All of us are amazing at something. Something we can take pride in. Whether it be something useful or ridiculous, all of us has some talent or skill that very few other people have. I for instance could tell you almost everything there is to know about Seinfeld. That indeed is not very useful. Many of you undoubtedly have talents such as teaching, learning Hebrew vocabulary, knowing every statistic there is to know about the 1991 World Series champion Minnesota Twins, knowing every episode of Grey’s Anatomy like the back or your hand, or an uncanny skill for memorizing Bible passages, all of us has something rare that we are good at.
In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, he lets them know how amazing he is at certain things. Here is the text…
Paul shows them how he is better than all people at these things, but his point is not how great he is, but rather how much greater Christ is as he continues…
All of the skill and talent and work that Paul has put in himself is worthless, rubbish, filth, garbage compared to what he has in his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. What Paul and all of us have in Jesus Christ is the assurance that after death we will be raised from the dead just as Christ was raised from the dead. What we have is forgiveness of sins in our Savior and Lord. What we have is eternal life because of what Christ has done for us in his death and resurrection.
But oftentimes, many of us forget that we need a Savior, we think we can do it alone, we forget due to pride that we aren’t capable of perfection, we aren’t capable of being blameless. For an example of this today, we’re going to watch a short clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. I’ll explain things after you watch the scene.
Watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail
So who are you acting like? Are you like Lancelot, thinking you can take paradise by force? Are you like Robin, thinking it’s easy to obtain paradise then realizing you can’t do it by yourself? Are you like Galahad, answering even the simplest of questions incorrectly, or are you like Bedivere, waiting for your King to answer the questions, because you know he’ll not only answer for himself, but will answer so well that it will allow you to cross into paradise with him?
Obviously, this is not a perfect analogy to our lives and God’s Kingdom, but it shows how our attitude should be in pressing on toward reaching salvation. We should not think it is easy, we should not think we can obtain it by force or alone. We should seek to follow our living Lord and Savior because he casts down those who try to keep us from salvation. Jesus accomplishes what we can’t accomplish in living a perfect life. He dies on our behalf to save us from eternal death. And he rises to life again, to assure us of our own resurrection from death.
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