Forgetting Those Things (Part A)

It is easy to be busy with many things, but to narrow it down to one thing so that the many things do not cause us to neglect that one thing.

Now, understood, we have many things we have to do, many responsibilities, but we have to be careful that we don't allow ourselves to major in minor things, but that we major in the major things in our quest for Christian perfection. This is Cross-Reference Radio with our pastor and teacher Rick Gaston. Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel Mechanicsville. Pastor Rick is currently teaching a special message called, Forgetting Those Things.

Please stay with us after today's message to hear more information about Cross-Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in Philippians chapter 3 as he begins his message, Forgetting Those Things. If you have your Bibles, please turn to Paul's letter to the Philippians chapter 3.

Paul's letter to the Philippians chapter 3, verses 7 through 14, and then I'll give the title and the text. Beginning at verse 7, But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ, and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith, that I may know Him, and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings being conformed to His death, if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead, not that I have already attained or am already perfected, but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal, for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Forgetting those things, that's the title of the message, and after reading that, there's nothing left to say, you just want to close in prayer or just keep reading it, how do you improve upon any of that?

Well you cannot, and yet God has ordained preaching, and the text is verse 13, but one thing, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. Such an inspirational letter, this letter of Paul, it is one of my favorites, this one and 2 Timothy are just always so inspiring to me. Here in the beginning of our text, in verse 13, where he says, brethren I do not count myself to have apprehended, he admits to having imperfect devotion to God, and yet he speaks of this devotion, and we reading it, knowing the background of this man's life, we are often just so impressed by how much devotion we lack in comparison to a servant like Paul. And yet, even though he is imperfect with his devotion, he has formulated a response, he's formulated a response to being imperfect. Instead of just saying, you know, I don't have what it takes, I cannot achieve the goals that Christ has set before us, I might as well just not even try.

Instead of doing that, he says, well I'm not perfect, but this is what I can do, this is one thing, this one thing. He has narrowed things down in spite of this downside of his walk, as he sees it, and we who believe can identify with that very easily. That phrase, one thing, it is an important Christian phrase, it shows up quite a few times in scripture, enough times to get our attention and hold it. In Mark chapter 10, Jesus said, one thing you lack, he said that to a searching heart, someone who was searching to devote more of their life in Christ, and that's what Christ said, one thing you lack.

Again, he said, one thing is needful, as he explained to Martha who was criticizing her sister for not doing enough to help her. There was a blind man who received his sight, and he said to the Pharisees, one thing I know, I was blind, but now I see because Jesus has touched me. And then there is David, the psalmist of Israel, the sweet psalmist of Israel, he said, one thing have I desired of the Lord that I will seek after.

He went on to express his desire to behold the beauty of the Lord. And so this is something that we should be interested in, but one thing, it is easy to be busy with many things, but to narrow it down to one thing so that the many things do not cause us to neglect that one thing. Now understood, we have many things we have to do, many responsibilities, but we have to be careful that we don't allow ourselves to major in minor things, but that we major in the major things in our quest for Christian perfection. And we're speaking about forgetting those things, but we have to identify what those things are so we can concentrate on that one thing.

So again, forgetting those things which are behind. Well, looking at his own past, it was blasphemous. He persecuted the church.

It's all recorded there in Acts 7 and Acts 8 and Acts chapter 9. We read of his conversion on his way to further persecute the church. And he talks about this in 1 Timothy also.

He says, I was a blasphemer. I persecuted the church. Well, Paul takes that zeal that he had against the church, and he uses it to uphold the church, to build the church, to spread the church. And when we say church, of course we mean those things that belong to Christ. He is a man who was not enslaved by his past.

Some people are. If anyone, if anyone in the New Testament, in the scripture, if anyone made Satan pay for lying to him about Jesus Christ, it was Paul. That doesn't mean others weren't doing it too, but you cannot escape that truth that he made Satan pay for lying to him about Jesus Christ. And in doing this, he had to refuse to allow his past to paralyze him. He could have said, you know, I'm just not worthy to preach the gospel. I'm not worthy to serve Christ. I persecuted the church, and he could have been paralyzed right there. Instead, he counter attacks with his life.

He spends his life going against Satan by going for Christ. Our memories, they can be determined, tenacious, to replay over and over some injury of the past, some slight of yesterday. We have to learn to fend off these things or else we will grow in resentment. We will be paralyzed.

We won't be able to serve. Someone did not say hello to me the right way. Someone didn't do this or something didn't happen. One thing that I find that helps me fend off resentment in life is remembering that every misery missed is a blessing. There are so many miseries that God has shielded me from. And because some make it through, I have to settle that in my head.

What's going on with this? And that's what we're going to talk about because if you don't settle it, you may turn against God or yourself or others. This man Paul, he was stoned or when he was stoned or when he was caned or when he was scourged, he had to forget that traumatic moment or those traumatic moments and move forward or else it all would have stopped.

And we're amazed. We see him get stoned, believed to death, and he gets up and he goes into the very city from where the people who throw the stones at him came from. He turned his back on those things that hindered his ministry for Christ. Anything contrary to Jesus Christ found in his education prior to Jesus Christ, he kicked out. This is not often practiced.

Well, maybe it is more often than what I could ever determine, but I know that some don't do this. Some seek to salvage. Some come to Christ and they want to mix and they want to mingle and they want to maneuver somehow into their theology some favorite error that they picked up along the way. They sort of Christianize some human teaching. And this is something that Paul makes it very clear that that wasn't the case with him. Look at verse 4 if you still have your Bibles open in Philippians chapter 3.

And there he says though, I also might have confidence in the flesh. If anyone else thinks he may have confidence in the flesh, I more so circumcise the eighth day of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews concerning the law of Pharisee, concerning zeal, persecuting the church, concerning the righteousness which is in the law blameless. But what things were gained to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. It's all rubbish. It's all trash if it is contrary to Christ.

I don't care where I got it from or how much work I put into it. If it goes against Jesus Christ, it is junk. And that's how he lived his life. And the Holy Spirit who authored this in this man's life wanted us to know about it, wanted us to think about it, to meditate on these things. And reaching forward he says to those things which are ahead. Serving Jesus, better off without those things that hinder, that paralyze, that tear down instead of building up. By this time in his life, he had achieved so much in his serving Jesus Christ.

He had already written so many letters and established so many churches. There are some, it can be said of them, as one author said, when they look back, it is with regret. When they look ahead, it is with fear.

And when they look around, it is with complaint. I don't want to be that guy. I don't want to have my life managed by regret.

I do not want to live in fear. And I don't want to be that person that turns lights off in a room by my incessant complaints. There's always something to complain about. I think the men, perhaps more so than the women, have to guard against this when it comes to church.

I think that the men may be more prone to complaining on the way home about the service, about the church, than the women as a rule. I have no way to prove that. But it is something to consider nonetheless. Paul, reaching forward without looking backwards at those things that harm. Well, there were things to look backwards at that you don't want to lose, of course. But there are other things, and we know what they are.

We don't need a teacher to come along and say, don't look back at that. We already know. He still has to visit Rome. He still has to write 1 and 2 Timothy as we know them, and Titus, and Hebrews. He hasn't gotten to those things yet.

But he will. He never would have gotten to them if he kept dragging up the past, letting it interfere with his present. Yesterday's failures. We all have them. We are shaped by them.

We are forged by how we handle those things that have been against us in our lives. Some yesterday loss that may be chewing on you still. It could have been decades ago. And you younger Christians who have not been around long enough to stack up their yesterday regrets, they're coming.

Get ready now. Have the resolve now that you will forget those things that are behind and reach forward to those things which are ahead. Samuel, that great prophet of God. The only rebuke that Samuel received that we know of, or that is in scripture, was for his excessive sorrow over Saul. In 1 Samuel chapter 15, we read Samuel went no more to see Saul until the day of his death. Nevertheless, Samuel mourned for Saul. Now Yahweh said to Samuel, how long will you mourn for Saul, seeing I have rejected him from reigning over Israel?

Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided myself a king among his sons. There it is.

There is those things. For Samuel, it was the regret over Saul that he had to forget. He had to get past that if he was going to continue to be used by God.

At least in a large way. Samuel's continued mourning over Saul kept him from reaching forward. He mourned for Saul because he had anointed Saul. This was personal for him.

He had such high hopes for this tall man who was the first king of Israel. He had taught him. He had directed him.

Told him how to conduct himself. And it all collapsed. It all failed. All he had left were ashes. And it hurt. It hurt Samuel deeply. And that's why we find this great man of God mourning over yesterday. He was sick with failure. He was sick with disappointment. If God had only, those kind of thoughts can tear us down. His hurt, before God showed up and began to encourage him to go forward, his hurt made him useless in service.

At least it greatly diminished him. Samuel was frozen because he could not forget the thing behind. To forget those things behind does not mean that we fail to remember. We have very little control over many things that come into our memory.

But it does mean to go forward without their interference. And that, I find to be key. We can make zombies of yesterday harmful memories that are still alive and they shouldn't be alive.

Alive to the point of blocking what the Holy Spirit wants to do through us. Forget those things. What things?

Useless things. Forget, as in disallow, being dominated and enslaved, ruined or otherwise afflicted by yesterday. And the Bible is loaded with these kinds of stories. Naomi, Naomi was paralyzed by the past. She came home from across the Jordan and she said, I went out full and I've come back empty. God breathed life back into Naomi. He changed the story.

He used Ruth to do it. To remain besieged by past defeats, past hurts and disappointments is to miss the one thing and it's so easy to do. It is so easy to say to our hurt feelings, here are the keys. Here is the control to the rest of my life.

You just take over from here on. That is disastrous. It's not being careless about the past that I'm talking about. It's having a disregard for those things in the past that stop us from plowing. Paul said, for the love of Christ compels us, not the regrets, not the failures, but it is the love of Christ. Love can see a long distance off. Love can see very far.

The prodigal son, we're told in Luke, he arose and came to his father, but when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. Love can see a long distance and the scripture is constantly encouraging us to find that in ourselves through the Spirit of God. But if love can see a far off, so can hate.

Hate can see a long way too. This was a story with Joseph, Genesis 37. His brothers hated him. We pick it up there in the 18th verse. Now when they saw him afar off, even before he came near, they conspired against him to kill him.

Which will it be? Let's talk about Joseph a little bit because here is a man that demonstrated the very thing that Paul is writing to the Philippians about forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. Later, after being sold by his brothers, he was then sold to Potiphar and most of you know the story. Then he was jailed for obeying God, for holding true to God. He was jailed for obeying God in the house that he contributed so much to.

He was a blessing where he was. We read in Genesis 39, and his master saw that Yahweh was with him and that Yahweh made all he did to prosper in his hands. His own brothers sold him, and then he is sent to jail for refusing to sin. What taste did that leave in Joseph's mouth? What did that do to his religion, to his belief in God, to be so abandoned by God? No blessings going on. In fact, when something seemed to be a blessing, it turned into a disaster, but those things could not enslave his faith to bitterness.

It did not work. If hell was trying to destroy the faith of Joseph, it failed. One of the best ways to cure our personal sorrow is to take interest in the service, even the sorrow of others. And that's why we read.

I read it again. Genesis 39, verse 3. And his master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord made all he did to prosper in his hand.

So there's Joseph, sold by his brothers, never knowing if he's going to see his father ever again, or his young brother Benjamin. And where he is, he serves. And he blesses that household. He blessed others. There's a simple theme that these things give to us, that we better not be controlled by yesterday's hurts today.

It's not to our advantage. In the end, when Jacob had died, those brothers that sold Joseph into slavery, of course Joseph is now one of the leaders in Egypt, next to the Pharaoh. He is the leader. And when Jacob died, as I said, the brothers were afraid. When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, perhaps Joseph will hate us, and may actually repay us for all the evil which we did to him.

They did not forget those things which are behind. But this is a significant part of the story about this man Joseph. So they sent messengers to Joseph, saying, Before your father died, he commanded, saying, Thus you shall say to Joseph, I beg you, please forgive the trespass of your brothers and their sin, for they did evil to you. Now please forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of your father.

Now here it comes. And Joseph wept when they spoke to him. It hurt him that they would think that he was a vicious man. It hurt him to think that they thought that he was a petty man. He had put those things behind him. He had moved forward. He had gone out of his way to bring his family and to bless them and to establish them there in the land of Goshen. And in the end they missed it, because they didn't put it to rest.

But he did. And so Joseph went on to say, As for you, you meant evil against me. You see, it's not to pretend that something did not happen. It's what do you do with what happened? Do you allow it to clobber you to death for the rest of your life?

Or do you put it in its place? And Joseph goes on, You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. You see, Joseph said, God was in this.

I can't explain all of it, but I can explain enough of it. Through my hardship, many people were made alive or their lives were sustained by avoiding the famine. These lessons are all over scripture. And when we read them and when we hear of them, they are supposed to make us stronger because they can make us stronger. Unless you've become so jaded in your faith, you think nothing will work.

What an awful place to be. If you are that way, I encourage you to get around strong Christians so they can shine that stuff out of you. That is the way to remember and also forget the hard and bitter things of the past, to see them as God sees them, to see the hand of God in them, and to trust that he will make it good. Regardless of what others meant by their actions, what is God doing? Admittedly, it's very difficult sometimes to know what God is up to.

It can take years to find out as it did with Joseph, but by faith he persevered, forgetting and forgiving a very big part of our faith. Thanks for tuning in to Cross-Reference Radio for this study in God's Word. If you've missed any part of this message or would like to explore more teachings, you can hear them by going to crossreferenceradio.com.

Pastor Rick is the pastor of Calvary Chapel mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Again, that website is crossreferenceradio.com. We'd also like to encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. By doing so, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross-Reference Radio that we upload. It's a great way to stay connected to God's Word. Just search for Cross-Reference Radio in your favorite podcast app. That's all for today. Thanks for joining us here on Cross-Reference Radio.