Then I’ll talk about the Philippians 3 passage.įor a small island, Nantucket has a large number of wonderful historical attractions and cultural institutions. But I want to begin by giving you the opening story, much as I told it, as a set-up for the sermon I preached. In the following outline I’ll offer some suggestions for a sermon you might do on this text. I used the experience as the opening story and as a focusing metaphor throughout the sermon. Months later, while working on the text from Paul in Philippians 3:4-14, I found in my experience of Take It Or Leave It an illustration for a sermon on this text. As I left Take It Or Leave It that day I remember thinking, “There’s a sermon in that, but I have no idea what it is.” When I got there I realized that the place is something of a cultural institution on the island. I heard residents of Nantucket speak often about a place on the island called “Take It Or Leave It.” It’s located out at the town landfill, our “city dump.” The stories I heard were so interesting that I decided to go experience Take It Or Leave It for myself. I had one of those experiences when I first moved to the island of Nantucket. You see a beautiful or disturbing sight, you hear something, or you have an encounter in everyday life, and you think, “There’s a sermon in that, but I don’t know what it is.” Sermon stories and illustrations often come to us as experiences long before we know what sermon or text they may illustrate.
If you preach, perhaps you have had experiences similar to mine. The apostle Paul describes it as a journey we make because of “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord.” It is a daily journey of pressing on to the goal of becoming more like Christ. Theological Point: The journey of faith is an ongoing journey of leaving certain things behind, embracing new experiences and beliefs, growing and maturing in Christ. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. More than that, I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of Christ. If anyone else has reason to be confident in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, a member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews as to the law, a Pharisee as to zeal, a persecutor of the church as to righteousness under the law, blameless.
#3 TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT HOW TO#
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