“Look At Me!”
“The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4:9 NKJV)
Our Youth Associate Pastor at church preached a sermon this past Sunday titled, “Look At Me!” When I saw this scripture, it flashed into my mind again. I just today posted the sermon notes I took on Facebook; it’s worth a look, if you have the time.
He utilized several great anecdotes, one of which was of his son, who wanted Dad to look at something unusual he had done with his toys. As a father of five (and grandfather of six), those moments of, “Mom, look!” and, “Look, Daddy!” have been myriad in our family. But as a former athlete, something he didn’t mention came to my mind.
What Paul says in this scripture is that the Philippians should imitate not just what he had told them (“things which you leaned and received”) but what they had seen him demonstrate in his own life (“. . . heard and saw in me”). That’s what every good coach does. Whether or not a coach could ever execute exactly what he is conveying, for his coaching to be effective, his players have to trust his reputation, that what he is telling them will work. Even better, he can demonstrate the move, they can try to copy and improve upon it.
There was an ad campaign in the early 90s which urged viewers to, “Be Like Mike.” That promotion had value because so many kids (and adults) wanted to emulate the seemingly other-worldly abilities of a star athlete and might infer from the commercial that the sports drink advertised would help them do so. The same thing applies today with shoes, arm wraps and the like.
All our lives we learn from examples. The first teachers a baby has are parents, older siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. A little bit of each of those influencers rubs off on the child. Patterns of speech, of movement and of behavior in general, are all learned from those we find to emulate, for better or for worse.
That’s where our challenge as believers comes in. Not only are we responsible to God the Father for our behavior, we are, “surrounded by . . . a cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 12:1), both those who have gone before us and those around us who see and know us. The question we then face is this: “Are we walking worthy?” At least three times Paul pleads with his readers to walk worthy. Probably the best example is in Colossians, where he says, “(W)alk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God . . ..”. Consider the entire passage from which that was pulled.
“For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light.” (Colossians 1:9-12 NKJV)
This is what Paul did and what we, in turn, need to do for others. We need to be able to say, “Look at me; I’ll show you how it should be done.”
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