Sermon: Flee From Idolatry (Part One): Self-Discipline
Paul's Athletic Metaphors
#1701-AM
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 06-Apr-23; 80 minutes
description: (hide)
transcript:
Please turn to Psalm 78 in your Bible. Psalm 78 contains a litany, a sad litany of Israel's forgetfulness and ingratitude and many rebellions in the wilderness. We are going to begin in verses 5 through 8 here and then we will drop down to verse 40. But please listen to what he is saying here and what he is trying to get across; that is, the Psalmist Asaph.
Psalm 78:5-8 For He [obviously God] established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments; and may not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart aright, and whose spirit was not faithful to God.
Psalm 78:40-62 How often they provoked Him in the wilderness, and grieved Him in the desert! Yes, again and again they tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. They did not remember His power: the day when He redeemed them from the enemy, when He worked His signs in Egypt, and His wonders in the field of Zoan; turned their rivers into blood, and their streams, that they could not drink. He sent swarms of flies among them, which devoured them, and frogs, which destroyed them.
He also gave their crops to the caterpillar, and their labor to the locust. He destroyed their vines with hail, and their sycamore trees with frost. He also gave up their cattle to the hail, and their flocks to fiery lightning. He cast on them the fierceness of His anger, wrath, indignation, and trouble by sending angels of destruction among them. He made a path for His anger; He did not spare their soul from death, but gave their life over to the plague, and destroyed all the firstborn in Egypt, the first of their strength in the tents of Ham. But He made His own people go forth like sheep, and guided them in the wilderness like a flock; and He led them safely, so that they did not fear; but the sea overwhelmed their enemies.
And He brought them to His holy border, this mountain which His right hand had acquired. He also drove out the nations before them, allotted them an inheritance by survey, and made the tribes of Israel dwell in their tents. Yet they tested and provoked the Most High God, and did not keep His testimonies, but turned back and acted unfaithfully like their fathers; they were turned aside like a deceitful bow. For they provoked Him to anger with their high places, and moved Him to jealousy with their carved images. When God heard this, He was furious, and greatly abhorred Israel, so that He forsook the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent which He had placed among men, and delivered His strength into captivity, and His glory into the enemy's hand. He also gave over His people to the sword, and was furious with His inheritance.
This psalm begins with Asaph the psalmist informing us that he has dark sayings to tell us, a parable of woe, a parable of the troubles of Israel that we need to learn from. We need to learn about our spiritual ancestors in Israel, about God's instructions, His many good and miraculous works on their behalf, great miracles that devastated Egypt and allowed them freedom. Also about His great mercy and faithfulness toward very weak men, which the Israelites were.
The psalmist's intention here is to help us avoid the serious fatal flaws of a previous generation. This generation that came out of Egypt and that is what he gets to in verse 8, "and may not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart aright, and whose spirit was not faithful to God."
We see here that the flaw was in their hearts, it was inside them, as Jesus later taught in His ministry. That generation did not set its heart aright, and their spirit was not faithful to God. All their inner motivations, all their attitudes, all their emotions, all their thought processes were not focused on doing good and following God's instruction, but otherwise.
Now this description of them there in verse 8 is set in a parallel couplet that is supposed to say the same things in both lines of the couplet. But as is often the case, this couplet is not perfectly parallel and it is a good thing too, because when the couplet is not perfectly parallel, it adds information for us to understand a little bit more. The second half of the couplet does not necessarily restate the first but gives a fuller view by changing the wording a little bit. Heart and spirit are not exact synonyms nor are "did not set its heart aright" and "was not faithful to God" exactly the same.
I will not get into all the technical details of the differences here. But essentially Asaph is saying that neither their inward attitudes and motives nor their outward actions showed, really, any of their supposed allegiance to God. It all began in their hearts; it all began in that inner spirit of who they were. But when it came out of them, you know, they are God's people, are they not going to follow God? But no, those times of actually following God were fairly scarce. More often they did what Asaph says here. They acted stubbornly and rebelliously toward God. They did not do what they had been taught to do.
So their stubbornness, which is an internal thing, and their faithlessness, which is also an eternal thing, revealed the corruption of their hearts just as their rebellions toward God or against God revealed all of those inner evils.
Now, as long time Bible readers, I am sure many of us have read the Book from cover to cover several times and over many decades, what I have just said about Israel, what I have just read here, it comes as no surprise to any of us. Israel's failure to believe God and her frequent rebellions are a major theme of Scripture. It keeps being brought up over and over. The apostle Paul says, "Hey, go back to look at what happened with Israel."
And that is what we are going to do today in short. We are going to veer off of that just a little bit so we can get back to it on the last holy day. But the long tale of Israel's on again, but mostly off again relationship with God stands as a testament for all time to humanity's rejection of Him. It was not just Israel. They are just a test case, if you will, God pulled them out of all the nations of the world. They were the least of all people. He put His blessing on them after calling them—calling Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the twelve sons of Israel—and they grew into a nation and quickly became enslaved.
And of course, we have the illustration of God bringing them out of Egypt and working with them over about 1,000 years, if we count all the time in the wilderness, all the way down to the captivity of the Jews in their exile, and their return. And it was a colossal failure! Not on God's part, He did everything that He needed to do to give them what they needed to be a special people, to be the people that other nations looked to as having righteous laws and being just and having a society that was happy and prosperous and peaceful, and they failed on all counts. They could not do it, they could not put it together, and they became then the model nation of how not to do things.
So David, and later Paul, tells us that in fact, no one does good. No one seeks after God. Everyone has sinned and fallen short. There is not a single person in the history of humanity beside Jesus Christ who has ever done it right. Not on their own. It is a fact of human life. Then, even those whom God appears to interacts with and guides, like the Israelites, tend to lack faith and rebel from time to time or frequently or all the time. It is a pretty sad thing to think about. Men, humanity on its own, is a failed project because man, from the very beginning, rejected God. And then Israel, given a special calling, rejected God. And men and women all around the world in every generation have rejected God. I mean, I hate to give you the sad fact, but it is true.
But it is a painful and sobering truth to swallow, especially for those whom God has specifically called in these days because we fill that position now of God's model nation. As much as we would like to blame Satan and the world, we know that, like Israel, the fault ultimately resides in our own hearts and in our spirit. We are still stubborn. We are still rebellious. The nature that we walk around with every day, that we coddle and do not want to offend, in the main is rotten to the core, deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, as it says in Jeremiah 17:9. God says that nature that we love so much and protect is incurably sick! It has the worst disease ever and it cannot be fixed, cannot be healed, cannot be cured. It must be replaced. What that nature is that we have is a poisoned mixture of good and evil where self-interest almost always has the last word.
I am painting a very bleak picture, but I am not far off from reality.
Sadly, getting back to us, the waters of baptism do not reset that nature. You do not come out of the waters of baptism and suddenly you are pure as the driven snow; you are a new baby without any faults whatsoever, pure and innocent. That is not the case. Yes, by God's grace, we are cleansed of sin. We are redeemed through Christ's blood shed to pay for our iniquity. But upon rising out of that water and even after receiving the Holy Spirit from God after the laying on of hands, our carnal nature remains a major factor in skewing our lives toward the gutter. Past sins have been forgiven, but we commit new sins to replace them.
That sin engine that is inside us, our nature still spews out new transgressions at a frightening pace. It is still there. And though we have new understanding, new teaching, maybe new motivation, we still sin and we sin a lot. Sometimes we look back at the way we were and the way we are now after baptism and say, "Has anything really changed?" You know, those are when we are most depressed about ourselves and say, "Ha, I haven't changed at all all these years. I'm still committing the same sins that I did before. It's not gotten a whole lot better."
Now, God's Spirit does help, it helps a lot because with most of us, and when we are thinking rationally, we do notice that we have been sinning less frequently and we have overcome some ingrained habits over the years. But even so, we tend to struggle to live godly lives in this present age. So we need to think about that. We need to think about our progress. We need to think about what is holding us back. We need to think of the fundamental mistakes we are making, why we have not progressed as well as we think we should—and as well as God would expect us to progress because He has invested a lot in us.
David [Grabbe] was talking about predicting the stock market. Do you know that Jesus Christ and God the Father have predicted that you are in His Kingdom and He wants a return on His investment? And so He is doing whatever He can to get that investment that He expects. Unlike a stock, you are rational, you can make decisions. Well, stocks are backed by a lot of irrational and rational decisions. But I am saying that there are expectations of you in heaven and He wants us to reach that.
Why are we not reaching any of even the low hanging goals? I am really asking you to think very seriously about your progress and the line that you are taking to the Kingdom of God? Or is it a very long curve with a lot of kinks in it? In his epistles, the apostle Paul frequently writes about this inner spiritual struggle and the disappointment over the lack of progress. In Romans 7, he even records his personal struggle with the evil carnality that he sees within him, which he calls the law of sin. It is like the law of gravity. It just seems to be in him, that his carnal nature, his humanity wants to sin. That is its normal course.
And so God has called us to reject this law and change the course of our nature so it goes against the normal carnal flow of life on this earth. And we can only do that by allowing God's Spirit to have the dominance within us.
But in the next two sermons, I wish to focus on another Pauline passage that provides solutions to this problem of faithlessness among God's people and their frequent rebellions. And if we follow His instructions in this section, we can overcome our carnality, forsake idolatry, and glorify God ultimately. But we have got to follow the instructions.
Let us go to I Corinthians 6 to get a running start. We are going to begin in verses 9 through 11. This is Paul's description of that church, at least in part.
I Corinthians 6:9-11 Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived? [do not think that God is going to make an exception, do not think that it is otherwise than this, He says] Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor sodomites, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God.
This encapsulates what I just talked about. God called these people and they were stone cold sinners of every stripe from, as he says here, fornicators and idolaters to revilers and extortioners. But God has reached into our lives and done something, changed our lives forever; reached His hand in and gave us an opportunity to be better. In fact, not only to be better, to be perfect, to be like Him and His Son. And so He did what He needed to do and continues to do to make this happen. He washed us, He sanctified us or set us apart in a different category. He justified us. And of course, He gave us His Spirit. And He lives in us and He teaches us and He prods us with His Holy Spirit to do what is right. He has done actually just about everything but make all your decisions and do what you do.
So what is it going to be? In 2007, I gave eight sermons on the subject of the church in Corinth. And I proposed throughout that series that its environment and its faults parallel the modern church and its many problems. But as you know, the two epistles to the Corinthians deal with one weakness after another. There is not a whole lot good to say about the Corinthian congregation. There are a few little tidbits of things that they did okay. But Paul was dealing with a congregation that was, as he says, still carnal, they were behaving like men, meaning humans out in the world. Their problems went from party spirit to sexual immorality to lawsuits between the brethren to marriage problems and on and on it goes as you march through the first epistle there.
And all along the way trying to deal with these problems, the apostle Paul drops all sorts of helpful advice and doctrine and wisdom that we can apply to our own situations today, which happen to be very similar, which tells me that they are very common human problems that just about any generation can delve into this epistle and say, yeah, he is talking about us, at least in this particular instance.
For instance, like us, the Corinthians were called out of a pagan world. "I wasn't called out a pagan world. The United States is a Christian nation." Sorry, ours is a pagan nation with a Christian veneer on it. Look at what they are going to do on Sunday. Look at what they are celebrating tomorrow. Does not matter about the facts. They want to worship as they have always worshipped way back to Medieval or even ancient times. They just put a different gloss on it so they can salve their conscience.
Another example. The Corinthian church was split into factions. Each member or family following various leading ministers and evangelists and apostles into their own little groups, little cliques. Another example. The deviant sexual practices of Corinthian society had infiltrated the congregation to the point that a man was marrying his mother-in-law or his stepmother-in-law, I guess it was. And the Corinthians thinking that they should show love on this situation. Later, it turned out they were thinking of the wrong kind of love altogether. But they thought tolerating these perversions showed godly love, showed the agape, the way God would react to the situation. And Paul says, "I've already judged, get those people out of the church! They're causing problems."
Another example. Many of the Corinthian's marriages were a mess and divorces were rampant, and Paul, in chapter 7, had to lay down the law. This is how we deal with marriage and divorce in the church. Disputes between members went unresolved. You see that in chapter 6. People were actually going out into the world to try to find solutions. And Paul was saying, Is there no one in the church that has wisdom that can mediate any of these things? Why are you going to unbelievers? He tells them this is really bad for you. What does he say there? "Now therefore, it is already an utter failure for you that you go to law against one another." He is saying, You guys have got it all wrong. You are not thinking like Christians.
And just generally, another example. People were very careless about their behaviors in public and in private, and this led to many offenses between members and many weak members were being led astray into practices that they should not have been doing, going against their conscience.
We find that many of these problems that were in the Corinthian church came down to a lack of love for one another. They were just doing their own thing and it did not matter what or how it affected any other people around them. And so they would just look at a situation and say, Well, this is best for me and this is what I am going to do, not thinking it through about how those actions would affect their close family members or people in the church or even the whole group. And that was a major underlying reason why Paul made the decision, "Get those people out of the church" because it was affecting everybody and tearing everybody's spirituality down. It was wrong.
This brings us, then, to my point in I Corinthians 9. And we will be staying here pretty much the whole time, maybe fly off to another passage now and then, but we are going to be staying in this chapter for the most part.
Now, the chapter begins with the apostle Paul defending himself, feeling like he needed to defend himself against this whole church that was trying to tear him down. He had to exhibit his credentials to them. It was like he said, OK, this is my certificate of ordination. You know, this is what I have done in the past. Hey, by the way, I have spoken with Christ and you know, I think that gives me a pretty good bit of authority here, etc. Apparently, the Corinthians were criticizing him about the way he did his work, how he used his authority as an apostle, how he used his freedom as an apostle to do what he needed to do to preach the gospel to them and get them to understand the ways of God.
But they did not like that. They wanted to limit him, limit his effectiveness. They wanted to keep him at arm's length and not allow him to make the changes that he needed to make, because this was a church in turmoil. It was about ready to just blow apart and they did not want him to do what he needed to do to bring everybody back together.
Now, in chapter 9, Paul argues against them by saying, Look, I have rights and I have authority as an apostle. But you know what? I have not used them. I mean, if we were going to do this in terms of like a video game where you have power levels and things for each person, Paul, even against all of us, is like double, triple, quadruple the strength and every blow that he would give against one of us peons would kill us. I am talking the video game, not in real life. He is very strong and he has a lot of strength points, power points, whatever. He is very resourceful. He does not get knocked down easily (using the video game analogy here).
But they were thinking that he was too strong already. And he says, Are you kidding me? I have not even begun to fight. I have not begun to use all my strengths because God has given me all of these things, all of these ways, all of these strengths, all of these gifts and whatnot, but I have been pulling my punches guys. Ok? And you might think, well, if you are playing a video game, why do you not just kill everybody all the way through? Because you know, that is why you have that strength. You might as well use it. But Paul has his reasons why he did not use all the rights and authorities that he had as an apostle. And that is what chapter 9 gets to. I want to start in verse 11. Well, first of all, let me read verse 1 just so you have that verse in mind.
I Corinthians 9:1 Am I not an apostle? [Can I get a yea? You know, can I get some affirmation here that you at least respect that I am an apostle?] Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord?
That is what I mean about he is establishing his credentials and he is reminding them through these rhetorical questions they all are supposed to be answered "Yes." That he has these qualifications.
I Corinthians 9:11-15 If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it a great thing if we reap your material things? If others are partakers of this right over you, are we not even more? Nevertheless we have not used this right, but endure all things lest we hinder the gospel of Christ. Do you not know that those who minister the holy things eat of the things of the temple, and those who serve at the altar partake of the offerings of the altar? Even so the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel. But I have used none of these things, nor have I written these things that it should be done so to me; for it would be better for me to die then that anyone should make my boasting void.
I Corinthians 9:18 What is my reward then? [You know, he has done all this work. What is his reward for doing all these things?] That when I preach the gospel, I may present the gospel of Christ without charge, that I may not abuse my authority in the gospel.
In particular here, he is speaking of making a living from their tithes and offerings. And it is very clear that if you go through the proofs of this from the Old Testament and the New that this is something that God approves; that preachers, evangelists, apostles spend their time preaching the gospel, studying the Bible, praying and such, and their support then comes from the membership of the church, giving them the opportunity to be free to do these things. Many men have tried to do both, have a job and also to be a pastor of a church or what have you and some people can do it. But doing both takes a toll.
And so he is saying that this is a principle within the church of God that we would rather that a pastor be supported by the tithes and offering of the church so that they could spend their full time on the spiritual matters. This happened in the book of book of Acts and the reason why deacons were first ordained. Because the apostles, the twelve apostles of Jesus were actually just acting like cooks and waiters for all the people who needed food at the time. You know, are we supposed to be waiting tables or are we supposed to be preaching the gospel? And so by this little bit of experience that they had there as the church was being started, they understood that this was a good principle and so it was enacted church-wide.
Paul says, I decided to do it another way. Am I not free? Am I not free in the way that I do my ministry? He decided that he would not take that perk, if you will, but he would instead work with his own hands and make money if he needed it by doing what he had been trained to do as his trade. And he had done this. We do not know if he did this all over, but he did it here in Corinth and his reason was that he needed to spend his time on these people. And one of the things that he would not do was to ask them for money, ask them for support, because they had other problems. And he did not want to add that one to the mix.
Evidently, Paul's family was well off. And so he had money that he could use, but he also had the trade. He was a tent maker. He worked in leather. So just about anywhere he went, he could put up his little cart there and start making tents and make some good money. And in Corinth, as we will get to a little bit later, they had a good trade in that sort of thing because they had the Isthmian Games every two years which meant that people would come to Corinth and maybe need a tent to stay for the games. And so all he had to do was sell a couple of tents and he was good to go. Of course, making tents was not an easy thing. It was pretty labor intensive, but he was one who could do it. Also armies always needed tents. And so he could always be a supplier for their kits as well.
So he had concluded coming into Corinth, seeing all the problems there, that in this situation it was best not to use his authority as much as possible so that he would not abuse it and cause further problems with the Corinthians.
Now, it is at this point, starting in verse 19, that he veers toward his main point. This is all a prelude. From verse 1 all the way to verse 18 is all prelude for his next argument, starting in verse 19, and his real goal, which is in chapter 10. So we are seeing the progression of his thought here. Now, verses 19 through 23 takes its cue from his question in verse 1. "Am I not free?" The answer of course is yes, you are free. We are all free. Christ freed him from sin. Christ freed him from his evil attitudes, his wrong decisions. And then that freedom opened up a world of good that he could do.
Before, being confined under sin and his ingrained carnality in his nature, he could only do more sin, for the most part. He could only make more wrong decisions that would lead to death. But Christ came into his life and freed him from that. Now, with God's Spirit and His calling, he was free from those chains, those shackles of his carnal nature and hopefully Satan's influence and he could choose his course with a fuller understanding of the right way to go. Because with the calling came understanding and a great deal of knowledge about the way of God and only with the Spirit was he able to find all those bits of wisdom that would lead him in the right direction, the great overall doctrines of what God is doing and who God is and all those things that would set his course. He was now free to follow that course.
So Paul says, "Yeah! I'm free now. I have all the things I need to make a life that's going to please God." And in terms of what he did as work during his life, he could then help set other people on the same course. He was now free to give what was necessary to bring the whole church into the Kingdom of God, which he did in 14 letters in the Book, full of deep theology and simple wisdom. God used that man because he was free and Paul decided, I am going to use my freedom for good.
Now, there is a paradox here. I do not know if you have caught it yet, but he was free. What did he do? Let us go verse 19.
I Corinthians 9:19 For though I am free from all men [men is in italics, it is not there], I have made myself a servant to all that I might win the more.
So what did Paul do with this glorious freedom that Christ had given him? He became a slave. He talks about this in Romans, that if he was once a slave, a slave of sin, but now he was a slave of righteousness and he was going to give his all so, as he said here, he might win the more, he might do the work in the way that was best. In verses 22-23 here he says,
I Corinthians 9:22 To the weak I became as weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.
He said, I am going to do use my freedom in every manner that I can to do my job as a servant of God so that they will have the same opportunity as me. Verse 23. This is the reason he did this:
I Corinthians 9:23 Now this I do for the gospel's sake, that I may be partaker of it with you.
He is saying he did this so that he could support the work of the gospel, going out teaching and preaching. But he did it so that he could be a partaker of it too; of all the rewards and the goals and all the things that we are all in it for. This was not something particular to Paul. He was saying here that when I (I will use use "I" as Paul) saw what God had given me and the freedom that I now had and what needed to be done, I went all in because otherwise we will not reach the goal. And if I did not go all in, I would not reach the goal either. If I did not do my part, if I did not fulfill my calling, you know, I could preach all I wanted, but I would not be there if I did not do it right. (He says something to this effect a little bit later.)
He said he did not use his freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, which he talks about in Galatians 5:13 where there is a whole section on Christian liberty there in chapter 5. So he did not use his freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but as an opportunity to help others come to know the gospel and use it then to reach the glorious goal of eternal life in the Kingdom of God. And in that way, if he went all in and did what he needed to do, his liberty under Christ would produce the most fruit, for himself and for others. And would not then, because he is so focused on doing what is right and good and the work of God, that it could not descend into selfish pursuits or selfish gain.
So if he put his whole body, soul, and spirit into the calling that he had been given, he would not have time for sin and selfishness. He would be all in and he would not only be moving himself toward the Kingdom of God, he would be bringing others along with him.
In verse 24, we have come to the beginning of the passage, then, that I want to consider for the rest of the sermon. If we would stop here in verse 23 we might say, Oh, what an ideal Christian Paul is! How selfless! Is he not the splendid model of the servant leader? All of this is true. He was a great man, a great Christian, a great example. Would that we were all like him because he left us a good example. But by his own admission (we will not read it in Romans 7), Paul was a sinner and weak and unworthy and unable to forsake sin completely as we cannot. He cries out that he is totally unworthy and unable to save himself. And thank God Jesus Christ has done that because otherwise he would have been out there killing Christians, hailing them into prison all the rest of his life. But God saved him from all that, all that sin that he was piling up, and gave him a new and better way to live.
So my question is, as he says there in verse 19, how was Paul able to become a servant of all? What allowed him to dedicate his life to what he did?
I Corinthians 9:24-27 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a perishable crown [it was the garland of leaves], but we for an imperishable crown. Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.
Paul answers this question that I just gave you. How was he able to become a servant of all? He answers this question with a metaphor taken from the Isthmus Games, which I mentioned before. They were an Olympic-like sporting event held every other year in Corinth and it attracted thousands of visitors to the city. And of course, being every other year, the Corinthians really never got off the cycle of anticipating and then participating in or, you know, helping to get those games done, get all the other things that had to be done. Like I mentioned with Paul and the tents, they had to bring in lots of food, they had to have vendors and whatnot of this, that, and the other thing. So they were always in the mood for these Isthmian Games. It is like this country, how they are always in the mood for a good election every two years. They did it, though, with these Isthmian Games. So every Corinthian was well acquainted with them and all the events that were run and they were certainly aware of the events like foot racing and boxing, two of the main events of these games.
Now, they also were probably very well informed about how dedicated and self-disciplined these athletes were who came and participated in the games, much less the winners. They knew what it took to get to these games, that these athletes had to win local contests and then regional contests and maybe kingdom-wide or nationwide contests before they could come to the Isthmian Games and perform and try to win the overall worldwide contest in their very games. So those athletes, then, are very much like those who participate in our modern Olympics.
Do we not pretty much agree that the people who participate in the Olympics are the best in their events and they have to go through a grueling schedule of training and competition in order to get where they are. And actually just to appear in the Olympic Games and to win in the Olympic Games against the world's best is just amazingly difficult. So nobody, no Joe Blow off the street is going to walk into an Olympic venue and strip down to his shorts and a T-shirt and be able to compete against these people who have been training for years and gone through very difficult contests to be in that position. It just does not work that way.
So only the best in each discipline can represent his or her country in an event like this in these games. It takes total devotion to that one goal and submission to a regimen that has been designed over perhaps many years, maybe decades or centuries of sports knowledge and experience and wisdom, plus all the things from medicine and health and exercise, science that people have come up with, that makes the best athlete in that particular sport. Put it the other way around: anyone who would think of doing any of these things but refuses to keep their focus and strive on with their best to improve and reach that point will never get there. They will fall short.
I Corinthians 9:24 Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may obtain it.
Now, Paul is a great rhetorician. He was very good and logical in the way he put these things together. He begins with an obvious truth or an obvious fact which comes right after, "Do you not know. . ." That "do you not know" is like everybody knows this, and he is saying, only somebody who is not all there would not know this. But he says though, a race has many competitors, we see that in the games. In the running races they have eight or ten people in each heat and they have to be eliminated until they get down to their eight or ten that will race in the finals. So there are many competitors, right? A race has many competitors but only one wins.
That is universally accepted to be true in races like this. No participation trophies, only one wins. In that arena, especially in the Greek Games like the Olympics or the Isthmian Games, only winning matters. They were not soft like us to give participation trophies. Second place is the first loser. Dale Earnhardt would have done great in Greece because that is what he believed. You had to win. If you are going to put a car in a race, the only good outcome was to take the checkered flag. Only the winner takes home the prize.
Paul then gives us some advice in this last half of this particular verse, verse 24. Run with everything in you so that you break the tape, so that you are the winner. His point is not competition like Dale Earnhardt's was. (He loved competition. He loved to win.) But Paul's point here is single-mindedness, wholeheartedness, dedication, devotion, determination, commitment, be in it to win it. That is the sole focus that we need to have. It is all about the goal and putting everything, all our energy into achieving it. Maybe a modern phrase that we would use in this case is: if you are going to be entered into a race, give it maximum effort. One goal, total effort. To paraphrase Paul's final sentence here in verse 24: run as if your life, your eternal life, depends on it. And it does.
I Corinthians 9:25 And everyone who competes for the prize is temperate in all things. But they do it to obtain a perishable crown, but we for an imperishable crown.
Here, Paul states the central theme of his counsel. Maximum effort is only possible through temperance. That is the word the New King James picked out, "temperate." Underlying temperate is the Greek verb enkrateuomai, which means to exercise self-control. It literally means to have power over oneself. The noun form enkratea, implies inner strength, self-discipline, self-restraint. You are not able to give yourself wholly to pursuing and achieving your goal unless you have self-discipline. It is only possible through self-control and self-restraint. And in terms of achieving a goal like this, it is both restraining oneself to avoid what would hamper you in reaching your goal, as well as pursuing with vigor anything that would help, anything that would be beneficial. If we want a word that reflects basically the whole concept of enkratea, it is self-mastery. We have total control of ourselves. We are our own master, if you will.
In modern terms, Paul writes here in verse 25 everybody who competes to win must undergo strict training in all aspects of his event—and stick to it. Give it his all. In the analogy, the athlete would have to follow a planned regimen or a course of life, actually, because it takes the whole life to do something like this. You cannot compartmentalize it and do one thing and do another thing. You are going to get very distracted by trying to do more than one thing.
But this regimen would consist of the right amount of rest, a proper diet, loads of training in various disciplines like speed or strength or agility or endurance or all of them, depending on what your event is. You and the coach would have strategy meetings about how you were going to not only continue the regimen but how you would work your race or fight your fight. There would be lesser competitions to stay sharp. There would be greater competitions that you had to come out on top in.
You had to give it your all and be very ready, very sharp. That person, that athlete, would also have many restrictions. He would have limits on alcohol, upon sexual activity. There would be many unhealthy foods that he would have to avoid. Of course, no drugs. You have to avoid injuries, you have to stay safe, etc.
So, what I was showing there is that you would have to do good and beneficial things and you would have to also avoid the things that are not beneficial that would harm your pursuit of the goal. So in sum, he is saying here that a competitor like this must forsake the harmful habits and remain committed to the beneficial ones. That sounds very much like one of the primary lessons of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, does it not?
Let us see. Let us go back to I Corinthians 5 here just for a minute. He is talking to the Corinthians about their supposed love for these two that were in a sexually immoral relationship. He says:
I Corinthians 5:6-8 Your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. [That is what Christ did for us.] For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. Therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven [or the old bad habits that hinder us], nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth [those good habits that will take us further along the path toward our goal].
Back to I Corinthians 9. Remember Paul is explaining here what allowed him to preach the gospel and serve them wholeheartedly without using all his rights and authorities. It was his self-restraint. It was his self-control. It was his self-discipline, his self mastery. It was the same virtue that he used to take hold on eternal life—the imperishable crown, the goal that is set before him. It was all bundled in one package. He would use his self-discipline, his self-mastery to make it to the Kingdom of God. But he would also use his self-discipline, his self-mastery to bring others with him and be their servant, guide them and help them.
Let us look at Philippians 3 where he talks about his pursuit of the Kingdom of God.
Philippians 3:7-16 But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ. [He had just been talking about all the the advantages that he had.] Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. [So what did he do?]
Not that I have already attained, or I am already perfected; but I press on that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. 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 our mature [spiritually mature people], have this mind [the same mind that he had about pressing toward the goal]; and if any in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule [under the same regimen, under that feeling that we have to keep pressing forward toward the goal], let us be of the same mind.
Now, verse 26 back in I Corinthians 9. So he says with this mindset,
I Corinthians 9:26 Therefore I run thus: not with uncertainty. Thus I fight not: as one who beats the air.
The apostle Paul here brings out two faults that we have to avoid. One in a metaphor from running and the other in a metaphor from boxing. The first thing he says we have to avoid is uncertainty. It is the Greek word adelos. It literally means "not evident." That is, it can mean unseen or uncertain or indistinct. The New King James translators use uncertain here, or uncertainty. Modern translators though, I think, have found a better word. What Paul says here, "Therefore I run thus: not aimlessly." Not aimlessly; you will find that in the English Standard Version.
Paul's intent seems to be on not having a fixed goal here. That we are not sure of where we actually are striving to get. And so he is saying we have to avoid running purposelessly. We have to have the goal surely fixed in our head and move toward it with great purpose. So we are to have eternal life in God's Kingdom as a constant goal in any and every situation. Our eyes are always on the finish line and nothing should distract us. A great athlete, such as a world class runner, never veers off to see some pretty scenery or something that may catch his eye. He never takes a time out in the midst of his run. He never sees somebody in the crowd and goes in and has a conversation with him or her. He avoids all distractions and he runs to win the race.
Paul also uses this thing from boxing that we need to avoid. He says here, "Thus I fight: not as one who beats the air." He said we have got to avoid being somebody who beats the air. A boxer who beats the air is not boxing. The two metaphors are parallel here. The one about running for the goal and the boxer who beats the air are parallel. So if the first speaks to the athlete being purposeful, then the second does too. It used to be a lot of people, including myself, thought that this metaphor was talking about shadow boxing, like being in the gym and you are fighting up against the wall, where you can see a shadow and you are fighting against the shadow.
But I do not think that is correct, not anymore. Not after thinking this through. He is not talking about throwing punches against an invisible opponent. I prefer to see it as a boxer in a match who never strikes the enemy. Yeah, he is in the arena. He is in the game. He is in the ring. But he never lands a blow. How are you going to win if you never land a blow? What are you doing? Why are you even fighting, or you are not fighting? You are just standing there and being beaten to a pulp by the other boxer who is hitting you all the time. Paul is talking about a person, a boxer who throws useless punches and never hits the target, forever.
What has been the object of boxing? It is either to knock the opponent out or to score points by landing punches. Why get in the ring if you are just going to do nothing that is going to get you the prize? If you enter a race, you should enter to win it. If you enter a ring, you should fight to win. That is what Paul is saying. The purpose of these events is to win the prize. Why would any athlete worth his salt, committed to winning his events, even think about doing anything other than what will achieve him victory? It is stupid to try to get into something with this idea that you are going to win and not do anything to make it happen or do the wrong things. It just does not make sense. It is not logical. Paul is talking about total commitment and not allowing anything to distract us from the purpose that God has called us to.
Hebrews 12:1-2 [also using a race metaphor] Therefore we also [remember this is a congregation of people who had started to lag, they were getting distracted], since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which so easily ensnares us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down on the right hand of the throne of God.
Look at what Jesus did. He raced to win. Despite all that happened to Him, the author of Hebrews is saying that is the mindset we have to have.
I Corinthians 9:27 But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection, lest, when I have preached to others, I myself should become disqualified.
Now, Paul brings this metaphor to a close with a plain statement of what he means. The first half of the verse can be rendered as: but I (taking the hint from the last metaphor about striking the blow), strike a blow to my body and make it my slave. The purposeful drive and the strict control he has been describing over this metaphor is over one's own body, mind, spirit, heart, nature. That is where you strike the blows. It is over our own carnality, our fleshly desires, it affects all the choices and decisions that we make every day. We have to make those things serve us and our goal.
So using himself as an example, he says that he could do a great work in preaching. But if he does not control his carnal desires and lives immorally in other aspects of his life, his ungodliness would disqualify him for entrance in God's Kingdom. The great Judge of all could reject him as unworthy, something Paul expands on in chapter 11, verse 27 in terms of the Passover. But if we think about it, if we take the Passover unworthily, we are certainly unworthy of the Kingdom of God. So he says, we do not want to be unworthy. The way we make sure that we are not unworthy is self-discipline, having control over our nature.
Let us finish here in I Thessalonians 4.
I Thessalonians 4:1-2 [Paul says] Finally then, brethren, we urge and exhort in the Lord Jesus that you should abound more and more, just as you receive from us how you ought to walk and to please God; for you know what commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus.
Paul's words here may make us a bit uncomfortable. We know what God expects of us. Many of us have been reading the Bible, listening to sermons, reading articles for many decades. The teaching we have learned over all that time is clear and simple. Listen to God. Do what He says. Be kind and gracious to others. That is not hard at all. I mean, I boiled it down to three simple points, but they are pretty on target, do you not think?
But the apostle here strikes directly at a common problem. Face it, many of us are not fully committed. We are not running all out. We are not running straight for the goal because of what I talked about at the beginning of the sermon. We have allowed our human nature to rule us rather than we rule it. This testifies that we have not developed enough self-discipline. So our efforts are usually unproductive. Being human beings still, not fully spirit, not perfect at all, we let our human nature win far too often.
This feast reminds us each year to get on the ball, to get rid of the corruption of sin, and live an unleavened life before God. That is what He wants to see. So we need to rededicate ourselves to running the race to win the prize of eternal life in the Kingdom of God.
RTR/aws/drm