Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] How many of you like running?
[00:00:02] I see some hands there. Yeah. How many of you hate running?
[00:00:07] Probably a few more hands there.
[00:00:11] I think I often tell people a little bit about my own history with running. I started running cross country in sixth grade, and I was a soccer player at that point, so I liked sports that involved running. And in sixth grade, I was pretty good. I was at a big public school, but I was often in the top 10 runners who actually scored for the team. But. But this weird thing happened where as seventh grade came and eighth grade came and eventually ninth grade, everybody else seemed to get faster, and I just never did. And that was okay through middle school. By the time you get to high school, it becomes pretty worthless if you're no faster than a sixth grader as a ninth grader.
[00:00:52] And I had an epiphany.
[00:00:54] I'm really bad at this, and I'm not even liking it, which I was not enjoying it, and so I quit cross country.
[00:01:03] Well, whether or not you like running, you and we all have races to run in our life.
[00:01:12] Anything that has a defined start and a distinct end point, a finish line, can be considered a race in your life, whether it's something physical, like an actual race you're running, or other things in life. You have a project to finish.
[00:01:29] You have a deadline to meet.
[00:01:32] You have homework to get done.
[00:01:35] You have a house to sell, treatment to finish, healing to undergo.
[00:01:45] Many of you are gearing up to start a new race right now, a new school year.
[00:01:51] And I know some of you may already be longing for the finish line of that race when it will be summer again.
[00:01:57] My son Arthur has his own grueling race to run at home this year as he waits a very long nine months during which his brothers are gone most of the day.
[00:02:09] For one of you, the end of this school year marks the finish line of a bigger race, high school.
[00:02:17] There's nothing wrong with looking ahead to the finish lines of these races.
[00:02:22] It's good to reach the end of something, isn't it?
[00:02:26] But what happens if you quit before the end of your race?
[00:02:31] What if you never cross the finish line?
[00:02:35] Well, then you're disqualified.
[00:02:38] There's no gratification, no award, no sense of accomplishment, no nothing.
[00:02:45] One essential aspect of running any race is getting all the way to the end.
[00:02:52] Now, the Bible talks a lot about running in races. It's actually one of the Apostle Paul's favorite analogies. He mentions running in Romans 1 Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians. And he mentions athletics and athletes in other places in his writings.
[00:03:11] Now, our passage this morning is one of those places where the Apostle Paul talks about running. And it's from 1 Corinthians 9, which I will read these verses. Would you please stand for the reading of God's word?
[00:03:22] This is 1 Corinthians 9, verses 23 through 27.
[00:03:29] The apostle Paul says, I do all things for the sake of the Gospel. This is very fitting in light of the children's sermon we just heard. I do all things for the sake of the gospel so that I may become a fellow partaker of it.
[00:03:45] Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize?
[00:03:52] Run in such a way that you may win.
[00:03:56] Everyone who competes in the games exercises self control in all things.
[00:04:02] They then do it to receive a perishable wreath. But we an imperishable.
[00:04:08] Therefore I run in such a way as not without aim. I box in such a way as not beating the air.
[00:04:15] But I discipline my body and I make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified.
[00:04:24] This is the word of the Lord.
[00:04:27] Would you please have a seat? And then I'm going to pray for the Holy Spirit's help as we hear from his word this morning.
[00:04:36] Father in heaven, we pray that you would send into our hearts your Holy Spirit, that we might be enlightened to understand your word and see the glories of Christ in it, so that we might run the race that you have set before us.
[00:04:50] We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:04:55] Now, these words are written by the Apostle Paul to Christians in Corinth.
[00:05:00] Does anybody know where Corinth is? What country Corinth is in?
[00:05:07] Shout it out. Greece. Yes. Thank you. It's a city in Greece. Now, by the time the Apostle Paul traveled to Corinth himself on his missionary journeys, prestigious athletics competitions had been a central part of Greek culture for hundreds of years.
[00:05:24] Our modern Olympics, as many of you probably know, are modeled after the ancient Olympic Games which took place in Olympia, which was is also in Greece. And those took place every four years. That's why we have our Olympics every four years.
[00:05:39] Now there were other sets of games very much like the Olympics in Greece. Another set of these games took place in or near Corinth every two years. It was a rotating set of games that happened on a regular cycle.
[00:05:55] And when Paul refers to those who compete in the games, this was a cultural analogy that meant a lot to the Corinthians.
[00:06:03] It was a lot like referring to Our Olympic athletes of today, the Greeks revered their athletes, so much so that athletes often took on a godlike status in Greek culture because of their impressive achievements.
[00:06:19] This is an ancient analogy which we can understand pretty well.
[00:06:24] Thinking about top tier athletes competing in a physical race is a perfectly relevant illustration for us. As Paul says, everyone who competes in the Games exercises self control in all things.
[00:06:39] What do you think he's talking about when he said these athletes exercise self control in all things?
[00:06:47] Well, he meant exactly what it still means today.
[00:06:51] And so you could pick any number of Olympic athletes today.
[00:06:55] I picked Michael Phelps, one of the most famous ones, to demonstrate a little bit of what it means and what we understand it means for an athlete, an Olympic athlete, to exercise self control in all things. So Michael Phelps, during his time as an olympian, was training six hours a day, 365 days a year.
[00:07:18] And one of the things that went along with that is he was eating 10,000 calories a day.
[00:07:25] You can go online and read, like, his account of what he ate. Now, that may not sound like exercising self control in all things, but if he did not do that, he would have died.
[00:07:36] With the amount of exercise and training that he was doing, he needed to fuel his body. Right now, other disciplines have different. Swimming is one of those. It's just like, load your body up with calories. There are other disciplines, whether it's boxing or wrestling or other Olympic events, where you have to be very disciplined in when you eat, how much, what you're saying no to what you're putting into your body.
[00:08:00] Michael Phelps, also, this pertains to sleep.
[00:08:04] He was sleeping eight hours a night in a hyperbaric chamber during that time, which, like, simulates high altitude so that your body's producing more red blood cells, Right?
[00:08:14] Plus, he took a nap in the afternoon in the midst of his training, and he needed that sleep just like he needed those calories, right? And his entire life was organized centered around training for his Olympic events, his races.
[00:08:32] Along with this goes sacrificing social opportunities, other work opportunities, saying no to friends.
[00:08:39] Everything is geared towards the goal that you're aiming for.
[00:08:45] This week with my sons, I watched the movie Miracle, which is about the 1980 USA men's hockey team who defeated the Soviets at the Olympics.
[00:08:56] One of the things that characterized that team was incredible discipline.
[00:09:00] One of the reasons they were able to beat the Soviets is because they dedicated themselves to rigorous conditioning that enabled them to keep skating with their opponents for more than an hour of intense competition on the ice.
[00:09:14] That's where the Soviets beat a lot of people was just staying in it for the whole game.
[00:09:20] Olympic athletes demonstrate incredible self control and self discipline, sometimes for many years of their lives.
[00:09:29] And for what purpose?
[00:09:31] What motivates them to make sacrifices, to discipline their bodies to the extreme, to exercise self control in all things. Why do they do it?
[00:09:41] To win.
[00:09:45] Today the prize for Olympians is a gold medal.
[00:09:48] And it's not just about having a heavy circle to hang around your neck, right? Like any of us could find a big heavy piece of metal and hang it around our neck, but that's not the point, right? It's everything that metal represents.
[00:10:00] Strength, power, endurance, skill, dedication, and ultimately victory.
[00:10:08] Being the best.
[00:10:10] And there's a feeling of immortality that goes along with that medal.
[00:10:15] When you win it, you know your name will end up in the history books and the glory of your name will continue even after you die.
[00:10:24] At this point, it will be helpful to understand something about the ancient Greek Games that might not be as obvious as we look at today's Olympics.
[00:10:33] So the ancient games were as much a religious festival as they were athletic events.
[00:10:41] The games were part of larger sacred celebrations held in honor of particular gods.
[00:10:47] The games were acts of worshipful devotion, not just for the athletes to win glory for themselves, but so that they might honor their gods.
[00:10:57] The Isthmian Games, that was what the Games were in Corinth were dedicated in particular to the God Poseidon.
[00:11:04] And champions were awarded a crown made of pine leaves because pine was considered sacred to Poseidon.
[00:11:14] This religious element of how the Greeks saw their athletics is essential to the Apostle Paul's analogy. When he mentions the wreath or the crown, that's what he's talking about.
[00:11:26] The wreath was a sign of approval from the gods. The gods say you won.
[00:11:35] Now let me ask you a question.
[00:11:38] Which God do you want a crown from?
[00:11:44] The Greeks sought their crowns from Zeus or from Poseidon.
[00:11:50] The Apostle Paul was teaching the Christians here in Corinth not to seek their crown from vain idols, but from the living God who made heaven and earth.
[00:12:03] Now, I don't think anyone in this room is seeking a crown from Zeus or Poseidon.
[00:12:09] And I don't think our modern Olympians are either.
[00:12:14] In our enlightened, humanistic day, we tend to think we've evolved beyond that kind of devotion to gods.
[00:12:22] But I think when it comes to our Olympics, what has really happened is that man himself has become our God.
[00:12:30] We give our highest praise and honor to men and their accomplishments.
[00:12:35] We build statues and write songs and hang posters of mere men.
[00:12:40] We treat Men like gods, forgetting that they were made by someone.
[00:12:46] This isn't all that different from the Greeks, by the way. Their Olympians were sometimes elevated to this kind of godlike status, even though they were just men.
[00:12:56] But not only do we give our praises to men, often the highest praise and honor we seek for ourselves is the glory that comes from men.
[00:13:06] We seek man's approval above anything else, which is another way of treating man as a God.
[00:13:14] Brothers and sisters, we must seek the crown that comes from the most high God.
[00:13:21] The Greek word Paul uses in this passage is the word for crown, which is what some of your translations probably say.
[00:13:29] Other translations, like the nasb, go with wreath, probably because that gives a more historically accurate picture of what Paul was actually talking about.
[00:13:39] And remembering that it's a wreath made of leaves really highlights the corruptible or perishable nature of the crowns that were being awarded at that time.
[00:13:48] After all, how long would a crown made of pine leaves last?
[00:13:54] Now, crowns can seem kind of abstract to us, even when we think of ones made of gold.
[00:14:01] And it's probably even more abstract to think about winning a crown made of pine.
[00:14:05] Well, it would have meant far more to the Corinthians than it does to us. It would have been more along the lines of what winning an Olympic gold medal means to us.
[00:14:16] And how does that sound to you, winning an Olympic gold medal?
[00:14:23] If you thought it was within your talents and your resources to win the Olympics, would you do it?
[00:14:32] Almost anyone would.
[00:14:35] Which one of us has not imagined ourselves up on the podium with the national anthem playing.
[00:14:41] In whatever your chosen event or sport is, many think it's so worthwhile that they dedicate their whole lives to achieving that goal.
[00:14:52] They're willing to give up everything.
[00:14:55] Comfort, friends, family, other hobbies and pursuits, money.
[00:15:02] They're willing to sacrifice their bodies and risk death.
[00:15:07] Think of Lindsey Vaughan as a downhill skier who is 40 years old and decided it was still a good idea to keep skiing in the Olympics and almost killed herself doing it this past Winter Olympics.
[00:15:22] Now our Olympians do it for gold, which is arguably better than pine leaves.
[00:15:28] But Paul's analogy still holds, because, as scripture tells us, even gold is perishable.
[00:15:35] Gold gets lost, it gets stolen.
[00:15:38] It can be corrupted, and most importantly, you can't take it with you when you die.
[00:15:47] And we can learn Paul's lesson here by looking at our Olympians.
[00:15:51] They exercise self control in all things.
[00:15:54] They do it to receive a perishable metal. But we an imperishable.
[00:16:01] If the worshipers of false gods disciplined themselves for the pursuit of a wreath that would dry up and fall apart.
[00:16:08] How much more should we dedicate ourselves to receive an imperishable medal of achievement from the true God who made us on Judgment Day? Don't you want Christ himself to say to you, you win?
[00:16:27] I sure hope so.
[00:16:30] This is what the Holy Spirit is calling us to through the Apostle Paul when he says, run in such a way that you may win.
[00:16:39] Aim for the right prize and do it with everything you have.
[00:16:45] Now, in order to win that prize, here are a few things that we have to bear in mind.
[00:16:50] 1. You must be in the right race.
[00:16:55] Many in this world are running their hardest in life, giving it their all but for the wrong prize.
[00:17:04] Only those who step onto Christ's path into his course by putting their faith in him and his atoning death, and then following in his righteous footsteps, pursuing the glory of God, only those will receive the crown of life in the kingdom of heaven. There's no panel of judges measuring you against a bunch of other competitors to see how you compare.
[00:17:30] Jesus Christ will be the judge who determines who receives the prize, so you must seek his approval through walking according to his gospel.
[00:17:44] You must be in the right race.
[00:17:49] Secondly, you must run to win.
[00:17:54] Thankfully, God is gracious and generous and there is more than one winner in the heavenly race.
[00:18:01] Anyone who, through the power of Christ, overcomes sin, the world and the devil will be awarded the victor's crown.
[00:18:10] The point of Paul's race analogy is to teach us about how we are to run our race, not about how many will receive the crown of life.
[00:18:20] He says, run in such a way that we may win.
[00:18:25] What does that look like? To run so as to win?
[00:18:30] Well, Paul focuses on the importance of self control.
[00:18:33] This comes directly from the example of the athlete who exercises self control in all things.
[00:18:40] The elite athlete is remarkable for what pleasures and pursuits he is willing to give up for the sake of his prize.
[00:18:49] He is governed not by passing pleasures, but by his goal, which may lie months or even years into the future.
[00:18:59] And the fact that he does not get distracted by those things shows the sincerity of his dedication to that goal.
[00:19:07] The pursuit of what is to him a higher good enables him to be the master of even the strongest desires that we experience.
[00:19:17] Hunger, thirst, sexual desire, comfort, freedom. To do whatever we want.
[00:19:25] We too must be willing to say no to any desire that gets in the way of our pursuit, not of a perishable prize, but of the kingdom of heaven.
[00:19:38] We can start with the life of the athlete and make some Direct parallels.
[00:19:44] Do you think the athlete gets a good night's sleep before race day?
[00:19:51] Do you get a good night's sleep before the Lord's day?
[00:19:55] Does it matter?
[00:19:59] Do you think the athlete gets drunk when he performs poorly in his first event? When he has a race the next day?
[00:20:06] Do you get drunk or binge on YouTube or on video games when you perform poorly at work, or when home life overwhelms you?
[00:20:16] Brothers and sisters, we must not live according to the flesh.
[00:20:20] The Apostle Paul speaks of his own bodily discipline in this passage. Now, I don't think he was literally training for a race or a boxing match, but I do think there's a significant bodily reality to the things that he's saying now. He's not teaching here when he says that I discipline my body, or some translations, I think he says, I beat my body into submission.
[00:20:45] He's not teaching here that there is a spiritual good that flows directly out of treating our bodies harshly.
[00:20:54] We know this because in Colossians 2, the apostle Paul, the same man, says that harsh treatment of the body is of no value against fleshly indulgence, meaning beating your body up doesn't make your sinful desires go away.
[00:21:11] So what's he talking about when he says he makes his body his slave here in 1 Corinthians 9?
[00:21:17] Well, he has just been writing in this letter about how he is willing to give up something, something as wonderful as eating meat if eating meat causes his brother to fall into sin.
[00:21:33] In other words, Paul's use of food, even good food, is ruled by a higher aim than the satisfaction of his bodily desires.
[00:21:45] He knew that the crown of life is laid up for those who are willing to give up everything for the kingdom of God.
[00:21:51] And the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
[00:21:58] If Paul were ruled by his belly instead of love for his brother in the pursuit of the kingdom of God, he would have chosen to eat meat and offend his brother rather than give up such a pleasurable thing for the sake of his brother.
[00:22:13] Paul's point is not that food itself is bad.
[00:22:17] The point is that our use of food must be governed by higher pursuits than just the satisfaction of our bellies.
[00:22:26] For the athlete, food can and is actually to be used strategically for the pursuit of the gold medal, right? Food's not an enemy, but it is something to be governed.
[00:22:38] For the Christian food can be used strategically for the pursuit of our heavenly prize.
[00:22:44] This includes using it to keep our bodies strong for the service of the Lord.
[00:22:49] But perhaps even more importantly, scripturally speaking, the use of food for the kingdom of heaven means giving it away or giving it up for the sake of someone else.
[00:23:00] Food is not to become our God, either through gluttony or through pride.
[00:23:07] The same is true with many other earthly things that are gifts from God.
[00:23:12] You can't take money with you to heaven, but you can use money to build the kingdom of heaven and even store up treasure for yourself in heaven as you give it away.
[00:23:25] Wine is a gift from God, but our use of alcohol must be governed by higher principles than just doing whatever we want.
[00:23:34] That may even mean joyfully giving it up for a meal for the sake of our brother, or for our entire lives, for the sake of our family.
[00:23:41] And what a joy to get to do so when we know we won't have to worry about it in the kingdom of heaven.
[00:23:49] Sex is a gift from God, but our use of sex must be governed by God's laws and used according to his rules for building up his kingdom.
[00:24:00] And how amazing that such a wonderful thing can be used to that end.
[00:24:05] And even if we are limited in our pursuit of certain kinds of pleasures, either by our circumstances like singleness or by the law of God which limits how we use our bodies, it is no trouble to the Christian who knows that the God who made our bodies has fullness of joy and pleasures forever at his right hand for those who obey him and for those who run according to the rules of the race that he has put us in.
[00:24:35] That's another place that the Apostle Paul talks about athletes in second Timothy. He says if anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules.
[00:24:48] And athletes are very careful to follow the rules because they know if they don't, they will be disqualified. And it's our joy to compete in our race according to the rules that God has set in front of us, knowing that we have a prize waiting for us at the finish line.
[00:25:06] Are there pleasures of yours that are threatening to become hindrances to your pursuit of the kingdom of God?
[00:25:14] Are there indulgences of the flesh that are hindering your fellowship with God's people?
[00:25:21] Think on your prize and lay hold of the Holy Spirit's power to give you self control.
[00:25:29] He has that power and he delights to give it to those who are in Christ Jesus, because it brings much glory to Christ in this life. When we exercise self control in all things.
[00:25:43] When we do so, we testify to our hope in the blessings that are stored up for us in heaven.
[00:25:50] I'm going to close with Hebrews 12, which uses this same analogy. It says, let us lay aside every encumbrance and the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who, for the joy set before him, endured the cross despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
