Please turn with me in the Word of God to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians will begin our reading at chapter 9, verse 22. 1 Corinthians chapter 9, beginning our reading at verse 22, and reading down through chapter 10, verse 22. 1 Corinthians 9, beginning at verse 22. Let us hear God's own word. To the weak I became weak to win the weak. I have become all things to all men, so that by all means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last. but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. Therefore, I do not run like a man running aimlessly. I do not fight like a man beating the air. No, I beat my body and make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink, for they all drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them. Their bodies were scattered over the desert. Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to engage in pagan revelry. We should not commit sexual immorality as some of them did. And in one day, 23,000 of them died. We should not test the Lord as some of them did and were killed by snakes. And do not grumble as some of them did and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us on whom the fulfillment of the ages has come. So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. No temptation has seized you except what is common to man, and God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can stand up under it. Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry. I speak to sensible people. Judge for yourselves what I say. Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? Is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? Because there is one loaf, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one loaf. Consider the people of Israel. Do not those who eat the sacrifices participate in the altar? Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, not to God. And I do not want you to be participants with demons. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too. You cannot have a part in both the Lord's table and the table of demons. Are we trying to arouse the Lord's jealousy? Are we stronger than he? So far the reading of God's word. In just a little more than five weeks, the Summer Olympic Games will begin in Beijing, China. And the Olympic Games will give to many preachers the opportunity to turn to various passages in the New Testament where there are allusions to the ancient Greek Games. There were not only Olympic Games, but there were also Corinthian Games. And here in chapter 9 of Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he makes reference to those Games as something well known in the culture that surrounded those early Christians. And so I thought I would beat other preachers to the punch and talk about games and prizes before others get the opportunity. Paul, in this section of his letter, is answering a question that had been put to him. In fact, from 1 Corinthians 7, verse 1, till the end of the letter, he's really answering a whole series of questions that apparently the Corinthians had put to them. Some of them require very short answers, just one verse, and some of them require rather long answers. As you know, sometimes I get out and about to speak at conferences, and even at seminary, one of the things that intrigues me is that people, when they come up to me to ask a question, almost always say, I have a quick question. And sometimes they've actually said, I'm only taking slow ones today. I guess what they mean is I don't want to take up too much of your time, so I think this is a short question. Well, the Corinthians had a whole bunch of questions, some quick and some slow. And Paul takes particular time over the question that they apparently posed to him as he summarizes it in chapter 8, verse 1, now about food sacrifice to idols. The Corinthians had apparently written to Paul to inquire about food sacrifice to idols, what they ought to think about it. And from chapter 8, verse 1 through chapter 11, so for four chapters, he's answering aspects and implications of that question. Some parts of the answer are, we might think, somewhat peripheral. For example, his discussion of head coverings. It's always nice to see Mrs. DeGrode, church with a hat. I don't think Paul requires that. So there are some somewhat peripheral questions that the apostle comes to. But beginning with our scripture reading, he comes to a very serious dimension of the whole problem of idolatry and of the connection of the people of God to their God. And he addresses this with the utmost seriousness, speaking first of all about himself. And he says, I need to be very careful about my life so that in the end, I'll win the prize. And then he says, verse 27 of chapter 9, No, I beat my body and make it a slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize. We have to ask ourselves, what is Paul saying about himself and what he's saying to us in this rather arresting text? We know that the apostle Paul was an apostle chosen by Jesus Christ. We know that the Apostle Paul was a good Calvinist who knows the Lord preserves his own. We know that the Apostle Paul was the author of that great Calvinistic verse. He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. How could Paul even contemplate the notion that having preached to others, he might be lost? Maybe Paul had a bad day. Maybe he wasn't thinking clearly. Is this an Arminian moment in the thought of the Apostle Paul? Well, we know that's not the case, can't be the case. But what Paul is saying to himself and to all Christians is that having come to faith in Jesus Christ, having come to a knowledge of your own salvation, don't be a slacker. Don't become presumptuous. Don't think that you can just be carried to heaven on beds of ease. And he takes the occasion of the, probably, Corinthian games rather than Olympic games, coming up to say, Christians, in a profound sense, ought to compare themselves to athletes. Athletes who have a goal, have a prize in mind. I'm always intrigued when I see athletes interviewed on television, particularly those heading for the Olympic Games. They're not going there for, most of them, for a lot of money. They're going for a medal, most of them. They're eager for that medal. They have their eye on the prize. They know what they're after. And you can see the heartbreak in some of them that have trained for years and years and years and go and coming forth. Now, many of us might be inclined to say to them, fourth in the whole world, that's pretty good. But you can see on their faces the disappointment. I missed the prize. I missed what I was after. I had a goal and I didn't make it. And Paul says that's just for a prize that fades away, isn't lasting. In those days, the big deal prize was usually a crown made out of laurel, branches, that a few weeks it would have been just gone, dried up. Paul says that's not the case with us. We have a prize at which we're aiming, a crown of life that fades not away, that's imperishable. Keep your eye on that prize. How can we win that prize? How can we be assured that we can win that prize? Not how can you get right with Christ in the first place, but how can you as a Christian be going on towards that prize? That's the question being posed in this text. And Paul answers it in three ways. He really was a preacher. First of all, we win the prize if we exercise discipline. If we exercise discipline as Christians. Being a Christian, in a certain sense, is hard work. Just as being an athlete is hard work. You have to stay at it. You have to be constant. See how in verse 25 of chapter 9, Paul writes, Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. Or as the ESV puts it more literally, exercises self-control. We have to get a hold of ourselves. We have to be hard at work. Paul puts it particularly and strikingly in verse 27 of chapter 9. No, I beat my body. The Greek word there is particularly fascinating. It means give yourself a black eye. Punch yourself in the eye. Now, he's speaking spiritually and metaphorically here, boys and girls. He doesn't want you to go home and literally give yourself a black eye. In my experience, boys and girls don't usually give themselves black eyes, but that's a whole other area of discussion. But what he's talking about here is really focusing, really working hard. Another way he puts it is, I enslave myself, I take control of myself, so that I can focus on what God would have me be. I wonder sometimes, do we take the Christian life that seriously? It is one of the dangers, perhaps, of a Calvinistic view of grace. As a former professor of mine said, the dominant American attitude towards religion is, I like sinning, God likes forgiving, the world is well set up. And that should not be the attitude amongst us. We should not be asking the question, what is the least we can do and still get into heaven? But we should be asking, as Paul does, how can we be a Christian in condition, in good shape, with our eye on the prize of the crown that fades not away? Well, I think as we look at 1 Corinthians broadly, we see he says a number of things about what it takes to exercise discipline in the Christian life. And one of the things he stresses is that we need accurate self-examination. We have that phrase, don't we? Oh, to see ourselves as others see us. We usually say that about somebody else who we don't think sees themselves very clearly. And Paul, over and over again in 1 Corinthians, is calling on Christians to take a hard look at yourself. He has that famous statement, doesn't he, in the section in 1 Corinthians 11 about the Lord's Supper, where he says, judge yourself so you will not come into judgment. What does he mean by that? He means if we take a really hard look at ourselves and acknowledge before the Lord where we've sinned, where we're weak, where we're wrong, then we will not come into judgment with the Lord. It's people who refuse to acknowledge their sin, who refuse to acknowledge that they violated the law of God, who insist that they're right, and in effect God is wrong, who are in trouble. And so he says, take a hard look at yourself, look at the problems in your life. And he says that very arrestingly, doesn't he, in verse 12 of chapter 10. So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. Don't be presumptuous. Don't be overconfident. But keep taking a look at yourself as to how it's really going with your spiritual life. Are things the way they really ought to be? What ought to change? What ought to improve? We must not be presumptuous. We must not be just coasting along. in the Christian life. But he also wants to make very clear in the course of 1 Corinthians that as we evaluate ourselves, we also have to know not only who we are in terms of our continuing struggles with sin, but we have to know who we are in terms of our relationship to Jesus Christ. Several times in this letter, Paul says to the Corinthians, you are the temple of God. You are the temple of God. The most positive thing to be said about you is not that you are tall or short or skinny or fat or handsome, but that you, individually, as you are in Jesus Christ, are a temple of God, a temple in which Christ dwells, a temple in which his spirit dwells. And Paul makes that point to say, how ought you then to live since you are the temple of the living God? Temples are sacred places. You are a sacred person. You are set apart for God, not for yourself. And that needs to direct the way you live, the way you think, the way you behave. I think Paul makes very clear that this discipline to which we're called for the sake of the prize isn't anything easy or quick. We as Americans are almost addicted, it seems, to quick-fix programs. I'm willing to go on a diet. I do diet 23 hours a day, and I really think that's enough. I think if I die 23 hours a day, the other hour ought to be mine to eat what I want. And if you live that way, you end up with a body like this. There are no quick fix programs. I read in the L.A. Times this past week that pastors are organizing a campaign against gay marriage in this state to support the initiative that will be on the ballot in November. And one pastor says, we're going to have 100 days of prayer and 40 days of fasting. Well, in a sense, it seems to me that's a quick fix. It's a program that isn't really biblical. Prayer is biblical. Fasting is biblical. But we often want a sort of gimmick. Praying for 100 days isn't enough. We need to be praying all our lives. Paul, you see, doesn't give you five easy steps to anything. Here he's calling Christians to recognize that it's a lifelong pattern of discipline to which we're called in living for Christ. American religion tends to be on a kind of constant roller coaster, ups and downs, moments of excitement, moments of depression. Paul's saying to us, that's not the way athletes train. You have to keep after it. You have to keep going. That's what we're called to, to be a disciplined people. You know, if Paul offers any kind of summary program, we might say it's in 1 Corinthians 16, verse 13. What does he say there? 1 Corinthians 16, verse 13. Be on your guard. Stand firm in the faith. Be men of courage, be strong, do everything in love. See, this isn't a program, this isn't a quick fix, this isn't sanctification for dummies. This is a lifelong commitment, isn't it? To be courageous, to be watchful, to be loving, to stand firm in the faith. And faith is at the root of every discipline. Faith as trusting God, believing in God, is the foundation of every discipline. Why do we fail in discipline before the Lord? Because we haven't trusted him as we should. We haven't believed him according to his word. We haven't followed him. Stand firm in the faith, Paul says. Now, Paul, in this section of Scripture, encourages us in this exercise of discipline by calling on us to examine the danger to which we're exposed. And it's really, I think, a very remarkable part of this text. Beginning at the beginning of chapter 10, he says, For I do not want you to be ignorant brothers of the fact that our forefathers were all under the cloud and they all passed through the sea. Sometimes we read these passages so quickly or they've become so familiar we don't really think a whole lot about them. But pause a minute and think, Paul the Jew is writing to a largely Gentile church. And he says to those Gentiles in Corinth, our forefathers. He doesn't say the Jews' forefathers. He said our forefathers. We as Christians have to look back at the Old Testament and see everything that happens in the Old Testament as our family history. And then he goes on in a rather remarkable way to assume that these probably fairly recent Gentile converts from Greece know a lot about the Old Testament. And this is just a footnote to the sermon, But it maybe should challenge us to ask, how are we doing in our Old Testament knowledge? Paul proceeds to refer to four quite distinct episodes in Israel's history. And if I asked you to take out a piece of paper and a pencil and jot down the Old Testament text to which he's referring, Without cheating and looking at the cross-references in your Bible, I suspect most of us would have some trouble identifying the exact story to which he's referring. Seems to have assumed that the Corinthians would know. This should be a challenge to us. How important it is for us to know the Word of God. If these things in the Old Testament were all written for our warning and instruction, we have to know those things. Come back for the good sermon on Joshua tonight. You'll see, it'll be a help. Well, what are the points being made here? Well, the first point that Paul wants to make is, our forefathers were surrounded by the blessings of God. They'd been delivered from Egypt. They were under the protection of the cloud and the pillar of fire. They were led through the Red Sea. They were fed spiritual food. They were given spiritual drink. The rock that accompanied them and from which the water for them came was Christ himself. What Paul is stressing here is those Old Testament people of God were in a very similar position to the New Testament people of God. They were surrounded by God's love. They had evidences of his favor and protection. And they were spiritually fed by him. Christ was present among them. Christ was giving himself to them. This is very strong language. But in spite of all those blessings, what do we read? Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them. Their bodies were scattered over the desert. Most of them didn't get the prize. And Paul wants this to be a sobering reflection for us. And then he goes over four specific episodes. Verse 7, do not be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to, the real word there is dance, to engage in pagan revelry. What's he referring to? Exodus 32, the making of the golden calf. Moses had been gone too long. The people lost confidence. They wanted a God they could see. They wanted a God they could touch. They gathered their gold and they made a golden calf. And they called him Jehovah. And they ate a covenant meal dedicated to this idol of their own hands. And they rose up to sin. Don't be like that. The Apostle Paul says. That doesn't mean we can say, I'm not like that. I don't have an idol and I'm not giving my gold to anybody. That doesn't mean that you've escaped the warning of this passage. And he goes on to say, we should not commit sexual immorality as some of them did. And in one day, 23,000 of them died. It's a story from Numbers 25 where Israel was encamped near Midian and the men of Israel indulged in sexual immorality with the women of Midian and the women of Midian led them to worship the Baal of Peor and the Lord sent a plague and destruction upon them. Don't be like that, says the Lord. It's intriguing how idolatry and sexual immorality are linked together in these passages. To move away from the Lord and from the worship of him in purity and in truth leads one into the ways of the world and its sin and its excess. Third example, don't test the Lord. Seems to refer back to Numbers 21 where the people had been traveling And they were about to travel around the kingdom of Edom to avoid it. And the people had become impatient with all this traveling. And they said, why do we have this lousy food and this lousy drink? Why can't we go back to Egypt? Lousy food, manna. Psalm 78 calls it the bread of angels. But Israel complained. And so the Lord sent snakes to kill them. And then the fourth example is grumbling after the 12 spies had come back from the land of Canaan. And 10 of the spies had said it was such a powerful land, they weren't sure that they could take it. And the people grumbled. They grumbled against Moses and Aaron and the Lord and said, it would be better to be back in Egypt. And the Lord condemned them to die in the wilderness. You see, this was a pattern that Paul says we have to think about, we have to see the danger. These were people surrounded by miracles, surrounded by a display of the Lord's presence and provision and power. These were a people who had been gifted with blessing after blessing of the Lord and of his presence, and they turned their back on. And most of them fell in the wilderness. verse 11 of chapter 10 says these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us actually the Greek word is singular it's written down as a warning one warning because all these examples really relate to one problem and the one problem is turning away from the Lord the one problem is apostasy The one problem is no longer trusting and following the Lord. It's no longer believing in the Lord. And what Paul said to the Corinthians and what he says to us is, we have to recognize that can be a problem for us too. Oh, not for me, I'm a minister. No, for me too. Oh, not for me, I'm an elder. No, for you too. Oh, not for me. I've been in this church for four generations. No, for you too. Oh, not for me. I'm too young for the Lord to notice what I'm doing. No, for you too. Paul says to all of God's people, if you think you stand, beware lest you fall. There's a real danger that surrounds the people of God, the covenant people of God. And we have to be sensitive to that. And the warning is this. How is it with your soul and God? Do you trust him? Do you look to him? You see, there's a constant temptation to fall away. Look at verse 13. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 13 is probably a verse that many of you have been encouraged to memorize. Kids, you've probably been encouraged in Sunday school or catechism to memorize. 1 Corinthians 10, verse 13. It's a great verse to memorize. No temptation has seized you except what is common to man, and God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so you can stand up under it. Now, the way it's translated here gives the impression that Paul has in mind every single imaginable temptation. I don't think that's actually what Paul has in mind. It would be much more faithful to the Greek to translate this, temptation has not seized you except what is common to man. He's not talking about every temptation. He's talking about the great temptation to turn your back on the Lord. It's common to man. It's a common problem. It's a problem that overcomes many. And Paul is pleading with them and with us, don't let that be true of you. Don't you submit to the temptation to fall away from the Lord. It's a danger. It's a danger in the covenant community. As Calvinists, we rightly say, it's not a real danger for the elect, but it's a real danger in the covenant community, and we all have to pay attention to that. And, of course, the beauty of 1 Corinthians 10.13 is that Paul says there's a way out of that temptation. There's an escape. And why is there an escape? Well, you see, winning the prize is not just exercising discipline and examining the danger, but winning the prize is also embracing the deliverance that God provides for us. That way of escape, that way out of the temptation to drift away or turn away from the Lord and following him and trusting him. And we have that way of escape, this text says, because God is faithful. It's a wonderful promise, isn't it? God is faithful. It's not the first time Paul's made that point in 1 Corinthians. In 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 9, we read it in the NIV, God who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful. A more literal translation would be, God is faithful, he who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. And how is he faithful? Well, look at verse 8 of chapter 1. He will keep you strong to the end so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful to keep his people. And he manifests that faithfulness by giving them a way of escape. What is the way of escape that the Lord gives us? Well, he promises that the temptation to depart from him will not be more than we can bear as we look to Jesus Christ. Again, you see, there's no secret solution here. There's no quick fix here. The way of escape is to look to Jesus Christ. Verse 15 of chapter 10, I speak to sensible people. He may be speaking sarcastically there. They'd called themselves sensible, and Paul had challenged their good sense. But he says, all right, you think you're sensible? I'm speaking to sensible people now. Judge for yourselves what I say. Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread which we break a participation in the body of Christ? He's saying it's in Christ that there's a way of escape. It's in the sacrifice that he offered on the cross where he poured out his blood and gave up his body. That's the way of escape. That's the way of escape from the temptation to depart from the Lord. The way of escape is to turn again and again to Jesus Christ and to see in him how weak we are in ourselves, how helpless we are in ourselves, But how all power is to be found in our Savior. If our feet are slipping, he can hold us up. If our faith is drooping and doubting, he can increase it. If sin is overwhelming us, he can give us strength. If the world is tempting us and blinding us, looking at Him and what He gave up for us, it should help us to see that what we're called to give up for Him is as nothing. Where's the way of escape? It's in Jesus Christ. Sometimes we're tempted to say, oh, we're too strong for that, we're too wise for that. We can do better than that. Haven't you got something new for us? Haven't you got something more profound for us, preacher? No. He's the way of escape. He's the only hope. Looking to him in faith is how we'll win the prize. How we'll have the strength to discipline ourselves. How we'll be able to avoid the danger. He's the only solution that there is. And he's a solution rich and strong and blessed. And full of life. Paul closes the text that we've read with a question. It's the kind of question students like to get in school. It's a giveaway question. The answer is obvious. No sensible person can get it wrong. Verse 22 of chapter 10. Are we stronger than God? Are we wiser than God? Can we do things better than the way God has done them? Is the food in Egypt better than the food God feeds his people with? Is the spiritual wisdom of this world wiser than the spiritual wisdom of God and his word? Are the pretended saviors of this world more powerful than the body and blood of Jesus Christ to save? No, of course not. And no one is stronger than our God. And so what he said to us, what he's taught us, what he's revealed of himself, what he's given us in his love and his mercy, we should not be so stupid as to turn our backs against. But we're inclined to be stupid. That's why we need the word of God to feed our souls, to open our minds to draw us back and this is the promise for all of us as part of the covenant community of God this is the promise if we exercise discipline if we examine the danger and if we embrace the deliverance as it is in Jesus Christ there's a crown there's a prize of life of everlasting life that fades not away on that last day may every one of us stand on that victory podium and receive the prize Amen let us pray O Lord our God how rich and deep and profound and challenging is your word to us and yet also Oh, Lord, how simple is that basic message. All that we need is in Jesus Christ. And we must come again and again and again to him to find our life, to find our hope, to find our forgiveness, to find our strength for living. Oh, Spirit of Jesus Christ, come and be with us and encourage every one of us in believing that we may turn from the idols of this world and worship you alone. For it's in Jesus' name that we pray. Amen.