Philippians 3:17-4:1

Am looking over Philippians 3:17-4:1.

What is today's "three-point" sermon from the Bible passage? 8-)

(1) Learn from the example of godly believers

Brethren, join in following my example, and note those who so walk, as you have us for a pattern.

Sometimes people get down on the institutional church. And to be honest, as a person who attends a pretty typical church, there is good reason to get discouraged!

However, having said that, what is the alternative?

If we try to live out our Christian faith on our own, the potential for self-deception is too great. Without other believers to bang heads with, we may get certain ideas into our heads that might have nothing to do with real Christian faith!

Within the community of faith, we are provided with older, wiser and more mature believers for us to learn from. In this setting, we, me too (gasp!), need to set an example of what wrestling with following Christ looks like to believers who are new to the journey.

(2) Watch out for those who are not setting a good example.

For many walk, of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ: whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame - who set their mind on earthly things.

Paul takes no delight in seeing people heading the wrong way. He weeps for them because they are headed for destruction. He weeps as he warns believers not to be deceived by those individuals.

"God is their belly" is a very vivid metaphor for driven by desire. The instinct of hunger is one of the strongest in the human experience.

Another strong desire is sex especially in our media saturated society which pours gasoline on the raging fire that burns even without the assistance of the media!

I was reading C.S. Lewis in Mere Christianity the other day and here is an extended excerpt on that subject:

We have been told, till one is sick of hearing it, that sexual desire is in the same state as any of our other natural desires and that if only we abandon the silly old Victorian idea of hushing it up, everything in the garden will be lovely.
........
They tell you sex has become a mess because it was hushed up. But for the last twenty years [ed. note, Lewis wrote the section on Christian Behavior in 1943] it has not been. It has been chattered about all day long. Yet it is still a mess. If hushing up had been the cause of the trouble, ventilation would have set it right. But it has not. I think it is the other way round. I think the human race originally hushed it up because it had become such a mess.

Indeed, one need only look at the headlines of the magazines at the grocery checkout counter or channel surf the television to find people who seem to be examples of those "whose glory is in their shame" who are part of the "cult of celebrity" leading the way with dysfunction.

We need to pray for ourselves that we don't get drawn into worshiping the false god of living only for the present. We need to pray for our society to be transformed.

(3) Seek transformation from Christ

For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. Therefore, my beloved and longed-for brethren, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, beloved.

Transform. Wow! Jesus is in the process of transforming us, lowly us!

Paul talked about transformation in Romans 12:1-2. We need to offer ourselves as sacrifices to God. Transformation can then take place and we come out of it with a completely different mindset.

I want to spend a few additional moments on this "body" part.

In the cultural milieu of Paul's time, a lot of the religions and philosophies thought that the body and the physical is bad. As a result some people became hedonists seeking pleasure because if the spirit is completely separate from the body then why not live it up? Others became ascetics and avoided all pleasures because they believed anything associated with the body was bad.

However, Jewish and Christian theology integrates body and soul/spirit. Here is another excerpt from C.S. Lewis:

I know some muddleheaded Christians have talked as if Christianity thought that sex, or the body, or pleasure, were bad in themselves. But they were wrong. Christianity is almost the only one of the great religions which throughly approve of the body - which believes that matter is good, that God Himself one took on a human body, that some kind of body is going to be given to us even in Heaven and is going to be an essential par of our happiness, or beauty and our energy.

Thus, we work at transformation in the here and now because even though our citizenship is in heaven, the Kingdom of Heaven has already broken into this world. We are part of the transformation process now and it will continue and will find its full realization when Christ brings the Kingdom in its fullness.

Lord, forgive me when I seek the earthly things. So often, my eyes are on those things instead of you. Help me daily to offer myself to you and to allow you to transform my mind and my being so that I can do that which is good and pleasing to you. Give me the humility to learn from others and give me the boldness to be an example. Amen.