SUNDAY MORNING SERVICE 23rd September, 2001.

What do you want, do you really, really want?
The Spice girls are ancient history but the question remains.
What are people's deepest needs?
We might have every physical and material need well satisfied
and yet we still need things like
friendship, acceptance, forgiveness, the need to put things right with others.
Things aren't right are they? We knew that long before Tuesday 11 September
but it may focus things for us.
Long before the call for justice that rises out of the ruins in New York
there has always been a concern, a passion to get things right.
Even small children know it when their rights are infringed:
What do they cry? 'That's not fair!'
and they come running to mum or dad or teacher for justice.
To have things put right is our deepest goal, not happiness.
Jesus did NOT say "Blessed they who hunger for happiness
but "Blessed they who hunger ... for righteousness
Righteousness is one of those Bible words that gets a bad press:
we may tend to think: self righteous, sanctimonious, holier than thou
but it is a rich and good word in the Bible with 3 intertwining meanings
(basic meaning: being right with others)
1 legal before God we are declared not guilty;
we have right relationship with him
2 moral character and conduct right, Christlike
3 social we care about justice >
not simply people keep rules
but laws are just, people not oppressed, fair dealing in business
wholesome home and community life
Like a three legged stool, we need all three aspects, legal, moral, social.
'A pattern of life in conformity to God's will' (DA Carson)

Philippians 3:4-14

Righteousness in Philippians 3 has 3 main features:

1 WE CAN'T MAKE OURSELVES RIGHT 3-6
No right to grace,
God's goodness is not achieved but received, not attained but obtained.
That is the flaw in all human systems of self improvement:
it's one flaw in Freemasonry
the idea of a ladder of degrees of moral improvement that you can rise in
It's a flaw typical of every religion, however sincerely held
the flaw of people trying to make themselves right with God
it is a mistake so easily entertained by Christians
that we can attain what can only be obtained
that we can work to deserve what can only be given.

We cannot live 100% perfect life. Paul once thought so:
3-6 He had right background, right rituals, right upbringing, right zeal!
But it was "legalistic" righteousness based on a rule book not on a relationship
and it could bring him no joy, no peace, no satisfaction
Paul is saying that all his self attained righteousness was rubbish
and so is yours and mine.
Not that it's wrong to pray, read your bible, come to church, help people:
those are all good fruit of a life grounded in knowing Jesus
but we get things the wrong way round.
We make our Christianity a matter of doing the right things
so that then God will love us
rather than knowing that God loves us so that we can do the right things.
Supposing you saw me pushing my car up the hill to church
what would you think?
Especially if you found out that there was petrol in the tank
and power in the a battery and nothing wrong with the engine
but I kept saying: I have to put the effort in.
It wouldn't be right to get inside and let the engine do the work.
But isn't this the tragedy of so much of our supposed Christianity?
We have the power of Christ available
but we still think we must get out and push.
And are we not miserable and weary? That's not right, is it?
Well we can't attain righteousness but we can obtain it simply by believing.
We don't achieve it but we receive it.

Jesus offers us this new relationship.
He holds his nail pierced hand out, inviting us to be his friend
We cannot offer him money to be his friend
we don't have to be especially religious to know him
He invites us.
Maybe you read John Stott's article in the Presbyterian Herald
how somebody explained to him
that Jesus was standing knocking on the door of his life
asking to come in and be his friend
''It was exactly what I needed to know.
I had always believed in Jesus, on the other side of the door.
I had pushed pennies under the door to keep him quiet.
I had said my prayers through the key hole,
but all the time he was on the wrong side of the door.
But that night ... I crept out of bed, knelt at my bedside
and told Jesus that I had made a mess of my life so far.
I thanked him for his death and resurrection and as simply as I knew how,
I opened the door and asked him to come in.
And the result, nothing. I heard no peals of thunder
saw no flashes of lightning, no electric shock passed through my body. ...
I hopped back into bed and went to sleep. Two days later I wrote in my diary
'I really have felt an immense new joy throughout today.
it is the joy of being at peace with the world and of being in touch with God.
Up to now Christ has been at the circumference
and I have asked him to guide me
but now he has come in.'''
John Stott is explaining very simply and personally
how one can become a Christian really and truly
by meeting Christ in repentant faith,
no more pennies under the door, no more prayers through the keyhole
no more weary struggle to get it right but joy and peace in his friendship
with Jesus in the centre of your life.
This is what Paul means in 8-9 about gaining Christ 'and be found in him
not having a righteousness of my own that come from the law
but which is through faith in Christ -
the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith'

2 TO BE RIGHTEOUS BY FAITH
IS TO ENTER INTO THE FORGIVENESS & FRIENDSHIP
THAT CHRIST OFFERS
Jesus invites us and as with any true friendship
it's not a matter of trying to please him,
always on tenterhooks in case we do something wrong
but it's a matter of trust and getting to know him better.

3 THIS IS A RELATIONSHIP OF GROWTH 10-14
Can you sense the passion with which Paul writes?
'I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection
and the fellowship of sharing in his suffering
becoming like him in his death
and so somehow to attain to the resurrection of the dead.
Not that I have already obtained this
or have already been made perfect
but I press on to take hold of that for which
Christ Jesus took hold of me.'

Note the hunger and thirst for a deeper and deeper knowledge of Christ.
A righteous relationship with God is not a package,
it is a dynamic, vital growing friendship.
We in this life can never say "I've arrived, got it all" "My thirst is satisfied."
Only in heaven we will know the full satisfaction
but now we can have a good appetite for it!
But do we even begin to approach Paul's passion for this 'one thing'
13-14 Do we press on towards the goal of heaven?
'I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.
But one thing I do. Forgetting what is behind
and straining on towards what is ahead
I press on towards the goal to win the prize
for which God has called us heavenward in Christ Jesus.'

There's an ambition!
How do our goals and aims match up? What do we really, really want?
Is it to know Christ, to be right with him?
Do we also look forward to the Lord's Supper (in 2 week's time / next week)
as a great symbolic expression of how our hunger and thirst is satisfied
and we have closer communion with God and others?
Do we passionately desire also to be right with other people?
Floyd McClung is a courageous and insightful missionary leader and writer
He has written a book 'Learning to love the people you don't like'
and in it he tells of a 70 year old man dressed in a tattered suit, Pop Jenkins
who for a few weeks travelled with 20 year old Floyd
on a journey to Mexico from California
Constantly Pop challenged him 'Do you care, Floyd? Do you really care?'
They saw poverty both physical and spiritual
they saw people living and dying without Christ
and again and again the same question: 'Do you care? Do you really care?'
Is our desire for righteousness just a private concern?
Should it not be as it was for that old man in the words of a hymn we sing
taken from the words of the Prophet Amos a desire that
justice should flow like rivers and righteousness like a never failing stream'?
a concern that things be right
between us and God, between us and others, between others and God

Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervour
serving the Lord
Be joyful in hope, patient in suffering, faithful in prayer