I want to read you a couple of sentence fragments, please tell me if you know what document they come from:

 

“…appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world…”

“…with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence…”

 

How about: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [and women] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”?

 

Most Americans are able to identify the Declaration of Independence from the third sentence, which appears at the beginning of the document. The other two sentence fragments come from the end the document. I find it interesting that in spite of being a Declaration of Independence, our forefathers found it necessary, when all was said and done, to describe their dependency on God for validation and protection.

 

Please pray with me. May the words of our mouths, the meditations of our hearts, and the conduct of our lives, be always acceptable to you, O God, our strength and our blessed redeemer. Amen.

 

Speaking of dependency, I found these requirements in the U. S. tax code for claiming someone as a dependent:

 

Requirement 1 – the person claimed must be in your immediate family, including those persons adopted into your family. Let’s check to see what the Apostle Paul has to say about that:

 

Romans 8: 14 & 15: “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption.”

 

Galatians 4: 4 & 5: “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”

 

Ephesians 1:5: “He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will.”

 

Looks like we meet that test for dependency.

Requirement 2 – to claim a person as a dependent you must provide at least half of their support. Hmmmm, let’s check to see what our brother Paul has to say about that:

  

Ephesians 1:3: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”

 

2 Thessalonians 2:16: “Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father, who loved us and through grace gave us eternal comfort and good hope.”

 

Sounds like we receive well over half of our support from God. I guess we meet that dependency test.

 

Requirement 3 – finally, to claim a person as a dependent that person must be a citizen. You have heard me speak about this several times. Just six verses after our text for today, Brother Paul has this to say about citizenship:

 

“Our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 3:20)

 

Well, it looks like we meet the citizenship test as well.

 

I guess that means based on the U.S. Tax Code and the Bible, we are all dependents of God, which brings a couple of points to mind: first, I would advise you to not stop paying taxes based on this analysis. I know that you are not normally liable for taxes if you can be claimed as someone else’s dependent…but, Jesus also said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God, what is God’s.” Second, since God is able to claim over 6 billion dependents this year, do you think he’ll get a refund? And, finally, don’t be like the man who wrote to the IRS: “I have been unable to sleep knowing that I have cheated on my income tax. I understated my taxable income and have enclosed a check for two hundred dollars. If I still can’t sleep, I will send the rest.”

 

All kidding aside, our text for this morning is a beautiful description of Paul’s personal relationship with Jesus Christ. I like to call it his Declaration of Dependency. First he lays out all his credentials for being a strong and independent citizen of Israel and Rome. It is an impressive resume. Then, based on his encounter with the Risen Lord on the road to Damascus, he renounces all of his earthly power and authority, gives all his material possessions to the poor and needy, and places all of his faith in a carpenter turned Savior from Nazareth. As the poker players say, Paul goes “all in” for Jesus.

 

But there’s more! Paul’s sole desire is to know Christ. When Paul talks about knowing Christ he is not talking about head knowledge or even knowing Christ in his heart and soul. He is talking about knowing Christ so well that he becomes one with Christ. We can only get a sense of what it means to know someone so well that we become one with them.

I think the human relationship that comes closest is marriage. Sue and I have been married for 39 years and there are times when I can just sense what she is thinking and feeling. There are times that I know what she is going to say before she says it. Paul is willing to risk everything for that kind of relationship with Christ. Are we?

 

But there’s more! Paul is willing to share the good times and the bad to gain Christ. He wants to share in Christ’s “sufferings by becoming like him in his death.” What are those wedding vows again? “For richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health.” Why do you suppose Christ himself referred to the Church as his bride?

 

Finally, Paul gives his motivational coach’s talk: “This 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 heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus.”

 

In the summer of 2004, when Sue and I served the Elma, Washington, United Methodist Church for a couple of months, we commuted to Elma weekly from Tacoma and on the way we listened to praise and worship songs on the van’s CD player. We became very attached to certain songs and the song that you will hear shortly is one of those. When I first heard it, I knew that it was taken almost verbatim from Scripture. I couldn’t wait to get to my concordance and look up a few key words so that I could find the passage. The words that I looked up were “gain”, “loss”, “goal” and “prize”. It wasn’t hard to identify our Scripture for today as the source for Graham Kendrick’s lyrics.

 

Please listen carefully as I read those lyrics to you. Close your eyes if you’d like. Let the words come alive in you and shape you:

 

All this world reveres and wars to own

All I once sought gain, I have counted loss

Spent and worthless now

Compared to this

Now my heart's desire is to know You more

To be found in You and known as Yours

To possess by faith what I could not earn

All surpassing gift of righteousness

O, to know the power of Your risen life

And to know You in Your suffering

To become like You in Your death, my Lord

So with You to live and never die

Knowing You Jesus, knowing You

There is no greater thing

You're my all, You're the best

You're my joy, my righteousness

And I love You, Lord

 

In his wonderful little book about the Bible, “Shaped by the Word”, Robert Mulholland links Paul and the experience of knowing Christ, and the journey of faith that makes us life-long learners:

 

Paul, like us, found that there were dynamics of being within him that were inconsistent with God’s will for his wholeness. He found that the “word” God spoke him forth to be was garbled, distorted, and debased. Even after coming to know Jesus in a personal way, we too discover this reality. This discovery usually puts us on a spiritual quest. We begin to realize that we need far more wholeness, far more healing, far more cleansing than what we have experienced if we are to become the “word” God speaks us forth to be in the world.

 

Who is God speaking us forth to be? Like our brother Paul, and millions of sisters and brothers across the centuries, we have not reached the goal or won the prize. But, we need to forget what lies behind and strain forward to what lies ahead. Perhaps the first thing we need to do is throw out our old resume, and declare our dependency on Christ. As we celebrate our independence and our freedom, let us remember, as Paul Scherer says, “We find freedom when we find God; we lose it when we lose Him.”