Pete's Reviews and Sermons: October 2023

Preached at Christ Church, Billericay on 8 October 2023

Prayer

Wannabe

In June 1996 the Spice Girls released their first single Wannabe. It became a huge hit and is a memorable track – even if you don’t like it. They ask and answer the question, “Tell me what you want, what you really really want?”

Paul provides his answer in the verses we had read today, and as you would expect, it’s nothing like the Spice Girls answer. So let’s have a look at what Paul said – because it’s more interesting.

Background - Philippi

Let’s start with a quick re-cap on Philippi, you will have heard this last week in Catherine’s sermon, but you may not remember it. Philippi was a proud and rich Roman town, situated on the coast, it was ideal for traders. There had also been a couple of Gold rushes in its history.

Background – Philippian church

Paul had founded the church there about 10 years before this letter was written. When writing this letter he is under house arrest, so cannot visit any of his churches, but there are people who keep him in touch with what is going on. Paul is particularly close to this church.

Background – Early Christian Judaizers

The early church, which includes the church at Philippi, had many arguments and disagreements. The most prominent of these were those who saw Christianity as part of Judaism and wanted the new gentile converts to undergo the correct Jewish conversion rituals – notably circumcision. They are known as Judaizers.

In verse 2 Paul writes:

Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.

Dogs

‘Dogs’ was a common insult in Paul's day and referred to packs of feral dogs that roamed cities. They could be dangerous when they were starving, and would occasionally attack people.

It’s these people’s beliefs that Paul is responding to in today’s reading.

As we go through this part of the letter, I will try to put the images he provides into a modern context where that needs to be done, as we don’t have any Judaizers in our church.

3 sections

The reading splits into 3 sections:

· 4b-6

· 7-10

· 12-14

You might like to follow the text in your Bible, it’s on page ____, if you do.

4b-6 ‘I am the greatest’

When Paul talks about confidence in the flesh, he is talking about confidence in his Jewish heritage. He and his family have followed the rituals impeccably. The first of these is circumcision on the eighth day – a basic requirement for all male Jewish babies. This establishes him as a Jew.

More than that, he is an Israelite from the tribe of Benjamin, the same tribe the first king (Saul) came from you can read about that in 1 Samuel 9. The tribe is renowned for its military valour and successes.

Hebrew of Hebrews seems to be a claim to purity in the bloodline, and to be a boast. It was meant to distinguish him from the Hellenistic (Greek) Jews.

As a Pharisee, he has studied the law, and is devoted to its practice, so much so that he was a leading light is the persecution of the new ‘sect’ – the Christians. Finally, he claims that he follows the law faultlessly.

There is no Jew who could make greater claims.

For us, in our time, as gentiles, we would have to be able to claim that we could trace our lineage back to a Saxon noble family, that we have graduated with a first class degree from Oxford or Cambridge, have at least one PhD and work in an Industry that provides us with a very generous income, or no need to work at all.

In other words, we can rely on ourselves, nothing that happens can affect us. It is our flesh that we rely on.

7-10 Strange Accounting

In vv7-10, Paul pushes that all aside, not just to forget it and say it was worthless, but to say that it was a detriment to what he really wants.

So here are the verses where Paul tells us what he wants, what he really really wants.

All his life he had been moving towards a role as a Pharisee – a comfortable life working for the purity of his religion and encouraging others to join in with the careful and very legalistic way he had chosen to live his life. I’m sure his mother would have been proud of him too.

Now he has given that up and become a travelling preacher, with little prestige and a lot of suffering. He had done that because he has found something immeasurably better.

His righteousness is perhaps the most important thing to him. He now wants to find that through his faith in Jesus Christ, because he’s realised that the Law cannot make him righteous. You can see even here in these few words that faith in Christ is all that is needed to put us right with God.

Paul wants more than a straight forward faith, he wants a share in the power of the resurrection, to join with Christ in his sufferings, and become like him in his death. We can see from many of the stories in the book of Acts, how much Paul suffered.

Paul, it is believed, was beheaded during the Neronian persecution.

A true faith so often leads to imprisonment and death because the world simply cannot tolerate God and his followers.

I looked at three of my Christian heroes to see how they died:

· Dietrich Bonhoeffer was hung by the Nazis just before the end of WWII

· Eric Liddle died of overwork and insufficient food, while imprisoned in China

· James Hudson Taylor died of old age, so an active faith does not always lead to martyrdom.

12-14 Pressing On

Paul knows that he hasn’t already attained what he is seeking, so even now he must keep going. He is deliberately forgetting past failures and successes. Now, he can’t actually forget, that’s not something anyone can wilfully do. I forget loads of things that I should remember, but am unable to forget a few things that I would really like to forget.

What Paul means by this is that he is not dwelling on the past, he does not care about past failures, except perhaps what they have taught him. His concern is only to achieve his goal, which, let me remind you, is to attain the resurrection from the dead.

The race

Paul uses the analogy of a race, let’s look at a modern example. In the 2011 F1 Canadian Grand Prix, Jenson Button started from 7^th on the grid. In a rain affected race, with a very long stoppage after an accident, he found himself last. He had been involved in two incidents, one with his teammate, and had plenty that he would like to forget. At that stage, it was probably the whole race, but he was focussed forward and not concerned about previous errors by him or by other drivers. In that second stint he overtook every other driver on the track, and on the last lap with the final overtake, found himself in first position to win the race.

That is the type of focus and attitude that Paul is talking about in these last 3 verses.

Paul’s suffering

He has been through much suffering – his life has been threatened many times, he had been beaten up, flogged and otherwise assaulted, but none of that matters, only the prize – only the resurrection is worth any focus at all.

Followers suffer

For a follower of Jesus, the world can be a nasty place. We are fortunate, in some ways, that we are rarely, if ever threatened. But the ridicule and the rejection can be painful too. Sadly, it is not only the secular world that can cause us to be troubled, the church can do that too. That can be either intentional, such as the many unresolved sexual abuse cases we hear about. Or it can be caused by thoughtlessness or selfishness from those around us.

Whatever set backs we suffer, how ever serious they may be, and however hard dealing with them may become, we must remember that the main prize is the attainment of the resurrection. That does not mean that we simply let bad things happen to ourselves or others, there are processes to follow and actions to take, that may be difficult in themselves, but the prize is the prize, and should not be lost sight of.

Tell me what you want

Paul’s calling was to be the Apostle to the gentiles, that is not our calling. Of all of us here, I only know of one calling in great detail – that is mine. I have some idea of some others, but not a detailed understanding. Each of our callings come with a prize, and the prize is the same – to be raised from death and accepted by God at the final judgement. We – all of us – attain the prize by faith in Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection – and in the power that brings. But what we do with it on the journey, is between each of us and God.