Message by Pastor John Culp : April 6, 2008
“Satisfied? – Part 1”
Text – Philippians 3:10-16
I began the sermon last week by asking you to take your own pulse. I’m going to ask your indulgence once more this morning while I invite you to participate in another simple exercise.
It will help if you will close your eyes throughout this little activity. The goal here is simple: To become as relaxed and as comfortable as possible. So I’d ask you to begin by trying to put all stressful thoughts out of your mind. Imagine that the only sound you can hear is a peaceful, babbling brook in the background.
With your eyes closed, I’ll invite you to assume as comfortable a sitting position as possible. I know that can be a challenge on hard wooden pews. (The cushions give us some real assistance here!) It may help if you’ll slide down in your pew somewhat. If you do that enough, you may be able to rest your head on the back of pew. Or if the person next to you is someone you know, you might even rest your head on his or her shoulder.
Once you’re in such a comfortable position, I would encourage you next to simply but systematically relax. We’ll work our way up from the floor. Think of first of tensing, and then relaxing various muscle groups: In your feet; in your ankles; in your legs; in the part of you on which you sit (!); in your stomach; your back; your chest; your shoulders; then your arms; your hands; your neck; your face. Tense each area, and then relax it as completely as possible.
If you’re doing this right, you’re feeling very relaxed, even wonderfully comfortable right now. I want you to invite to enjoy the sensation, to savor the moment. (This can be very risky for a preacher to suggest such a thing – and right at the start of the sermon!)
But here’s the point of our little bit of therapy today: Think of the posture of your body and the attitude of your mind as a metaphor for the state of your spirit before God. The more relaxed, the more comfortable and satisfied you are . . . the farther away you are from the place where God wants you to be!
Open your eyes and think about all this with me for a few moments.
To a greater or lesser degree, all of us want to be where God wants us to be! It’s probably safe to assume that you wouldn’t be here today if that were not true. But in fact it turns out that there are significant forces at work to keep us apart from the will of God.
Now it is gloriously true that Jesus came to give us His perfect peace (John 14:27; 16:33). But peace is not the same as complacency! True, we are to be satisfied in Jesus. But a believer can never be fully satisfied apart from Jesus.
So if your spirit this day is in a state at all similar to the one I tried to have you achieve a moment ago in your mind and body, you especially need to learn the lesson God would teach us all today through the Apostle Paul:
God calls us to a holy discomfort, a godly dissatisfaction,
so that we will diligently press on throughout our days,
until we are truly one with Christ.
The real enemy here is complacency: being too satisfied with yourself to press on to the real goal. Make no mistake about it: This is a serious danger indeed! Let’s explore the problem together.
This is really a lesson about two different kinds of comfort: False, and real. Consider both with me for a few minutes this morning.
Paul certainly had ample cause for taking false comfort. That’s true in two big ways. In the first place was his own distinguished past. By all the standards of the finest religious system of his time, Paul had it made. In a world filled with pagan falsehood and blatant idolatry, Judaism represented the shining light of truth. And among Jews, there was none finer that Saul of Tarsus. Listen to his own testimony, recorded in his letter to the Philippians just before the text we read today:
“If others have reason for confidence in their own efforts, I have even more! For I was circumcised when I was eight days old, having been born into a pure-blooded Jewish family that is a branch of the tribe of Benjamin – a real Hebrew if there ever was one! What’s more, I was a member of the Pharisees, who demand the strictest obedience to the Jewish law. And zealous? Yes, in fact I harshly persecuted the [Christian] church. And as for righteousness, I obeyed the Jewish law so carefully that I was never accused of any fault.” (3:4-6 NLT)
Even after his famous conversion to Christianity, Saul (who became Paul the apostle) had to be sorely tempted to rest on his laurels, because of his exemplary righteousness under the Law of Moses.
But Paul had what might have seemed an even nobler reason to take false comfort. He was not just another Christian tempted to misuse the truth that we’re saved by God’s grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. Paul was the very one through whom God chose to articulate that truth in a clear and compelling way for believers across the centuries in his inspired letters – most conspicuously the letter to the Romans. Surely the enemy of our souls tempted the great saint to think – as he has tempted believers in every age: ‘I’ve really got it made! God has saved me purely on the basis of the great love He has for me in Jesus. It doesn’t matter how I live my life day to day; there’s no real need for me to press on . . .’
Whether he considered the righteousness he had earned by the sweat of his own brow, or Christ’s righteousness God had freely given to him, Paul was surely tempted to figure that for him, the race was already won.
But Paul knew that it would have been foolish – dangerously foolish – to allow either consideration to lead him to rest on his laurels.
Fast-forward twenty centuries. The false comforts that primarily tempt us are not really as valid as Paul’s. But they’re no less powerful to distract us from the real goal. Think about life in these United States early in the 21st century. Nearly everything about our lives is engineered to make us comfortable: Central heating; air conditioning. Supplies of wholesome food and pure drinking water that are, for all practical purposes, limitless. Arguably the best health care system in the world; two weeks’ (or three weeks’ or four weeks’) paid vacation; medications to heal us when we’re sick, and to mask our pain when we’re hurting; SurroundSound®. Everywhere we look life seems to be designed to pamper us and make us comfortable.
The real tragedy is that all too often we allow those abundant comforts of this life to seduce us into a sleepy complacency. ‘I’m satisfied! Why do I need to push myself to be “good”? Why do I need to worry about anything? In fact, why do I even need God? The government will take care of me! My doctor will take care of me! My hard-earned savings will take care of me!’
The three condemned men finally reach the end of the line. They’re led out of their cells, and the first one, George, is placed against a wall in front of the firing squad. As the soldiers raise their rifles and take aim, George (always the clever one) yells out, “Earthquake!” The soldiers panic for just a few seconds, and in the confusion, George scrambles over the wall and escapes.
The firing squad quickly regroups and Charlie is placed up against the wall. Noting with obvious interest what’s just happened, before they can shoot he yells, “Tornado!” Once again the firing squad scatters and Charlie manages to flee to safety.
Now it’s Phil’s turn. He’s actually a bit cocky as they stand him up against the wall. He’s confident that he’s got it all figured out: Just scream out a disaster, jump over the wall and get away. The soldiers raise their rifles and take aim, and Phil yells, “Fire!”
(“Laughter, the Best Medicine”® Reader’s Digest, November 2004, page 120.)
That’s silly! None of us would ever be so foolish as to think we’ve got it all figured out. We would never allow ourselves to be lulled into any counterfeit comfort – a casual self-confidence – a dangerous complacency - - - would we?
Roberta Hestenes puts it simply but powerfully: “Maturity is pressing toward the mark; immaturity is complacency and self-satisfaction.” (quoted in Leadership, Vol. 9, no. 4.)
So what is the real goal toward which God calls us through Paul? Nothing less than oneness with Jesus Christ!
Paul says simply: “I want to know Christ” (Philippians 3:10). He doesn’t say, ‘I want to know about Christ…’ Paul wants to know his Lord personally. The Greek for ‘know’ here is a form of the verb ginoskein, which in Hebrew is yada. The verb yada speaks of a knowing of such deep intimacy, the Hebrew is used of sexual relations: “Adam knew his wife Eve…” (Genesis 4:1).
And in fact something Paul says about his desire to know Christ is even more startling than that. Paul says that he wants to share in Christ’s resurrection, which he knows full well must mean he will also have to share in Christ’s suffering and death (Phil. 3:10-11). It’s the intimacy toward which Paul strains when he writes to the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (2:20 NKJV).
I don’t have to tell you that it’s not natural for us to want to be that close to Jesus! It is only by a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts that we will even want to take up crosses to be united with our Savior – let alone diligently press on to such an other-worldly goal!
We need supernatural food if we’re going to have that sort of strength – food like that which we read about in today’s Old Testament lesson. It was food that enabled Elijah to travel forty days to Horeb, the mountain of God (1 Kings 19:5-8).
We think of communion in many ways. Today as you come to Christ’s table, I want to encourage you to think of it especially as the source of that very heavenly food – food that will strengthen your spirit, so that you will not be lulled into a deadly complacency, but with Paul, be eager to press on to real oneness with Christ.
You may know the name of Bruce Thielemann. He used to love to tell a story about a man who many years ago had just retired from his job with the Post Office. He was sitting on his porch in Kentucky on the day when his first Social Security check was delivered. In that circumstance he could easily have been comfortable. He might have been satisfied. Isn’t that the goal toward which we labor all throughout our working days?
But instead he was very discouraged. He thought to himself, ‘Is this what life is going to be from now on – just sitting on the porch waiting for my check to arrive?’
He decided he wouldn’t settle for that, and so he made a list of all of the things he had going for him: all the blessings and the capacities, all the unique things that were in him. The list was long because he listed everything he could think of. Included in the list was the fact that he was the only person on earth who knew his mother’s recipe for fried chicken. It used eleven different herbs and spices.
So he went to a nearby restaurant and asked if he could cook the chicken, and they said yes. It soon became the most popular item on the menu. So he opened his own restaurant, and then another, and in time a whole string of restaurants. Eventually Harland Sanders sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise across all of America. He finally retired a second time (remember, he had already retired from the postal service), and he continued in the service of the company as a public relations representative for a quarter of a million dollars a year (a far bigger sum in the 1970s than is today) till his death in 1980.
Harland Sanders could well have slipped into a casual complacency in his first retirement. He could have been satisfied. But instead he pressed on to achieve something great. (Bruce Thielemann, “Dealing with Discouragement,” Preaching Today, Tape No. 48.)
I don’t have to tell you that the greatness to which God calls you involves something far more profound than fried chicken! It’s nothing less than a radical, total and eternal unity with Jesus Christ.
Don’t be satisfied by the world’s offer of any counterfeit comfort! Here at the table of your Lord, open yourself now to His life-transforming power, that with Paul you might long to press on to claim the heavenly prize.
Let us pray. Thank You, gracious God, for calling us to a life-transforming relationship with Your Son Jesus. Please forgive us when we allow ourselves to sink into complacency, satisfied by the baubles and trinkets the world holds out to us. Please strengthen us, that with Your servant Paul, we might long to press on to the heavenly goal of true oneness with Christ, so that we might live now and in eternity to His glory. We ask it in His almighty name. Amen.