The Second Sunday in Lent, February 28, 2010

Preached at Providence Lutheran Church, Holland, Ohio

Pastor Dennis R. King

"Take Me for Example!"

Philippians 3:17-4:1

The Grace and Mercy of our Lord, Jesus Christ, be with you all. Amen!

Paul surprises us in this text from Philippians this morning. He surprises us by setting himself up as an example. Essentially, he says, "Brothers and sisters join in imitating me." Follow my example. Who of us would dare to set ourselves up as an example? If we are honest with ourselves, we would say "Do as the Bible says not as I do." Parents, too often, have this handicap in dealing with their children. Most of us would hesitate to set ourselves up as an example to others, except perhaps in some specific instance or circumstance. Dwight L. Moody once said, "I have had more trouble with myself than anybody else that I have ever met." Most of us would agree with him.

The trouble with following an example is that sometimes we end up following the imperfections. A man had a beautiful Chinese plate which he valued very much. One day it fell off a shelf and it cracked down the middle. He was afraid that this heirloom would be lost. So he ordered six more plates. To ensure the exact pattern, he sent his broken plate as a copy. When he received his package from China six months later, he was astonished to find that the Chinese craftsmen had so faithfully followed his copy that each new plate had a crack right down the middle!

Ordinarily we do not think much of someone who sets himself/herself up as an example. Those who do so usually are not. Like the little girl when asked to suggest a topic for discussion responded, "Who is the prettiest girl in the class and why am I?"

"So you are a minister," someone once asked. "Do you know what you fellows ought to be preaching? You ought to telling everybody to mind their own business. Now, you take me, for example. I do not borrow and I do not lend. I do not ask and I do not give. I mind my own business and expect everybody else to do the same. Now what do you think of that?" I think, you are about as far away from God as anybody could be. Wouldn’t you hate to live with a person like that man? Now take me, for example. No thanks. People, who act this way, judge others by themselves. We all know people who say I think playing cards, or dancing, or drinking, or borrowing or something else is evil and therefore it is evil. They "think more highly of themselves than they ought to think." They are glad, like the Pharisees of old, to serve as other people’s consciences. Johnny Carson is reported to have said to Jack Leonard, "Tell me, Jack, if you had to do it all over again would you still fall in love with yourself?" Of course, he would, if he could. In designing people God has created us so it is very difficult for us to pat our own selves on the back. But some people manage to do it anyway. Yet it is precisely where we are in love with ourselves that we are unlovable to others. Conceit is the only disease known to man that makes everyone sick except the one who has it. A movie actress, visiting a friend, talked on and on about herself for an hour, not letting her friend say anything at all. Finally she said, "That is enough about me. Now tell me, what about you? Tell me, what did you think about my latest picture?"

In the 1800's an unknown publisher issued a small pamphlet entitled, "Excerpts from the Memoirs of Caroline E. Smelt." Miss Smelt was an insufferable prude, but thought herself a model of propriety. On her death bed she sent a message to her cousin, "Tell her never to enter a theater, never to play cards, never to attend tea parties. For these things are all evil. Of that I am absolutely certain." God, speaking through Caroline E. Smelt, is telling everybody how to be good. The Pharisee in all of us says, "Take me, for example." How not to influence people! Yet influencing people for Christ and His Kingdom is one of the major responsibilities of every Christian person. Although most of us would be reluctant to set ourselves up as an example, still we must try to "lead lives worthy of the high calling to which we are called." In an old copy of The Lutheran, there is an article about an official from China who heard the preaching of Christian missionaries and was much inclined to Christianity. Yet thirty years went by before he even thought about openly professing his faith. One of the influences that slowed him down was that his partners in business were not willing to share one seventh of their gain by Sabbath observance. He felt that without this he could not truly be a Christian. The other was the opposition of the women of his household. His mother and his wife were devoted to idol worship, and scoffed at the idea that Christians were really what they professed to be. This Chinese official urged his mother and his wife to go and hear the missionaries. But they said that words meant nothing - anybody can talk. Instead of going to church, they descended upon the mission house, and were very curious about every detail of these missionaries lives.

Even this was not enough for the man’s wife. One day she came and invited herself to visit one of the missionaries to study her at close range. "I am sorry," said the missionary, " But I have no place for you." "Oh, that will be all right," said the lady. "I will bring my own bed and a servant to wait on me." The missionary knew that to refuse would only increase the woman’s mistrust. So the missionary consented and this Chinese visitor settled down to watch her host. "Here she stayed asking to translate the letters written home by this missionary, listening to her prayers, watching her with terrible Chinese thoroughness in her sitting down and rising up, and watching her from behind and before. There could scarcely have been a closer testing of one’s religion. At last, the Chinese woman declared herself satisfied, "I see you really do live as you say Christian’s should."

The missionary passed the test of "living as a Christian should." I am sure Paul would have, too. Would we have done as well? How would you and I look like to a Chinese woman if she should come into our homes and live with us for a week? Paul took seriously his responsibility of influencing people for Christ. Yet for all the reverence we give to this great apostle, it seems at first glance that he has gone the wrong way. Here is a bold Christian who can say, "Imitate me - Follow my example." But example in what? Paul cannot be referring to his own righteousness because he said that he looked on himself as "not having any righteousness of his own." And he also said, "For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do." Often his hot temper got the better of him. We know that he quarreled with Barnabas, that he withstood Peter to his face. It is quite possible that Demas, who forsook Paul and went back to his own people, being himself Greek, found Paul to be a man with a temper impossible to live with.

In what, then, was Paul trying to get them to imitate in him? He was trying to influence that early group of Christians to follow the true Christian faith. There were some among them who had their own ideas of what it meant to be a Christian. If their ideas had prevailed, Christian historians tell us that Christianity probably would have been considered just another Graeco-Roman cult. Paul was concerned lest the new Christians in the group should follow that false teaching. So he instructed, "By my example not theirs." Example in what? For one thing Paul was trying to get them to imitate him in his sense of "falling short." This humility before God was his constant concern. He had written to the Romans "There is no difference, all have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God." When he urged the Ephesians to "lead a life worthy of the high calling to which they were called," it was with "lowness, meekness, patience, forbearing one another in love."

A lawyer once asked a farmer, "Why don’t you hold up your head in the world as I do? I bow my head neither before God nor man." This farmer had a bit of wisdom of his own and pointed to a field of grain. He commented to this lawyer, "Only those heads that are empty can stand upright. Those that are well filled bend over, real low." Paul wanted them to imitate him in a sense of "falling short" before God. Again he wanted them to follow him in remembering that there is more to life than setting their minds on earthly things. Psychologists tell us that to be happy an animal only really needs three things: food, shelter and amusement. The sad thing is there are people like that and some of them were among this Christian group that Paul was speaking to. There are people like that among us today. "There is no salvation for a sinner until he admits he is a sinner; and the sin above all sins is to put our human senses in a higher place than God."

This brings what Paul is saying up to date and puts it in our living rooms. It speaks to modern Christian’s who think they are good people because they pay their bills, go to church, and have not been in jail recently. It speaks to modern Christians who have set their minds on all the conveniences and gadgets that surround us as the best of life. But Paul reminds us, we are first of all citizens of Heaven. "Our commonwealth," he says, "is in Heaven."

Here was a picture that the Philippians could understand. Philippi was a Roman colony. These Roman colonies were amazing places. Here and there at strategic military centers the Romans set down their colonies. They were not like modern colonies out in the unexplored wilds; they commanded great road centers, and passes across the hills, and routes by which the armies could march. In such places the Romans set down their colonies, whose citizens were mostly soldiers who had served their time (Twenty-one years) and have been rewarded with full citizenship. Now the great characteristics of these Roman colonies were that, wherever they were, they remained fragments of Rome. No matter where they were, Roman dress was worn; Roman magistrates governed them; the Latin tongue was spoken; Roman justice was ministered; Roman morals were observed. Even in the ends of the earth these colonies remained unshakably and unalterably Roman. So Paul says to the Philippians, " Just as the Roman colonists never forget that they are citizens of Rome so you must never forget that you are citizens of Heaven; and your conduct must match your citizenship." Wherever the Christian is, his conduct must show that he is a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven. Every so often in my ministry, I will meet someone who has just joined a congregation. When I talk to them about why they were drawn to that particular church, what it was that interested them about that church so much that they would become a member, they usually respond with something like, "I got to know these people and I have worked with them for years. Often I have wished that I could be like them. So I decided that if these people came from this church, than this church is the place that has helped them to become what they are. Therefore this place is where I want to be.

While we hesitate, and rightly so, to set ourselves up as examples, still our daily living needs to show something that makes it clear that we have answered Christ’s call to follow Him. That is the example that we want to set for others that they, too, might join with us. Amen!