Each of us has raised our Ebenezer monument, our stone of help, to remind us of that point in our life when we came to the definitive point of a serious walk with Christ.
It may have been a specific moment when we fell to our knees and cried out, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” It may have been a less definitive time when we became conscious that a great change had taken place within us to confirm God’s presence there. We may not know exactly when the moment was that we trusted Jesus Christ as Lord. But we can remember when it dawned on us that something was different.
The seed was perhaps planted by a Godly mother or father. Maybe a grandmother or neighbor. It might have been a sermon that you recall from this very pulpit at some time in your life. Whatever triggers your memory, your Ebenezer marks the time and the place of realization that things became different.
If this resonates with you, I would ask you to consider what other memories you have about your walk with Christ. You may have disappointed yourself and worried that God would reject you. Those memories may have brought doubt to your mind and heart about your standing with God. Can you remember those wrenching moments when you cried out, “God, how can I possibly be a Christian and have behaved like that?” Those are the times when you subject yourself to the same condemnation that the non-believing world brings in accusation of the people of God: “How can they say they are Christians and behave like that?”
There is a big difference, though, between those who have raised their Ebenezer in memory of the love and help of God and those who have chosen to go it on their own. The difference is that the memories of the Christian are of his sin and human failure and act as a confirmation of the depth of God's great love and mercy. The memories preferred by the non-believer are of his good deeds that he hopes will open heaven’s door.
Along with the memories of a halting Christian walk are also memories of times when God seemed to signal you that He was still with you, despite your doubt and despair. I am certain that each of you has had memories like that. Those are the markers that propel you onward. Those are the evidences of God’s grace that drive you to press forward for the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Those are the signs that point the way from your Ebenezer to the prize that lies beyond the pale.
I can think of two instances that happened to me in MY erratic walk with Christ. The first was when I was walking into a temptation over which I seemed to have had no control. It was as though the Holy Spirit were hollering at me to stop and turn around. I didn’t, and I wondered if I had committed the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Spirit.
There was another time, however, maybe 8 years later. I was out of sorts at that time, as well – in the throws of a divorce, which from my fundmentalist background was the worst of all possible sins. I was at a Sunday service listening to a visiting evangelist preach on Romans 7. While he was preaching, I was reading. I had to restrain myself from jumping up when a bolt of lightening hit me that he was preaching false doctrine. He was preaching that we could lose our salvation by committing sin, and Paul was telling me that there is no condemnation of those who are in Christ Jesus our Lord.
What a memory that was! It was the beginning of a long journey that brings me here in this pulpit this morning. For if there is anything that stirs my soul it is that God's people are safely beyond condemnation. That is the only hope we have, you see. For if we are capable of picking up our own salvation at will and setting it down at will, we have LOST it already. For the sins in our lives is not just the biggies. The sins of our lives are the little sins that lead to the biggies.
The Apostle Paul has something to say about memories and how to sort them out so that they don’t discourage us but propel us to higher ground as disciples of Christ. He begins with his résumé. He has credentials to die for. If his confidence and hope are in the flesh, then the Apostle Paul is all set.
From the time of Abraham, all baby boys born into the line of Abraham were circumcised on the 8th day of life. The thinking goes that because God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th, the 8th day is symbolically the day when God began to assemble His people – back to work! Paul was a direct descendent of Abraham from the tribe of Benjamin, a tribe held in high regard by the Jews, not only because it was one of the southern two tribes of Israel but because it had produced Israel’s first king, Saul.
Paul was a Pharisee. To be a Pharisee required that you be a person of great self-discipline. Not only were you to keep the Mosaic law; you were to keep all the numerous other laws that had been handed down over the centuries. Pharisees were highly honored people among the Jews.
Paul claims to have been faultless in his zeal for the law and in persecuting the church. His was a system of legalistic righteousness, and he was good at it. Paul had it made! If he could have preached the Gospel of the Kingdom of God from that position of authority, it would have been very effective politically, perhaps. But in order to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom, Paul had to surrender his credentials. The Gospel and legalistic righteousness were completely at odds with each other. One was about citizenship in the Kingdom of God; the other was about citizenship here on earth.
That is an important point. Legalism and the Gospel do not mix. You cannot live the Gospel and be a legalist. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is intended to save us from the hopelessness of legalism. If you live by the law, you do not live by the Gospel. Paul had to walk away from all that gave him stature among the Jews. In fact, his Roman citizenship was now more important to his survival than was his well-earned status as a leader of the Jewish church.
Paul was able to beat the best of Judaizers at their own game. No matter how righteous they thought themselves to be, Paul had been higher on the ladder and gave it all up. In v. 7, Paul makes a value statement. Everything that he had accomplished that he once held to be worthwhile, he threw out as you would the rubbish because he would have been in danger of having it destroy his relationship with Christ. The KJ refers to Paul’s accomplishments as “dung.” I suspect that is about as low as you can get.
His desire was to be found in Christ alone. In order to avail himself of that potential, he had to get rid of everything for which he might be tempted to give credit to himself rather than to God. He did not want to be tempted to step back from faith into self-reliance. So he gave it all up – threw it out.
He wanted to know Christ and the power of His resurrection. The only way to do that was to get rid of his own power and live by faith alone. He wanted fellowship with Christ by sharing in His sufferings. The only way to do that was to leave himself vulnerable and without political clout. He wanted to become like Christ in His death. The only way to do that was to be willing to die without exercising one bit of self-preservation. He voluntarily went back to Jerusalem knowing that he was going to die for the Gospel’s sake. The very letter that we are considering was written from a prison in Rome.
Paul lived his testimony. He not only talked the talk; he walked the walk. When brought before the magistrates, he did not plead his credentials as proof of his credibility. He pleaded the cause of Christ. The magistrates were free to react to Paul in whatever way they wished, and they did. He was whipped, stoned and imprisoned. And every time God rescued him, it was a clear demonstration of God’s power and might, and souls were saved.
I think this is the kind of vulnerability that Christ wants of His church. It is a vulnerability that survives by faith and not by design. It is a vulnerability that lives day-to-day and not through a trust fund or a fundraising project. It is a vulnerability that makes it look and seem impossible to survive, but God seems always to give grace in the nick of time.
The 11th v. is a particularly important one. Paul keeps himself vulnerable so that, “…somehow" he might attain to the resurrection from the dead. This ought to be an encouragement to us. Paul, with all his experience in the desert, being caught up into the heavens, was unsure of how God was going to do the resurrection thing. Compare that with many of today’s evangelical Christians, who are very certain not only of how it is going to be done, but when. For Paul, it was enough to know that God was going to do it, even though he did not know how or when.
He is not perfect, v. 12. He has not attained all that he hoped to attain of the kinship with Christ. Things remain a mystery to him, and faith fails him from time to time. Even though he has walked away from his power and credentials, his sacrifice has not been enough to erase all the uncertainties and the mysteries.
So he presses on toward the perfection that he yet seeks, because Christ has made him His own. Christ has claimed him as His own through His blood, and Paul finds that alone is enough to urge him onward toward perfection.
Is what Christ has done for us at Calvary enough for us to press forward toward perfection as Christians? Have we anywhere near reached the point of understanding that suffering with Christ and fellowshipping with Christ and becoming like Him in His death and Resurrection leads to perfection?
The text is the law of progress: “Forgetting what is behind, and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.”
Behind Paul is Saul of Tarsus – the scenes of boyhood, the eagerness of his awakening intellect, his affection for the religion of his fathers. Behind him, also, was his Ebenezer in the City of Damascus under the anointing of Ananias: “Brother Saul, receive your sight.”
The agony of that moment some 26 years before is behind him now, as he passes from the protective bosom of Judaism into the Church of Jesus Christ. Behind him are all the sufferings and agonies and misunderstandings and separations and disappointments and triumphs and victories. Behind him as well are his failings in the flesh and his inner struggles. These signposts of God’s presence were not forgotten but have fallen into the background because Paul is pressing forward.
He is no longer on a predetermined career path. He is pressing forward in uncertainty because pressing forward is more important than where he is going. Those are words to consider this morning for those of us who want to know where we are going and what is the right path to get there. Paul would consider such thinking to be a stumbling block to his relationship with Christ.
What were those things before him? What was his goal? He saw spiritual heights that had yet to be scaled. He saw enemies that had not yet been conquered. He saw graces that had not been won in his secret soul. He saw love that had not been completed – the deepening, purifying, strengthening personal love for the Lord who brought him out from bondage and death.
He saw ahead of him only the possibility of a small window of opportunity and desired to be enriched with a secret strength that would be inexplicable except for the grace of God.
Maybe Paul saw before him the future of the church and the vast Kingdom of God. Maybe he saw the urgency of giving you and me the tools with which to tackle this thing called faith.
We live in a time much faster than that of the Apostle Paul. Things are moving very fast. This is an exciting time to be alive. But this restless, struggling, seething mass of life is also fraught with peril. It calls us who claim Jesus as Lord to be vigilant and to be discerning as to what occupies our time and our devotions, that we not be found so self-sufficient that we need little of faith to make it through this veil of tears.
Just as believers are in danger of insulating themselves by relying on their wit and wisdom, so the church is in danger of being defined by human ability and energy. Human progress, however wonderful it may be, and it certainly is, carries with it the dangers of distraction. Praise God that He always retains a remnant within the confessing church. And the church rises again and again through the ashes of persecution and suffering.
Today in many parts of the world, people are suffering for the cause of Christ. Just when the political pundits are about to pronounce its death, the church rises victorious. It rises on the sure knowledge that, despite our foolish attempts to do for God what He is patiently waiting to do through us, we share the conviction that this Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever.
Are we striving with a view toward a future that is unknown, or are we plotting a course that takes us where we want to go? Are we longing, struggling, praying to conquer in ourselves everything that keeps us from progress in the faith? Are we waging war on selfishness, idleness, sensuality, indifference, frivolity, unbelief? Are we dissatisfied with small thoughts of the Creator? Are we discovering in the Scriptures and in the Sacraments the treasures that will help us press forward toward the mark of our high calling?
Do we desire to dwell on thoughts of God, thoughts of death and thoughts of eternity?
In other words, are we anxious beyond anything else to be humbly, earnestly, fervently and intensely Christian?
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