It's Life No.11 How big are your ambitions?

I trace the rainbow through the rain, And feel the promise is not vain, That none shall tear less be. O cross that liftest of my head, I dare not ask to fly from thee. I lay in dust life's glory dead, And from the ground there blossoms red, Life that shall ever be.

Let's look into the word of God in Philippines in chapter 3. We're looking at verse 12 and on to the first verse of chapter 4. The Guardian was interesting yesterday. Gave a feature article on Ronnie Cray. Two brothers, Reg and Ronnie, born of a Jewish mother.

Made quite a name for themselves when they were just 21 years of age in the east end of London. Ron was born in 24th of October 1933, shot his first man in 1955. And just a few days ago a heart attack took him into the presence of God.

He got a boast that when he died, there'd be a funeral bigger than that of President Kennedy. Might well be the case. Spent most of his years, the last years of his life in jail.

30 year rap for murder. Quite extraordinary, the money that he wanted to make never really succeeded and in so doing, the first part of his life in freedom, he actually made in jail. Because his story was marketable.

Can you believe it? I reckon they gave him £100,000 on his first book. The film was made of his life, him and his brother. He wanted Richard Burton to play the main part.

Funny, isn't it? I mean, when we die, they'll not give us a front page of the main Saturday magazine of the Guardian. When the Apostle Paul was telling a little bit about his aim in life, he didn't want the weekend supplement of the Roman Tribune to give its front page to him. He got one reason to live and to die.

And that was to achieve the purposes of God, which is actually what he's saying in the twelfth verse of this third chapter. He didn't say that he'd made it, but he was working at it. Not that I've already obtained all this or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.

To put it straight from the original, I press on to snatch hold of Him who snatched hold of me. Brothers, I don't consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. In other words, he's not arrived at his fulfillment of his life's desire.

But now he'll give us the bottom line. What is it that he's living for? One thing. One thing I do, forgetting what is behind, straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenwards in Christ Jesus.

All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For as I have often told you before and now say again, even with tears many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction.

Their God is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things, but our citizenship is in heaven, and we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like His glorious body. Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends.

I wrote something down late last night which I'd like to read to you. Watch out for ambition. It can get you into a lot of hard work.

I was turned off Shakespeare when I was 11 years of age because the set play was Midsummer Night's Dream, and my part was Oberon, the king of the fairies. I was 15 before I forgave the teacher. By that time we'd gone to Julius Caesar.

Remember the funeral oration, friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. And Antony goes on to say, I come not to pray Caesar but to bury him, for I believe the bad in men lives after them, the good is often tore within the bones. And then reviewing Caesar's credits, he leads to that final almost immortal line, Did this in Caesar seem ambitious? Ambition should be made of sterner stuff.

To want a funeral in size equivalent to that of the late President Kennedy causes me to say, if that's all, ambition should be made of sterner stuff. So here is this remarkable, small, hook-nosed, unattractive man, possibly with an eye disease, and he's writing to his beloved Philippians, and he tells them a thing or two about ambition. You know, when our beloved Lord was on the seashore, not fishing for fish but fishing for men, He comes across a man by the name of Simon, and He says, You are Simon, but you shall be Peter.

Jesus always makes a distinction between what a man is when he first encounters him, what a woman is when he first encounters her, and what he or she can become. That's the word, at least the concept demands the word potential to describe it. Our Lord Jesus sees what is latent and He makes it patent.

It may take a process, it may take a lot of time, but nonetheless, by the empowering of His Holy Spirit, He brings those characteristics that He sees deep in the psyche, deep in the personality, He lifts them to the surface, and eventually He lets that man, that woman run for Him. And this is basically what the Apostle Paul is telling us in these opening verses. For here, centering in on the theme of ambitions, he speaks about a goal to be attained.

And he leads off, unusually for Paul, with a personal testimony which is followed by a public plea. His personal testimony is given in three aspects. First, there is a confession.

He's not quite where he wants to be. The potentiality is more obvious than it used to be, but there's still a long way to go. You remember that Tim and I, in having the tremendous privilege, and we say that very sincerely in trying to unpack this epistle, on one occasion, we made the point that sanctification is a progressive thing.

God is not finished with me yet. And don't close down on me. Give me a little bit more time.

You remember the illustration that I dangled in front of you. And here the Apostle Paul is saying, well, I'm not quite where I should be. God is not finished with me yet.

You see, he has said out before, you remember I shared it last week, what it really means to be a Christian. And he brings together so many glorious concepts. And he says, this is the ideal.

Yet with the humility that befits the Apostle, he says, but I'm not yet there. And yet, though there's some way to travel, I have got a determination to achieve the goal. This one thing I do.

Jesus snatched me. He took hold of me for one thing. And I'm snatching onto Him.

I'm holding onto Him. And I am wanting what Jesus took hold of me for eventually to be fulfilled in my life. What is the greatest problem in your present? My answer is, your past.

So many occasions in the Christian life, the present and the future are bankrupted because of the past. The Apostle Paul says, I'm forgetting the past. What does he mean by that? He can't mean it too literally because he's just taken us on a little tour of what it used to be like in the opening verses of the third chapter.

What I think, brothers and sisters, he is saying is this, that those things in the past which might bedevil the present, he's pushing to one side. Could you live with blood on your hands? Could you live with the thought that you were the first person who contributed towards the death of Stephen, making therefore Stephen the first martyr? That you brought paralysis into the minds of womenfolk in Jerusalem because you hounded their husbands to death? If the Apostle would constantly be thinking on those sad thoughts from his past life, then his present life would have been completely blighted by what happened in the past and the future would have been unacceptable. There is a sense in which we need to enter into the freedom of forgiveness.

Be of sin the double cure. Save me from its guilt and power. Some of us have been saved from the power of sin, but not from the guilt of sin.

And the Apostle Paul is here saying that one of the things that will obtrude, one of the things that will be an obstacle in pursuing the course for which Jesus took hold of us may be our failure to accept his forgiveness and the fact that he has pressed the delete button in our past. Forgetting those things which are behind. There's a sense in which you can dwell on the past and clog the wheels of present and ever.

Some of you I speak with tears to in my heart. Even your bereavements in the past you have to come to terms with because they can paralyze your present and make your future unacceptable. He's gone from me.

She is no longer around. The possibility is that you can dwell on that for so long. The loss of a beloved friend who is a shadow to your substance that the present seems to be completely unacceptable and your work for the Lord Jesus impoverished as a result.

It says, Paul, there's a goal to be attained and I am determined in achieving that goal to forget those things in the past that may clog the wheels of the present and prevent my future bringing service to the Lord Jesus. Confession, determination, followed by, if you like, anticipation. What does Paul want? Well, I want to press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me to be heavenwards in Christ Jesus.

Now, frustratingly in one sense he doesn't tell us what the prize is but actually we know because there is ample evidence in the rest of Scripture to resolve what could have been a conundrum. What do you want most at the end of your day? To step, as I believe you will, from this world into the immediate presence of Jesus Christ. That I believe as much as I believe I'm standing here.

The first thing you want the beloved Savior to say surely is, well done. You did what you could. The apostle dresses up the language and he puts it more graphically when he's writing to Timothy.

Paul, an elderly man, realizing that the sands have run through the glass and that the baton to shift the metaphor is going to be handed over to Timothy and he's quite happy about that. Elijah is always happy when he finds Elisha and he says, Timothy, I've fought a good fight. I've kept the faith.

I've finished the course. Henceforth there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me on that day. You see, here's his personal testimony.

This is what he wants. This is the goal to be attained. Now, not just is this a personal testimony but he leads it into a public plea.

All of us, verse 15, all of us who are mature should take such a view of things. All of us should be at one in this. Even if you find it a little bit difficult to grasp on first hearing, he says in the second sentence of verse 15, may God give you grace so that this shall be clear to you so that you will live up at this moment to what you've attained so that your doctrine and your demeanor, the message and the way that you live your life are so close that you're pleasing God.

Isn't that wonderful? It's the credibility of the Christian that is his strongest testimony. So here is a goal to be obtained. Join with others, verse 17, in following my example.

As many as are mature, as many as really have any spiritual insight at all, you will see that what I am saying makes for essential wisdom. I am pressing on the upward way. Do some of you remember Moody and Sankey hymns? We still sing them at the time? We haven't completely given over to Graham Kendrick? I'm pressing on the upward way.

New heights I'm gaining every day. Still praying as I'm homeward bound. Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

Lord, lift me up and let me stand by faith on heaven's table land. A higher plane that I have found. Lord, plant my feet on higher ground.

A goal to be attained. Followed by, quickly, a danger to be averted. I mean, this is what the apostle has to say in the 18th and 19th verses.

He puts up a warning. He puts up a red light. And it's a difficult passage and we're going to go fairly quickly through it.

You see, verse 17 brings alongside Paul those who have got his objectives as Christians. And there's a contrast that he leads into in which he shows us a bad example. Join with others in following my example, brothers.

Take note of those who fit their lives according to the pattern that we have knitted before you. Because why, well, there are those who don't follow our example. In the second verse of the third chapter, or the same chapter, he's already made references, you know, to legalizers, to people who've reduced their religion to codes and commandments and subcommandments and regulations and so on and so forth.

These people dug the feet, the footsteps of the apostle Paul and they were always trying to corrupt the gospel that he preached and make it that much more narrow, make it a gospel of works, of doing things. But over against the legalists there were also the libertines. You know, when you've saved, you can do as you like.

You come across that crowd of people when Paul is writing to the Romans. He's got these people in mind. Let us enhance the grace of God by sinning as desperately as we can because the more we sin, well, the more credit goes to God.

It was a perversion, you see, of the gospel. And the apostle Paul is always concerned to keep the purity, the essential purity of the gospel. Jesus died on the cross of Calvary to save sinners, to save them from their sin and to empower them so that they live differently.

I've told you often, verse 18, he says, and now I tell you with tears, there are those who pollute the doctrines that I preach to the degree that they have become enemies of the cross of Christ. Isn't that a powerful expression? An enemy of the cross. It's the antipathy of all that Christianity stands for.

In the cross, in the cross, be my glory ever. Jesus, keep me near the cross. At the cross, at the cross, there I first saw the light and the burden of my heart rolled away.

It was there by faith I received my sight. Somewhat extravagantly, and now I'm happy of the day to become an enemy of the cross. I mean, there they were, Caiaphas and Annas, and all the motley crew with flushed faces tormenting the Christ, throwing up their shafts of abuse, openly distancing themselves from the Lord Jesus.

Says the apostle, there are more enemies than is obvious in the immediate crowd. Anyone who negates, who reverses the essentials of this gospel is an enemy of it. And he gives us the creedal statement, if you like, of these people.

He tells us of their divinity, it's really their stomach, verse 19. He tells us of their destiny, it's destruction, the first part of verse 19. He tells us of their demeanor, the end of verse 19.

Their mind is on earthly things. These are men and women who have not submitted themselves to the message of the old rugged cross. And Paul is saying that any man or woman who denies that, or waters it down, is not just doomed to annihilation, for destruction does not mean the cessation of being.

They are doomed to an eternity without God. I had an amazing fax that came from someone that I don't know, into the TAB office just this last week or so. It's amazing the letters that are being sent to us at the moment, and news of things that are happening in various parts of the world.

And this brother, he's from some church, it must be a fairly mega church in the States, he faxed me. And I wrote back to him, and he faxed me again. And he said that in his area, where he is a preacher, some 20 to 25,000 people have just been converted in the United States.

Now, I tell you, I know nothing of this man at all. I know nothing of the background. All I know is that through our office came this two or three page fax.

And when I read it through, apparently what had happened was that some people from Canada, strangely enough, had come into his area. And they had started to preach. And the emphasis of their preaching was not on heaven, but it was on hell.

It was not on the love of God, it was on the wrath of God. And throughout the whole of this area, there has come a sense of the fear of God. It has become known as a miracle in this town.

They've actually asked the people who were so used to go back to Canada just to give the churches a chance to cope with the number of people who are trying to get in the churches. What is the fear that has been triggered? Well, it's the fear of destruction. It is the concept of an eternity outside the presence of God.

Now, in these days, we don't emphasize hell. We don't emphasize judgment very much. We've gone soft in this area of the gospel.

That would not have been the case in the Great Awakening with Jonathan Edwards. And maybe it was this fresh emphasis and this sense of the horror of being the wrong side of the cross that gripped these people, I don't know. But the fact of the matter is that when a man or woman is on the wrong side of the cross, then their eternal destiny is in the balance.

And when they die in their sins, there is no hope. They die in a condition of destruction and the destruction lasts eternally. That is what the Bible teaches.

However hard the doctrine may seem to be, their destiny is destruction. They've lived for themselves. Their glory is their shame.

There's been an inversion of ethics. Quoting Isaiah chapter 5, there are some people who call sweetness sourness, and others who call sourness sweetness, darkness light, and light darkness. What does Isaiah mean? He means the perversion of the ethical standards.

And this, says the Apostle Paul, is what causes him to weep on the part of some people that he knows. Their God, their destiny is destruction. They worship themselves.

They glory in shame. They are moribund. Their mind is on earthly things.

This is something to be averted. Set your mind not on earthly things. Rather, says the Apostle Paul, if there is anything excellent or praiseworthy, if there's anything noble, if there's anything right, whatsoever is pure, whatsoever is lovely, whatsoever is admirable, whatever will last throughout eternity, set your mind on those things.

And that defines the Christian attitude, you see. The Christian has lifted his eyes to the eternal hills. He realizes that he's not here forever, and he won't be tricked into a materialistic mindset that lives to acquire and to satisfy the body as though that is all that there is.

So, you see, the Apostle, having shown us a goal to be attained and dangers to be averted, he takes us on more positively and causes us to rejoice as he points to a savior to be awaited. But, our citizenship is in heaven. Look at verse 20, you see.

Here's the contrast between these people that he's touched on in the preceding two verses with himself, and not just with himself, but with all those who acknowledge the cross of Christ. Our citizenship is in heaven. We eagerly await a savior.

Isn't it interesting that when the Apostle is running a contrast between an enemy of Christ, he doesn't give you the picture, or rather, an enemy of the cross. He doesn't give you the picture, contrary-wise, of the lover of the cross. What he does is, he links together the cross and the second advent.

The opposite of the enemy of the cross is the one who is the watcher for the return. Because Paul will put parity on the death of Jesus and on the second advent of Jesus. You see, because these are the two fixed points on the spiritual compass, and these, if you like, just to shift the metaphor a little bit, are the pivots on which Christianity swings.

He came. He came from heaven. He became like you and me.

He humbled himself. His mindset was the mindset of the servant. He faces death, I, he says, the Apostle, even death on the cross.

And then he's raised. Raised in the power of an endless life. Assumes his throne in heaven.

To him all the accolades are given. The highest name that heaven affords is his, by sovereign right. But he is not by the Father's right hand eternally, with no intention whatever of returning back to this sin-stained earth.

He who was born incognito in the manger in Bethlehem shall come in great power and great glory. And actually, the lover of the cross is the one who is the watcher for the return. Because we live in that sort of twilight period between the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus and his return.

And we cling to this with eager expectation. The elders will be relieved to know that I have never been to a race meeting. But I have watched one on television.

In fact, I've watched more than one. Can you imagine it now? Just, elders, close your ears. More ordinary Christians, you can listen.

Imagine you're at Epsom and you've put five pound on a horse. And that horse is gradually inching its way forward. And you've got your binoculars.

And you're watching. You're watching. You're watching.

Will it win? Now let's lift that mundane illustration. The elders can now tune in. We've got our eyes fixed on the return.

We're watching. We're watching. We're waiting.

We're waiting. Eager anticipation. And if the conviction is so dominant that nothing else matters, then whether you're like Wang Mingdao who's done 28 years or had done 28 years in a Chinese jail, or whether you're like Paul who describes himself as being treated like the offscarring of the world, it doesn't really matter because you know that the future is in his hands and he is going to return.

The expectancy which you own is now subsumed, if you're liking your thinking, to the concept of his efficiency or his efficacy. What is he going to do when he comes back? Well, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, he will transform our lowly bodies. That same power that we referred to last week, that same power which was available to the blessed Christ in the tomb and brought him back from the dead, that cosmic power shall be released by him at the end of time.

For what purpose? To renew this sin-stained earth. To bring everything under his control. You see, the earth is his, as the heavens are his.

And the time will come when the earth shall be so close to the heavens that there shall be no distinction between them. I saw the New Jerusalem coming down from God as a bride ordained for her husband. The heavens and the earth becoming as one.

And the glory that God had for Adam and for his descendants in his mind at the beginning of time, that shall come to pass. And the cosmic Christ shall inaugurate his reign forever and ever. When the universe and the universes beyond the universe and the universes beyond the universe of this universe shall move into the purpose for which they were created, God will be glorified not only in the heavens he made, but on the earth that he brought into being.

The whole inanimate creation, says the Apostle, as he's writing to Romans in the eighth chapter, strains, reaches forward, eyes on the horizon, believing that the Creator will move the creation into the fulfillment of the original reason why it was there. For this thin-stained earth carries the marks of the curse, the obscene stretches of the desert, what the philosophers call the distaliology, the earthquakes. All that that works against harmony and order, eliminated, eradicated, says the Apostle Paul when Christ comes, he will bring everything under his control.

And this body, this small emaciated body of mine, this vile body, it will be transformed. And I will have a body like unto his glorious body. So here is this little prisoner of a human level so insignificant, seemingly at the butt of Roman officialdom, having known the hostility of the religious Jews, he can face his deprivation, he can cope with all the problems, though he dies daily, though he is knocked down, he still has this lamp and light of faith that glows.

And knocked down, he will not be knocked out, and he will tell his beloved Philippians that there is a Savior whose return is to be awaited. And when they do this, then stability comes to them. And therefore, verse 1, chapter 4, my brothers, you whom I love and long for, my joy, my crown.

Wasn't Paul a wonderful pastor in the love that he had for his people? How you should stand firm, my dear friends. You see, all that Paul has been trying to do is to impart to them, and he believes to some degree they're already there in any case. The same sort of ambition that he has.

He wants to keep hold of Christ. He wants to know him more and more and more. Prisoner, you say? He was the freest man that ever there was.

A narrow philosophy. The Christian faith gives you the grandest philosophy that there is in the world. Paul is a member of the church, and the church is the greatest organism that there is this side of eternity because it's part of the people of God.

Now, are you there? Do you love the cross? Or are you an enemy of the cross? Are you a watcher for the return? Or is your ambition so low that you'd settle for a funeral as big as that of Jimmy Kennedy? Away with your small ambitions. Ambition should be made of sterner stuff. Lift up your eyes.

See the coming King and allow your lifestyle, all the remainder of your days, to be controlled by what you know will ultimately be your future. You see, if what Paul has been teaching us is important, then it will affect the whole of our lives. Our ambition shall be made of sterner stuff than even the perpetuation of life here by being almost neurotic about our health, about our personal comfort, about simply job security.

All these things have a place, but they're secondary. The important thing is that you might grasp hold of Him and have fulfilled the reason why He grasped hold of you. So Paul is quite personal in his teaching.

That's why he lifted the curtain and became no longer an anonymous individual, as he wrote. He went into personal illustration, most unusual for Paul. And he gave us what was his heart's desire, sharing it with us, that I might know Him.

Bringing praise and glory to Him. So now as we extol Him as Majesty, offer Him every area of your life, every department, even the secret areas where you have so many problems. Not one person here who doesn't have problems in some attic in their personality.

Submit to His claims. Know His authority and know the peace of resting in the knowledge that you're achieving His will.