Read 1 Cor 9:19-27 This passage talks about two types of winning: winning people and winning a race. Paul talks about winning people five times in verses 19 to 23. Winning Jews in v20 Winning those under the law also in v20 Winning those who are without law in v21 Winning the weak in v22 And winning the more in v19 The most obvious point to make about this is that Paul wants to win people. He wants people to be saved. Paul certainly wasn t afraid to offend people with the preaching of the cross and he did offend people frequently, to the extent that quite often they wanted send him to glory post haste (i.e. kill him). But Paul says to the Corinthians (in the second Corinthian letter) that through him (and his companions) God diffuses the fragrance of His knowledge in every place. He said he was the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. (2 Cor 2:14, 15) When people smelt Paul they smelt God; they smelt Christ. For some that meant they were drawn to the living God that Paul preached. For others it meant they wanted to kill him. I wonder what people smell when they smell me. Am I a winning person, or am I a person who puts people off? Am I grumpy, moody, critical, quick tempered and unfriendly? Or am I cheerful, kind, encouraging, appreciative of others, forgiving, willing to listen to others, willing to understand them? We are talking about matters of life and death and so it s good for all of us to examine ourselves about this and then CHANGE if we need to. I think it would be a shocking thing if I got to heaven expecting the Lord to give me a pat on the back and say, well done, good and faithful servant and instead he says, have you any idea how many people you put off because of what you were; people who are now in hell? What a shocking thought! Perhaps something worth dwelling upon? How does Paul plan to win people? How does he go about doing it? He tells us in v19; he makes himself a servant to all that he might win the more. He makes himself a servant. He does it. He doesn t just think about it; he does it. He doesn t just aspire to it. He does it. Love is more to do with something we do than something we feel. We should do the right thing whether we feel it or not. If we live like that, our feelings will catch up with our doings. If we wait for our feelings, there is a good chance that we will never do what we are supposed to do. I once heard about a farmer in Exeter who was baptised with the Holy Spirit and, as a result, so filled with love that he went out and kissed his cow. Have you ever been so filled with love that you might kiss your cow (if you ve got one)? Now, I must confess, when I hear things like that I think to myself (perhaps very naughtily) what is the point in kissing your cow? Does God want us to kiss cows? I wonder - does this man ever kiss his wife or his children? I m not casting aspersions on the man; I don t know the answer to the questions I m just asking them. I believe it is probably true that many men (even Christian men, even men perhaps confessing to be full of the Spirit etc.) don t even kiss their wives. Now, there was a time, when they were younger, when they couldn t get enough of kissing their wives. But now they are older things have changed. They don t have the same feelings. So, what should they do? They should kiss their wives. They should do it. Love is something we do, more than something we feel. If we do what we should, our feelings will get into order. If we wait for feeling, there is a good chance we will never do what we re supposed to. It s the same when we come to praise and worship God in the meeting. When you come, are you waiting for some sort of extra-ordinary outpouring of God upon the assembly and then you will pour out your heart to God? If you are, you might wait for the rest of your life and die before it happens. (Or you might be lucky and be in such a meeting once [or even several times] and pour out your heart in those meetings. But then, what will you do when you come to meetings where there isn t an extra-ordinary outpouring of God?) No when you come to the meeting, pour out your heart to God; just do it. Do it in the singing. Do it quietly. If you re bold enough, do it loudly. Don t wait to feel it; just do it. Bless God. Praise Hm. Worship Him. And then when you hear other people say, that was such a naff meeting (or some such thing), you ll be thinking If that was a naff meeting, what will the good ones be like? If the naff meetings are so full of the glory of God, what will we do when God comes in all his glory? 1 P a g e
How will we ever live? I am simply telling you what the God tells us in the Bible, he says, Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. If you do it, you will find yourself in his presence in glory. If you don t, you won t. This is what C S Lewis said. (I like C S Lewis; he is such a clear thinker. Now, by saying I like him, I don t mean I think everything he ever wrote was correct I don t. But I like him anyway.) Here s what he said about loving your neighbour in Mere Christianity : The rule for all of us is perfectly simple. Do not waste time bothering whether you love your neighbour; act as if you did. As soon as we do this we find one of the great secrets. When you are behaving as if you loved someone, you will presently come to love him. Have you noticed that there are some people who can never get to the end of their problems, but there are others who always seem to be blessed? Now (all things being equal, and sometimes they aren t equal) you will probably notice that the ones who are always blessed are the sort of people who are always blessing other people. They are thinking of them, encouraging them, comforting them, helping them, praying for them etc. They don t have so much time for their own problems. (And sometimes you might eventually find out that such people have had the most horrendous problems all along and you would never have known it.) They are also people who are always blessing and praising God. If you ve never realised this before, or only partly realised it, I suggest you start straight away this very minute. Become a doer. Love, because God has commanded you to love. Jesus said it A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. (Jn 13:34) He commanded it. He didn t advise it or suggest it. He commanded it. He didn t say, wait until you are so full of love that you could even kiss your cow. He said, do it. This is a big lesson to learn. Perhaps we should all take a moment to reflect on how we should respond to it. How am I going to be in my home, with my wife, with my children? How am I going to be with my brethren? How am I going to come to the meetings? Let s reflect. To continue: Paul makes himself a SERVANT to win people. Now, if he d said he makes himself a prophet, or a preacher, or a teacher, or an evangelist, or a pastor, or a scholar, or an apostle etc., we might think that this was a ministry only Paul, and perhaps a few other people, could have. (Please note: I am not belittling any of those things I have listed or suggesting they are unimportant (I believe they are all very important), I am just making a point.) But Paul said he made himself a SERVANT. A servant serves. A servant humbles himself. A servant is around to make other people happy. A servant is something every one of us can be. So, praise God, we can all set about the task of winning people. When we are with people we should be thinking how can I serve this person? (Now in our innermost hearts, we might be thinking how can I win this person to Christ? But, the fact is, people don t respond well to being thought of as commodities to be gained, so I think it is often (though not always) best to keep that thought of winning someone deep within, but to keep the thought of serving someone further up.) How can I serve this person? Jacqui Deaville taught in Cornerstone School for many years; like so many others she was a servant to the parents, children and church. Since she left, which was some years ago now, she has quite often been in school and sometimes Jacqui and I have both been in the kitchen at a school break time. Quite often she would say to me something like, Well, Mr Davies, you re about to make the tea for the staff are you? Well, the truth is that I wasn t about to make the tea for the staff. The reason Jacqui says it is that, many years ago, for some months I did make the tea for the staff at break times. But, the reality is, that for most of the 25 years of the school (almost all of it) I haven t made tea for the staff at break time. The point I am making, is that a very small act of service stuck in Jacqui s mind. I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more. 2 P a g e
Our Lord Jesus Christ, himself, came to the earth as a servant. Hours before he was crucified he laid aside his outer garments, girded himself with a towel and washed the feet of his disciples the work of a servant. He said, the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve. (Mk 10:45) I have made myself a servant to all Paul made himself a servant. He chose to do it so that he could win the more. Can you see that we can ALL be in the front line; we can all be in this ministry of winning people? As was said last Sunday evening this is not a guarantee of success, but it is the way God has given us. ALL of us. Paul is happy to identify with the people he mixes with in order to win people (as long as there is no compromise to righteousness or obeying Christ; he explains that clearly in v21). That is his motivation winning people. I think we should all ask ourselves are there ways I should change when I am with particular people in order to win them? Paul is not so set in his ways that he can t adapt. As Les said recently; he is uncompromising on the important things, but is flexible on the unimportant/incidental things. So, for example, Paul purified himself with some other men in Jeruslame in Acts 21 to show the Jews that he still keeps the law. On the other hand he insists that there is no need for Gentile Christians to be circumcised or to keep the ordinances (the rituals) of the law. He is very fiery about this; we read all about it in the book of Galatians and other places. He won t compromise on this truth. Paul says he has become all things to all men that by all means he might save some. That is his motivation. Paul loves people. He tells us that the love of Christ compels him; that s why he does, what he does. Now we come to the next section in v24-27. We have to read these verses in the context of what we ve already been reading and thinking about. In this section Paul is talking about how he intends to win a crown for himself and he is telling us to do the same. I think we have to be careful about the concept of selflessness. I believe selflessness is what we have been talking about up to now; becoming a servant to win others. It is to do with being God-focussed and others-focussed rather than me-focussed. Selflessness doesn t mean that I don t get anything at all out of it. Selflessness doesn t mean that because I am spending my life serving God and serving others I end up being miserable because my whole life is servile. That is not the Bible idea of selflessness. The sort of selflessness we are talking about brings joy to the selfless person. The people who truly serve God and other people are the happiest people on earth and will be the happiest people for eternity. (Now, of course, we understand that sometimes a person s life can get out of balance when they end up with too much to do, or have too many crises at once etc. so that they might even become ill and/or (temporarily) lose their joy I m not talking about that. I m talking about what should be the usual state of affairs.) The Bible says that for the joy that was set before Him Jesus endured the cross. Jesus went to the cross because he loved the Father and he loved us, but he endured the cross because he knew it would result in joy for Him. He acted selflessly and it brought benefit to others, to the Father and to himself. The apostle Peter said those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory. (1 Pet 1:8) A selfless life is a life full of unspeakable joy and glory. And so we learn in v24-27 that we are to live this sort of selfless life, not just for others, but for our own benefit as well. And Paul says the desire to gain a crown should motivate us to the extent that we change the way we live in order to gain it. If I say, I am not going to attempt to gain a crown because I m a humble person and all I want to do is serve others for their benefit and for God s glory, and, in any case, I d prefer it if they gained the crown rather than me, then we have gone wrong because Paul tells us (GOD tells us) to Run in such a way that you may obtain it. 3 P a g e
What we think of as humility has really become pride, because true humility is listening to what God says, believing it and doing it. If we ve gone wrong in our thinking in things like this, it s a very simple thing to change; we can do it right now if we need to. So, here we are, ready to listen to what the Lord wants to say to us through this passage. What is it he is saying? The writer to the Hebrews exhorts us to run with endurance the race that is set before us (Heb 12:1). There is a race set before us; a race for us to run, and Paul asks us in verse 24 if we know about it. Essentially, he is saying there are many people running the race, but not everyone will win the prize. And he tells us to run in such a way that you may obtain the prize. He s telling all of us to try to win the prize (the you in verse 24 is definitely plural). We ve got to aim for the prize. Just like we need to aim to lay up treasure for ourselves in heaven, we need to aim to get this prize. But we ll only get the prize if we win the race. He s not talking about salvation. Our salvation is a gift; it comes through God s grace and we get into it by exercising faith. He s talking about a prize, a reward. It s the same sort of thing he was talking about earlier in chapter 3 when he said we are all building and some of us will receive a reward for what we ve built and some of us won t. But Paul is telling us, God is telling us, encouraging us, exhorting us, to run the race so that we win the prize. And he s warning himself that if he doesn t discipline himself he might become disqualified and lose the prize, even though he was such an effective preacher and apostle. He tells us the prize is an imperishable crown and we don t know exactly what that means, but we know that it is worth winning. So, now I want you to ask yourself, Are you going to run so that you win this prize? Now, I m going to embarrass you; I want you to ask someone sitting near you, Are you going to run so that you win this prize? And try to do this so that no one gets missed out. So how do you win the prize? For me, there s one word that stands out: DISCIPLINE; it s in verse 27. But I discipline my body and bring it into subjection I would love to give you lots of interesting background to Paul s comments and to the Corinthian letter, but these days it seems brevity is the name of the game in British churches (even our own fellowships), so I ll have to miss out most of that stuff. Next week I ll be in Africa where, quite often, you preach for an hour, then there s some singing, a few comments from people and then they ask you to preach for another hour (and sometimes another hour after that). Anyway, to get back to the point; here s a tiny bit of background. Corinth was a big, important city. It hosted the Isthmian games, which were second only to the Olympic games. If you wanted to participate in the games you had to go through the compulsory 10 month, rigorous training that led up to the games. If you dropped out of the training, you were disqualified even before the games started. These athletes had to be DISCIPLINED. The highlight of the games was a great endurance race. It would have been impossible for anyone to compete in it if they had not been properly trained. This is the race Paul is exhorting us to run and win. Now, we know that the top athletes have to discipline themselves, they have to train themselves; they have to submit to rigorous, perhaps gruelling training, in order to succeed. This week Sir Alex Ferguson published his autobiography. He said that last season, at one stage, he dropped Wayne Rooney for a while for the simple reason that he was not fit; he had failed to DISCIPLINE himself to keep fit enough to compete at that high level. When interviewed this week Ferguson said, (something like) Look at Wayne now; the wonderful football he is playing. Do you think that, if he had been playing like that I would have dropped him from the team? Of course not. It was a lack of discipline that excluded Rooney from the team, from the prize. DISCIPLINE. We have to face the fact that, if we are going to win this prize, we are going to have to live differently to other people and we won t be able to be casual. At times we are going to be uncomfortable with it; we might even find it gruelling. I think we should ask, Lord, how should I discipline myself in order to win this race? We are all on the race somewhere. We are all disciplined to some extent, however small. What I am saying is, perhaps we should look to God for grace to take the next step, if we are not already doing that. Not everyone will win the prize, but God wants you to win it. He wants me to win it. You might say, I m just not a disciplined person. Well, praise God, He is in the business of changing people, step by step. He wouldn t tell you to do anything that you can t do. 4 P a g e
My observation over the last 40 years is that one major thing, perhaps even the key thing, that separates more successful Christians from less successful Christians is DISCIPLINE. Take, for example, our friend Norman Meeten; he is a disciplined man. So, I want to leave you encouraged: God has told you to run to win the prize, so it IS possible for you to do it. But I also want to leave you challenged: not everyone is going to win the prize; if you are going to win it, you will need to exercise DISCIPLINE. Ask God to show you how. Let me leave you with three statements of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount: 'When you fast When you pray When you give And some advice: If you are going to discipline yourself to, for example, fast, pray and give, do it for the Lord and for others. For example, for me, I hate fasting, but it doesn t stop me doing it. When I am struggling I fix my eyes on what I m aiming at and I say things like, Lord, if this is going to contribute to saving someone from hell, then I m very happy to do it. And I carry on. To recap: We are in the ministry of winning people; to win them we must be winning people and we must serve them. Sometimes we ll be rejected, sometimes we ll succeed. God has called us to run in this great race to win the prize; we need to look to the Lord for his grace to help us discipline ourselves for the task. And then we must do it. Amen 5 P a g e