A few weeks later, a prestigious gathering of coaches and
athletes from across the country was held.
Tom Landry, the acclaimed Coach of the Dallas Cowboys, had an extra
ticket. He invited the humiliated and
discredited former coach, Woody Hayes, as his guest.
When they walked together into the banquet hall and the
heads all started to turn, in that moment Coach Landry became Professor Landry
– a teacher of grace and mercy.
Someone has said, “All of God’s blessings are accompanied
with a teaching certificate. When God
forgives you, He equips you to become a teacher of forgiveness. When God pours generosity and kindness into
your life, He qualifies you to become a professor of kindness and
generosity.” And that’s what we see the
Apostle Paul being time and time again.
What is best known about his letter to the Philippian Church
is that it’s one of the letters he writes from prison. Unlike most of his other letters, Philippians
is a letter of unbridled joy, with few disciplinary exhortations. He begins with the familiar words, “Grace to
you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,” and he continues
both themes throughout.
What is not so well known is the presence of false teachers
in the midst of the church of Philippi. Indeed, it is the presence of these false
teachers that prompts Paul, inspired of the Holy Spirit, to describe the heart
of what “living a life worthy of the Gospel of Christ” means. Though he never explicitly states what these
false teachers are teaching, it’s clear by the beginning of chapter two what
they are saying. They’re saying many of
the same things we hear today from well-meaning, moral, upright, religious
teachers. They’re saying that pleasing
God means doing the right thing and avoiding the wrong ones. It means pulling yourself up by your own
spiritual bootstraps and pressing on to be all you can be in Christ. But the truth of the Gospel is the opposite
of that. And Paul provides two
gloriously transparent examples – Jesus and himself.
Since September we have been looking at what it means to
live Beyond ourselves. In the last few
weeks we’ve been looking at what it means to serve the world with the Gospel by
gathering ourselves and our stuff, and giving to those God sets before us. This week is the final message in the Beyond
Series, “Gathering to God.” And it’s
here in Philippians 3:12-21 that we see how Paul instructs us to do that.
Like everything in the Christian life, gathering ourselves
to God is counterintuitive. Rather than
standing up for ourselves, it requires laying ourselves down. Rather than focusing on bettering ourselves,
it requires taking our eyes off ourselves and focusing them on Jesus. Rather than changing our ways, it requires us
to change our minds about who God is and who we are.
The question before the house this communion Sunday morning
is “How are we to gather ourselves to God?”
In preparation for receiving the answer we may wish to consider the
following:
1. What
did Brit Hume of Fox News say about Tiger Woods a few days after the scandal
broke?
2. Why
did the media react as it did?
3. How
does Jesus’ example of going Beyond Himself (Phil 2:1-11) inform us of what
gathering to God means?
4. How
does Paul show us he “gets it” in Phil. 3:2-11?
5. How
do you square Sunday’s text with Romans 7?
6. What
does Paul mean when he says, “I press on” in verse 12?
7. What
does Paul forget about his past when he says in verse 13 that he “forgets what
lies behind and strains forward to what lies ahead”?
8. What
is the “goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus”?
9. What
is the “mature” way of thinking Paul references in verse 15?
10. What
is the meaning of verse 16? How do you
define “attaining”?
See you around the Table on Sunday!
