Your best days are ahead of yoiu (Philippians 3:12-4:1)

In the last church I pastored, a woman gave me a video of her brother who was an evangelist in London.  I didn’t actually watch it.  Then one Saturday evening she rang me with a request.  ‘My brother is in town.  Could he speak in church tomorrow?’  

My sermon was done and ready to go.  I didn’t know this man.  So, I said, ‘I’ll preach, but he can give his testimony.’  The next morning, I met him at church and told him that he had seven minutes.  He kept to that seven minutes, which is just as well, as who knows what he would have said if he had more time?

The beginning of his testimony was very good.  He had struggled with an alcohol addiction, but God had changed his life.  However, just before he sat down, he said something that alarmed me.  ‘Since I have become a Christian I have not had so much as a cold.’  What did he mean by that?

The next morning, I took out the video I had been given by his sister.  There on the screen was the same man in a little church in Uganda.  He looked at the congregation and declared, ‘I have an anointing, and because I have an anointing what I say will come true.  I don’t care if you have AIDS or TB, tomorrow you will be well.’  I thought of some of those people heading home, perhaps deciding that they didn’t need their medication and yet still being as ill as ever.  It made me angry.  I was also relieved that I had only given him seven minutes.

I am not saying that God does not heal today.  We pray for people when they are sick, knowing that God is compassionate and powerful.  But we live in a world where Christians do get sick and die.  Our reading tells us that it is not until Christ returns that our lowly bodies will be transformed into glorious bodies (3:21).  Lowly bodies are bodies that decay.  Bodies like that of the apostle Paul who had to go to the hill area of Galatia to recover from a sickness (Galatians 4:14).  Lowly bodies like that of young Timothy who had to take wine rather than water for his delicate stomach (1 Timothy 5:23).  Lowly bodies like that of Trophimus who Paul had to leave behind ill at Miletus (2 Timothy 4:20).  Lowly bodies like that of the Philippian, Epaphroditus, who had been so ill that he nearly died (Philippians 2:27).  Lowly bodies like many of our loved ones who have passed from this world before us.

But it is not just physical weakness that we have to bear in this world.  We also struggle with moral weakness.  We often cry with the apostle Paul, ‘O, wretched man that I am’ ‘what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate to do’.  

I once met a man who believed that he had attained some sort of spiritual perfection.  He had a theology that taught him that we could be free from our sinful nature.  He believed it was possible for him to sin, but that he no longer had a bent towards evil.  Personally, I wasn’t convinced as I didn’t like the way he treated his wife.  The great preacher of the nineteenth-century, Charles Spurgeon, came up against such perfectionist teaching in the nineteenth century.  He once met a man who claimed to be sinlessly perfect, so he took a jug of milk and poured it over him.  ‘I watched his perfection disappear before my eyes.’

How do we keep on going as imperfect Christians in imperfect bodies living in a world that is filled with temptation, sorrows and pain?  This passage tells us.  Look at the first verse of chapter four.  ‘This is how you should stand firm in the Lord.’  We stand firm by looking forward.  We should believe that our best days as a Christian are ahead of us.  We should follow the example of humble Christians who are ahead.   We should look forward to what awaits us in heaven.

1.      Look forward for your best days as a Christian are ahead of you (12-16)

The apostle Paul is not what he wants to be.  He is not yet perfect (3:12).  We will not be perfect until we are like Christ when we see Christ (1 John 3:2).  But he presses on with his heavenly perfection in view.  He strives to take hold of that for which Christ took hold of me’ (3:12).

He seems to see the Christian life as one of spiritual growth.  We may not be what we want to be, but we are not what we once were.  Indeed, we are being made more like Jesus.  At least that is what should be happening!

This growth comes through an awareness of our utter dependence on God.  ‘It is God who works within us to will and act according to his good pleasure’ (Philippians 2:13).  We run on our knees.  We need to live lives of prayerful dependence on God, painfully aware of how helpless we are when we are proud and self-sufficient.  We cry out, ‘Lord, I can’t face this day without you, I need you.’  ‘I can’t change my heart, purify me Lord.’

I had a friend who used to think his best days were behind him.  He felt that the church used to be better, life used to be better, his faith used to be better.  I used to tell him that his best days as a Christian were ahead of him.  That is what we are supposed to believe.  The apostle Paul tells us to forget what is behind.  Not that we don’t look back in thankfulness.  But don’t look back on the days when you first followed Christ and think, ‘oh, wasn’t it wonderful then?’  You can have a future where you know him better than you did then and love him more than you did then.  We should always anticipate that our best days as a Christian lie before us.

2.     Look forward at those who give us an example in faith (17-19)

There are those who are enemies of the cross (3:18).  Such people do not see themselves as the chief of sinners, but say, ‘but I am a good person.’  Their happiness is found in their self-esteem.  Don’t copy the proud!

There are those who are worldly.  John opened his sermon last week reminding us of the shallow example of a celebrity culture.  Is fame and fortune what we strive towards?  Is our happiness based on our looks or image?  We will never be happy if that is the case.

The apostle Paul tells us to imitate the example of those who follow the pattern we gave you (3:17).  What is that pattern?  Paul has told us to consider other people more important than ourselves (2:3).  To follow the example of Christ who laid down his life for us.  To think of Timothy who took a genuine interest in their welfare and looks not to his own interests but those of Christ (2:20-21).  To put no confidence in our own efforts at goodness but consider our self-righteousness as nothing for the sake of knowing Jesus (3:9).

I was in the hospital visiting Alice a number of years ago.  She told me of this really kind doctor that she had just met, and that she thought he must be a Christian.  I described a particular man to her, and she said, ‘yes, that sounds like him.’  ‘Yeah, I know him, he has just joined our church.’

When I was growing up, we had an older family friend called uncle George (although he wasn’t really our uncle).  George was a godly Methodist minister.  He had served for a while in Sri Lanka.  The Christian author, Ajith Fernando, describes George in a couple of his books as ‘the pastor of my teenage years, who influenced me in the beauty of godliness.’

Look to those who will influence you in the beauty of godliness.  They are not perfect.  They would never claim to be.  Don Carson says, ‘I have never met a godly person who thinks they are.’

3.      Look ahead for our story has a happy ending (3:20-21)

In the Christian life there is a ‘now’ and a ‘not yet’.  We have some blessings now.  We are completely forgiven (you won’t be more forgiven in heaven).  We are perfectly loved by God (you won’t be more loved by God in heaven).  But there are some blessings for which we have to wait.  We get sick now and we will die (but there is no death in heaven).  We see through a glass darkly now (but in heaven we will see Christ face to face).  So, we are glad now, but looking forward to what is to come.

For now, we live in a lowly body that is subject to aging and influenced by our sinful nature.  This is a world of death.  The undertaker can sign his letters to us, ‘yours eventually.’  Jesus was a man of sorrows who was familiar with grief, born to a poor family, never owning a home, misunderstood by many, betrayed by friends and eventually hated by the crowds.  He shed plenty of tears.  He calls us to a life that has suffering now.  But our story has a happy ending.  He will transform our lowly bodies that they will be like his glorious body.  We will have a glorious resurrection body, that knows no temptation to sin and experienced no decay.

As we wait, we remember that our citizenship is in heaven.  That is where we belong.  That is where we are going.  That is the source of our future hope.  We will be the most useful as a Christian when we are heavenly-minded.  It was said of a man called Samuel Rutherford, ‘his hand was on the plough, his feet were on the ground, but his heart was in heaven.’  I remember listening to a woman tell her friends in a prayer meeting that she had breast cancer.  ‘God is good.  We will pray.  And sure, even if I don’t get better think of where I am going.’

Conclusion

So, we stand firm as we look ahead.  We look forward as people who want to grow in faith.  We look forward to those who set us an example in faith.  We look forward to what we will be when Christ returns.

I must admit I find this hard.  I can look forward to the next holiday, because I have been on holiday before.  I can look forward to that parcel in the post, because I have had many such gifts to myself.  But heaven stretches my belief.  It is hard to believe in what we cannot see.  We pray, ‘I believe, help me in my unbelief.’  For a vision of heaven will change our perspective on everything.  ‘Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, In the light of His glory and grace.’