I love this book of Philippians. Have you enjoyed it? It's a blessing to go through. I know it's a loved, beloved epistle of Paul. It's one of those that is small enough that you can read it in one sitting and you can, you can sort of get the big picture of the book. And if you've, if you've never done this before, I'd encourage you to do it. Maybe take a month and read through the book of Philippians every day for the 30 days of the month and just saturate yourself. It'll take you 15 minutes a day to read the book of Philippians, but just as you do it day after day after day and jot down observations, the Lord will encourage you and you will see things that maybe you didn't see before in your reading, and that'll be just a great encouragement to your own heart. But we're in Philippians 3. We're going to look at verses 12 through 16 tonight. Now, if you're like me, we're going to read this paragraph and it's going to be very familiar to you. You've read this before. You've gone through it before, but I've never really done an in-depth study of this before. And it's just a wonderful paragraph that is fitting for all of us here in this room tonight who are believers in the Lord Jesus. So Philippians 3, 12 to 16, two essentials on the focused and strenuous journey of sanctification. Follow with me as I read beginning in verse 12 of Philippians 3. Here's what the apostle Paul says, not that I have already obtained it or have already become perfect, but I press on. so that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of by Christ Jesus. Brethren, I do not regard myself as having laid hold of it yet, but one thing I do, forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead. I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let us therefore, as many as are perfect, have this attitude. And if in anything you have a different attitude, God will reveal that also to you. However, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained. Let's pray. We come to your word, O God. We gladly and we humbly kneel before the authority of your word, because in reading the Bible, we are reading the very spoken, breathed out word of God. It is true. It is unchanging. It is inerrant. It is triumphant. It is instructive and it is powerful. And so we pray, oh God, that you would take your sufficient word and that you would change us, that you would mold us, oh God, that you would even convict us. Oh Father, I confess even myself and all of these believers here together, we could say we are not as far along the journey of sanctification as we would want to be. So make us more like Christ. Sanctify us. Show the sin that resides in our hearts. Bring it to light, O God, so that we would be more useful to you for the ministry of our great king. It is in his name that we pray. Amen. Wilhelm was a mountaineer's guide in Switzerland. Whenever people would go to Switzerland and wanted to climb the Swiss Alps, often they would look for and they would request and they would find Wilhelm. Because he had a good understanding of the foot and the hand and the eye and all that was needed to get from the bottom of these mountains to the top of these twist Alps. He knew the right paths to the top and Wilhelm spent his whole life guiding groups and climbing to the top of the mountains and then guiding these groups along the more difficult downward trails. He was a master. of leading groups in the Swiss Alps. One day, there was a harsh blizzard, and on the slippery, treacherous mountain slope and the blinding blizzard, he slipped one day and he fell into a cleft in the rocks. He died. They found him days later. And they buried him there at the bottom of the mountainside, at the foot of the mountains, right at the base of where he would begin his journeys so often. He loved these mountains. He loved climbing these mountains. Well, there was a whole lot of argument that then came. What is it that we should write on the epitaph? What should we write for this man? After much discussion, they decided on these words for his epitaph. He died as He lived, climbing. He died as He lived, climbing. I think that would be a fitting, a fitting way that that could be said of all of us in the realm of our spiritual walk. That it would be said of us, He died climbing. He died climbing. The Christian life is a passionate pursuit of Jesus Christ. It is a high, it is a holy ambition, it is a lofty ambition, it is a glorious ambition, it is an all-consuming ambition, and that is the pursuit, the relentless pursuit of the Lord Jesus Christ. And what we're looking at today in Philippians three is, is going to teach us about the pursuit of Christ. And it's going to deal, we could say a death blow to the false teaching, the false doctrine of perfectionism. Perfectionism is that false teaching that says that there is a class of Christians who achieve sort of a moral perfection in this life. They might say that there's no more conscious sinning in your life. Roman Catholicism has held to that. Methodists hold to that. Some Wesleyan traditions, the holiness movement. The Church of the Nazarene holds to this. Even some Pentecostals. hold to this. But if one were to hold to the view of perfectionism, then that would reveal a very distorted view of man. That would reveal a very distorted view of God. And it would also reveal a very distorted view of Scripture. Because one of the true marks, one of the comforting remarks, one of the comforting marks of our ongoing journey of sanctification and walking with Christ is the growing awareness that we have that we fall so far short of reaching perfection. And sometimes when you get saved, you think, man, I can't believe God would have saved a wretch like me. And that's true. But I think one of the marks of growing sanctification, of maturity in the faith, is that we see more of the dark crevices of our heart and we see more of the sin of our heart. Not that we see ourselves more perfect, but we see ourselves as more vile, more ungodly, more selfish, more dark, more self-loving. But in this journey of progressive sanctification, we keep pressing on. We keep going. We don't give up. We don't lose heart. We keep climbing. We keep climbing. Paul is a man who is climbing. He is a man who is following hard after Jesus Christ. He is pursuing Christ. He has, we sang that little chorus tonight, one holy passion. A magnificent obsession to know Christ. In Philippians 3, verses 1-6, we looked at it a few weeks ago, where Paul deals squarely, eye to eye, with the false teachers that have crept in and they've been infecting the church in Philippi. They say, you can believe in Jesus, but you need to add a little bit of your works as well. You need to be circumcised. You need to keep the law. You need to do this. You need to do that in order to be fully received by God. We call them the Judaizers. In verses 7 and 8, Paul says, look, all of the self-righteousness that I could have ever attained is garbage. It is dung. It is loss. Everything that I could have ever earned is worthless. Because, verse 9, there is something far better. I am found in Christ, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the law, but I've got a righteousness through faith in Jesus Christ. I've got a perfect righteousness found in Him. I don't need my own. I don't have my own. And then in verses 10 and 11, Paul talks about the joy that comes from knowing this Christ. I want to know Christ. And I want to know spiritual power. And I want to know fellowship in my suffering. And then verses 12 to 16, Paul just launches. He opens the door into his heart, into this lifelong pursuit, this consuming obsession that Paul has. He is pressing on like a runner. Like a sprinter. Like an athlete who's got the finish line in sight. And he wants the prize. He wants the goal. He wants that heavenly prize, which is the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's exactly what we're looking at in Philippians 3, 12 through 16 tonight. And as we go through these verses, Paul is going to give us two essentials on the journey of sanctification. And I just want to say at the outset, none of what I'm going to say at all applies to anybody if they're not a Christian. This is the journey of sanctification. In other words, verse 9 must be true of you in order for verses 12 and following. You must be righteous in the righteousness of Christ by faith alone. If that is true of you, now there are two essentials that Paul's going to give to us in this section. But if Christ is not your Lord, if you're not running toward the goal, if Christ is not the prize, Then before you start applying these verses tonight, you need to go to verse nine and cry out for mercy and say, I need the righteousness of God have mercy on me. And he will. So let's look at the first essential that Paul gives to us in this journey of sanctification. Number one, diligently pursue biblical holiness. diligently pursue biblical holiness. It's like what Christians of old would pray, Lord Jesus, make me as holy as a justified sinner could possibly be. I want to be holy. That's what Paul says. And the key phrase that sort of brackets the whole section together, verse 12, I press on, and then verse 14, I press on. So point one is really glued together. It's bracketed together by this one word in Greek, I press on. I am running, I am pressing on. Now, Paul, Paul is just a master writer. He is a master writer. In this paragraph, he's using all kinds of literary devices in the Greek language. He is using literary devices like word plays, repeated words, what we could call doublets, carefully constructed clauses that parallel each other. And he's going to use a metaphor that everybody would understand. It's the metaphor of an athlete. It's the metaphor of a runner, of a sprinter. That is what's going to drive Paul in this section. He's gonna speak in the metaphor of running a race, of running a race. Now, I want you to picture with me, maybe you've traveled around the world and you've seen some of these things, or maybe online, or maybe in your mind's eye, you can imagine this. Picture in your mind, Picture an ancient Greco-Roman stadium, an amphitheater, one that's all the way around a circle, kind of like Busch Stadium, but much longer, much wider. And imagine that in this stadium, in this amphitheater, you've got a course for foot races, you've got all the distinct lanes, and then you've got all these rows of seats that would go up and everybody could watch. Imagine 30, 40, 50,000 people, maybe like Bush Stadium, maybe even a little bit bigger. And there you are, you're in this stadium and you're looking down onto the field and you see the race. What's the purpose of the race? Well, the runners are racing to reach the goal. And they want to win the prize. So... Historical sources tell us near the entrance, the runners would strip themselves and prepare for the race. Then they would be assigned their places at sort of a stone threshold, and then sort of like different lanes on the field. And then there would even be, archaeology has found, some old blocks, some old blocks with grooves in the blocks to give the sprinter's feet a firm hold for a quick takeoff and a quick initial start to the race. So there the runners stand, their body is bent forward, one hand is touching the threshold, and when they await the signal, that sound, they would leap forward, and they would run, and they would exert all of their energy, and they would train their body, and they would fix their eyes on the goal to win the prize. That's the background. of what's going on in this paragraph in Philippians 3. But Paul begins in verse 12 by saying, not that I have already obtained or have already become perfect. He says, I've not already received moral perfection. I've not already received the eternal consummation of all of my salvation benefits, like we looked at verse 11. I've not been resurrected from the dead yet. I've not been glorified yet. I've not seen Christ face to face yet. I've not obtained that yet. I've not become perfect. But in verse 12, notice what he says, but I press on. I press on. It's a Greek verb. I like one English translation, the Net Bible. It says, I strive to take hold of something. The Greek verb here for press on has the idea of pushing. It has the idea of driving. It has the idea of setting something in motion fast. Interestingly, this is the word in the New Testament for persecute. When Saul persecuted the church in the book of Acts, when the Jews would persecute the church, what would happen? They would, they would use this word. They would aggressively, they would push toward, they would drive, they would pursue, they would chase after. It would be an ongoing pursuit. That's the word right here. It's often translated persecute. But that same idea of chasing after something is what Paul says. I press on. I Press on. And he says in verse 12, I press on so that I may lay hold of that for which I was laid hold of by Christ. In other words, look, I am pushing with all of my might in this Christian life, but I want you to know it's only because Christ was there first. And he sees me first. And He grabbed a hold of me first. And He saved me first. He secured me first. I like the ESV. I think it has a great translation. I press on. Why? To win the prize because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Verse 12. That's good. I'm only able to press on, Paul says, because Jesus made me His own. Jesus did the initial work to make me His own. That's good. That's the Christian's cry. Oh, I'm not perfect, but I am running the Christian race. Why? Because Jesus made me his own. Because I belong to him. Because he did all the initial work. I'm saved by his grace. And then verses 13 and 14, Paul says, and just so we're not confused, verse 13 begins by saying, brethren, He's writing to believers. This is not about non-believers. Come on, try harder to be good enough to get to heaven. That's not the point. He's writing to believers. And he says, brethren, he's going to tell us how to diligently pursue biblical holiness in the metaphor of a runner who is pressing. And he says, verse 13, brethren, I've not laid a hold of it yet. But one thing. One thing. There's a focus. There, there is one thing. There's a determination. I'm single minded. I am, I am captivated. I am driven. My mind is fixed on this one thing. It's like a priority. It's a concentrated focus. It's a crisp resolve. One thing. And Paul's going to flesh out that one thing in a couple of different ways. How do we pursue biblical holiness? Number one in your outline, you see it there. We cannot be distracted by other things. And beloved, hear this. This doesn't mean just the sins. Sure, sure. We turn away from sins. But Paul is going to speak of not being distracted by other things specifically in the past. Don't look back. Look at what he says in verse 13. Here's one thing I do. I forget what lies behind. I'm forgetting the past. That's a good thing for us to remember. There are all kinds of applications to this. I can't look to my past achievements, nor can I look to my past failures. I cannot look to my past successes, and I cannot look to my past sins, and we've all got them. And maybe you say, man, I can't believe what I did. I can't believe what they did. I can't believe what happened to me. And Paul says the past, in a sense, is non-relevant. It's non-relevant. What matters is maximum effort now. Now, you've got to remember the metaphor. Paul is using the language of a runner, and a runner who is sprinting, he's not going to look behind him and see where the runners are. He's not going to think in his mind, you know, I've not really won a trophy before. He's forgotten the past. What matters right now? What matters? The race right now that I'm running in. It doesn't matter if he's won trophies in every race before, or if he's not won any trophies before. What matters is right now. Maximum effort. Believers cannot live on past victories, nor can we be weighed down by the guilt and the burden of past sins. Hear that again. We need to press on right now, in the present, with all of our might, as it were, saying, I have forgotten the past, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and I am pressing on toward the goal. One writer put it like this, it's so good. He said, churches are full of spiritual cripples who are paralyzed by the grudges. by the bitterness, by the sins, by the tragedies of the past. We're not ignoring the past. We're not saying that those weren't real. We're not saying it didn't happen. But what we're saying is that we can often be spiritually crippled. And the writer says we must learn from Paul and have a healthy break with the past to pursue diligently and resolutely the spiritual prize that is ahead of us. And then let us remember that the clearest vision, the clearest vision for the runner belongs to those who have forgotten the past and they're looking ahead. That's how it is in running. That's how it is in running the race. That's how it is in the Christian life. So Paul says, here's the first way that we can diligently pursue biblical holiness by not being distracted by other things in the past. Number two, by pressing on hard toward the goal. Verse 13 continues. Here's what I do. One thing. I forget what lies behind and I'm reaching forward to what lies ahead. I love this. That's all one verb in Greek. reaching forward to what lies ahead. One verb. It's a Greek word that means I am straining myself every ounce of energy. It could be used to be translated this way, to exert oneself to the uttermost. As a hockey player, I remember this. I remember when you've got those races and, and the last one back would have to skate more laps and do more. And I didn't want that. So you're, you are exerting every ounce of energy. Paul says like a runner who is training every nerve and every muscle as he kept on running with all of his might. toward that goal. You've seen those pictures. Maybe it's online, or on a magazine, or on the news, of like an Olympic runner. And you see him in stride, in motion, and you see the muscles, and you see the veins. It is an all-out pursuit. It is an all-out pursuit. Paul says that's what the Christian life should be like. I forget what lies behind and I am stretching forward. I am straining myself with every ounce of energy. Now, does our Christian walk look like this? Could this metaphor be used of your Christian growth? Look, I was convicted this week. Why waste an hour? Why waste a moment? Not sinful things, not just indulging in sinful things, but am I straining, am I pressing on, exerting all of my energy by the power and grace of God, by the enabling strength of God? Like a marathon runner. Does that describe me? Does that describe you in our Christian growth? For us, it calls us to reach out. It calls us to seize every opportunity to grow in faith. I mean, this is Paul saying, I am running. I am sprinting. I am exerting all the effort that I can. toward the finish line. He continues, notice verse 14, I press on toward the goal. I press on toward the finish line. I, I press on toward the end of the race that I have fixed my gaze. You know, one, one Puritan said it like this, James Ferguson said, though perfection in holiness is never attainable in this life. Yet we are to aim for nothing less. Let's not forget that. Though we know that we will never achieve sinless perfectionism, we want to aim for it. We want to be holy to the Lord. We want that crown and that engraved inscription, like the priest's, holy to the Lord. For Paul, the goal of that life, that finish line, was Christ. I want to get there. I want to get there. I don't want to walk there. I don't want to stroll there. I want to run. Which then leads to a third way to pursue biblical holiness. Number three, he longs for the prize. And this is so good for us. Paul says in verse 14, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God. And yeah, I don't just want to finish the race and get the line, the finish line. No, he says, I want the prize. Now, in a sense, the metaphor breaks down. There's only one winner in a race. But you understand the point. It's not just for me to finish the race. I want the prize. And for Paul, the prize is Christ. To have him fully. To have Christ completely. To have Christ physically. To have him intimately. To have him eternally. Here's the lesson for us. Is that our longing? Is that our pursuit? Is that your goal? Is that your prize? I just want Christ. Yes, I want to finish the race and I want to finish it well, but I want Christ. You know, our heaven and our glory is not merited. We don't earn it by running well. Let it be said again. We don't earn it by running well. But we must remember, like Paul right here, in verse 14, I want the prize That you could say comes from the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. What's Paul doing? This is Pauline language at its best. Sovereign election. Divine choosing. I am pressing on. I want that prize. What prize? I want that prize of receiving Christ. Why? Because I've been called. Same word. I've been elected. I've been chosen by Christ Jesus. And by the way, it's an upward call. What does that mean? It comes from above. It comes from God. That's the prize, to reach the consummation for that which I've been elected in Christ, my union with Christ, all that I have in Christ. I want that, Paul says. So we diligently pursue biblical holiness, diligently pursue biblical holiness. Notice again, middle of verse 12, I press on. Beginning of verse 14, I press on. Beloved, where, where can you grow in this? Where, what, what, what, what do you need to give up for Christ? I'm not searching for something. I don't know something. I'm not fishing for something. But what could you and I do? to be more committed to Christ as a runner. So we are on this race toward the finish line and we're running together and we're not looking around us comparing ourselves with others. We're not looking at the path saying, oh, I shouldn't have done that or they shouldn't have done that to me. We're not looking at the stands up there and who's watching. We're looking at the finish line and we are pressing on. We are straining. We are reaching forward. Where can you and I grow? Where can we grow? May God help us by bringing us to our knees in repentance, where we say, God, forgive me. Forgive me, God, for wasting these moments. God, forgive me for wasting these days. God, forgive me for wasting these evenings. God, forgive me for not reaching out to others, for not being a disciple-maker and a disciple-er. Forgive me for not showing hospitality. Forgive me for not praying, whatever it might be. God forgive me and he will of course he will and we say God I need the strength and I need your help and I want to diligently press on and he'll help you he'll help you so we want to diligently pursue biblical holiness and then second and then just really briefly as we close The second way that Paul talks about sanctification is not only diligently pursue biblical holiness, but number two, diligently cultivate godly thinking. This, this is Paul's theme in the book. Think. Attitude. Mindset. That's one of the key repeated words in the book. Notice verse 15, let us therefore as many as are perfect, ironic wordplay there, He earlier said, we're not perfect. I've, I've not become perfect. He's using a wordplay, I think, as a polemic against the false teachers that have crept in claiming perfection. Paul says in verse 15, let us therefore, as many as are mature, spiritually mature, growing perfect. Let us have this attitude or this mindset. There's the key word. And if, if anything, you have a different attitude, there it is again, or a different mindset, God will reveal that to you. This reminds us of chapter two, verse five, have this attitude, have this mindset in yourself, which was also in Christ. You see, we want to cultivate godly thinking. Why? Because Paul brings out the fact over and over and over again that the way that we think drives how we live. You don't just talk a certain way. Things just don't come out of your mouth out of nowhere. We don't dwell and look at things and then live a certain way out of happenstance. Whatever fills our thoughts and our hearts and our minds, the internal mission control center part of us, whatever fills that, that's how we're going to talk. That's how we're going to live. That's how we're going to respond. And that's for Paul, why it's so important that we cultivate godly thinking. How do we do that? How do we have this right attitude? How do we have a biblical, godly way of thinking? Your outline gives a number of ways. I don't want to dwell on all of these, but we are to fill ourselves with God's Word. We are to have the mind of Christ from Scripture, 1 Corinthians 2. We are to meditate on the Word. We are to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. We are to allow the Word of Christ to dwell in us richly. We are to think with sound, sober judgment of ourselves and depend on God's grace. Paul says, if you have a different mindset, if somebody doesn't agree with our pursuit of biblical sanctification like a runner, if somebody doesn't agree with that, I love what Paul says, God will reveal that to you. And I think what Paul means is as the Word goes forth through biblical preaching, through the teaching, through the instruction, through the discipleship with the Word of God, God works through His Word to change and to transform and to alter our thinking. Paul says, God will reveal that to you. However, verse 16, let us keep living by that same standard to which we have attained. In other words, this is Greek language that just means stay in your lane. Stay in your lane. You're the runner. Stay in your lane. Keep the course. Keep running. You need to be focused. Stay in your lane. Stay on the path. Keep the course. This is Pastor Paul speaking to the church that he loves. They're brethren, they're righteous in Christ. We don't have to attain a standard to be accepted by God. Christ has done it all. But here is Paul showing a heart of a Christian. As he says, I am diligently pursuing biblical holiness and I am diligently cultivating godly attitudes or godly thinking. May that be true of us as well. May we, even as we gather and pray here in a couple of minutes, may we pray, God help me to diligently pursue biblical holiness. Maybe it's in your prayer life. Maybe it's in your Bible reading life. Maybe it's in discipleship, the one another's, relating to others. Maybe it's in your own personal conduct. Maybe it's in your speech. Maybe it's how you respond to that particular person. I don't know what it is, but it's praying. I want biblical holiness. And then God, transform my mind. Transform me. Fill my heart, my mind with godly truth, biblical truth. Help me to cultivate godly patterns of thinking. May the words of that little praise chorus be true of our lives. Give me one pure and holy passion. That's a great prayer. Give me one pure and holy passion. Give me one magnificent obsession. Give me one glorious ambition for my life. What is it? To know and follow hard after You. To know and follow hard after You. To grow as Your disciple in the truth. This world is empty, pale, and poor compared to knowing You, my Lord. Lead me on and I will run after You. May that be our prayer. tonight. Father, help us now as we would respond God to your word in a time of corporate prayer. Help us to call upon your name as we remember, oh God, that we are clothed with the righteousness and the merit of Christ. We come to you not seeking to find ourselves good enough to be received. But we come to you knowing that we are already received in Christ. So we pray with boldness in Jesus name. Amen.