“Paul said, ‘I press on’”
Philippians 3:13-14
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
“Feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme. Get on up, it’s bobsled time.”
If you’ve ever heard those words, then you just might remember a Disney film from back in 1993 called, Cool Runnings. Not only is it one of the top ten highest-grossing sports comedies in history, it’s the ultimate fish-out-of-water underdog story.
And while Disney took more than its share of artistic license, (in other words, they made quite a lot of it up!), the real story began when two Americans, George Finch and Bill Maloney happened to visit a local Jamaican pushcart derby. And thinking that the sport looked an awful lot like Olympic bobsledding, they had an idea. Why couldn’t warm, sunny, average temperature of seventy-seven degrees Jamaica have an Olympic bobsled team too? And sure enough, just a few months later, they began to pull it together.
First, they recruited some athletes from the Jamaican military, then they hired some coaches from Austria and the United States, then they took them all to train in Lake Placid, New York.
But it was never easy. Not only did they have to use borrowed equipment, one of the Jamaicans got hurt during training. And in their final race, they lost control of the sled at eighty-five miles an hour and crashed, trapping some of the teammates underneath. And while they never did win a race, they did manage to come in 30th out of forty-one teams.
Not bad for the Jamaican bobsled team!
When I think of them, I think of what Paul once wrote to the church in Philippi, chapter 3. Please turn in your Bible to page 1249.
Philippians chapter 3, starting at verse 12: “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are mature think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you. Only let us hold true to what we have attained” (Philippians 3:12-16).
It’s easy to say that Paul’s epistle to the Philippians is one of his most beautiful letters of all. It’s here that we find words like these, in chapter 4: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” Chapter 2: ”At the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” And chapter 1: “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell.”
Paul epistle to the Philippians is one of his most beautiful letters of all.
Now here in chapter 3, just as soon as he writes in verse 8, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord,” he goes on to say in verse 12, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own.” And verse 13: “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of Christ Jesus.”
If you’re a good student of the Bible, and most of you are, you’ll know that the apostle Paul must have loved sports. And the reason I say that is because he often used images, word pictures, of athletes and the Olympic games.
Think of his words to the Galatians. To them, he wrote, “You were running well. Who hindered you from obeying the truth?” And he said he hoped that he himself had not “run in vain.”
To the Corinthians, (the home of the Isthmian Games), he wrote, “Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run to win the prize.” And he wrote, “I do not box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.”
And in what was very likely the very last letter he wrote, he said to a pastor named Timothy, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will award to me on that Day and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for His appearing.”
So it is in his letter to the Philippians. As he wrote in verse 13: “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of Christ Jesus.”
Can you notice something for me? Notice that before he “strained forward” and “pressed on,” he did something. He wrote in verse 13: “forgetting what lies behind.”
If you think about it, that’s one of the hardest we could ever do, to “forget what lies behind.”
What did Paul leave behind? He left his sins--confessed, repented, and forgiven. He left his failures, when many thought he wasn’t smart enough, or good enough, or strong enough. He left his successes, the things for which he had once been so proud, (“of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to righteousness under the law, blameless”). He left his past pleasures and treasures. And best of all, he left the sins and failures of others.
And so should we. As he wrote to the Philippians: “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind...” No matter how great or small, dark or deep, leave it all behind.
Then what? Paul wrote: “...and straining forward to what lies ahead…”
What lies ahead? Perfection. Glory. Peace with others. Peace with God. As he wrote in verse 14, “The prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
More than sixty years ago, back in August of 1954, John Landy and Roger Bannister were asked to compete in what was called, “The Miracle Mile.”
And for good reason. Earlier that year, Bannister had become the first runner ever to break the four-minute mile. Then, a month later, Landy broke even his record, running the mile in 3 minutes, 57.9 seconds.
So in August of 1954, the British Empire Games in Vancouver invited each of them to compete--one running against the other. The press called it, “The mile of the century,” and “The miracle mile.”
And though each of them had a lot in common, they had very different personalities and different ways to train. Bannister was very private. Landy was public.
And they ran very differently too. While Landy set a fast pace in hopes of draining his rivals’ speed and energy, Bannister could sprint hard and win at the very end.
Then when it came time for the race, it wasn’t easy for either of them. Bannister had caught a cold the day before, that left him coughing and sneezing, and Landy had gashed his foot and had stitches after stepping on a photographer’s flashbulb.
But in spite of their handicaps, both started fast and both ran well. And for much of the race, Landy was ahead by at least five feet.
But as they came to the end of the race, everything changed in an instant. For in that moment, Landy looked back. He glanced inside, over his left shoulder, to see if he had done enough to hold off Bannister. But it was at that very moment that Bannister shot past him on the right.
Later Bannister said, “I saw him glance inwards over his opposite shoulder. This tiny act of his held great significance and gave me confidence.”
Then sure enough, a moment later, Bannister crossed the finish line first at 3 minutes, 58.8 seconds, while Landy, in second place, was another eight-tenths of a second behind.
Later, a statue was sculpted of that fateful moment. Landy said, “While Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt for looking back, I’m probably the only one ever turned into bronze for looking back.”
As Paul wrote to the Philippians: “Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
In their book, Does God Really Like Me?, authors Cyd and Geoffrey Holsclaw tell of a visit they once paid to a museum in downtown St. Louis. It’s called City Museum, housed in a hundred-year-old warehouse. Close to a million people visit there every year.
And when they first went to visit, they assumed it would be a boring place to learn about the history of St. Louis. Instead, much to their surprise, they found that the entire museum was literally made of junk--concrete, rebar, rusty gears, cinder blocks, ceiling panels, broken tiles, shards of pottery, empty kegs, and broken bottles. And while most of us would say the junk was worthless and useless, the builders transformed it into a playground wonderland.
For example, one room transforms scraps into a swampland forest that adults and children can swing through. Another room is a maze of bank safes and mirrors. Another is full of slides and ladders, one of them ten stories tall! And outside the museum, people can climb through “gerbil tunnels” made of rebar, into a broken airplane suspended high in the air. An old school bus hangs off the side of the building.
As their site says, “Expect the unexpected. You’ll find something different every time you come.”
For all the times life leaves us broken and useless, there’s a place even we can come to be renewed and restored. It’s the cross, where the blood of our Savior Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
In the words of John Newton, “I am not what I should be. I am not what I want to be. I am not what I will be. But, praise God, I am not what I used to be!”
And as Paul once wrote to the Philippians: “But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”
How thankful we are, dear Father, that You have taken us as we are and made us Your own. By Your grace, be our constant source of hope and strength in all our days to come, for Jesus’ sake. Amen