Sermons from Moorpark Presbyterian Church

Never Stop Growing

by Dave Wilkinson

Philippians 3:1-14

March 4, 2002

The scene is the campus of the University of Florida in the early 1960's. The Gator football team is working out running wind sprints for conditioning. A defensive tackle named Jack Katz had shown himself to be the fastest lineman on the team. One morning Katz walked up to coach Ray Graves and asked if he might run sprints with the faster backs. Permission was granted.

For the next several days Katz finished dead last in every race with the backfield runners. Nobody was surprised. The coach finally asked if he wouldn't rather be a winner with the linemen than and loser with the backs.

Katz responded, "I'm not out here to outrun the linemen. I already know I can do that. I'm here to learn how to run faster. If you've noticed, I'm losing by a little less every day."

That's the attitude, the ambition, that God wants from us the attitude of continued striving for growth.

Now the Apostle Paul had never heard of football. So he borrowed his sports analogy in Philippians 3 from the sport he knew best the track and field of the Greco-Roman games. But Paul tells us that he and Jack Katz are brothers under the skin.

Paul had had a lot of successes in life. He was one fast lineman. He had the training, the pedigree, the early record of outstanding success in Judaism which he outlines in Philippians 3. He also had his failures his zealous misdirection which led him to misread God's will and spearhead the persecution of the early church.

But all of that the successes and the failures are relics of the past. "However I got here," Paul says, "by the grace of God I am what I am." "Forgetting what lies behind, I press onward toward the finish line." "I see the tape ahead I'm pounding my feet and bursting my lungs to get there."

What is Paul saying to us? He is saying, "Don't be imprisoned by your past failures. Don't rest on your past accomplishments. Keep moving forward."

What is the goal of our Christian lives? In Ephesians Paul says that God's goal for us is maturity on Jesus Christ. He says in Ephesians 3:15 that we are called in all things to "grow up into Him who is the head, Jesus Christ."

In his book, The Roots of the Righteous, A. W. Tozer observes that: "One of the big milk companies makes capital of the fact that their cows are all satisfied with their lot in life. Their clever ads have made the term "contented cows" familiar to everyone. But what is virtue in a cow may be a vice in a person. And contentment, hen it touches on spiritual things, is surely a vice.

"Tozer writes: Contentment with earthly goods is the mark of a saint; contentment with our spiritual state is the mark of inward blindness. One of the great foes of the Christian is religious complacency. Among the many who profess the Christian faith, scarcely one in a thousand reveals any passionate thirst for God."

We are to grow up in all things. There are a lot of areas in which our growth in maturity will show itself. This morning let me highlight just three. You will hopefully explore others in your small groups.

First and foremost is in our relationships and how we express our love. The whole theme or outline of the Letter to the Ephesians is that God's purpose for us is maturity in Christ; the method God uses to bring about maturity is the church; and the way maturity is expressed is in healthy relationships that model the mind of Christ. When Paul speaks in Ephesians about "attaining to the whole measure of the fulness of Christ, it not only means that we are to have an experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ and His ways. It means that we are to become increasingly like His through our closer fellowship with Him.

This means that if you come to me as your pastor and tell me about some spiritual breakthrough through Bible study, prayer, a small group, a mystical encounter whatever suits your spiritual temperament I will first of all rejoice with you. But then I will ask what difference it is making in how you act. How are you more honest? How are you now more accepting of non- crucial differences between you and other believers? Who are you beginning to forgive after a long period of entrenched hard-heartedness?

The reason this area of growth is so important is because the trajectory we set for our personality has the power to continue into eternity for good or for ill. As C.S. Lewis observes in Mere Christianity, "Every individual human being is going to live forever ... Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I were to live only seventy years, but which I had better bother about very seriously if I am going to live forever Perhaps my bad temper or jealousy are gradually getting worse -- so gradually that an increase in seventy years will not be very noticeable. But it might be absolute hell in a million years."

That's why it's important not to let the relationship stuff slide. It is central. Who we are, what we are becoming, is much more eternal than anything we may do.

A second place of needed continuous growth is in service. It is interesting how many Christians seem to think that Christians reach a retirement age when God will say "Alright, you've done your share for the Kingdom. Let the younger people or the newer believers shoulder the load." They forget that Jesus said that God expects more from those he gives more ---

which includes length of years. As long as we are physically and mentally able, he expects us to be used in much more than an advisory capacity.

One of the things I admire about my parents is the way they model this for me. My dad in almost ninety. He has not been in good health for some time. My mom is about 85. She has been in bad shape too. But until just about two years ago my parents taught English as a Second Language classes to older immigrants through the Adult School. They not only serve. They grow. They keep their minds active and get invited to some great parties. My dad also works as a volunteer with the Senior Activity Center at the church. It's fun to see him leave the house on Tuesday mornings to "go down and help the old people" -- many of whom are twenty years younger than he is.

The point is that Christians don't have a retirement age -- be it forty, sixty or eighty. God will let you know when He wants you to change your place of service from this world to His own house. In the meantime, don't stop growing in service.

A third area of needed growth is knowledge. We are called to grow in the knowledge of God and His Word.

When I was studying sermon writing and preaching in seminary yes, people actually tried to teach me these things I had a very limited view of the Bible. I actually thought, "There's enough in this book for about five years worth of sermons but then what will I do?" I envisioned having to change churches every five years so as to not run out of material.

Those early thoughts are absolutely incredible to me now. I have been preaching an average of forty times a year at this church for over fourteen years and I haven't begun to scratch the surface of what God has to say to me and to us. God is awesome. And when I am in His Word, I feel as if I am being given the privilege of encountering an incredible mind of subtlety and love.

Of course some people have thirty years of experienced with God's word. Other people have one year of experience thirty times. Which are You? Are you continually growing in your knowledge of God and His Word?

Paul writes: "forgetting what lies behind and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal."

And what is the prize? Paul says it is to come to the end of your life as a mature person in Christ with all that that means and to hear what Paul calls "the upward call of God in Christ Jesus." It means to be asked to climb onto the victory podium where Christ now stands to receive from the hands of Jesus the stephanos -- the crown of the victor and to hear from His own lips these words, "Well done, good and faithful servant. Enter now into the joy of your Master."