Paul's Goal — Vance Havner

Paul's Goal in Philippians

Philippians, the third chapter, a very familiar portion, beginning with verse 7, and I like to call this Paul's goal,. But things were gained to me, those I counted lost for Christ. Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but lost for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but refuse that I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death, if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead, not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect, but I'll follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus.

Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting that I am among those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before. I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Now if we can together be as quiet and thoughtful as possible, without disturbance or distraction, and do our utmost to concentrate, because we not only need consecration these days, but concentration, consecrated concentration, I want you to think with me about three statements that I should like to lay on your hearts.

The Bad as the Enemy of the Good

Life is a series of choices between the bad and the good and the best, and everything depends on these choices. These three things have a habit of getting in each other's way. It goes without saying, to begin with, that the bad is the enemy of the good.

That we wouldn't debate. An alarming percentage of God's servants are going down these days in defeat and disgrace, overcome not by something merely doubtful or debatable, not on borderline issues, but going down before downright evil.

David was a man after God's own heart, but it was gross iniquity that snared him. Now Hollywood may glamorize it today, but God's word describes all such evil as sordid, ugly, filthy putrefaction. And we're shocked every little while when Christian workers leave town before daylight because their sins caught up with them.

We are astounded at the unmentionable vices described in Romans 1, and breaking out now even in upper brackets of the religious world. When Paul warned against chambering and wantonness, he had in mind more than meets the eye at first reading.

We've grown sentimental about sins. We have called sickness what God calls sinfulness, and weakness what God calls wickedness. We are seeing today, for instance, the scourge of illegitimacy, unwed mothers, and some are advising a new approach that would revise the code of morals so as to make such immorality respectable and subsidized by the welfare state.

Preachers are accused of being pharisaical, and parents are accused of being puritanical if they try to warn their flocks and their children. Many a Christian and many a church today dates this world, and it begins so innocently that there is rarely a protest, but one thing leads to another, and soon it's too late.

The best rule all the way through is never to make the first date. Nothing is bad anymore. Evil is applauded. Reputations are enhanced, and box office receipts pick up in the amusement world if celebrities can boast of several licentious escapades.

That wasn't true a few years ago. I remember when a certain movie comedian got into growth and equity, and the public was thumbs down on him, but not now. It would be an asset to him in the business. God's Word portrays this sinful generation as rotten from head to foot, and pure in its own eyes, and yet not washed from its filthiness.

Every day we are amazed at weird and fantastic crimes committed by children not even in their teens. I saw some time ago a sign along the road, DIRT, per se, and I thought that ought to be hung over every paperback book rack in the drugstores and bookstores of America.

Downright vicious evil wrecks multitudes of Christians and plays havoc in many a church. During these years I have learned one thing, and that is never to take my crowd for granted anymore. A Sunday morning congregation is just about the most innocent-looking aggregation on the face of the earth.

But I've been in many a meeting where, by the middle of the week, enough moral corruption had been confessed, and often by church officers, that no one's dream could possibly exist that I don't take the crowd for granted.

Beloved, you can't play with this world and not be contaminated. Be not deceived. Evil communications corrupt good manners, awake to righteousness and sin, not for some of you church members, it really means it.

Have not the knowledge of God. I speak this to your shame. This vile world is no friend of grace. Help us unto God. Romans 7, verse 4 says we're married to Jesus. James 4, verse 4 calls whirlings adulterers and adulteresses.

No decent married man dates another woman, and no true Christian dates this world. To flirt with it is to fall in love with it and to live in spiritual adultery. Physical adultery often begins with a look and a casual conversation that seems innocent enough, and Christians are lured away from the Lord gradually in pretty much the same way.

The first flirtations are harmless, and the warnings are ridiculed. Gross iniquity. The bad is the enemy of the good. But I want to make a second proposition that you may not agree with, and that is that the bad can be the enemy of the good.

The Good as the Enemy of the Best

Now here is a man unwilling to join the local church, for instance, waiting until he can find a perfect church. Of course, he never will find a perfect church, and if he did and joined it, it wouldn't be a perfect church anymore with him in it.

But he's a perfectionist, and he has such a concept of the ideal church that he's unwilling to work in a real church. His view of the invisible church makes him invisible at church, and the abstract best is the enemy of the concrete good.

That's entirely possible. I heard of a fellow some time ago who wanted to join the choir of a certain church, and the pastor said, well, I don't believe you're one of our members. No, he said, I don't belong to any local church.

I'm a member of the invisible church. And the pastor said, then I suggest that you join the invisible choir. Sometimes preachers set their sights so high in the heavenlies that they're not worth much down in the earthly.

With them, people are either all good or all bad, and they are not able to work effectively with people as they are. Now, of course, people are either lost or saved. But most Christians, beloved, are babes, full of faults and flaws and imperfections.

They have not yet arrived, and while they are saints in the sight of God, they are becoming saints in daily experience. And we can be so demanding of God's sheep that we discourage them and drive them away.

Such a high standard may be set that one becomes impatient with anything short of that standard. All the geese must be swans, and we expect all the rookies to act like veterans. And our Lord worked with people just like they were.

He was patient, not tolerant of sin, but compassionate. And the bruised reed he did not break, and the smoking flax he did not quench. The only crowd he ever blasted were the Pharisees. They were those religious hypocrites who thought they were the best.

They had arrived. So that's all. We must never let the ideal best become the enemy of the concrete good. It's possible to be busy studying how to do better and never do what you're doing well. I don't suppose that anybody is so starry-eyed as a young preacher just out of school and in his first chapter.

What lofty dreams of a church where the deacon's really deep, where the choir never fusses, where the committees do not spend time keeping minutes and wasting hours. But soon the honeymoon is over, and after a couple of ulcers, he begins to take stock.

He may find that the best has been the enemy of the good. He expected too much too soon, and he must learn how to work with people as they are. Now, that isn't compromise. That's blending the ideal with the real and the heavenly with the earthly.

And while we may well lament how far short of the best we've all fallen, we must learn to rejoice in the bad that has become good and the good that has become better. You see, a perfectionist has an awfully hard time of it.

If he's a father, the children ought to be angels. If he's a choir director, the singers ought to be prima donnas. If he's a Sunday school teacher, what on earth can make one hang his harp on the willows?

Quite like a class of a dozen squirming little boys, for instance, with their feet where their head ought to be, and not, you think, getting one thing you say, except that twenty years later you find out that in spite of everything, some of the word of God got into those mischievous little hearts, and they understood something of it after all.

One of my former pastors, Dr. Turner, told some time ago about a little boy who came to our Sunday school years ago, and he was a little terrorist. Nobody knew what to do with him. He was just simply an enigma to everybody, and a mischievous one at that.

He came for some months, and all of a sudden he didn't come, and the good doctor said, I'm ashamed to say it, but I think we were all sort of relieved that he didn't show up for a couple of Sundays, and then one evening we were having some sort of a church get-together, and here he came down the hall of the church with a little violin case under his arm, and he came up to me and said, Dr. Turner, somebody gave me a fiddle.

And I said, well, that's nice, and what did they give it to you for? He said, they gave it to me for being good. He said, as dumbfounded as I was that anybody had even given him a fiddle, to say that he got it for being good was almost too much.

And he saw that look on my face, and he said, you see, doctor, I'm gooder than I used to be. And Dr. Turner said, as he scampered down the hall with that little fiddle case under his arm, I said to myself, well, by the grace of God, some of us are gooder than we used to be, not with our goodness, as we heard very well at breakfast this morning, but one may say, with proper understanding, and if you can say tonight that by the grace of God, in that meaning of it, that you are gooder than you used to be, why, oh, because of what the Lord has wrote.

But thank God, even such poor creatures as we are, in his hands, can be made into instruments of beauty and usefulness to his glory. I remember when I entered Moody Bible Institute in 1922. That's a long time ago.

I didn't even apply to enter the institute. They didn't know I was coming. I didn't know I was going. So I got on the train and started up there. I landed in the middle of the Fall Turner, unheralded and unannounced.

I went into the women's building instead of the men's when I arrived there. And they gave me a card, and I signed it, and they said, go over to this next room now and turn it in. I went there, and there was a lady at the desk, and she reached out her hand for the I thought she wanted to welcome me to the institute, so I shook hands with her.

And that's the way we started. And I hadn't been there very long until I played the piano a little. And, of course, down here where I grew up, down in these hills, I had woven into my piano playing sort of an extra beat.

We have that here in the center. I didn't know it was there. And some of those students began looking down their noses, and one of them finally said to me, don't you know that syncopation has sin in it?

Well, I'd never heard of syncopation. I didn't even know I was syncopated. And finally they said, you will appear before the superintendent of men. That awful day had arrived. I ascended those steps in fear and trembling.

I had visions of that great man seated there at the desk. I could just see him come down with his fists on that table and say, keep your hands off that piano. I know. He was a wise man. And when I went in, he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, you know, I said, when you came up from the south, brown-eyed and playing the piano, that we'd have trouble.

Then he gave me one of the most wonderful little talks out of his heart about playing to the glory of God, and he wove all the necessary instruction about that extra beat into it. And then to cap the climax, he said, now I want you to play for the evening devotions after supper.

That's wisdom. Why, you should have seen me marching into that day, devotions that evening. Napoleon never crossed the Alps with any more confidence than I was in that day. And do you know the secret of the whole thing?

That good man, Superintendent Schaeffer, took me as I was in the hope that I would be gooder than I used to be. And you have to do something like that, beloved. And we need to learn that. And if he hadn't, I think I'd added another beat.

I think that in personal experience, we can be so demanding of ourselves that when we fail, we're almost overcome. Don't expect too much all of a sudden. You don't learn it all in a day. You don't grow up overnight.

Let's be sure we thank God for the progress already made. We want to fly before we walk. We want to be perfect before we start toward perfection. Paul said, I count not myself to have apprehended, but I'm on the way.

And by the grace of God, I am what I am. He blended the ideal with the actual. And the best did not defeat the good. It's not a mark of godliness, dear friends, to be forever condemning oneself in morbid self-accusation.

Dear old Matthew Henry has a word about a peaceable enjoyment of ourselves. Now, he'd be the last man to mean by that a complacency with that whereunto you have attained. But I can see what he means, and I think you can see what he means.

Sometimes we confuse obtainment with attainment. My Lord said, come and I'll give you rest. That's obtainment. Take my yoke upon you and learn, and then you'll find rest. That's attainment. And we don't graduate in a year.

We go on unto perfection, but we don't reach it here. And we must be patient both with ourselves and with others. I hear a lot about the good old days. Well, not just when were the good old days. Even the New Testament churches were filled with ordinary people, even as you and I.

Somebody wrote to a magazine editor some time ago and said, your magazine's not as good as it used to be. And he answered, it never has been. You mustn't lose sight of the ideal. And, of course, you don't in the New Testament.

But at the same time, you find out that God is working His will through some very weak saints who often fall far short of that ideal. And we mustn't be so enraptured with the perfect that we despise imperfect.

You can't be faultless, but you can be blameless. And that's the word that's used. And when a little child writes a letter, if it does the best it can, it's not a faultless letter, but it's a blameless letter.

And what kind of parent would that be who would say, won't you ever grow up? Well, can't you do any better than that? But you rejoice in the progress already attained. And we ought to do that with ourselves and with others.

If a child refused to write because it could not produce a perfect letter, it would write no letter at all. But I press on to the final consideration. We've heard this old adage again and again. And I may seem to be turning right back on what I've said, but I think you can readily see that there's a difference.

The Good as the Enemy of the Best

The good may be the enemy of the best. Our Lord said to the Pharisees, you tithes of mint and anise and cumin, and you have neglected the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. These ought you to have done, not to leave the other undone.

Now, they were measuring on the minor. And they were not putting first things first. Now, the good is better than the bad, but we can become so occupied with the good that we miss the bad. The thing that bothers me most in my meetings is that we shall settle for good meetings when we can have the best meetings.

I was in a New York town many years ago with a young song leader who had unusual discrimination. And one night after the service, I said to him, well, we had a good meeting tonight. And he said, too good.

Well, one doesn't often hear that. So I said, what do you mean? Well, he said, you know what you said, that the good is the enemy of the bad. He said, I know this church. These people should have been on their faces before God in confession of sin.

But everybody settles for a good meeting because we didn't want to go all out. So we settle for a good meeting, and everybody's going out feeling quite harsh about it all. We could have had the best. We settle for the good.

Now, it's harder to blast church members out of this state than it is to arouse sinners. Because a man who is living in gross iniquity may be shocked by the very enormity of his misdeeds and his wretched state.

But lay of the Seans, who are rich and increased with goods and don't need a thing, are the hardest people on earth to awaken. And it's possible to be so busy going to Bible conferences and evangelistic meetings, and even bringing bad people to become good people in evangelism, that we see no need for revival which brings good people to become better people by the grace of God.

And as much as I want to see bad people become good people, I have a burden that the good shall have the best that God has provided. Now, the Apostle Paul sets a goal that rebukes our complacency to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings, forgetting the things that are behind, and that included the bad, and reaching forth to the best that is before.

I press on, not settling down in the good, but moving through the actual on toward the ideal. May I warn you tonight, beloved, of the peril of lesser goals. Making the means become an end in itself. We have a habit, all of us, of arriving at little goals, and then we have no ambition to reach the main objective.

The Peril of Lesser Goals and Religious Complacency

I see the danger of arriving today in, well, for instance, our new church buildings all over the land. We've spent millions, and we needed new church buildings. But I find myself again and again in one of these ornate temples, where the end of the chapter has become the end of the book.

They have arrived in a new building, and I mean arrived. They have settled down to cancer. They're not moving anywhere. Some time ago I talked to a pastor. I had helped in a meeting in a little tumbledown sort of a church some years before, and now they had quite a lovely one.

I asked him, How are you getting along? He said, We're living in idolatry. We're sitting around admiring the church. We've arrived. We've got it made. No more worlds to conquer. What ought to be a milestone has become a millstone.

We've run out of goals. Sometimes I meet preachers who have let that happen. They have arrived. They have their postgraduate degree, and their trip to Palestine, and their big church, and their new car, and their home out in suburbia in a forest of TV aerials.

Ecclesiastical security, financial security, social security, eternal security. They have furrowed their nests, and they are like Baruch. They are making things comfortable, or want to, and if he ever smug, he's arrived.

He's settled in the good. He's not bothered about the bed. You can't get the flicker of an eyelid out of him. He's settled like the Israelites in the promised land. There remains much land to be possessed, but he'll never possess it.

He's tired of fighting. He's not taking off to battle anymore. He's arrived. From here on, he will rehash, and reminisce, and repeat. He's run out of goals. He's got it made. Now, any Christian can get into that state, and it never was easier than it is now.

We don't have many like Jabez, saying, Lord, I'm not satisfied with my boundaries. Widen my horizon, and enlarge my coastline. We've got too many comfortable saints extending their physical waistline, instead of extending their spiritual coastline.

And there aren't many Calibs who, even in old age, are saying, I don't want to retire I don't want a pension. Give me a mountain. Calibs never had to hear that song, old soldiers never die, they just fade away.

He wasn't in any notion of fading away. I want a mountain. I want the best. Yes. There aren't many Pauls saying, I count not myself to have apprehended, but I'm not driving my tent pegs down in these lowlands.

I'm pressing on the upward way, and new heights I'm gaining every day. And my heart doesn't have any desire to stay down here where these doubts arise, and these fears dismay, though some may be satisfied to dwell where these abound.

I've set my sights higher. My prayer, my aim, higher ground. Now, dear friends, this road is not easy. Any man or woman who is not satisfied with the good, I'll kill me. But determined to have the best is in for a rough time of it.

You will be the target of the powers of darkness. You may be beset by strange maladies of body, mind, or spirit. You will be viewed with suspicion by contemporaries, even in the church. You will be called a crank by the moderates for going too far, and a coward by the extremists for not going far enough.

You will be a lonely person because you don't settle like Lot and Sodom. You insist on traveling with Abraham. This road is not crowded. Few there be that find the way to life, and fewer still there be that move into the abundant life.

The average church member, I've discovered, a long time since, is not remotely interested in the deeper Christian life. He is not even casually interested in the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his suffering.

But the man who sets out to know Christ never arrives down here, but he's always arriving. He never fully apprehends, but every day he keeps on apprehending. He never knows Christ completely, but every day knows him better.

And that keeps him fresh without becoming fed up. He knows the difference between obtainment and attainment. He does not confuse the means with the end. He's not bitter and harsh, for he expects nothing of himself and very little of others and everything of God.

He's not satisfied with things as they are, but he's not impatient. He's not content with the good, but he enjoys the good while he moves on toward the best. He doesn't confuse the end of the chapter with the end of the book.

Each victory will help him another to win. He may lose the battle now and then, but he wins the war. And he doesn't settle for a lesser goal. Each experience is not a stopping place, but a stepping stone on the way from the good to the best.

And you see, that saves him from St. Vitus' dance on one hand and rigor mortis on the other. Now, if you have settled down in smug complacency, satisfied with the good, when you could have the best, I beg you, beloved, set your sights on a higher goal.

Knowing God as the Greatest Pursuit

Getting to know God in Christ is the greatest of all pursuits. And it is not so much a matter of art as of heart. The man who knows God and the people who know the Lord today are not usually very conspicuous.

They don't usually make headlines. Most of them are plain, simple folks. They don't go around looking strange and acting mysterious. They are not sanctified posers trying to live up to dramatic versions of themselves.

Sometimes I go to a church, a town, for a meeting, and they take me out to show me where the bank president lives. Well, actually, I'm not too interested in that. I wish they'd show me where the greatest saint in town lives.

However, they might have to go to the other side of the railroad track. He that ruleth his spirit is better than he that taketh the city. I'd like to see somebody who's president of his own spirit by the grace of God.

I'd like to see that man. The art of all arts is to be conformed to our Lord. And that calls for devotion and time and work. Old William Law said, Who am I till I fold it up in the bed late of the morning when the farmers have gone about their work and I'm so far behind with my sanctification?

That ought to get all of us out of there. Some time ago I was looking over some old newspaper clippings and I found one telling about a sermon I preached in the First Baptist Church of Shelby 45 years ago.

And I said to my wife, and I said first to myself, I ought to be a better preacher and a better Christian than I am having had this long to work at it. Did you ever say something like that to yourself?

Some of you older Christians? Did you ever say you ought to and be honest with yourself? I ought to be a better Christian. I've had a long time to work at this thing. I ought to have covered more territory.

The difference between Paderewski and just anybody pounding a piano is not genius alone. He was a genius. But also devotion and love for the art and time and thought. And the difference between a man that knows God and just an ordinary Christian is devotion and love and time and thought.

And how the devil does fight the pursuit of God. Some of you will bear me witness that you never knew what satanic opposition was until you set out for a closer walk with God. You housewives, you have learned that you've gotten into this.

And one of the best ways to remember things you meant to do around the house and forgot is to start to pray. And the devil will speedily bring all these little details to your memory. The devil doesn't mind how many sermons we preachers prepare, if it'll keep us from preparing ourselves.

If you're growing more irritable and impatient and sour notes and discords are creeping in, let the Holy Spirit get a word in edgewise and stop staging concerts long enough to tune up the instrument. And if you're developing purse pockets while you're preaching hell, have a checkup.

It's so easy to do. The devil will settle for anything short of knowing God. If he can't sell you a bag bill of goods, he'll settle for something good. If it can be made a substitute for God's best, even church work can crowd out God.

We can be so busy going to religious meetings that we never meet God. Pastors become not under shepherds, but heads of religious department stores. The only way to break out of all this trap, as far as I can see, is to become a rebel in this rat race.

And make time for God at any cost. And if you can't untie some of the knots, cut them. Radical? Yes. So were the early saints, but they upset the world. Learn how to develop a great big healthy nose. Cancel that engagement to speak for the sons and daughters of I Will Arise.

Tell them I have an appointment. And you do. You've got one with God. You probably heard Brother Duncan tell us at the Keswick and Moody Church that he has an appointment with his boys each day. And when somebody else wants an appointment, he said, I tell them I have an appointment with my two boys.

That's sensible. Well, we have an appointment with the Almighty. You have an appointment with Deity. Years ago, I was with Dr. Paul Reith in his conference out in Minnesota. And I heard that great preacher tell of a missionary in India who came to an old bishop and said, Oh, Bishop, I don't know what's the matter with me.

I've read all the books and I've taken all the steps and I've done all that they say to do, and still I don't seem to know the Lord very well. Does God have favorites? The old bishop said, not favorites, dear, but he does have intimates.

Now, most men are strangers to God and some are just acquaintances. None are favorites, but thank God a few can be intimates. Everyone could be. If you are forgetting the bad behind them, pressing through the good around them, they would reach the best that's before them.

And that's what you were predestinated for, to become conformed to the image of his son. Some time ago, I read of an art student whose teacher put him outdoors one late afternoon at a spot something like this to paint a sunset.

Before him lay the hills and beyond the hills the sinking sun. On the horizon over here, there was a barn. And he became very involved painting that barn. He wanted that red roof to be just right. Late in the day, the teacher came to see how he was getting along.

He took in the situation, put his hand on the pupil's shoulder, and said, now look, the sun is almost down. And you're so busy putting a roof on a barn, you have no time to paint the sunset. And after all, he said, you are painting a sunset and not shangling a barn.

I don't think I need to press the application tonight. The sun is going down, beloved, on all of us. Fast to its close ebbs out life's little days. And what a tragedy to let even the good keep us from the best and become so occupied with lesser goals that we fail at the great objections.

What a pity to miss the sunset. Painting the barn. And painting barns is quite all right. There isn't anything wrong, mind you, with painting barns. But it's poor business when you can be painting sunset.

And some of us in Christian experience are dabbing around here and there with a lot of even religious activities and good things. First thing you know, it'll be all over with us. And we shall have spent our precious years putting a roof on a barn.

A Call to Pursue Christ Above All Else

I beseech you tonight, you who have come to this mountaintop, won't you resolve under God that you will not stop showing all Paul's goal and all of your goal and every Christian's goal to know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his son, Peristain.

I have a feeling that it would hardly be possible to gather this many people together without having some of all three of the classes we have talked about tonight here. There may be some in our gathering who are beset by gross inequities, who are even tempted tonight to foul transgressions.

There may be someone in Christian work here tonight who is sore beset and is feeling the terrific pull of this world and the flesh and the devil. Oh, blessed Holy Spirit, convict such a one right now until they shall turn from all that to the Savior in the cleansing blood and his forgiveness and the filling of the Holy Spirit that they may get in that good path and that bright way that shineth more and more into the perfect day.

We have a feeling, dear Lord, there may be some who are too exacting. Thou knowest what a failing that is. Maybe we have set the sight so high that we're not very usable for thee among people as they are.

Help us, Lord, to cultivate a proper understanding of the needs of the human heart and remember that so many people are weak and babes and they're like Mr. Littlefaith and they need our tenderest care.

And that includes ourselves so often. And then, Lord, practically all of us are in that other group. And it's so easy, dear Father, to become so wrapped up even with good things that we think that's enough.

Then we get into a sort of merry-go-round around and around the same diseases. And they're not bad things, they're good things. But we're not going anywhere much. Oh, save us from the peril of lesser goals, dear God.

Maybe there's a preacher who has slipped in here tonight who's busily engaged with good things and has not lately covered much ground and taken much of the promised land in his own experience. Maybe there's a very zealous church worker and thank God for every one of them.

Somebody must do the work. And yes, it's so easy, Lord, to work our fingernails off in religious work and not cover much territory in our spiritual progress. And we mistake activity for progress. Speak to us, Lord.

And oh, God forbid that we miss the sunset painting the barn and become so occupied with lesser goals that we fail at that which matters most, to know our Lord and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his servant.

Oh, wilt thou bring any resolves that are welling up in hearts right now to fruition in the prayer meetings that shall follow, in the evening, grant that no one shall try to lay aside whatever whisperings of God are coming in their heads without settling and going through with Him.

This night, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.