August 8, 2004
"Going for the Gold Part Two - Triumph of the Spirit"

   How many of you have heard the term “Nobody’s perfect.” Sure, everybody has.

Now, how many of you have ever used that phrase to hide behind when you’ve messed up something in your life? Not as many. That’s good. Not necessarily truthful, but good. Most people, myself included, have used that phrase, “Nobody’s perfect,” in their own life, but it’s tough to reconcile it to the words of a Jesus who said “Be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.” Wait a minute, Jesus. How are we supposed to be perfect and human at the same time? The Apostle Paul wrestled with that question a lot. He writes that “I haven’t achieved the goal of becoming perfect.” Most people who knew Paul would agree. But, Paul adds, “I keep striving for the prize anyway. I forget what’s in my past and I keep running straight ahead. This is what a mature Christian is supposed to do.”

I read something this week that was kind of funny in a way. Those gold medals that are so prized in the Olympics? You have to be careful not to scratch them, because they’re only gold plated. They’re actually made of silver with just a thin layer of gold. Somebody had his gold medal appraised and found it was worth all of $11 to a jeweler. But I guarantee you, put it for sale on E-Bay and it’s going to fetch a lot more than that. Because of what it symbolizes. Because of all the sweat that went into winning. Scott Hamilton received his ice skating gold medal and was asked what it meant. He said “I can see the 16 years of my life that went into this medal.”

Gold medal athletes go through a tremendous amount of adversity to win. Gail Devers won the 100-meter dash by only 6/100 of a second over her four top competitors in 1992. Gail suffers from Grave’s disease. Just one year before she won the Olympic gold, Gail came within two days of having both feet amputated. After surviving that scare, she began to train and push herself toward her goal. Her determination and persistence won the day.

  Wilma Rudolph was a gold medal sprinter for the U.S. in the 1960 Olympics in Rome. Wilma Rudolph suffered polio as a child. But she overcame that setback through work and determination. In the movie Forest Gump, Forest walks with leg braces as a child, but we see him run and run and in one memorable sequence the braces literally fall off his legs. These are all symbols, factual and fictional, of the triumph of the Olympic spirit.

Even those who have no hope of winning the gold medal keep running into the teeth of their disappointment and pain. In the 1968 Olympics held in Mexico City, Tanzania's John Stephen Akhware, with his right leg bloody and bandaged, staggered into the stadium for the end of the marathon more than an hour after the winner had crossed the line. He said afterwards, "My country did not send me to Mexico City to start the race. They sent me to finish the race."

I’m here to tell you this morning that the gold medal we’re after in the race of the Christian life is worth far more than any cash.. Here’s the good news of Jesus Christ: We have every hope of winning the gold medal, thanks to him, a medal that is solid gold through and through. And as believers in him, we represent a heavenly country and we have not been sent here just to start the race, but to finish the race.

So why do people fail to finish because they want to look backward all the time? Paul said you have to forget what’s in the past and look forward. But some poor souls get themselves convinced that they don’t have what it takes to win.

A student at the end of his college days came to the chaplain, saying that he had lost all his faith, and asked for advice. There was no time for a long argument, so the chaplain asked the young man if there was anything in the personality of Christ that appealed to him, that he could grab onto, that was worth giving himself to. “Of course,” he replied, “but that has nothing to do with religion.” That boy really was on to something. People think of religion as nothing but a list of rules and regulations that you have to make yourself follow by sheer willpower.

I want you to understand something—God is not some angry avenger looking to kick you out of his exclusive club. He doesn’t want to pounce on whatever failure you have in your past— let’s face it, we all have them—and use that to write you out of his will.

God, through the love of his son Jesus Christ, wants you to realize that you can be a better you today than you were yesterday, and tomorrow can be better still. That’s what the Olympic motto: faster, higher, stronger, is all about. Just as every Olympic athlete is already a pretty good athlete, you are already a pretty good you. But to grab the gold medal, to have a truly victorious life, you need to set the bar a little bit higher each and every day. You have to become mature in the faith. Paul said “We’re like spiritual babies, we’re baptized and we never want to grow from there.”

When Jesus said “Be perfect like your Father in Heaven is perfect, he is challenging us, just like the Olympics: faster, higher, stronger. Make those your targets, every day, until you reach the finish line.

So what is God trying to tell us this morning? Failure is not final. Would you say that with me? Failure is not final. If failure were final the Bible would be the most depressing book in the world, because it is loaded from one end to the other with stories of people who let God down, who let Christ down, and most of all let themselves down. No failure was more abject than Paul, who hunted Christians and killed them both as a vocation and hobby, but he got a second chance.

Peter rejected Jesus three times when the chips were really down, but he got a second chance.

I was well on my way to ruining my life with equal amounts of alcohol and self-pity, but I was given a second chance. Yet Satan doesn’t want any second chances. He wants to keep us feeling down and dirty. He loves to tell us, “You’re nothing. You’re less than nothing. You had your chance and you blew it. You’re nothing but a low-down scum-sucking sinner.”

 But you know what? This is how perverse people can be. They actually buy into it. They actually wallow in this mud, thinking “I might as well not try, ‘cause I’m such a loser.” And of course, some of their associates are all too quick to agree, unfortunately.

  Two college buddies met one day and began to talk over old times. Before they realized it, it was past midnight. They met again the next day. One said, "How did your

wife take you coming in so late last night?" "Oh," said the buddy. "I explained it to her and it was all right. How about your wife? How did she take it?" The other said,

"Well, when I cam in my wife got historical." "You mean hysterical," said his friend. "No," he replied. "I mean historical. She brought up everything I had done wrong for

the past 30 years."

   Some people expect to fail, and others are surprised by our failures, but God isn’t. God understands that we are weak and human. He understands, like any father does, that we’re going to fall down a lot before we learn to walk, let alone run. Perfection is not achieved by never failing; perfection is achieved by how you react to your failures. Perfection is achieved by getting up when you fall and turning your back on your past and running towards the goal. That’s what happened to Peter. Peter was the poster boy for failure, and Jesus knew that Peter’s failures were yet to come when he said “Before this night is over, Peter, you will deny me three times.”

That really upset and embarrassed Peter, who always thought of himself as just a little better than the rest of the 12 disciples. He said “I’ll never deny you, Lord, I’ll die for you.” And of course, you know the story. When push came to shove, Peter fell flat on his face. He denied being a disciple three times. He even swore an oath that he didn’t know Jesus. Then the rooster crowed, the night was over, and Peter was smacked in the face by the shame of his sin, and he wept bitterly.

Later in the gospels Jesus appears to the disciples while they are out fishing, and Peter is so excited, so eager to be forgiven and reconciled with Jesus that he jumps overboard with all his clothes on. He must have been close to shore, close enough to wade in or he probably would have drowned. But he didn’t. He became one of the leaders of the early Church. When he preached his first sermon, 3,000 people were saved in a single day. God gave him victory, because he turned his back on the failures of the past and ran toward the finish line.

If a person has confessed their sin to God and He has forgiven you, there is no need to carry around a load of guilt over past sins and failures. That sin has been forgiven, therefore can be forgotten. If you’re having trouble running because our Great Enemy has you loaded down with guilt over your past sins, take your eyes off the past, believe God's promise that you have been forgiven, and get up and go for the gold.

Another example of looking back is past sorrows. There are those that are bound up, bitter and belayed by something someone did to them in the past. Maybe another person has disappointed you. What happened in the past eats at you. Instead of running for the finish line, you want to stand on the track and fret about the pain that someone has caused you. It’s tough to run in pain, everybody knows that. Forgetting what’s behind you may mean forgiving what’s behind you, too.

And this is the best news: you know how athletes are always looking at film to see their mistakes and improve their performance? When God looks at our films now with all of our disobedience, he sees what Jesus did right, not what we did wrong. When God looks at the replays of our selfishness where we forget about God and others and worry only about ourselves – he sees what Jesus did, not what we did not do. God looks at us in Christ and sees perfect obedience, straight "A's.", 10.0 scores across the board. God sees the righteousness of Jesus as our own.

John Ortberg wrote this, and it is so good. Listen to this: “Redeeming is what God is into. He is the finder of directionally-challenged sheep, the searcher of missing coins, the embracer of foolish prodigal children. His favorite department is Lost and Found. If there is one way that human beings consistently underestimate God’s love, it is in his loving longing to forgive.” What that means is that God can not only forgive you, he can make a gold-medal winner out of you. But you’ve got to forget the past and run straight for the finish line.

I heard a great story this week and I want to share it with you. A man recalled going to see his nephew Tommy play baseball in Little League, and the boy went up to the plate to take his turn at bat. But obviously he was scared stiff, because he just stood there with the bat on his shoulder as the first pitch came in. “Strike one,” the umpire said. Another pitch came in, and the umpire said “Strike two” as the boy just stood there. A third pitch, same result. The boy took a called third strike, and shuffled back to the dugout with his head down. His coach offered no word of encouragement, and his teammates sat with their heads down, some muttering under their breath, so the boy went to the end of the bench and just put his face in his hands and started to cry.

His uncle knew he had to do something, so he got down out of the stands and came down to the dugout and said to the boy, “Tommy, turn around and look at me. How come you didn’t swing?” “Cause I was scared.” “Next time you go up to the plate, I don’t care where the pitch is, I want you to swing the bat as hard as you can, and that will help you get over being scared.” The boy did get another chance to bat, and this time, when the first pitch came in, the catcher had to jump up to grab it, but Tommy swung anyway and missed. The second pitch came in and it was way outside, but Tommy swung and missed again. Strike two.

Again the pitcher delivered, and again Tommy swung, but this time a miracle happened. He made solid contact, and drove the ball right at the shortstop. Now what you have to know about little boys and baseball is that often as not, they can’t catch a cold. Sure enough the ball goes right through the shortstop’s legs. The other thing you need to know is Uncle Jack is excited he got down from the stands and he’s running back and forth hollering, jumping up and down, “and I had a three piece suit on.”

When the ball went through the shortstop’s legs, Uncle Jack started yelling “Go for second, Tommy, go for second.” By this time the left fielder has the ball and Tommy’s coach is trying to get him to stop at second. But the throw comes in and dribbles all the way through the infield, so Uncle Jack hollers, “Come on Tommy, we’re going for third.” By now the catcher has the ball and he throws toward third, but he whales the ball all the way out in the street, and Uncle Jack’s screaming “Head home, head home.” There wasn’t even a play at the plate, but little boys love to slide. There was still a lot of little boy in Uncle Jack. He slid, too, three piece suit and all. It was a great day.

The story doesn’t end there, though. More than 10 years passed, and Tommy and Uncle Jack got together one day, and Tommy said, “Remember that game when you made a fool out of yourself, Uncle Jack?” And he said, “I remember it well.” Tommy said, “I want you to know, I was never scared out there after that day. And I want you to be the first to know, I’ve been offered a baseball scholarship at the University of Arizona.”

We said last week that Paul was a sports fan, and if he were alive today, he’d probably root for the Pirates, because he wasn’t scared of a little suffering. He wrote about running and heading for the finish line because those were the sports analogies he understood. But it converts to baseball, too. He would tell us this morning, don’t let the strikeouts and errors of your past keep you on the bench. Get up and swing the bat. Set your goals higher each day. Faster, higher, stronger, until we reach the finish. That’s the triumph of the Olympic spirit. That’s the triumph of God’s spirit within us.