And it's in His name we pray. Amen. You'll find Philippians chapter 3 as we continue our study in Philippians. When I was a teenager, there was a church in Laurel where I grew up, and it was a fairly large church. And it's actually a really large church. And a friend of mine, his family went there. And this is my friend Mark. You've heard me reference Mark. They were a great godly family and really helped me come to know Christ. And they had a revival there one time that lasted like a year and a half or two years. They brought in this revival preacher. Whatever happened, they basically met every night for like a year and a half. And I went to a few of those meetings. And it was kind of a, I don't know, looking back, I wish I knew more information about it, because I'm not sure exactly, was it real? Well, I don't know. Looking back, I'm like, what actually happened? But I remember one time I was there, and there's a large church with a big balcony in the back. And some of us teenage boys thought we'd get up in the balcony so we could goof off or whatever. And early in the sermon, he from way up, I mean it's a long, it's a huge church. He pointed up at the balcony where us guys were hanging out. And he said, there are six boys up there that need to be saved tonight. And I was like, I don't know who he's talking to. I'm already saved, who's he talking to? And I'll never forget that, because he just called us out from like way up in the front. And, but he was that kind of guy. He would show up, he would show up for the sermon and he'd be like, he would say stuff like that. He would say, there's five people today that need, that need to be saved or 10 people. He would just throw out numbers and which I thought was weird back then. And I think it's even more weird today. Um, so I know at least five of y'all, I'm just kidding. I'm not gonna say that, but I do, I want to say this. And the reason I thought about that is at least one person in here, I feel like needs to hear this sermon. And I'm not going to give you a random number, 5, 1, 30, 40, 50, whatever. Somebody, I think, needs this because this sermon today is about pressing on or continuing on when you're tempted to give up or quit. And we've probably all been there in some aspects of life. We've probably all quit something, whether it's a job, or a hobby, or a sport, anything. But when it comes to the Christian life, when we're tempted to give up, when we're tempted to quit church, for example, I hope we never will. I pray that everybody in this room right now would say, two things I'm never gonna quit on is God and my church. whatever church it is, whether it's this church or another church, I'm not going to quit on God and being a part of His church. So we're running a race, this Christian life is a race, and I think when I read, and you'll see it as we read the text in a minute, Paul used racing language that talks about running a race. And I don't know if y'all remember this, back during COVID, I was sitting around bored because it was COVID. What are we going to do? And I live right down the road from a trail, a trail that you can walk. And I got this crazy idea. I'm just going to start jogging on this trail. And I've never been a jogger, never been a runner. And all of a sudden, I guess because it was COVID and there was nothing else to do, I started enjoying running. And so I'd go out there and run the first time I ran I went like half a mile and I was about to die. I just like I'm done with this. I went back the next day and I ran a little bit farther a little bit farther and I started enjoying it. So I went and bought nice running shoes and my wife started running with me and we got the Apple watch so we can keep up with our running mileage and all these things and and We really enjoyed it, but we had to learn pretty quickly to pace ourselves or we would burn out. And so let's say Jesse and I would go to rate a run. I'll say, well, let's run two miles. And I'm thinking, here we go. I'm easily going to be here in two miles, right? But as a guy, what do we usually do? We're going full speed, we're going all out. And so I would go it's the turtle, tortoise and the hare story. I'm running as fast as I can. But a mile in or half mile in, I'm just dead. So I'm just walking. And this slow little jog she does, goes right on past me. And I'm just like, there's no way I'm losing to her. And she beat me a few times because I would just burn myself out going running too hard. I'm like, there's no way her little waddling run is beating me down that trail. But she did I take a picture from way back in the back. So, but when we ran there was, it helped having each other out there, it helped having a partner. Some days though it was so hot, like a day like today, right? You're like, I don't want to run today, it's too hot. Some days it was freezing cold. I don't want to get out there in that cold, it just burns your lungs. But in that phase of my life, I had set it as a goal that I was going to do this. I was going to run three miles. I was going to run three miles without stopping. I was going to beat this time. And so I just kept making it to the next goal. And I would set a goal, and I would break that goal. I would set a goal, I would break that goal. And I think that's similar to how Paul describes the Christian life. Because we know that the Christian life is not a sprint, it's more like a marathon. It's a lifelong pursuit. When God saved you and saved me, he called us to a lifelong pursuit of not, listen, God did not call you to a lifelong pursuit of church primarily, he called you to a lifelong pursuit of him primarily. Now that comes through the church, but do we seek to know Christ more in our lives? We're going to see that and I hope that we understand in life there's going to be barriers in life. There's going to be obstacles, but we are called by Christ through the words of Paul in Philippians 3 to never quit and to persevere. So find Philippians 3 verse 12. We'll read the rest of the chapter. If you're there, let me know by saying word. Now let's read God's Word. Brethren, I count not myself to have, I'm sorry, verse 12, not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I follow after that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forth unto those things which are before. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded, and if in anything yet ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing. Brethren, be followers together of me, and mark them which walk so as ye have us for an example. For many walk, of whom I have told you, and now tell you even weeping, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. For our conversation is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, even according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. There's so much in these verses. I'm just gonna bring out four principles to help us press on from this text. First, If we're going to persevere and press on in Christ, we must do it with purpose. Again, like I said, when I first started running back during COVID, I wanted to get in better shape. That was my first purpose. And then it was to run a certain distance and to run a certain distance without stopping. Then I wanted to beat my old times. And once I established that time, I'm like, I'm going to beat this. And so I just had purpose to keep me going. So on days when I didn't feel like going, guess what my purpose kept me going. Y'all do that y'all set like goals in life. I like to set goals. And I like to tape it to the refrigerator door. Why? I'm gonna see it 10 times a day, because that's how many times I go into the refrigerator door. I like to put a goal there, or the bathroom mirror, somewhere where you're gonna see your goal. And I have found, personally, whether it is with physical things, spiritual things, financial things, relationships, whatever, work things, I have found if I put it, if I write it down and put it up where I can see it, and I see it every day, I almost always accomplish that goal. Pretty amazing if you just put your mind to it, right? But we must press on in our Christian walk with purpose. And so to do that, Paul gives us some great things that we need to understand. First, he says that we need to acknowledge our imperfection, or how we've fallen short. Verse 12, the apostle Paul, who earlier in this chapter said, I have all the right qualifications to be this person that I am, and this Hebrew of Hebrews and called himself a Pharisee, and yet in verse 12 he says, even though I'm seeking after Christ, I have not already obtained it, and I'm not made perfect. In verse 13, I count not myself to have apprehended or attained it. You see, Paul acknowledged that he had not arrived. He knew that, and this is the difference between a prideful Christian and a humble Christian, or a prideful person and a humble person. A prideful person says, I've got it all figured out. I don't need to hear the sermon today. This sermon, I can just sit here and chill because I know it all, right? That's what a prideful person says. A prideful person says, my own intellect, my own spirituality, my own achievements, my own abilities, that's enough for me. But when you have that kind of mentality, doesn't that block you from learning? Doesn't that block you from growing? Yes. That's a prideful mentality. A humble mentality says, hey, I recognize my need for ongoing growth. I recognize that. I remember years ago, I had a pastor, and I was the associate pastor, and he would rarely ever let me preach. He just would never let hardly anybody else preach. He just wanted to preach every sermon, which I get that, but hey, sometimes it's good for the preacher to sit down and listen, right? Sometimes that's good. I enjoyed Wednesday night as junior, let our Wednesday night study. And I got to kind of sit back and just take some things in. We all need that. And we should never get to the point, no matter how old or young or how knowledgeable we are, we should never get to the point where we say, I know it all, or I have arrived in my spiritual walk, right? None of us should. A lot of us, several of us have been in coaching, and you know how it is when you coach a player who thinks he knows it all, right? He's uncoachable. If he knows it all, what can I teach him, right? But if you have a player who's like, coach, help me, that's the kind of player you want, right? Because you can coach them. That's the kind of Christians we want to be, Christians who say, hey, teach me something. I've told you the story many times about the deacon who sat in my office years ago and said, I pretty much know all I need to know about the Bible now. And I tell that story often because that story still blows me away that he would say that. How can you say that? And I know the guy, he didn't, he don't really know that much, but, sorry, but, but none of us do, right? None of us, I mean, the most knowledgeable, if you put all our Bible knowledge together of everybody in this room, we still don't know that much. There's still so much more we can learn and grow in our knowledge and our wisdom and our understanding of Christ. And so don't be the Christian who thinks you know it all. Don't be the Christian who thinks I'm too good to serve. I don't need to serve. No, we're called to be lifelong learners of Christ and lifelong followers of Christ and lifelong servants of Christ. And so we can't press on and go forward if we don't recognize our imperfection. What's the old kid song? He's still working on me. Remember that song? He's still working on me. He should still be working on all of us. Well, we also recognize not only our imperfection, but recognize our motivation. In verse 12 he says, at the end of verse 12, He says, I follow after that I may apprehend or attain that for which I am apprehended of Christ Jesus. So the motivation, our true motivation for following Christ, our true motivation for going forward is, well let me just quote the scripture, we are not our own, we've been bought with a price, therefore glorify God with your body. We are not our own. We have been bought. Jesus Christ, verse 12, has made us his own. We are his. And we need that reminder. He is the Father and we are the children, right? So our goal is to rest in his attaining of us. that God purchased us with the blood of his own son, and that we rest in that truth, and now we seek to just know him more, love him more. That is our purpose, that is our motivation. Not just as, it shouldn't just be, you know, I just need to join a church so that I can write that on my, who I am, I'm a member of this Baptist church or this church. No, our main purpose is to know Christ more. Doesn't matter what church we go to if we're not knowing Christ more, right? We need to know Him more. And as a part of that, our motivation is to not only know Him, but to make Him known. To help others, to help our children, to help our families, to help our church family know Christ more. Well, verses 13 and 14 give us another way to press on. If we're gonna press on with purpose, listen closely to this, we must forget the past and move forward. So verse 13 said, I haven't apprehended it, but this one thing I do, I forget those things which are behind and reach forth to those things which are before. I press on toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. One of the most crippling things people do is let, and by the way, we're all guilty, I'm definitely guilty of this, letting our past control our present. We're all guilty of that in some way or another. And this can truly cripple your current life. I read an article this week about church and there were four different answers to it. It was like, how do people feel about their church? And one of the highest percentage answers was, they think, excuse me, they think, I wish things were the way they used to be. It was like a high percentage and I get that right. We all can probably think back to some church past where we had a really good time and you know, we enjoyed it. But if we only think about those times, good or bad, or we were truly doing what we need to do now in the present, we cannot let those past things, the failures hold us down. We can't rest on our past achievements. Again, when I used to run during COVID, I didn't think about how bad the day was the day before. Like if I had a bad day, the next day I'm like, guess what? I'm gonna go out and do better. I also didn't care about the good days. I was like, well, yesterday I did great, but today I'm like, I might not do that good. I better move forward. Each day is its own thing, right? And so Paul says, my past failures, my past achievements, I leave those things behind. I lay them down. Now we all know This is much easier said than done, right? There's some things that have happened in my life, in your life, where we've been hurt, or past failures we've committed, and it's so hard sometimes to just let those things go. Maybe it's achievements. You just think, man, you're resting on what you did in the past. Man, Paul calls us here to lay those things aside and put your complete attention on the prize, verse 14, the goal, Christ. I've heard many I heard several preachers say this, the windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror. Y'all heard that? If we took off and drove to Columbus today, and we only looked in the rearview mirror, we're probably not gonna make it very far, right? We're gonna be in a ditch on Wolf Road somewhere. But we look out the windshield, most of the time, and we glance at the rearview mirror, right? And so in the same way, we glance at our past, we glance back to the successes and failures. But we're mainly looking forward to what's next. that's what Paul's saying here. Strive toward the prize, and the prize is Christ. Fellowship with Christ, and I mean true fellowship with Christ, where we pray to Him, we know Him, He leads us by His Holy Spirit, He guides us, and we know that this will lead to eternal fellowship with Him. So we press on with purpose. My other points are shorter. Number two, we press on in maturity. Verse 15, he says, let us therefore as many as be perfect or mature, have this kind of mindset, and if in anything you be otherwise minded, God shall reveal this to you. And what I think verse 15 and 16, what Paul's saying is, mature Christians think this way. Mature Christians think, I'm gonna leave these things behind and move forward. This is a maturity in your Christian life when you cannot let the past control you. It's an immaturity in my life if I only think on the past things and don't move forward. He says, if we're mature, we will think this way. We'll press on. We won't be complacent. And if our understanding is different, he says, we'll just trust the Lord to kind of help us. God shall reveal this even unto you, verse 15. We'll trust God to clarify things that we need to know as we walk along. In verse 16, he says that we should be faithful to the truth We've already attained it. We've already attained some level of truth by the Lord as we're Christians. And he says, be faithful to that truth. I want you to think about that. Think about all the people in your life who poured into you in a spiritual way. Pastors, Sunday school teachers, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, whoever. All those people have helped. God has used those people to build you into the person you are today. And who would we be if we abandoned that all of a sudden? I wouldn't dare want to let down, number one, the Lord, but number two, all those people who've helped me along the way. So we're to be faithful. And as he said in verse 16, walk by the same rule. Be faithful to it. And so there's a level of maturity we ask God to give us as we move forward. Number three, we press on by following Godly examples. Verse 17, Paul says, imitate me, follow me. and keep your eyes on others. Mark them or keep your eyes on them that walk as an example. If I ask you to name names today, I bet you could. I bet you could say this person, this person, and this person were Godly examples for me to follow, right? Parents, grandparents, pastors, friends, Sunday school teachers, whoever. I hope you have a list of people like that that have helped you over the years and I hope you can think back and hey, this is a time to think back and say, God, I'm thankful for those people. I'm thankful you put those people in my life. But I wanna ask us this, now, at this point in our lives, can others imitate us? Can we live in such a faithful way to Christ that others could see us? And maybe we're not even, maybe we don't sing, maybe we don't preach, maybe we don't teach, but people can see our very lives and say, they're a godly example. I can follow that example. It might be somebody who's really quiet and never says much, but you just know they're faithful to the Lord. This is why church is important, because we are able to be around other faithful believers. Once, years ago, I was preaching in the book of Titus, and I called the sermon, Trophies of His Grace. And I said, God has saved us to be trophies. And, you know, some of y'all may have trophies at home, or your kids had trophies, and the trophy just represents what you did, right? You played a sport, you did an activity, and you won first place, second place, whatever, that trophy. If people say, what's that trophy for? Oh, I see you won first place in this competition. We're to be trophies of God's grace. When people see our lives, they don't just go, oh, they're just a regular person. They say, no, he or she is a child of God. They're not perfect, but I can tell they're trophies of His grace. They live for the Lord. Paul says, imitate me. As I want to follow Christ, as I want to know Christ more, as I count all things lost, verse seven and eight, as I want to be found in Him, verse nine, as I seek to know Him more, in verse 10, as I press on in verse 14, Paul says, you do these same things by following my example. And this leads me to the key term of discipleship. that God has called us not just to be Christians, but to be disciples, to know him more and to make him known. So, we do that by following Godly examples. My final point, number four, verse 18 and 19, is we press on by focusing on the eternal. Verse 18 and 19, every time I read this, it takes like a turn. And you can see even in, I know the Bible I'm using here, it's a, verse 18 and 19 are in parentheses. which I think is appropriate because it takes kind of a turn here. Because it's all positive stuff we're reading in Paul's chapter three. Well, once he gets to the middle of chapter three, it's all positive, encouraging, follow Christ, do this, do this, imitate me. And now in verse 18 he says, for many walk, so he's contrasting the godly people that you want to follow to the others. And I tell you, even weeping, so Paul is saying this weeping, he's saying, he's writing this in despair over these folks, and he calls them something very blunt. At the end of verse 18, he calls them enemies of the cross of Christ. That's pretty tough, isn't it? I mean, have you ever called somebody an enemy of the cross of Christ? That's tough, and that's somebody you definitely don't want to be, right? We don't want to be that person. We don't want to be an enemy of the cross. We don't want to be an enemy of Christ. He says, but these people are enemies of Christ, and it's not who you think. It's not people out there who are preaching a false gospel, although they are enemies of Christ. He says, these are people whose, verse 19, their end is destruction, so their destiny is Damnation, their God is their belly and their glory and their shame and they mind earthly things. So who are the enemies of the cross of Christ? It is those who are focused primarily on earthly desires. Their God is their appetite. In other words, they're self-indulgent, living for the flesh. And we can list many examples of that. And we all have been tempted with these things. It could be an earthly mindset when it comes to material things, getting it. You ever see that when I you know, I have an F 150. I love my truck, but I see somebody with a better truck. And I'm like, Oh, that guy's truck. Why is he got a bigger truck to me? or newer truck, whatever. You ever done that you were going to a friend, everybody been to a friend's house and left and thought, I wish I had their house better than my house. These material things, or you see somebody with a nice ladies, a nice outfit, I want that outfit, you know, whatever. We're all tempted with this, but these are people who've given themselves over to materialism or to other earthly pleasures. And they prioritize their own appetite, their own desire, verse 19, over the desires of God. Now, I don't think God minds us having a nice truck or a nice house and things like that and nice outfits like God wants us to have things but examine yourself right now and say, do I desire earthly things more or do I desire godly things more? Am I more devoted to God or am I more devoted to just living life the way I want to live it? And I think this is one of my biggest takeaways from this text. is that the enemies of the cross of Christ are not even necessarily those people that you think, although obviously false teachers are, but the enemies of the cross are people who completely ignore it altogether and say, I'm just gonna live a life of sin and not even think about God. And there are people, listen, who go to church, who are in churches today who live this way. And those kind of people are showing up at church on Sunday, and sitting in a chair. And they're thinking, well, I know I'm living for the work for the world. But this Sunday morning, I'll just this will make it all better. It's kind of like if you cut your arm open, and blood's gushing everywhere. And you say, hand me a bandaid. Is that band-aid gonna do much? Probably not. But there are people who go to church every week and think that Sunday morning will just be the band-aid over their sinful life. Now, God can use them sitting in church and they can hear the gospel and hear the word. I'm trying to call you to understand that last part of verse 19. There are people who are devoted to earthly things. instead of Christ. Look at verse 20. He contrasts it. He says, not us. We are not like that. We're not like verse 18. We're not like verse 19. Our identity and our hope is not in this world, but our citizenship is in heaven. Last week, I don't know how y'all felt. Last week we had Independence Day, July 4th. July 4th is one of my favorite holidays. Because why, we eat good food, we hang out with family or friends, eat foods, watch some fireworks, and I'm proud to be an American. I love our beautiful display we have down here. I love being an American. Do you? Hope so. But, as a Christian, our primary citizenship is not American. In the grand scheme of life, right, in the grand scheme of everything, what's Paul say? Our citizenship is where? In heaven. And so of course we're proud to be where we're from, but we're not looking this way, we're looking this way. Our citizenship is in heaven and we look that way, why? Because we're looking for a savior. And this savior is one who will return. It's so interesting to me how our Sunday school classes right now, the two adult classes, one's going through Revelation, and our class is going through a study called Heaven, Hell, and the End of the World, and it seems like, and I don't know, but I hadn't asked the Revelation class, but so many things in Philippians are kind of connecting some dots. These verses, verse 20 and 21, were in our study this morning in Sunday school, and I did not plan that. And one thing we know as a church and we preach and believe is that Jesus Christ will return. Now, I'll be honest, it could be today or it could be 10,000 years, I don't know. I mean, it seems like probably nearer than farther away, right? But I don't know. But what we do know is he is returning. There's a lot of questions about all the stuff that goes with it, right? And that's fun to discuss, but he's returning at some point. And we're called in scripture, whether it's gonna be today or 10,000 years, we're called as long as we're here to anticipate his coming and to look for it and to wait for it. Does that mean we stop working? Does that mean we stop living? No, the scripture actually talks about that. We keep doing what God's called us to do, but we also have an eye open in case. And when he returns, verse 21 says this, I love verse 21, He will change our lowly or vile body. Come on, Paul, that's kind of harsh, calling our bodies vile, but I know what he means. That it may be like his glorious body. So we hear the doctrine here in this point of glorification, that when Christ returns, he will transform us. And as Christ had that resurrected body, we will have glorious resurrected bodies. And we had a big discussion on that this morning in Sunday school. What's that body gonna look like? And all the different things about it. What age will that body be? What, you know, will I have hair? I mean, who knows what's gonna happen. I mean, if all's, the Lord is just, I have hair again. He is just. We don't know what it's gonna be like exactly, but There's a guarantee in scripture that he will give us a glorified, resurrected body. And the main thing about that body isn't hair, or age, or muscles, or what we look like. The main thing about that body is that it will be free from sin, sickness, pain, suffering, and death. That's something to look forward to, isn't it? I mean, we can all agree, the older we get, the more these bodies fall apart. Things go wrong. One day, you're going to have a resurrected body in Christ to live in his presence. And so, verse 20 and 21 is a motivating fuel for us to press on, to persevere, and to run our race. So, in conclusion, Paul calls us in this text to lay down the past and strain toward what is ahead, to focus on the prize, and in this case, the prize is knowing Christ. And we're called by Paul to run faithfully, watch me, today, and then tomorrow, and then the next day, until the Lord returns or takes us home. And we're told in this chapter, in this book really, the only way to run this race well is with a hope and a strength that does not come from ourselves. We're gonna see in the coming weeks in chapter four, right? I can do all things through who? Christ, who strengthens me. The only way to press on, the only way to run this race is through the hope and strength that is found in Christ. I've talked a lot about running today. I'll read you this illustration I found related to this as I conclude. It says there's a marathon runner, her name is Sarah, and she's been training for the race of her life. She's gonna run 26.2 miles, a grueling test of her endurance. Early in the race, she trips at mile five, scrapes her knee, and loses valuable time. But she gets up and keeps going. At mile 10, she hits a high, feeling strong as the crowd cheers her on. As Sarah reaches mile 20, her legs ache, her lungs burn, and the finish line seems impossibly far away. In those moments, Sarah faces a choice. Dwell on the fall at the mile five, or the triumph at mile 10, or keep her eyes fixed on the finish line and press on. As I've said in the sermon, life is like that marathon. Our past, both the stumbles and the victories, can weigh us down if we let them. If you fall then hard, you have a failure, some past thing that still stings. Or maybe you're coasting on past success. Remember, that's not enough. In Philippians 3, Paul reminds us to press on. So for Sarah, this means ignoring the pain, tuning out distractions, and focusing on the finish line. Sarah remembered the words of her coach. You don't win by looking back. You win by running forward. She draws strength as she takes water. She draws strength as she hears the crowd's encouragement. And she draws strength from her training. in the same way we press on, not in our own power, but by Christ, who gives us our strength. So today, what is holding you back from running faithfully? What is holding you back from running the race that God's called you to run? What do you need to lay down so that you can run better? What do you need to pick up so that you can run better? It's time to fix our eyes on Him. And even today, as we close in prayer in a moment, I want you, I ask you, I encourage you to even say a prayer of commitment. Lord, help me to run more faithfully starting today than I have in the past. And give me the strength to do it. I love verse 14. I press on toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Let's pray.