Sermon Title: The Surpassing Worth of Knowing Christ [Sermon]
Sermon Text: Phillipians 3:4b-14
Sermon Summary: Knowing Christ means forgetting the guilt of the past, bearing fruit with God’s blessings, and pressing on toward the future, because His death transforms our hearts and makes us His own.
Preacher: Rev. Dr. Christopher D. Jackson
Liturgical Date: Pentecost 19, Proper 22 A
Calendar Date: 2026-10-04
Location: Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church in Door County (Forestville)

Saint Peter’s Lutheran Church serves Sister Bay and other areas in Northeastern Wisconsin.

The following transcript has been cleaned and lightly edited with the assistance of AI:

TRANSCRIPT

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Today in our sermon, we are going to be taking up the theme of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ. We’re going to be taking it up under three headings. First of all, we’re going to talk about the fact that knowing Christ means forgetting what is behind. Second of all, we’re going to talk about the fact that knowing Christ means bearing fruit with the blessings that we have received. And finally, we’re going to talk about the fact that knowing Christ means knowing what our future holds, and therefore pressing on to that future.

Knowledge, training, it can make all the difference. We can have all the raw materials, but if we aren’t oriented in the right way and things aren’t structured the right way, it can actually go in the opposite direction. Instead of being a blessing, it can be a curse. Or at least simply not utilized in the way that would be good and right.

A pertinent example of this to me is in my own family. Back about, I don’t know, about 20 years ago or so, 23 years ago or so, my brother came back from Marine basic training and his advanced training as well, and was a completely different person. That’s an age-old story, right? But it was very stark and very dramatic with my brother.

He had all the raw materials to be an impressive individual. So when he took the ACT, for example, he scored higher than a lot of valedictorians that I’ve known. But even while he had that intellectual capacity, he really didn’t apply it. He was a C and D student. He had a tall, big frame, taller than me by probably about 6’3″, 6’4″ or so, and very broad-shouldered and so on. But before he went off to boot camp, he was pretty flabby, pretty weak, hunched over. He came back a lean, mean, American fighting machine. It was incredible to see how the Marines were able to take all these blessings that he had been given, and were able to help him to use it and apply it to benefit others, in this case, our nation, in his service in the military.

And the Lord Jesus Christ does an even more profound thing than this by filling our hearts with His love and giving us the knowledge of Him. Through the knowledge of Jesus Christ, we are transformed to render unto God the fruits that he desires, the fruits of thanksgiving to him, the fruits of seeking to serve him, and the fruits of loving service of the neighbor as well.

The Surpassing Worth of Knowing Christ Means Forgetting What Lies Behind

And the way the Lord does this is first of all by, in the knowledge of him, forgetting what lies behind. And when Saint Paul talks about forgetting what lies behind, I think this is a very personal thing for him. Paul is not talking just in objective ideas. He’s talking about objective ideas, but it’s through the filter of his own subjective experience, the life that he had actually lived.

‘Cause man, did Saint Paul have some skeletons in his closet, in some senses quite literally, that was good for him to leave behind. He was a man who had been blessed in many ways, and we’re going to talk about these ways in which he had been blessed in a minute. But yet he used those blessings to hurt and to harm others.

Consider, for example, his role at the martyrdom of St. Stephen, the very first Christian martyr. While he himself, it appears, did not cast any stones, he yet facilitated those who did. He watched over the cloaks of those who had laid them aside in order to stone St. Stephen, and he looked on with approval. So much approval, the next time we encounter St. Paul, he’s actually himself actively persecuting Christians.

And the great honor and the great wonderful blessing that we have in the knowledge of Christ Jesus is the ability to forget the guilt and the shame of our past. To leave that behind.

You see, Christ Jesus through His wondrous, loving, atoning death for our sakes, He took the just condemnation that we have all deserved according to our sinfulness. The condemnation that we have deserved is eternal death. And some people think, including some theologians think, that’s far too harsh of a sentence for our sin. But it’s just the natural result of what we have done.

So consider our readings for today, our other readings, which compare the people of God of old to a vineyard. In the Lord Jesus Christ, in his parable today, somewhat modifies this to talk about them as the tenants of the vineyard. What had they received? Incredible blessings. Israel had been taken up out of Egypt. It was about to die, and yet the Lord dug them up there from Egypt and planted them in the fertile soils of Canaan. There, he watered and fertilized this vine so that it went to branch out so that many nations stood under their protection, and provision, and power. Lord had granted them many blessings.

But what had they failed to do? They failed to render him the fruit that he desired from them. Lord desired that they love Him with all their heart and soul and strength and mind. And yet they let their heart be divided. Maybe they acknowledged Yahweh with their lips, and yet with their deeds and with their hearts, they were continually going after other foreign false gods.

In the parable of the vineyard, of the tenants of the vineyard, Jesus relates how the tenants of the vineyard failed to render to the owner of the vineyard the fruits that were his due. And the common thread with both of these is this: a rupture in the relationship with the one who had given them such great blessings. Israel, when they failed to give God his due, they said, “God, we’ll take those blessings, but we don’t want anything to do with you who gave us those blessings.”

That’s why condemnation is just. By the way, brothers and sisters in Christ, God has given us everything. God has given us life. If we reject God therefore, we reject the giver of life, and we reject life itself. It’s our preference to have death rather than life. If we reject God we reject the giver of all light. Therefore, it’s a preference for darkness.

We can go on and on, but here is what Christ Jesus, our Lord, did in His holy and precious death. Even while His heart was a heart of undivided love towards God, an undivided love towards the neighbor, yet He suffered the just consequences of a rejection of God, which was His own rejection. “My God, why have you forsaken me?” Christ Jesus took the condemnation we have all deserved, leaving us therefore only the fruits of His righteousness, which therefore becomes our righteousness, our grace, our mercy. So that no longer are we guilty or ashamed before the Lord, but instead we can look to Him as dear Father. With hearts that then trust Him and acknowledge Him and look to Him as in faith.

The Surpassing Worth of Knowing Christ Means Bearing Fruit with the Blessings We Have Received

Which brings us to our second point, because that knowledge of God through Christ, it transforms our hearts so that now we are, in fact, able, imperfectly this side of heaven, but yet we are able to bear the fruits that God so desires. We can have all the blessings from God, and yet we can use them to evil ends.

And this is, in fact, what we find with St. Paul. He recounts so many of the blessings that he received from the Lord God. He says, for example, “I was circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless.”

He recounts many of the blessings that he had received. First of all, he was born into a pious family. And as being born into a pious family, they kept for him the laws and the rules and the regulations that were prescribed for a pious family. In those days, they didn’t bring the children to baptism as we do now, but instead they were to bring their children to be circumcised, their sons to be circumcised, and he had received that blessing.

Not only this, but he was born of the people of Israel. He was descended from Abraham according to the flesh. And it says a Hebrew of Hebrews. What I think he might mean by this, by being a Hebrew of Hebrews, is that he was well-versed in the Hebrew scriptures. He knew the Old Testament, the Bible as it stood in that time. And not only this, but he was taught to observe the laws of the Old Testament in a very strict way so that those who were concerned about such things could find no charge to level against him, and yet this was all lost. Why? Because he used these blessings to be a persecutor of the church.

He received many other blessings besides these ones that he lists out. Not only did he have a good Hebrew education, but he also had a good Greco-Roman education. He was familiar with the philosophers and the poets and the playwrights of the Greco-Roman world. He was not only a Jew, but he was also a Roman citizen. Because of this, he was a prime person to do what he ended up doing, to extradite people from Roman provinces such as Syria back to Jerusalem in order to try them there. He was the exact right person to do the devil’s work of persecuting the Christian church.

All these blessings that he had received from the hand of God, he turned to evil ends. And so it is with so many of us, so many around us. The Lord has blessed our country and our land with incredible material prosperity. We are the richest nation, the most powerful nation that has ever existed on the face of planet Earth.

Because of this, our hearts ought to be filled with gratitude towards God. His courts ought to be full. We don’t need to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day in order to make means come together. And yet so few people come to give thanks to the Lord God and to receive His blessings of eternal life. The Lord has granted us such blessings, and yet so many people turn aside from His ways. And instead of rendering God the obedience that they ought to do, instead of loving neighbor as themselves, instead they follow their own ways and look to who they consider to be number one. People use their blessings and use them towards evil ends, and fail to render God His due. They fail to offer up the fruits of righteousness.

But for those of us who know Christ, it is entirely different. For those of us who know Christ, our hearts are transformed. That makes all the difference. Just as my brother had all the raw materials, but needed a personal transformation in order for them to be put to good ends, so also as Christians, we are transformed. Our hearts, instead of holding God at arm’s length or even further, instead are filled with love and gratitude towards Him. And these hearts are transformed to the neighbor as well, that even as God has loved the neighbor, so also that love is reflected in us towards the neighbor as well. So that we render to God what is His due, thanksgiving, obedience. We render to our neighbor what God desires of us to do, loving service.

The Surpassing Worth of Knowing Christ Means Knowing What Our Future Holds

Now that’s certainly imperfect this side of heaven, and St. Paul acknowledges that as well in Philippians. He says, “Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Jesus Christ has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own, but 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 upward call of God in Christ Jesus.”

This side of heaven, the old sinful flesh still hangs around our necks. Because of this, we will fail. We’re going to fail sometimes to love the Lord our God with all our heart and soul and strength and mind. We’re going to fail to love our neighbor as ourselves. And yet, on account of the mercy we have in Christ Jesus, we know what lies ahead for us. We know that when Christ returns in power and might and glory, we will be utterly perfected, completely glorified. No longer will our hearts be divided. No longer will we love anything before the Lord God. No longer will we put anything in God’s place. No longer will there be any shade upon our hearts to prevent us from loving neighbor as ourselves.

That is what we look forward to as Christians. We know what lies before us. Because we know what lies ahead of us, we press on and we strain towards it, seeking by the power of God to become more and more who we will be when Christ returns. To seek to love the Lord God more and more, and to seek to love the neighbor as ourself more and more. Not that by these means we earn our own righteousness or our own salvation, but rather as a reflection of the love of God so lavishly poured into our hearts, this love by which He became one of us, to live for us, to die for us, to bring us forgiveness and everlasting life.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.