Forgetting What's Behind
- Details
- Sunday Morning Service
- Jeremy Richards
- Copalis Community Church
- 20 July 2025
- Philippians 3:13-14
- Hebrews 9:11
- John 16:20-22
Chapter three. Forgetting what is behind and pressing forward to the things which are ahead. Philippians 3, 13, 14. Philippians 3, 13,14. It says in chapter three, verse 13, Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.
I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, let us, as many as are mature, have this mind and if anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Let's pray. Oh Father, Lord, we do come to youo, Lord, just asking that those things which hang on in our hearts, Lord, that we have trouble forgetting, Father, that yout would enable us by youy Spirit to see that glorious work of Christ, that we might push on, that we might preserve and obtain something that we neither deserve nor expect, something that's a direct benefit of knowing Christ. And we thank youk in Jesus name.
Amen. So we have been talking in this section and we have to remember that Paul is. This is a continuation of that conversation he had of that forgetting, that leaving of that lifestyle that he once possessed while he was a rising star in Judaism, in Israel, right? He left all the things that he thought at that time were beneficial for him. He left them behind for the beauty that he saw that was in his relationship with Christ.
If you remember that God brought a sudden, abrupt hope, halt to his rising career in Judaism. He was walking down the road. He felt that he was doing everything that his sect, his type of Judaism demanded. And all of a sudden he came in contact with Jesus Christ through a light and a voice in the middle of the desert. And there he felt he heard God's voice calling to him, Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?
And God called Saul out of that religious angry lifestyle into one of following Jesus Christ. He left everything. And there is an absolute perspective here that Paul had to forget those things, he was putting them behind him, that he might also embrace that new ministry that Jesus had for him. But there are also things that come along with lifestyle. Everyone hear me.
There are types of attitudes that come along with the way you walk. And he also had to leave those things behind. There are certain things that are associated with a religious and angry lifestyle. There are certain things that confront us in our relationships when you've allowed a certain kind of lifestyle to live in your heart and work through you for a certain amount of time. It is not a neutral ground a person finds themselves in when they are called out of the lifestyle.
They used to walk in. There is baggage associated with a lifetime of living a life that is not Christlike. Everyone tracking with me, you're not brought out of an area in which ultimately you were serving the devil in your natural flesh and come out without no scars, no hurts, no pain. And what's maybe worse, you don't come out of that lifestyle without the recognition that you might have hurt other people in that walk. There is a very real forgetting that is not just about changing your clothes or putting on a different suit.
There is a kind of forgetting that is much more internal and deep. It verges and touches emotional areas and deep rooted harm in our lives and in the lives of other people. It's not about becoming, putting on a different hat. It is about really addressing those issues that came along with the lifestyle we had to walk in. So with a little bit of trepidation, I want to talk about that.
In Philippians 3, it says, Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead. We know, or I think most people would believe that Christianity in its purest form is described as a relationship with God. It is one in which two individuals have an interaction. One ultimately being the authority, being the master, being the leader, being the one who does all the work, leads an individual out of slavery and calls that person to follow him in a love relationship that is beautiful. It is a relationship.
But every relationship has modes, right? There are ways in which relationships are viewed. You may have a relationship with one person and there is a way that relationship is handled, right? Some relationships, unfortunately, are built on anger and there is a lot of strife and bickering and such that happens within that relationship. Oh, your eyes look wide.
I don't know.
There are other relationships that are built on joking or built on work or whichever. There are modes within every type of relationship. So it is in the relationship that Jesus Christ has with us. There is a type of mode that would describe how that relationship works. Some of us ultimately take the relationships that we have learned from the world and transfer the rules of those relationships into the one we have with God.
Some people have had certain fathers or mothers. Some people have had husbands and wives. And they take the rules learned in those relationships and they transfer them as if they applied into the relationship they have with God. Some people view the relationship they have with the Heavenly Father through the same glasses that they viewed their relationship with their own earthly Father. Some people view the relationship we have with Christ through other glasses or other forms.
But Paul here is going to give us the mode. If you could boil down what does the relationship with God look like? How is it walked out on a natural, a day to day basis? What does a relationship with God look like?
I don't know how it happened, but Obed picked a story on her way up to Blaine to buy a tractor and it was the word of faith, word of faith fellowship. And it has become what is considered by many to become a cult in North Carolina. Came out of the Kenneth Hagin and Rhema movement a long time ago, but quickly became brutally angry and abusive and such. And people coming out of that were left with the feeling that God was this angry being that they had to satisfy him in some way. It's very difficult.
But Paul is going to give us the mode that he views is the most important in his relationship with God. How to walk with him. Verse 13 I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, one thing I do. This is the way in which he views this relationship that he has with God. And he describes it forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.
Here is a mode, a very simple message describing the relationship he has with God. Number one. The part of it is forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to the things which are ahead. Nothing about religious exercises, nothing about having to do this or that. This relationship that he has with God is most clearly identified by the principal, I forget those things which are in the past and I move forward to what is ahead of me.
Some of us don't have that mode of relationship with God that Paul does.
Paul described the simplicity of the Christian message as forgetting those things which are in the past and moving forward to the things that are ahead. Some of us don't view the Christian walk that way. We feel that God is somehow digging in the past or bringing up things in the past or won't let the past go. Paul says no, the Christian message is about forgetting the things in the past and embracing the things that are in the future. Now we talked a little bit, I believe, two weeks ago about forgetting.
Forgetting. Forgetting does not mean just putting it out of your mind or try to erase it or trying to cover over it. We have a tremendous smell under the kitchen sink and Stacy has been talking to me about this smell. And I don't do dishes and don't spend much time at the sink. And I'm just like, yeah, you know, later we'll deal with it, right?
And she's like, man, it smells every time I'm at the kitchen sink a lot, and I have this smell. So she's trying to cover over that smell. And she lights a candle, right? And she puts it there, and the candle gives a little bit of a different smell. Well, that's not what God is saying when it's just forgetting.
There is a. I am trying to just please, just for a second, we are going to remodel the kitchen. And I don't really want to break up the cabinets until it's time to do that. So please don't think that I'm completely denying my wife here. But some of us think that forgetting means burying. But the forgetting actually, when we talked about this as a legal aspect to it, right?
There is an individual to whom we are accountable for actions. If you remember, the person I remember is Adolph Eichelman. Anyone remember Adolf Eichelman? Any person in history that is a Nazi, right? And Adolf Eichelman was responsible for transporting and building centers for the destruction of Jews, Poles, Communists, homosexuals, and all sorts of people.
And through those doors that he facilitated, he said, I am going to die, go to the grave. Laughing that I sent 5 million people there ahead of me, right? But after World War II was over, he wanted to forget about the past. He moved to Argentina, started a new life and business. But it wasn't him that could just forget about the sin.
Everyone. It was the individuals that he sinned against and who had the authority of over the sin that he committed. You see, it's not just enough to try to put out of our mind the legal responsibility of our sin. That's not enough. The legal responsibility still has to be satisfied.
And so one day, the Mossad visited him on his way home in Argentina. Years and years and years later, they still felt that even though he was trying to forget, that there was still a legal responsibility that he owed for his sin. They drugged him and brought him back to Israel, where he stood trial for murder and other things. And he was hanged. Even though he was trying to forget his sin, gloss over it, put it in the past, there was still a legal responsibility for his sin that could not be forgotten.
And so it's very true for you and I that there is one who still holds legal responsibility for justice for our sins, whether we try to forget them or not. A person can't just say, after they've murdered a family, well, I'm turning over a leaf and trying to forget about the past. No, when they are arrested, there is a legal culpability for their sin that must be atoned for, that must come into play. And so an individual cannot just forget about their sin until it is legally atoned for. And here that's what we see that Jesus Christ does.
He is the one who legally deals with the culpability of that sin. And as a result, because the fine has been completely paid, because justice has been 100% satisfied, because the one to whom we owe justice to has said, I forgive them for Christ's sake, because that penalty you made, I forgive them. So you and I can wake up in the morning with no remorse. That sin which once we had been hiding from, that sin which once we were ashamed of, that sin which once had hurt us and other people, now we can truly forget about it. Our conscience has been satisfied knowing that it is dealt with.
I'm going to read out of Hebrews. Let me just find it here. Okay. In Hebrews 9. Sorry, I had two there that got confused in chapter 9, verse 11.
But Christ came as high priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle, not made with hands, that is, not of this creation, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood. He entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit, offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? We can. I'm not saying that we don't have a remembrance of the sin or we don't know that it existed.
But when our conscience is fully satisfied, knowing that God's justice was completely satisfied with Christ's offering, our conscience bears witness. And we can truly forget about sins. For some of us who have harmed other people, who have done damage to them through our actions and our sins, we thank God that the strokes that we deserved, that God placed on Jesus Christ a willing sacrifice for us, that he bore that abuse and pain which we righteously deserved. Our sins were heaping up before God a just reward. But Christ took those sins upon his own shoulders and as a result took the punishment for those sins, became the willing lamb taking that sin for us.
But that is not the only kind of sin that Christ dealt with. There are other types of sins. There are sins which appear to have.
Which appear not to hurt anybody. Jesus talks about these kinds of sins. He says that if you lust for a woman in your heart, it is the same as adultery. Sins in our world currently are being promoted as having no harm and as a result of no one being harmed are perfectly acceptable. But Jesus says he took those sins, these things, that they truly are our sin and that he also took the punishment for them.
We see that even our culture recognizes that certain sin, even though it doesn't appear to hurt anybody, has reaching consequences beyond just the action. We see the government going into people's homes and looking onto their computers and finding things that are inappropriate and wrong and then prosecuting those people as a result of what they did in private. So also those things which we think don't hurt anyone else are actually sins against the justice in heaven that he watches everything we do and calls us into account. But Jesus took even those sins upon his own flesh. The last kind of sin that I'm going to talk about is the sin of the victim, the sin of the individual.
How blessed it is for individuals who have been involved in abuse, who have fought and hurt and done stolen and robbed and done hurtful things to other people. How gracious, how grateful of a proposition to be forgiven of that sins that we did with our own hands. But there is also. That sin also affects the individual that was hurt by it. That sin also is not just the sin of the attacker, it is the sin that the abused has to experience.
Also it is that sin that a person puts on another who did not deserve it, that that also has to be dealt with. It would be great to just forgive every murderer, but it would be wrong to leave the victims wallowing in the pain that's caused by the anger. And so I want to look a little bit. Sometimes it's easier to forget about the sins that we did than the sins that we were the victim of. But I would like to say this morning that Jesus Christ not only came to forgive the attacker, he came so that the attacked could also experience his forgiveness and freedom.
He came to give an ability for the legal responsibility of that sin to be forgotten, to move on to something that which he has for us also.
I'm going to go back to Hebrews. Let's see.
No, let's go to John first. John, chapter 16.
First of all, we have to take if. If you and I have been harmed by other people. And I think that just as you and I have harmed other people, that we have also been harmed by other people. If you've lived in Kapelis for any amount of time, there's a good chance that you've been stolen from. You woke up one morning, you went to your pickup and you opened the door and your toolbox was gone.
You went to look for your motorcycle and it wasn't there. Someone in the night had stolen it, and you felt hurt by that. Some of us have been harmed by other people physically, that it's hard to go through this life without having experienced some sort of violence against your person. I've never been attacked, but I remember one time just being cursed relentlessly. It makes you feel a certain way, right?
Some of us have been attacked, abused, ridiculed, shamed. And that leaves an impression on us. It affects us. We have a hard tendency to forget it. But I believe, first of all, I want to say that Christ's sacrifice, I believe, is the source of.
For building this into something greater, something, and I hope to introduce something in our lives that is those experiences which I cannot minimize the pain of what some people have gone through. And it's not my desire to do that. But I believe scripturally, biblically, that God's ways of redeeming things leads to something more beautiful than we could have obtained. If we can start with that as a principle, let's go to John 16.
Jesus, in talking to his disciples before his departure, began to describe to them the types of abuse that they were going to experience, right? And that is what they experience. They experience tremendous emotional and physical abuse, beatings, imprisonments, group pressure, being brought before an assembly and ridiculed and slapped and pressured. These individuals did not go through a light trial, right? They, I think we could say that some of what has hurt us they experienced also.
But Jesus, in recognizing what they were going to go through, gives them a talk. In verse 2016 of John, it says, most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned to joy. And then he's going to give an example. It says, a woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come. But as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish for the joy that a human being has been born into the world.
And here we're given an example of what this sorrow, this abuse, this harm, this hurt that they are going to experience will turn into. And it gives an example of a woman. And if you've ever been with a woman when she's given child, I have the tremendous blessing of being not only there, but Most of the time, it was just Stacy and I delivering our children. Right? And a lot of them, right?
And I don't know if you could fathom the blessing of being with your wife while she's in that pain alone, no one to call to, emotionally drained, physically exhausted. And she. She is hurting, she is tired, she's stressed out. It's a very traumatic experience, a very exhausting experience, a very emotionally draining experience. One that each time we're just like, lord, what have we done?
How could we come out of this?
But praise the Lord that every time that Stacy went into labor with a child, we came out of that experience with a baby. And the holding of that child eclipsed the draining experience, the painful experience of what the woman and some extent me went through in delivering the child. I'm not trying to compare them. I'm not right? And we say, yeah, but that's a child being born.
But Jesus is using the example of a child, the pain of that birth, the emotional experience of that birth, to pave the way for an experience that he promises.
It says in verse 22, therefore you now have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you in that day. You will ask me nothing. Most assuredly I say to you that whatever you ask the Father in My name he will give to you. Then we're going to turn back to Hebrews. So there is, even in the most difficult physical and emotional situations, a joy that Christ can bring out of that circumstance as a result of a spiritual work that he is going to accomplish.
Please, please understand me. I'm not trying to minimize anyone's experiences. But if I could compare what you and I have went through with what Peter went through, being crucified upside down, I think we could relate somewhere. I think if you knew what it means to be beaten repeatedly with whips stretched out. And we have an example of this.
It says in chapter 11. Still others had trials of mockings and scourgings, of chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, sawn in two. They were tempted, slain with the sword. They wandered about in sheepskins, goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented, of whom the world was not worthy.
They wandered in deserts and mountains and dens and caves of the earth. And all these, having obtained a good testimony through faith, did not receive the promise. I hope that you can hear me and say, he's not trying to minimize your experience, but he is trying to say that what you've gone through is concept what people through the ages have gone through and yet known that it was the foundation for joy on the other side of the work of Christ.
It says in chapter 12, verse 1, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight in the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. And then verse two, the key verse. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of God. That shame which threatened to engulf him, to overcome him, to drown him, was not his shame. I want to try this again.
Just as if, just as the same, that those sins which he bore upon the cross was not his sins, those lashes that he took were not for his own sin. It was not because of his own disobedience that he bore that punishment. So the shame that he bore upon his own shoulders was not his shame. Though he was stripped, though he was emotionally brutalized, though he was beaten, though he was terrorized, it was not for his own shame that he did it. For though that he hung on the cross, he despised the shame because he recognized that which was the result of him enduring it.
He recognized that that which I can, by experiencing, by embracing, by putting this shame on my shoulders, there is an opportunity to bring joy to individuals who as otherwise would have been joyless. He recognized I can bring to people something as a result of my spiritual work on the cross that enables them to forget those things that were behind. Right? You and I are tempted to handle the sin that has been committed against us with our own resources.
The Bible says, judge not that you be not judged. With the judgment you use, you will be judged. He says, how should I forgive men? Peter said up to seven times. Jesus said, no, I do not tell you up to seven times, but up to 77.
70 times. Seven times. There is a temptation in you and I's heart. Rather than go to Christ for forgiveness for what we have experienced at the hands of others, to use judgmental attitudes to handle that situation. Now, please.
I'm a farmer and not a very good one. I'm a carpenter and make a tremendous amount of mistakes. I didn't go to school.
I'm just a guy that works with my hands. I love Christ and I want to see people experience the goodness of God. I want people who have dealt with their own sin for too long to experience a freedom that someone has already paid for them. There is a false balance in our minds. There is a judgmental attitude that weighs incorrectly, that views evidence from a skewed perspective, that looks upon weights and measures and cannot understand them correctly.
This is not minimizing what you and I have gone through. I'm only saying that the perspective that we inherited is not correct. If you remember, there was a king and he wanted to settle accounts, and he called into his presence one who owed him 10,000 talents. And he said to him, I forgive you everything. The man went out astonished.
But then he found someone who owed him something, someone who harmed him. And he took him by the neck and took him and threw him into jail and he said, committed him to the torturers until he could pay him back the penny that was owed him when he had just been forgiven 10,000 talents. You see what happened here? He had a false balance. He thought that he deserved the forgiveness that God offered him by grace.
He thought, of course God would forgive me the harmful things I'd done, what I owe. It's an easy thing for God to forgive me. That which God forgives me is easy. But then someone sinned against him and he had to balance the two. Which is more right?
God forgiving me or Me forgiving the other person? You see, we sometimes think we deserve the forgiveness of God, but the individuals that harm us don't. Does that make sense? We think we deserve the full grace of God, yet won't extend that to people who have harmed us. I would say that is a false balance that you and I, no matter how much we've been harmed, have to be willing to approach the subject that if Christ has forgiven us, then we must forgive other people.
I'm going to turn back to Philippians. We're focusing more on this, and I want to finish it off if possible. Says brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind. He has the ability to forget what's in his past because of a focus on what Christ has done for him. We're told in that forgetting when it comes to individuals that have hurt us, abused us, harmed us, that we are to absolutely forgive them.
I don't believe necessarily where. I'm not trying to say that if we don't forgive, we won't be saved.
Bible says, if you don't forgive, neither will you be forgiven. Says that clearly. I'm not talking about heaven here, but I am talking. You can't experience the fullness of Christ's forgiveness while you hold on to unforgiveness. I would like to say that the amount you can forgive other people is exactly the same as the amount you can experience the beauty of God's forgiveness, that the two are related to some degree.
It also has more to do with just forgetting. It also has to do with pushing forward. Pushing forward, moving on, accomplishing that for which Christ has laid hold of for us. It says in brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended, but one thing I do, forgetting those things which I are behind and reaching forward to those which are ahead. I don't know the last time you saw somebody and they said, you know, we're going to put the car in reverse and forward at the same time and see what happens.
We're going to get on the road, going to Aberdeen and the one to ocean shores at the same time. No. In order to move forward, there has to be a release, spiritually, biblically, righteously, correctly, of those things which are behind. Excuse me. In order for us to reach for a head.
That basket into which God puts rich, beautiful, loving things is the same one he's trying to empty of the bitter and unkind and ugly. That same heart that you have, that same spring of water which once was a bitter spring he is casting like in the wilderness that stick into that bitter spring when we were so thirsty and healing the waters to make them sweet. He is that one doing that work in us so we can reach forward. Desire to grasp that which God has for us. It says, reaching forward to those things which are ahead.
It is an act of a spiritual desire to obtain the beauty of what Christ has for us. Jesus says about the devil and his work in destroying people's lives. It says, the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. He'll use every means available. He'll use other people, he'll use friends, he'll use family, he'll use thieves, he'll use strangers.
He will do whatever he can to wreck that beautiful work for which God has purchased your life. But Jesus comes. He says, I have come to give you life, life in abundance. I have come not to hinder you, but to give you so much more. When he calls us, when he says, take up your cross to follow me, it is not a one of pain that he's calling us to.
There may be physical sacrifice involved in it, but the joy in the experience is worth reaching forward and walking with him. He says, come, follow, follow me. And I believe in all of our relationships that if we're to follow Christ, there comes A point of realization that he's also asking for areas of sin that we have not seen or recognized. And he says, this is in the way of you experiencing the beauty of what I have for you. For you and I. I believe there is a necessary moment to give these things to Christ, recognizing that he purposely chosenly bore the shame for us that on that tree he bore that pain legally and legally took it.
In verse 14. To finish, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. There is a pushing in him. I only have so much earthly time available. The call is still the same.
Repent. Turn from those things to which we were ensnared and follow God. Repent. The kingdom of God is at hand. There is a pressing forward, a desire to accomplish in this lifetime the most that God has for us.
We will never experience the fullness of heaven here. We see through a glass darkly, but we do have the opportunity to participate in it. That the beauty of that inheritance is available. The kingdom of heaven is at hand. It should be a goal for us.
I want, first of all, over whatever has happened to me, I want to experience the fullness of what Christ has for me. That's got to be our confession. First of all, I want to experience the blessing of Christ. Everything is dispensable in the light of that experience. You could have a lot of things on this earth, is what I'm trying to say.
Those things have some benefit, but they are temporary. You could drive a real nice car. I bought a tractor. It does have air conditioning and heat, but I didn't drive it. I gave it to Malachi.
Malachi drives it. You know, there's no. Yeah, it's nice. You could have a lot of things, but what I'm trying to tell you is none of it compares to that which Christ has purchased for you. If it means releasing whatever things my encouragement to you would be, let it go.
Abandon ship. Jettison. Take on a cargo that is full and joyful and has meaning. Fill up your ship with something so gracious that only Christ can offer. I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
This calling which he is calling us to, this walk with God, is only capable through the person and work of Jesus Christ. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me. Everyone can talk about a relationship with God, but you have to ask him, what is it based on your good works. You don't live in Kapelis.
Where do you live?
No, it's based on only a work of Jesus Christ. But I have to tell you, it's an upward call. Some people think that they, when they get the call, they think it's a downward call. They're like, what? I got to leave this or that?
I'm saying no. This call which Christ calls us in is an upward call. He pulls us out of that which we are entangled with and gives us a freedom to experience life everlasting. I will give you life in abundance, he says, an overflowing life, a full life. It is an upward call.
Life winds upward for the wise, but for the fool, it descends down to hell. There is a wide gate that leads down to hell that you can just basically lay down and just roll down it. It's like a sloping hill that leads to a cliff at the end. You just lay down and roll. But one day it's too late to grab hold.
But there is an upward call. There is an upward walk with a narrow gate and a difficult, difficult daily experience of walking with Jesus Christ. I have to believe that if he were here, not one person would be able to keep up with him. Not one person would be able to experience the fullness of the joy associated with that relationship. Though we try, he would out distance us all.
And yet we're called to walk with Him. It's difficult, but it's worth it. And my call number one. If you have committed sin, Jesus paid for that sin. If you have committed sin that didn't seem to hurt anyone, Jesus has paid for that sin and it's become the surety for that sin.
If you have had sin committed against you.
I believe with all my heart that Jesus paid for that sin. He became shame for us that we might experience joy in Him.
Therefore, let us, as many as are mature, have this mind and if anything you think otherwise, God will reveal evenness to you. God is so extraordinarily gracious. If you haven't come to this point, God is still kindly calling and wooing you. And one day we hope that he will fully replace all of our pain with his joy. If you're not at that point as of yet, there's no condemnation, there's no pressure that God is doing that work when he can and however he can in such a beautiful way.
Let's pray.