tonight we turn in the scriptures to 1st Corinthians chapter 9 1st Corinthians chapter 9 and the text that we are considering the verses are verses 15 through 27 15 through 27 i do want to back up at verse 1 and read this since the context is so important tonight so We'll be reading at verse 1, 1 Corinthians chapter 9. Let's give our attention tonight to the word of the Lord. Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? If to others I am not apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord. This is my defense to those who would examine me. do we not have the right to eat and drink do we not have the right to take along a believing wife as do the other apostles and the brothers of the lord and cephas or is it only barnabas and i who have no right to refrain from working for a living who serves as a soldier at his own expense who plants a vineyard without eating any of its fruit or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk do i say these things on human authority does not the law say the same for is written in the law of Moses. You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain. Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Does he not certainly speak for our sake? It's written for our sake because the plowman should plow in hope and the thresher thresh in hope of sharing in the crop. If we have sown spiritual things among you, is it too much if we reap material things from you? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more? Nevertheless, we've not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ. Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple and those who serve at the altar share in the sacrificial offerings? In the same way the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel. now our text but i've made no use of any of these rights nor am i writing these things to secure any such provision for i would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting for if i preach the gospel that gives me no ground for boasting for necessity is laid upon me woe is me if i do not preach the gospel for if i do this of my own will i have a reward but if not of my own will i'm still entrusted with the stewardship what then is my reward that in my preaching i may present the gospel free of charge so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel for though i am free from all i have made myself a servant to all that i might win more of them to the jews i became as a jew in order to win jews to those under the law i became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law. To the weak, I became weak, that I might win the weak. I become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some i do it all for the sake of the gospel that i may share with them in its blessings do you not know that in a race all the runners run but only one receives the prize so run that you may obtain it every athlete exercises self-control in all things they do it to receive a perishable wreath but we an imperishable so i do not run aimlessly i do not box as one beating the air But I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. May the Lord bless the hearing of his word. In our passage tonight that we are considering, Paul is concerned that the church in Corinth has lost its purpose in its witness and being an evangelistically-minded church. They're not being all things to all people. I wonder, however, what our understanding of that really is. I don't know how you've heard 1 Corinthians 9 preached in the past. I've heard more than a few sermons on this. And typically how this passage goes is that the average churchgoer gets pretty beat up in feeling like they're not being missional enough. That they're too inwardly focused and they really have no heart for evangelism and therefore the church kind of remains its own club and it's defective in its mission and mandate that Christ has given her. There really has been in our day an entire missional approach to Christianity that has amounted to doing nothing else and nothing other than beating up the churchgoer, making them feel incredibly guilty like they haven't done enough to win souls for Christ. It's a strange phenomenon. I've seen this become dominant themes in people in men's ministries. And the very thing that they're trying to avoid, they end up doing to the weak Christians. They don't consider them. They don't work with them. They're pushing a certain view of missional theology upon the church and upon the weak, and the weak end up very confused. So we have conferences on evangelism and how to be a more reaching out church and how to embrace the lost and how to be more welcoming and how to look less like the church so that we don't cause offense, that we become all things to all people. I'm not going to do that tonight to you. Why do I say that? Well, it's interesting that the church in Corinth, when I say all those things, I say was a church radically defective in its mission. It was. This is what Paul's dealing with. But the way Paul combats that, the way Paul deals with that is he gets to the heart of the issue. He gets to the solution and how to create a proper missionary zeal and how to create a proper witness of people. He goes about it in a different way than we might expect. He gets to the root of the problem. Which, if this is understood, if this mindset and model that the Apostle is presenting to us tonight, which most will say that this is his driving mission statement of his ministry, if this is understood, you're not going to have to talk about how to be a welcoming church or how to be evangelistically minded. I promise you, it'll flow from it. I promise. Well, the church in Corinth becomes a great case study to see how the apostle dealt with a church that had become closed off. A church that had become a club. A church that had been ripped apart in divisions. It was divided. It was divided by disputes. And Paul addressed this whole thing by setting something in front of them that at the beginning of chapter 8, which is really a run here in the same problem, dealing with the same problem for quite some time. This is our third sermon on this issue. Paul said something in chapter 8 to deal with the main problem and he used the example of food offered to idols to answer it he said we know in chapter 8 1 all of us possess knowledge this knowledge puffs up but love builds up if anyone imagines he knows something he does not yet know as he ought to know that is such an important verse knowledge that you have knowledge that you're giving has a goal it has the goal of edifying one another in love and if the contrary to that if the fruit of your knowledge is a life of division a life of fighting a life of separating out a life of destruction if that's in your wake with all your knowledge if that's what that's produced it's not from God that's what he's saying you don't know anything and so what was happening was these strong Christians in Corinth who were saying well we get the gospel we understand the gospel we're coming into temple guilds and they were eating food offered to idols this is how you did business in those days and they said listen we know God's one we know God's one we know there's one lord and all these other gods they're just idols we're free with this regard we can eat this stuff we can eat whatever we want and paul says well you're right you're absolutely right in your conviction but here's the problem not everyone else has that knowledge not everyone else knows what you know and when that becomes an avenue to hurt your weaker brother there was something strong he said here you sin against christ well that's enough to stop it isn't it we don't get this though we just keep pushing we just keep pushing so he began then to use himself in the second sermon as an example to demonstrate the mind of a servant that he wants from us and he began with all these questions rhetorical questions remember am i am i not an apostle have i not seen jesus are you not my workmanship do i not have the right to eat and drink do we not have the right to take along believing wives oh we've got all these rights and you know we have all these rights but let me give you a real specific one to chew on for a minute do we not have the right to be paid yeah we have the right to be paid all the other apostles are receiving that right the law commands it that's that was the real hit last time the law commands that we be paid you do not muzzle you know muzzle an ox while he treads out the grain god wrote that for us ministers god wrote that for servants that we have the right to be paid we and barnabas and and i said we decided because of a concern that we were going to work with our hands and not take that right. It's really powerful. We wouldn't take pay. We explored some of the reasons for maybe why he did that. Patronage may have been a real issue. There was a whole bunch of circumstances. Maybe these new poor Christians would feel that strings were attached. I don't know, but whatever the case, he saw it as causing a stumbling block to his weaker brethren. And Paul said, in my particular case, we made this decision for that reason. And you need to think about this. And the real power of it, the apostle was saying, I didn't have to exercise my right. Rights has been the dominant word in this section. Rights. I didn't have to. Now that's where we left off. And he has really bolstered his point to get to what I believe he really is driving at tonight to hit this home to the Corinthians. Tonight becomes where he's aiming, where he's going, and I hope you see that. If you were to study church history, you'll know that one of the greatest failures of the church has been to get caught up in all sorts of distracting issues that have distracted them from what is most important and what is essential. that's history that's church history and those issues that take us away from the core mission and mandate of the church paul was constantly warning about this oh he was constantly telling timothy about this but avoid timothy foolish and ignorant disputes avoid it knowing they generate strife and a servant of the lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all able to teach patient in humility correcting those who are in opposition if perhaps god will grant them repentance so that they may know the truth stay away from that stuff you need to know how dangerous that stuff is in corinth you get another textbook example of what it looks like when you don't avoid those things and we really get into paul's heart here as he continues this thread of giving up gospel pay you'll notice here as we look into this the simple answer is there was a necessity here that the lord placed on me and he'll go on to say there's a priority of life so so what i want to emphasize tonight up front here i want you to notice in this text how paul in wisdom if you're going to be wise in the ministry how he emphasizes priorities priorities there are priority other things are not priorities that you don't have to exercise so notice what he says in verse 15 i have made no use of any of these rights i've not done it nor am i writing these things to secure any such provision for i would rather die than have anyone deprive me of my ground for boasting for if i preach the gospel that gives me no ground for boasting for necessity is laid upon me woe is me if i do not preach the gospel for if i do this of my own will i have a reward but if not of my own will i'm still entrusted with the stewardship what then is my reward that in my preaching i may present the gospel free of charge so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel someone explain that that's tough that is a tough verse that section is challenging here's why the first part of verse 15 seems clear i've made no use of any of my rights when it comes to being paid i want you to know that i'm not writing you so that you think i should get paid see how pastors always have to be careful of objections here and how they're worried about how everyone's going to hear something i go through this endlessly but then look at what he says everyone recognizes that it seems like paul starts a sentence and then never completes it look carefully verse 15 he starts a thought i would rather die and then he mentions that no one should deprive his right to boast those things don't really connect i believe they're two separate thoughts so so what is going on here he's dictating this to a scribe scribes writing it remember romans we went through that i think he's in tears i think he's full of emotion right now i think he's worked up and he's been trying to use himself as an example to make a point i had the right to be paid but I sacrificed it why because I was so concerned about being a stumbling block I would rather die than be that to someone and I don't want anyone to think this is about my boasting for if I preach the gospel that gives me no ground for boasting for necessity is laid upon me woe is me if I don't preach the gospel doing this for no pay does not produce in me boasting i want you to know that you need to understand something god put a burden on my heart a necessity a priority if i didn't preach the gospel i put myself under prophetic curse woe is me if i don't preach it i have no choice and then he says if i do it willingly i have a reward but even if unwillingly it's still something god's entrusted to me you need to understand this This is something that is the priority of what He's given me to do in the ministry. It's the necessity of why I exist. I want you to feel that tonight. If you don't understand the flow of thought, just feel that. I sacrificed this. This is all it's really about. This is it. The Gospel. The reason I exist. The purpose. This is Jeremiah 20. God put a burden in me. I have to do this. It flows out of me. I can't shut up my mouth. It's the gospel that drives me. It's the gospel that animates me. That's my passion. That's my single great drive in life. That's the priority of my ministry. This is the priority of my life. I can do no other. I'm faithfully discharging what I am called to discharge and do, and in and of itself, that is my reward, doing that. Because I love it. The question is, why is he saying this? Why is he emotional? Why is he worked up? Here are Christians exercising their rights and wrecking and tearing down everything he's been laboring for. Everything. They're ripping it down. What everyone recognizes is that this is his philosophy of ministry. And you're really into the Apostle's heart here. It's remarkable. If we learn this in the church, what we would save ourselves, the agony. Everything this man has worked for, everything he was set apart for, his work in Corinth was all being ripped away by stupid divisions and people exercising their rights. over issues, they don't have to do that. Over secondary issues. And it's ripping apart the ministry. You ever seen this stuff happen? And they have no idea. They don't seem to get that their behavior is assaulting the very thing he was set apart for. And that's why I've been trying to explain to you that this mind of a servant that we come across over and over and over again in the New Testament has a great characteristic and quality to a mind of a servant. It's what James talks about. It's a willingness to yield. To not be equally ultimate on everything. And to not push things that don't have to be pushed. And to be willing to consider your weaker brethren who are sitting next to you and not to wound them by your behavior which they don't understand. Love them. The problem is that's the last thing we want to do. We rip apart Christ's church with things that are not priorities. We impose our rights. And I think it was very intentional that Paul raised something commanded in the law. The law commanded Paul be paid. And Paul said, I didn't have to do that. I didn't have to take that. Because when I did that, it might actually have trumped, it might actually have assaulted the law of love. That's wisdom. It's wisdom. It's balance. And Paul just set before us the greatest priority in the church. It's the gospel. When you claim that, when you say you believe that, it produces a priority of love to our neighbor next to us. Because we want and would never want to do anything that might hurt them from receiving and understanding the gospel in their life. What is one of the worst divisions that the devil has loved to use in the history of the church? Well, at least in our day. Music. This is it. He has ripped churches apart with this stuff. And churches that are always focused on that. And churches that are always worried about that. And people that are fighting over that. You have a church whose priorities are all wrong. What is the priority of purpose? When churches are fighting over those things, it's not the gospel that's animating or driving them. And do you see Paul's passion here? When this takes hold, these disputes go. They go away. Because you're fulfilled in that which is most important. If you have the priority of the gospel in the church, that will be seen in the priority then that you give to your neighbor over your own rights. and positions, and interests. Paul says that in verse 19. For though I am free from all, I've made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews, I became as a Jew in order to win Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law, I became as one outside the law, not being outside the law of God, but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law. That is a remarkable passage. My whole purpose is to win people. Do you hear that? I'm willing to go the extra mile for that. To put myself in different kinds of positions to win them. I'm free. The gospel's made me free. I'm not denying that. But listen to the language. I've made myself a servant. What does that look like? Well, anyone who wants to be a Christian and at least act like one, anyone who cares about a sanctified life is going to realize how important a statement this is because he's about to demonstrate what a servant looks like. This gets hard. It requires real denial of yourself. It was Jesus who said, anyone who wants to be first must be very last the servant of all here's what it looks like you want to be a servant of jesus you want to be a follower of christ here's what it looks like woe is me if i do not preach the gospel that's my priority of purpose but you see what good would any of that be if my actions stand in the way of it instead i've chosen in my freedom of the gospel to become a servant how so tell us paul tell us how you how did you become a servant what does that look like here's my mission statement to the jews i became as one to those under the law as under the law. And I might win those under the law. But I made a conscious choice when I met Jews to live like one under the law, even though I wasn't. Do you feel that? That is remarkable. What did he mean? Well, here were these Gentiles stuffing their faces with foods offered to idols. jews were really troubled about that and paul looks at those still under the law we're not talking about new converts struggling at this point i'll get there when he went into jewish homes in jerusalem and elsewhere and he went into homes of those who hadn't yet come to their Messiah. Or when he was around them, he respected their customs. He wasn't raising scruples about meats and days and freedoms and rights to hurt the priority of what he wanted to get to. He wanted them to be able to hear about their Messiah. He wanted to bring the claims of Christ to bear on their hearts. And had he done that, he would have erected a wall. They would have put up the wall and he never would have got there can you imagine if his attitude was oh they're just stuck in their old school traditions and their customs and i'm done with them that's what we do do you think they would have ever wanted his messiah i don't think so he was able to look beyond certain things and his actions didn't assault it and you really do see here what was driving him it was a certain charge that was repeatedly made against him what was the charge the jews made against paul you're an antinomian you are an antinomian sir you deny god's law the jews were constantly charging him with that that he threw out the law of god all together and here's the thing when that charge was made against him he didn't get angry he didn't fly off the handle his thought was well i need to carefully guard my tongue and my ways lest i give them an out from our message i'm not going to give them an out i'm not going to let them use that in other words he was considering how he could win them with the gospel without letting the charge of being an antinomian become their way out by his behavior this is why he circumcised timothy by the way i mean i've always read that and thought you've got to be kidding me why would you do that you you circumcised timothy paul wanted to take him along on one of the journeys and he circumcised him because the jews who lived in that area so they're all they all knew his father was a greek and he dug in his heel you know and said i'm not i'm not i'm not i'm not gonna do that and he acted like a jerk he lost every opportunity to those people you see people do that they kill meaningful connections to people kill it and it looks nothing like the apostle and we do it easily i've done it to the greeks those without the law as without the law doesn't mean that i um behave lawlessly he says i want to make sure you understand i'm not going out to the bars and drinking it up i'm still under the law of christ i'm still believe in the moral law but what i'm saying is i came to them understanding who they were what they believed and I approached them with the same sensitivity that I would have so that I could bring the gospel to them. But then Paul says something fascinating. He raises another classification that I think is his punch tonight. What is it? To the weak, I became weak. Who's he talking about? Well, he's not talking about weak physically. I mean, I'm sure he would do that. That's not the context. The punch of this is Paul's strong. And these weak ones who didn't understand their liberties were really troubled in conscience. I became that. They're the ones in the chapter who didn't have all the knowledge that Paul had. They didn't know as much. They didn't understand as much. Had they ever seen him behave in a certain way, the weak didn't understand these things. Not everyone has all the wisdom that you do and all of your convictions and learning and knowledge. So what should you do with them? What do we do with them? We separate from them. We do other things away from them. Paul says, I became weak. That's Christ-like. That's a servant, dear Christian. I'm not putting any obstacles before them that would hurt the priority of what's most important. I'll become all things to all men so that I might save some. And I do it all for the sake. Priority of the gospel. The good news of Jesus. I fully understand this passage has been abused and it's taught that Paul did whatever he could to win the lost. I hate that. Okay, I absolutely hate that. That's not what I'm saying tonight. But he is saying that I should ask the really important question. 1 Corinthians 8.1, what does all of my knowledge, what is the fruit of it? Is it the edifying of the brethren in love or is it a wake of division and fighting and separation? You may have many rights that God has given you, many freedoms that you get to enjoy, We should all ask whether this mindset of denying ourselves and letting the gospel have priority and purpose in our convictions, whether that's showing itself in our actions to our neighbors or is the wake of that destruction. All right, I'll be the first to say why we can't say this. Reformed have been terribly guilty of this problem. Should we ram down our convictions down the throats of people who've never heard of these things? Or should we be thinking carefully about how to approach them? How patient Paul was. How patient. And division? Well, this goes for us as a church and us as individuals. Any knowledge that does not have the fruit of edifying love is not knowledge. We know nothing. No matter how much learning we ever have. And Paul concludes this section tonight and I conclude with comparing this life to a race. He compares this life to a race. Every runner runs to obtain a prize. And he says in verse 25, he uses a key word, and they're temperate. Every athlete exercises, notice the language, self-control. I mean, this is important language. You need to be self-controlled Christians. You do that by disciplining your body and bringing it into subjection, lest when I have preached to others, I should become disqualified. Get that? We discipline our rights. We discipline our bodies. We discipline ourselves, denying ourselves. We discipline our freedoms. We bring our bodies and desires into check so that what we say we believe, when we say we confess the gospel and believe the gospel, and we run around saying the gospel, the gospel, the gospel, a better act with a way consistent with it and not undermine it by our actions lest we harm the very thing we say we believe and confess. So Paul's saying, set aside every obstacle to the flourishing of the gospel. Use wisdom. The rights, even the rights that you have with the goal of winning those around you. That's the mind of a servant. And I pray that we all in the Escondido URC have the same passion for the Gospel that the Apostle had. A passion that will be demonstrated in our willingness to put the interests of others before our own. Amen. Heavenly Father, we thank You that You instruct us in righteousness and we confess tonight together how far short we have fallen of this standard. it really is a paradigm shift in how we should think. And we need that. And we ask for forgiveness that often we have done damage to your mission, to a lost and dying world, and that we have not cared about those who are next to us, but have worried about pushing our rights. And we ask that we would demonstrate the mind of a servant of our Lord Jesus Christ who left the throne in glory and took on our rags and humbled Himself to the obedience of death for all these lawbreakers and that we would love the way that we've been loved. Thank You for being so forbearing and patient with us. May that kind of patience be demonstrated in our lives to one another. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.