Joy in Pursuing Jesus
We are six weeks into our study of Philippians, and each Sunday, we’ve been digging into the life of the Apostle Paul to try and understand the joy that he has…even while being in prison. So, I have to ask…how many of you would say you have more joy now than you did at the beginning of January? Be honest! My guess is that even if you’ve been here every Sunday and you’ve been engaged in your small group and doing all the things, the felt difference on a day-to-day basis is minimal. We don’t usually change that fast. There are moments when we experience it, and there are times we see it in others, but what’s more common is that we come to church, learn something new, get encouraged by the worship and the community, and leave eager to live out our faith, but as the week goes on, our resolve grows weaker. We get distracted and bogged down by life. We know this from all areas of life, whether you’re trying to lose weight, get in shape, save money, or just keep your house more organized…we have spurts of inspiration and motivation, but that fades. Transformation takes time, and energy, and commitment. Unfortunately, we’re so used to instant gratification that we easily get discouraged when we don’t see the results we’re hoping for.
So, what do we do? Give up? Do we stop coming to church? Do we just go through the motions? Does it even matter? Don’t stop coming, and yes, it does matter because that little bit of change from week to week is cumulative. You’re here today, which, for some of you, is a big deal. I’m glad you’re here, and I want you to know you’re not alone. And, as we’re going to see today, even the apostle Paul was on a journey of transformation.
We’re going to be in Philippians 3. Last week, we ended with Paul saying in 3:10 that his “goal is to know [Jesus].” He doesn’t say his goal was to know, but it is to know Jesus. It’s a goal that he’s still working towards. It takes effort to achieve our goals, and a lot of times, we give up because it’s too hard. The New Testament uses a lot of athletic and military terms to describe the Christian life because it takes discipline, commitment, and endurance. But discipline and endurance don’t sound joyful! So, how do we find joy in our spiritual exertion? How do we maintain joy in the middle of our striving? I think we can draw out five ways to be joyful in our pursuit of Jesus from our text today…five lessons from Paul’s life that we can apply to our own to help us have joy when the goal of knowing Christ seems overwhelming and, frankly, impossible at times. With each lesson, I want to give you a joy component; we’ll call them joy gems because it’s cheesy, and you’re more likely to remember it. These are just five simple truths that lay the foundation for the lessons we need to apply to our lives.
Let’s pick up in verse 12.
12 Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus. 13 Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself to have taken hold of it.
If you were here last week, then you’ll remember that Paul is speaking against the message of the Judaizers, the self-righteous religious elites who were trying to get the Christians in Philippi to follow all the Jewish laws and customs. They held a high standard of religion but didn’t have a relationship with Jesus. But the problem is that rules without relationship equals rebellion (parents need to know this, too). So, Paul lays out again the gospel of salvation by faith and not works, and he uses his own story to paint the picture. I love Paul’s vulnerability and honesty here in verse 12. His goal is to know Jesus perfectly, but he immediately says he has not reached that goal. He’s not perfect. Paul does a great job throughout his letters to set a high standard of holiness for Christians, but he always balances it with the reality of the ongoing struggles we face. At one point, he calls himself the chief sinner! It’s a reminder that none of us have arrived. Through faith in Jesus, our salvation is complete and secure, but our transformation is ongoing. That won’t be complete until the day we are joined with Jesus at our resurrection. Then we’ll know him perfectly.
But notice what Paul says, “I make every effort to take hold of it.” He hasn’t reached his goal of knowing Jesus, but he is giving his all in going for it. He’s not just sitting around waiting for the second coming, holding onto his fire insurance policy. The word translated as “take hold of” is katalambanó, and it means to grasp or capture, like you grasp an idea, or to physically capture something, like a king would capture a city. There’s a little bit of wordplay here in verse 12 as Paul says he is striving to take hold of Jesus because Jesus has already taken hold of him. He considers himself to have been captured by Christ. If you know Paul’s story, it makes sense. He was walking down the road, and Jesus stopped him in his tracks, and he was never the same. Most of us are not going to have the dramatic experience that Paul did, but the first lesson we can learn from this passage is to let your Heart be captured by Jesus.
I’ll tell you a little bit about my story. I was raised in a Christian home and put my faith in Jesus at a young age. But when I was 16 years old, I was at a Y2K youth rally, and Jesus captured my heart. It’s one of the few times I’ve been physically shaken by God. I believed in Jesus, but I became overwhelmed by the fact that I had not allowed him to have all of me. Similar to the Judaizers in the text, I had the rules but lacked the relationship, and I was on my way to rebellion. For me, everything changed that night as I went to the altar and prayed. It wasn’t that I was immediately different, but my perspective was. In the following months, I made some hard decisions, but decisions that I believe God was asking me to make and that changed the trajectory of my life. And like Paul, I’m not perfect, but for the past 25 years, I have made every effort, with lots of stumbling, to take hold of Jesus.
I can’t take any credit for what happened on December 31, 1999. Jesus took hold of my life, but I distinctly remember being in that moment and deciding if I was going to give in and surrender or stand my ground and let my pride keep me from responding to the Holy Spirit. I was tempted to shake that conviction and blame it on the fear of the world ending at midnight, but I surrendered, and I’ve found day after day that there is joy in surrender. There’s joy when we let go and let Jesus have complete control of our lives.
So, the question is, who or what has captured your heart? And will you allow Jesus to capture your heart instead? It might be money, it might be a relationship, it might be fear….but before you can make every effort to take hold of Christ, you have to allow him to take hold of you. Don’t hold back…and then don’t look back. This leads us to verse 13.
But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead, 14 I pursue as my goal the prize promised by God’s heavenly call in Christ Jesus. 15 Therefore, let all of us who are mature think this way. And if you think differently about anything, God will reveal this also to you. 16 In any case, we should live up to whatever truth we have attained.
Paul has no regrets for the life he left behind, and we see this idea of putting off the old and putting on the new throughout the New Testament. We call it sanctification. It’s the continual process of growing in Christlikeness, and it is the goal that Paul mentions here again, with the final prize being the day he is glorified in heaven with Jesus.
I want to point out the word pursue that we see in verse 14. That’s a word that means to chase or go after something, like an animal hunting down its prey. It’s active. It’s intentional, and it describes the exertion that Paul puts into going after Jesus. The Christian faith is not a lazy faith! Sometimes, we swing the pendulum too far when we focus on the “free gift” of salvation, and we misunderstand God’s grace. God saves us from sin and death, but he also saves us to a better way of living; a way of living that brings us peace and joy. So, the second lesson we see from Paul is to let your heart and mind be transformed by the Gospel. One of our codes at City Awakening is the Gospel is more than a way to eternal life; the Gospel is our life. It should have a continual impact on us, causing us to grow and change.
We are not intended to stay spiritual infants. When my kids were little, sometimes we would ask them if they could just stop growing up, and of course, they would always say no. If we asked them why, they would say something like, “Because God wants me to get bigger.” Yes! That’s true for us spiritually, too! He wants us to grow up, to mature.
Now, Paul does use some sarcasm here when he refers to being mature since he has in mind the “spiritual elite” that he’s speaking out against, but that doesn’t negate our call to maturity.
Romans 12:2 says, “…be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is the good, pleasing, and perfect will of God.”
Hebrews 6:1 says, “Therefore, let us leave the elementary teaching about Christ and go on to maturity….”
And Paul gives us a hint of what this looks like in verse 16 when he says that we should “live up to whatever truth we have attained.” In other words, you don’t continue to count on your fingers once you’ve learned your multiplication tables, or you don’t put the training wheels back on once you learn how to ride a bike. You live up to what you have attained. While learning is hard and takes time, every time you reach that next level of knowledge or mastery, it’s rewarding. There’s joy in maturity. There’s joy in growing closer to Jesus and becoming more like him. I don’t know anyone who rejoices in a lack of progress. It’s rewarding to move forward, especially when that’s towards Jesus.
So, what old things do you need to put behind you? What thought, behavior, or burden is it finally time to set aside? And what truth do you need to start living up to? Ask God to reveal to you the areas in your life where he wants to mature you. The examples of that are endless, but the Holy Spirit can speak to precisely what you need, through prayer, through the Bible, and even through other believers.
Let’s look at verse 17.
17 Join in imitating me, brothers and sisters, and pay careful attention to those who live according to the example you have in us.
This is a picture of discipleship. In the ancient world, it was common practice to follow a teacher…to be an apprentice. Think about Jesus and his disciples. Here, Paul is inviting these Christians to follow him as he follows Jesus. He’s already established that he’s not mastered the faith. So, while there is an element of do-as-I-do, he’s really inviting them to learn with him…to be co-imitators.
We naturally are followers. We latch on to an author, podcaster, or Youtuber and begin to model our thinking or habits after them. I remember years ago, couponing became a big thing. Probably not in Orlando, but it was in Alabama. All the ladies in our community started scrambling to get their hands on whatever coupons they could…buying newspapers, collecting mailers, whatever. They would cut them out and organize them in scrapbooks! I’m not making this up. And there was one lady who was the queen couponer. She came and taught a couponing seminar at our church, and the place was packed! It was great. Everybody learned how to get all the extra toothpaste, shampoo, and deodorant they could ever want for free! My wife did learn how to save a lot of money on diapers, so that was worth it!
That seems funny, but it’s no different than the social media influencers today. It’s a huge business with millions of followers doing or buying whatever these influencers say.
But the point is, we find people to imitate. So, who are you imitating? Are you imitating Jesus or someone else? Are you imitating someone who’s imitating Jesus?
And better yet, is your life compelling enough to invite others to join you in imitating Jesus? Paul was compelling because he was committed to following Jesus at all costs. I read a quote by John Piper this week that was convicting to me.
“People don’t fall in love with the worth and beauty and greatness of Jesus because they look at rich, healthy, comfortable Christians. They don’t. If that’s all they see, why wouldn’t they just conclude that we live for the same worldly things they do? If that produces conversion, it’s not conversion to Jesus, but to more money. What wins people to the infinite beauty and worth of Jesus is that they see people for whom Jesus is so precious that they are willing to endure suffering to follow him.” - Piper
That’s hard to hear…. because most of us live healthy, comfortable lives. We’re not in prison facing the death penalty. Even when we do face suffering, it’s not typically because of our faith in Jesus,… and we don’t usually suffer willingly.
But here’s the thing I want to point out. Paul wasn’t living this compelling life on his own. Everything he writes is tied to his community. Notice that he invites his readers to join him so that they can practice their faith with one another. We need other people. Those couponers who showed up in droves to save $0.50 did so because there was a whole bunch of other people who were trying to figure it out with them. They were learning together. Here’s the third lesson we see from this text: Let your faith be practiced with others.
I said earlier that our faith is not meant to be a lazy faith. It’s also not meant to be a solo sport. We need our teammates working beside us, cheering us on, correcting us, and celebrating with us. What I love about the timing of this is that for the past two weeks, we’ve had a group of people going through Growth Track on Sunday mornings, learning about what it means to be a covenant member of City Awakening. It’s not about having your name on a roster but joining arms with this community as a co-imitator of Christ. And we believe that there is joy in community. There’s a lot of joy that comes from having people in your life who share a common goal and who care about you because Christian community brings us closer to Jesus.
We need people, but we need to make sure they are the right people.
Look at verse 18.
18 For I have often told you, and now say again with tears, that many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. 19 Their end is destruction; their god is their stomach; their glory is in their shame;
and they are focused on earthly things. 20 Our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly wait for a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ. 21 He will transform the body of our humble condition into the likeness of his glorious body, by the power that enables him to subject everything to himself.
One thing we need is continual discernment to separate truth from lies. Our enemy is a master of deception, and he will try every tactic and angle to hinder us from our goal of reaching for Jesus. He is especially crafty at misleading Christians with a false gospel. It’s unclear here whether Paul is referring to the Judaizers as the enemies of the cross or early Gnostics who swung the other way and gave license to pagan practices under the banner of grace. Either way, both groups had their own desires and self-interests as their goal, which made them enemies of the cross. So, we need to test the message of the people we are following.
I think the biggest danger today is preachers and Christians who proclaim Jesus and the benefits of knowing him but avoid talking about sin, suffering, and the uncomfortable topics the Bible addresses. The message subtly becomes about having a better life on earth without cost. It’s very me-centered, which is no different than the rest of the world.
To reiterate John Piper, if our lives just look like everyone else’s, then something is not quite right. That doesn’t mean we have to sell everything we own, throw away our smartphones, and move to another country to be missionaries. It does mean that we are willing to give things up, reprioritize our lives, and say yes to the path that leads us closer to Jesus. Earlier in the chapter, Paul said that his goal is to know Christ by sharing in his suffering, even to the point of death. I think that living that way starts with remembering that this earth is not our home. Just like the enemies of the cross in verse 19, we can become too focused on earthly things, which leads us to build earthly kingdoms to safeguard our earthly comforts. But we aren’t made for this earth. We are made for eternity. I heard someone say this week that we are made for the garden, but we are living in the jungle. After the fall, God banished Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and sent them out into the wilderness, away from the order and presence of God. As a result, we are all living in the wilderness, but our hearts, whether Christians or not, are longing to get back to the garden. So, the fourth lesson from this passage is to let your longings be focused on the future.
What is it that you are longing for? We all long for things. We long for our desires to be fulfilled, whether that’s in a relationship, a job, financial security, retirement…whatever. But Paul says to let our longings be on the future because we are citizens of heaven. That’s where we belong, and that’s where we will be fully united with Jesus, and we will receive glorified bodies. So, instead of trying to find our joy in the jungle, we need to remember that our joy is in the resurrection (joy gem). Listen to the way that Peter says this,
1 Peter 1:6-9, You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials 7 so that the proven character of your faith—more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
We can rejoice now because we know what’s coming! And if you aren’t sure about the future, if you don’t know about the salvation of your soul, then I want to encourage you to make that your focus. Ask yourself if the things you’ve tried so far have worked for you. There’s only one solution to the longing in your soul, and it’s Jesus.
We have one more verse to cover. Chapter 4 verse 1.
1 So then, my dearly loved and longed-for brothers and sisters, my joy and crown, in this manner stand firm in the Lord, dear friends.
This is the culmination and confirmation of a lot of the previous points, but I want you to notice what Paul calls his joy and his crown. He is rejoicing in those he’s writing to. No doubt his own transformation gives him joy, but seeing the transformation in other people does as well.
As we pursue Jesus and strive to know him, we have to step back and see the work that God is doing. The last lesson for today is to let your Spirit be encouraged by growth, even if it’s gradual. Caught up in the day-to-day, it’s easy to miss signs of transformation. We get discouraged by the mistakes we make or frustrated with other people’s lack of maturity, and it can feel like the pursuit of Christ is one step forward and two steps back. But we need to be able to recognize the work that God has done and is doing and give him thanks and glory for it. There’s joy in our fruit!
If you’re able to put to death a habitual sin in your life, then you celebrate that and thank God for the strength and perseverance to overcome it. If you set out to attend church every week, read your Bible every day, or give more, and you even take some steps towards reaching your goal, celebrate that and recognize God’s work in changing your desires. The fact that those desires exist at all is even a reason for us to thank God for his work in our lives. If you see evidence of growth and transformation in someone else’s life, then celebrate that and thank God for the work he’s doing in them. If you see a friend or child come to faith in Jesus, celebrate that and thank God that you got to be a part of the process in some way.
The point is not to pat ourselves or anyone else on the back but to see more of Jesus. When we talk about pursuing Jesus, we have to remember that he’s not hard to find. What I mean is that Jesus doesn’t make us play a game of hide and seek. He’s not sitting in the closet waiting for us to figure out where he is….even though sometimes it feels like it. Jeremiah 29:13 says, “You will seek me and find me when you search for me with all your heart.”
Jesus is right there all along, every day, ready for us to join him, ready for us to take hold of him. Like Paul, we have to continue to put the old way of life behind us, keep peeling back the layers of our flesh, and reach forward to what’s ahead. Here’s the big idea for today: Keep reaching for Jesus because He’s where the joy is.
I know, I stole the line from Tara Leigh-Cobble, but it works. Make every effort to know Jesus. Whatever that costs you, wherever that leads you. It’s not about following a religion. Joy is found in a relationship with a very real and present Savior who loves you and wants to be your friend. Keep reaching for him.
