday and it happens to be this Sunday.  It is a day when all believers take communion everywhere.  So when they are finished on that day, they can have the cleansed feeling that millions will have throughout the world.  Isn’t that great!  I think that it’s a wonderful idea and feeling.(If you are watching this online, try to find a church and have Holy Communion.)  A few years ago around this time of year I spent the night sleeping in a box with our youth group.  I was very, very proud of these young adults.  We spent the night being homeless and hungry.  We began at Saturday at noon and didn’t eat again until 6 PM on Sunday evening.  Then on Sunday evening we would go out some place and have a bite to eat.  Usually the boys were quite hungry.  The point I like to stress with everyone, is that the real homeless and hungry cannot go out or home and eat.  They cannot walk away from their situation.  I was hungry on that Sunday night but they would still be hungry tomorrow.  Let’s try to remember these people when we go into our time of prayer.  (during communion.)  Paul is giving us a good reason to remember this in today’s Scripture.  We all have priorities in our lives and many of them are wrong.  Paul will try to help you get them straight and in return you can have a better life.

I would like to open today with a story that was told by Ken Sauer about a man in Texas who had been dating a young lady for several months.  For whatever reason, he killed her one day and made it look like a suicide.  The authorities agreed and ruled it a suicide and this man named Dan was home free.

Dan kept on living his life but he must have been going through tremendous agony by what he had done.  Two months after the incident, Dan went to see “The Passion of the Christ.”   The following Sunday he attended church and announced that he had to confess a crime.  He then drove himself to the sheriff’s office and confessed.  He was then charged with first degree murder and will spend the rest of his life in prison.  But at least he will have some peace with God as he will not have to carry this horrible load of guilt alone.  God has forgiven him.  Oh, he still committed a terrible crime and there is someone dead as a result.  He will still have to serve his time in prison but it will be a little easier as he has been forgiven.

You may be thinking right now that this is really a terrible story to start a sermon or to be any place in a sermon.  If you remember from last week, you are absolutely right.  But I wanted to point out to you that the Apostle Paul was very similar to our criminal Dan.  Paul begins our reading by telling us what a great Jew he was.  He was circumcised on the proper day.  He was of the tribe of Benjamin.  He was a Hebrew of Hebrews.  He was a Pharisee.  And he had persecuted the Christians.

Try to remember back to the story of Stephan.  He was stoned to death for his belief in Jesus.  Paul, who was known as Saul then, stood by and watched it happen.  He could have stopped it at any time.  He chose to be a part of the murder of Stephan.  I would guess that the family of Stephan was just as distraught as was the family of the girl that Dan murdered in our opening story.  Both were just as wrong.

And Paul, like Dan, went on after committing these terrible crimes and came to know Jesus.  He changed his life also.  Paul went on to write many books in the New Testament.  He brought the word of Christ to the Gentiles in the area.  He had been persecuted and beaten and left for dead because of his faith.  These were the very things that he had done to others before his conversion.  Now he is in a prison in Rome writing this letter to the church in Philippi.

Before I gave my life to Jesus, I led the life of leisure and sin.  You would not have considered me to be a bad person but I sure didn’t follow the teachings of Christ.  I was a pagan.  If you knew me 40 years ago, you would know that the only way I could be here today is through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who takes away our sins.   I know of many pastors who have a similar story of a very sinful life before they knew Jesus.  All these same pastors still sin today but now they have a place to take their sin.  You can have this also.  All you have to do is confess your sins to Jesus and ask Him to be Lord and Savior of your life.

The point I am trying to make here is that we have to be of a forgiving mind when we hear of people like Dan.  If he is converted and is walking the walk, then it is our duty to forgive.  Paul was a murderer also.  We not only forgive him but we read him all the time.  If you look back on history, you will find that some of the greatest Christians were also some of the greatest scoundrels before they met Christ.  Try to remember this when you hear that one of your neighbors has come to the Lord.  Please try to put their old stories of sin out of your mind.  Give them a chance at a better life.

Paul has told us how great he was before he met Jesus.  I am serious when I say that Paul was a leader with great power.  Then he tells us that whatever he had before he knew Jesus, he now considered it meaningless.  The only important thing is what he can do for Jesus in his new life.  All things of his old life are nothing.  As a matter of fact they are garbage.

Can you imagine this?  Everything that you have ever done is like useless rubbish.  I stated earlier that we need to have our priorities in order.  Even as strong believing Christians we need to do this.  Our social system tells us that we are not successful unless we make a lot of money, have a lot of power, or own a lot of things to name a few of our societal benchmarks.  Most of these things are totally unimportant.  They are rubbish.  Let me repeat that.  They are rubbish!  How many of these things can you take with you to heaven?

I can just imagine when I get to the doors of heaven and I tell Jesus that I was a millionaire.  I owned 50 sections of land.  I had power over many people.  And I pretty much know that Jesus will answer by saying something like, “So.”  These so called big things are not important. Again, they are rubbish!

Each and every one of us has to be careful about our priorities.  Do sports rule your life?  Do your families rule your life?  Does the outside world dictate what you do?  There is nothing wrong with any of these things in moderation.  You have to tend to your families.  You need money.  Sometimes outside forces do dictate what you do.  But you need to be careful that they do not take precedence over Jesus Christ.  God needs to be #1 in your lives.

Russell Brownworth tells the story of a man of 36 years of age.  He was down and out and had absolutely nothing to show for his life except for his motorcycle.  He was a drug user, an alcoholic and had been married a couple of times.  His passion was his bike.  One day someone invited him to church.  I like to call this radical hospitality.  This means that everyone you meet deserves a chance to meet Jesus no matter what they look like or what they do.  We are all sinners and we all deserve a chance.  Therefore you should be inviting everyone you see to attend church with you.

Anyway, Keith was this man’s name and he came to church.  It wasn’t long before he came again.  The next thing we know is that he was coming pretty regular.  Finally, he decides that the message is true and he asks Jesus to live in his heart.  You can guess the rest of the story.  Keith couldn’t find enough to read about Jesus and became dedicated to Him.  He even sold his bike, his passion, so that he could feed the poor.

This is the kind of passion that we all probably had at one time in our lives.  It is the passion and excitement of being a new Christian.  If you have lost this, you can get it back.  Just ask Jesus for a little help.  You don’t have to sell your bike, your passion.  You only have to give Jesus the priority that He deserves.  It doesn’t matter if you are a beggar, a banker or a billionaire.  Jesus needs to be your top priority.  As a little side bar, I find it very exciting to see new and old Christians fired up about their lives in Christ.  It is a good feeling and one that we should try to achieve.

And finally Paul calls us to move towards Christian perfection.  This is to be our goal.  This was one concept that the founder of the Methodist Church, John Wesley, was continually trying to grasp.  I think that this would be a good time to explain what Christian perfection means.

In our modern terms we think of perfection as not having a flaw.  In these terms we could never be perfect because we are in the continual state of sin.  We are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God.  But this is not what this means at all.  So you can all breathe a little sigh of relief.  What Paul, John Wesley and others were talking about is achieving ‘oneness’ with Christ.  You can do this while you are still sinners.

Over the years I have tried to explain my feelings on this during communion several times.  When you come to the rail or come forward or are sitting in your seats and ask for the cleansing that Jesus provides through the juice and the bread, you should be able to get up as nearly perfect humans in Christ.  When Jesus cleanses us, He does the entire person.  He doesn’t just cleanse here and there.  In the children’s terms, He also washes us behind the ears.  He not only washes our hands clean but our whole body.  So when you get up you are clean.  You are probably as pure a Christian as you can be.  And when you are clean, then you are nearing the state of Christian perfection.  Both Paul and Wesley would get to this point and then they would try to stay there through prayer, through doing the work of God, and so forth.  They wanted to stay there because it felt so good to be in the hands of Jesus all the time.  It not only felt good but it was good.

This is our goal.  Paul says to press on to be perfect.  This is why we have all these directions.  You are to be reading the Scripture.  You are to be in Bible studies and fellowship groups.  You are to be going out and finding the needy and helping them.  You are to be in prayer continually.  You can accomplish this by keeping your focus on Jesus all during your waking hours.  There are some of us that can do this.  There are others where we need a little more work.  But it is something that can be achieved and it is very worthwhile to be able to get there.  And it usually takes more than overnight to get there.

Gordon McDonald tells the story of how his track coach invited him over to dinner one night.  After the meal was over the coach took him to his office and showed him a notebook.  He turned to the back where the heading read, “June 1957.”  This was 3 ½ years away.  Obviously, Gordon is now an older man.  Anyway, the coach told him that these were the races that he was going to enter him in and they were followed the times he was to run.  The boy thought that there was no way he could ever achieve these times and how strange it was to plan almost 4 years ahead.

Then the coach showed him the preceding pages of the notebook.  He had laid out a 42 month plan for the boy to follow so that he could become a good athlete.  Coaches understand what it means to train for the long run.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, Paul doesn’t know if he will survive his captivity in Rome.  With the help of God he has mapped out what our lives are to be like in 3 ½ years.   He has helped us with a training schedule of prayer, study, worship and action.  Our goal will be Christian perfection, whether we make it there in this life or the next.  And many of us just shake our heads and say that isn’t possible for me.  But it is!  It is!

I present myself today as living proof that this is possible.  15 years ago I would have thought that it would be impossible for me to be here today.  The lives of several pastors before me and many of you tell a similar story.  And the journey begins, no matter where it leads, with prayer, study, worship and action.  This is the long range goal that Paul is talking about.

Jesus wants the very best for you.  I can’t tell you this too many times. You can achieve this when you let Him work through you to help others.  That day when I slept in a box with the young people, I was hungry and homeless.  I ask that you pray for the real hungry and homeless throughout the world.  They need your love and action.

As we prepare our hearts to go out into the world (holy Communion), pray about these people.  They are part of our long range plan that Paul was talking about.  In your quiet time, ask God to help you further the Kingdom.  And as we finish Communion, (the next time you finish Communion) bask in the Christian perfection that you will have or be near.  Jesus did all this for you.  Take advantage of it.  And thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.

Gracious God, hear our prayer of confession.  Have mercy upon us according to your loving kindness; according to the multitude of your tender mercies blot out our transgressions.  Wash us thoroughly from our iniquities, and cleanse us from our sins.  For we acknowledge our transgressions, and that our sin is ever before us.  Create in us clean hearts, O God, and renew a right spirit within us; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.