GOLIATH MUST FALL: COMFORT MUST FALL

We hope you enjoying the Lenten study, Goliath Must Fall.  We are at the fourth sermon in this series but you still have time to do the study by picking up a book and watching the videos at sjpcjax.org.  We would encourage you to grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ by participating.  In our series, Goliath Must Fall the sermon for this week  is Comfort Must Fall. Why comfort?  After all, this is a good thing!  Most everyone prefers being comfortable rather than uncomfortable.  This giant seems so harmless…but so deadly.  You have heard it said that “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  This is the deathly side of comfort.  It lulls us into a lame, powerless faith.  It softly caresses our cherished notions of selfishness.  It quietly mutes the majestic power of God’s mission for our lives.  This giant is powerful because it is the easy way, the broad road of safety and security that leads to spiritual death.  In  Philippians 3:8-16 we find the path to bring this giant to the ground through a power-filled faith.  The Apostle Paul is writing from the discomfort of a prison cell to encourage these young believers to experience Jesus, especially through inconvenience and difficulty.  He uses personal experience. He has found a partnership with Christ that has made his life before Jesus seem hopeless and empty.  He had enjoyed a comfortable life but it was blinding him to the power of God’s grace and forgiveness.  Through discomfort and hardship God forged in Paul not just the strength to endure, but the power to thrive regardless of the circumstances.   Our most earnest prayer is that you will experience the power of Christ that will break the hypnotic gaze of comfort and lead you to experience the resurrection life of sacrifice and service.

Philippians 3:8-16: What is more, I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ ⁹ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ– the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. ¹⁰ I want to know Christ– yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, ¹¹ and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead. ¹² Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. ¹³ Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, ¹⁴ I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. ¹⁵ All of us, then, 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. ¹⁶ Only let us live up to what we have already attained. (NIV)