For you tonight, this evening, it’s just, Lord, sinners in need of a Savior. We don’t come with merit. We don’t come with any honors, Lord, any titles. We don’t come before you, Lord, with any claim to, Lord, what we’re due. We don’t come with family ties. Guys, we just come naked, like the song said. We come and just can only plead your grace and mercy, Lord, that you love us and that in your Son, Jesus, you own us and you’re making us new. And in Jesus, as we are hidden in Him and in Him alone, are we made new, are we loved, are we kept? So, Father, your Son, Jesus, is our hope. Your Son, Jesus, is our desire tonight. Just pray that you would grow us up. In Him.

Thank you for your faithfulness, Lord. Even in our wandering, Lord, you’re good. Even in our lulls and our laziness, you stir us up and you call us back home. Lord, so just have your way with us, we pray, as we look into your Word. Bless us, keep us, grow us, for your name’s sake.

We thank you for your wonderful provision for us as a church. We thank you for how you take care of us. And Lord, I just pray for our tithe and our offering, whether we give here physically or we give online, Lord. I just pray you would multiply all that you ask us to give so that, Lord, your name would be made great as, Lord, our church, as your kingdom expands. I just thank you for this body of faithful believers. We love you and pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen. You can be seated. It’s good to see you. It’s good to be with you.

If you would turn with me to 1 Corinthians chapter 9. We did the first half of chapter 9. We’re going to do the second half this week. Finish it out. Verses 15 to 27. 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verses 15 to 27.

Paul says, starting 15 there, But I have made no use of any of these rites, 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. And woe to me, if I do not preach the gospel.

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 be a burden to anyone. So as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. I don’t know if you watched much of the Olympics that were on a couple of months ago. We watched a good bit of them. And the Olympics are exciting to watch because it’s every couple of years. But it’s kind of soul crushing for a lot of those Olympians, if you think about it. Because they spend years and years preparing, eating strict diets their whole life, all day, every day, focused on this one blip of a moment that they have on the other side of the world to win. And you see some of those wins, and it’s cool, but a lot of times, you see that guy take off down the slope, and he trips and falls, and it’s like, I hope you had a good time tripping and falling. That was it. You get to go home, or they don’t stick the landing, or they, you know, false start, or something happens, and it’s crushing because all of that work, your attempts to win, your best attempts to secure a win, have just come to nothing. Because you win by winning. You win by being the best.

It’s funny, because the kingdom of God is funny, and His kingdom, that’s upside down. In God’s kingdom, we don’t win by winning. In God’s kingdom, we’re victors, when we lose.

You and I are victors in Christ Jesus when I don’t assert me. When I don’t live for me. And I find out deeply what is Chad Cronin’s agenda, and I bury it in the ground, and I say, death to me, I want to lose. Paul says that’s winning in the Christian life.

What I want us to consider this evening is, are you willing to win by losing?

Now remember what we talked about last week, for a minute, Paul had spoken a lot about the appropriateness. He made his argument both just from nature, if someone works hard, they should get paid, but he makes his argument from the law even, that God intended for those who are in ministry, in the Old Testament priest, even to apostles, elders, pastors in the New Testament, if the gospel is your labor, the gospel should be your pay, and we talked about how that should stir up in us like generous hearts, like Lord, I just want to do things your way. But Paul now is saying to them, you know what, church at Corinth, I know that it’s my right, I know that it’s my due that you pay me, and it’s a good thing, and it’s a right thing for you to do it, but Paul says, I don’t want it. At all. In fact, Paul, even says, and we’ve got to take Paul not to be a kidder, you know, I don’t think he’s just blowing smoke. Paul says, I would rather die than you take care of my needs. I would rather go homeless. I would rather have an empty stomach, empty bank account. I would rather have to get a second job as a tent maker, which he did, but I will not take money from you all, because if I did, I would lose my grounds for boasting.

Which, whatever this ground for boasting, must mean a lot to Paul. It must be really precious, because most people like to eat dinner. And most people like to have a roof over their heads. Most people like to have personal gain.

And Paul says, now my ground for boasting is not preaching the gospel. He says, that’s a necessity laid on me. Like, I’m an apostle. It’s my job. Like, what’s the bare minimum of the job? Like, I got to go preach the gospel. Like, that’s what I do. Like, it’s not some special, like, you’re just doing what you’re supposed to be doing. In fact, he says, if I don’t preach the gospel, he says, you know, whoa, let horror and terror come upon me if I don’t even do that thing. But that’s not Paul. Paul says here,

in verse 17, if I do this of my own will, I have a reward. You could translate that, if I do it gladly. If I do it voluntarily.

Paul’s not someone who is unwillingly against his desires doing this. This thing he’s doing, he’s doing gladly. What’s he doing? Well, Paul is willingly caring more about the triumph of the gospel than he is his own due and right to be paid by the gospel. Paul is far more interested than the kingdom of God being planted in the hearts and lives of people in Corinth than he is his own stomach and bank account. And you could sympathize with Paul. Well, hey, if there’s, you know, a handful of people in Corinthians that they’re mature, they don’t get it, it offends them that, you know, I get paid for sharing the gospel. Like, I’m sorry, but, you know, I work hard, I travel all over the known world, the entire Roman Empire, sharing the gospel, you know, getting punched in the face, getting stoned. Like, I’m hungry, I want to eat. Like, it’s fine for me to get paid. And you could sympathize with Paul and go, yeah, forget those people. That’s not what Paul does. Paul doesn’t sympathize with Paul. Not at all. Paul loves the glory of the gospel greater than his rights and due to be paid by the gospel. So what’s his reward then?

It’s entirely upside down.

In verse 18, 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. Does that make any sense to you? Because it doesn’t make any sense to me. Paul just said, my reward is that I forego my reward. My reward is that I have no reward. My reward is that I get to say, I gave up my due and I was a radical servant to the task. I was a radical servant to the task of the gospel and I went around, I did without what was my own.

I think that this passage, it looks a square in the eye and it asks us the very same question that Paul had to ask himself. And it’s this, are you a happy, zealous, radical servant of Christ Jesus? Are you willing to give up your rights? Are you willing? Are you willing? Are you willing to give up your due for the cause of the gospel? That’s what I think this passage asks. It’s easy to carry the label. It’s very easy to carry the label. You could find a great myriad of church experiences that suit you and you can be called a Christian and you can just show up to church. Not even that we expect people to do that faithfully anymore. You could drag yourself every once in a great while to read a verse or two. You could every once in a while give a passing prayer in your mind when you think about it. Sometimes give your money to the church when it’s convenient. Sometimes be in a discipling relationship when it’s not too sacrificial. Serve in the local church when it doesn’t ask too much of you. Evangelize if it’s not awkward. But you know, when I look at the Apostle Paul, I really only see church one kind of service. I see one kind of disciple and it’s a radically illogical, over-the-top, totally unaware-of-self kind of disciple.

And it’s not Paul. Like, whew, Paul’s great. Isn’t Paul so great? No. Paul killed Christians. He’s not great. Paul did not want to do this. He didn’t wake up one morning and want to do this. The grace of God got a hold of Paul. And radically transformed Paul so that Paul saw Christ as worth it. It’s not Paul. It’s Jesus. It’s Jesus that we’re looking at here explicitly. Because we read about Jesus that though He was in the form of God, He did what? He didn’t consider it a thing to be grasped. In other words, according to the will of God, to the glory of His own Father, Jesus lowered Himself. He humbled Himself to fulfill God’s will so that God could be glorified. So Paul’s not doing anything other than what the Spirit of Christ is doing in him. Jesus is a radical Savior. So guess what? There’s only such a thing as radical discipleship. And the funny thing about it is when we read about Paul, we think, wow, what a saint. If only I could be a fraction of a fraction, a fraction like Paul. But you know something? You and I have the exact same access to the exact same Spirit and the exact same Jesus that Paul did. Don’t boast in anything other, friends, than Jesus Christ and what He can and will do through you if you will be obedient. I want to be like Isaiah, the prophet. When God comes to Isaiah in a vision and Isaiah, Isaiah sees the holiness of God. Isaiah’s confronted with his own sin, his own unworthiness. And at that moment when he believes, he knows he deserves for God to strike him dead, what does God do but clean and purify him? And what does it do to Isaiah? He says, hey, here I am. Send me. Isaiah gives the rest of his life away. He’s treated as just an absolute discontent. He’s condescended by the Jewish people. He doesn’t care because he’s going. He’s sacrificing. He’s giving up his life for Christ. Are you a happy Christian giving your all to Jesus? That’s what I want you to ask. That’s what I think this passage asks us. Because there is such a thing, there is such a thing as false converts. And it’s not like a rare unicorn. Like, oh, there is this false convert this one time. I don’t know. I think the Bible is very clear. As time goes on, and as we get closer and closer to Jesus returning, false converts in the church is going to be the norm. Paul says to Timothy, do what you’re supposed to do. Preach the Gospel. You’ll save both yourself and your ears. There’s going to come in the last days people with itching ears. They just want to hear what they want to hear. In other words, they want to take God and make God in their image, not let Christ come, and make them in Christ’s image. They don’t want radical discipleship. So I want to ask us this evening, what are we doing here? Why do we keep coming back every Sunday? Why do we keep doing this? If for any other reason, then we want to be radical, happy servants of God. And I’m not asking this question because I want to take a sledgehammer to your head. I want to take a sledgehammer to your head. to take a blowtorch to the ice around your heart. And so often we let callous build up and we forget what it means to know and follow Jesus. But I believe if we with Paul look at Jesus, we see a worthy savior. We see a worthy king. We see we see the love of our lives, the lover of our souls. And we see someone for whom it is worth giving up all of my rights, giving up everything, suffering for his name, for his cause. Is this you tonight? I want to ask you that. You know, that that saying the journey is the destination. Hate that because I think it’s entirely unbiblical. What is Paul’s journey?

Uh, he’s often starved, he gets beaten, he gets derided. People lie about him. He gets thrown in prison. He’s shipwrecked a couple of times. His life was suffering. Tell that to Paul. Hey, Paul.

No, for Paul, the destination is the destination. It’s the weight of glory. That’s the destination. So so, friends, I think we we have to with Paul keep our eyes fixed. Not on what we want now, but on what God is calling us to in eternity. And that will radically shape my willingness and my desire to bury myself in the ground so that Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected, is alive and at work in me.

So, Chad, does it I need to be radical and I need to be a missionary and fly to the other side of the world? Probably not. What you need to do is be willing to get on a plane and fly to the other side of the world. That there can’t be anything where you ever get to say, well, that one’s not for me. Well, no, not in this stage of life. Oh, no, that’s not for me. I’d really rather not do that. I could have been a missionary, but not now or I could serve in that capacity, but I don’t I don’t really want to. I would serve God in such a way. I would. But but but there’s no but there’s just Jesus and there’s just obedience, friends. Jeremiah, Jeremiah was often discouraged, you know, as a prophet of the Lord, and he says, he says, if I try to keep my mouth shut. If I try to not do it, I find that I can’t. He says it is, as it were, a fire shut up in my bones. In other words, Jeremiah can’t not preach, teach, live. Suffer for God. What is what is your reward? What is your reward? What is your ground for boasting and glorying? Is it that Christ and the gospel would be made manifest in your life? I’ll just take it. I’ll take it and measure. I’ll put Jesus in a compartment and as it fits my life, I’ll I’ll give him I’ll give myself away to Christ and to the local church.

And I can’t I can’t give you. I can’t give you. I can’t give myself a passion for the name of Jesus. Only Jesus can give us that passion. So, again, I say, look to the cross. See what a wonderful savior he is. See that he calls you to believe. See that he calls you to die to you and come alive in him. And that should be just the overwhelming like yes in every heart. Yes. I don’t want that version. No, there’s no there’s no other versions like yes. Radical discipleship. So I wanted to sit heavy and I don’t want to let you off the hook. I don’t want to say I’m not trying to be heavy. I’m trying to be heavy. I want it to matter to you. I want Christ to be everything. But Paul Paul goes on to say, if we’re going to really win by losing, we’re going to have victory as losers. We can’t simply be happy servants of. God, we have to also be happy servants of men. Verse 19. He says, 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 some Jews. To those under the law, I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, though I might 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 have become all things to all people that by all things I have become all things 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. You and I think take for granted the great abnormality of living in a society and even a world that is anti-slavery. You know, like there’s underground like human trafficking that goes on, but no one’s like happy about that. Like there’s no place where you can go like, yeah, pro-slavery. We don’t live in that age and that’s a good thing and praise God for that. Put yourself in Paul’s mind and when he’s writing that, when he says, I’m free from all, Paul’s just said to them like, hey, I like I’ve won the lottery. If you were like, hey, this is like a precious thing because not everyone was free like you and I are free. That’s not a concept that comes into our minds. So Paul says, I have no master. I can do what I want to do. I can go where I want to go. I can live my life the way I want to live my life. Yet. Paul says, I have I have become a doulos. I have become a slave, a bondservant at the disposal of all. He doesn’t even say to some, he says, I have become a slave to all.

And we have to say that that is radical. He’s radically given up to God. He’s radically given up to others. He’s given up his own. Welfare for the welfare of all people. And it’s saying a lot. It’s saying a whole lot. You’ve probably seen some iteration of this T-shirt. It’s like I saw one the other day, like I like coffee and maybe three people. You know, or I like golf and maybe three people or I like my dog and maybe three people. And it’s it’s it’s it’s humorous. But at the same time, we get it. We are by nature. One, we’re self-preservationists. So we just naturally think about what’s best for me, what’s best for Chad, what’s best for number one. Like, I’m going to think about that. And but secondly, I think it draws out the point that people are really hard to love. And this this isn’t like an entirely new concept. We’ve talked about this before. The people who live under your own roof. Or hard to love. Your extended family. Hard to love. You probably have faces popping up in your head right now. You probably have some friends that are hard to love. Co-workers that are hard to love. Just because we live in America and we have fellow countrymen does not mean that we’re square with all of our fellow countrymen. Think about how divided politics are. Think about wars. Think about Russia and Ukraine right now. The war going on there. Just generally, people have enemies. So so Paul is is is by the power of Christ flying over that. And he’s saying, no, in Christ, I am a servant of all people. And it’s amazing that Paul says, I’m a servant to the Jews. You say, well, why is that amazing? I mean, he’s a Jew. Yeah, he’s a Jew. He stopped being on the Judaism team. What happened? They started lying about him. They started imprisoning him. They started, you know, throwing rocks at him. They did everything they could to kill, mistreat Paul. But Paul says, hey, I became like them, though. I did what I could do. I became like them and I became under the law. Now, what does Paul mean? So so for a Jewish person who in Paul’s day or even even today that doesn’t believe Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, Jesus. Right. You’re still doing everything that you can to live under the Mosaic law. So the law that Moses got on the mountains. So anything that that law has to say in reference to custom, to ceremonial observances, to festivals like you’re going to you’re going to live under all that stuff. Now, Jesus said, I fulfilled the law. So everything that has to do with temple offerings, ceremonial offerings, you’re going to live under all that stuff. So everything that has to do with temple offerings, I think even, you know, exactly as as, you know, Israel was a nation state in the way that those laws govern them. It doesn’t apply the same. It doesn’t apply the same. Now, could not Paul have gone? Why don’t y’all get it? Jesus did away with it. We don’t have to do that stuff anymore. Stop celebrating that. Stop doing that. Get over it. Move on. Mature. Grow up. But it’s not what he does. When we look in Acts, he decides. He wants to take Timothy on and it says that he has Timothy circumcised. That’s a huge thing to do. Now, why would Paul do that? Because Paul’s very clear. You don’t need to be circumcised to be saved. You don’t need to be circumcised to be Christian. He did it to remove a possible hindrance to someone who was a Jew listening to him share the gospel. So Paul’s not saying, hey, you know what? All religions are fine. We’ll do whatever we just go with it and we’ll mix and mingle Judaism and Christianity. He’s not doing that. He’s just saying, look, you care about this custom. You think it matters. OK, fine. Timothy, go get circumcised because we got to preach the gospel. That’s what Paul’s doing. When Paul feels called to go back to Jerusalem in which he knows he’s going to die. He listens to the advice of the elders in Jerusalem and he purifies himself. He purifies himself so he can be ceremonially. Pure and go into the temple. Why did he do that? So as not to offend the Jews. Paul says, I’ve become just like those who are outside the law, meaning non-Jewish people. So Paul is sitting down at dinner with a bunch of Gentiles in Corinth and they put meat down on the table to eat. And guess what? That meat was offered to an idol and bought at the marketplace. Paul’s hungry and he’s he’s eating and he don’t care because it don’t matter. He’s not bringing custom and religion, and that’s irrelevant. He’s not doing anything that’s going to get in the way of him being able to preach the gospel. Paul’s eating pork. And I like pork. And Jesus or, you know, Jesus says to Peter in the blanket, don’t call anything that I’ve made, you know, don’t call it unclean. Everything is clean. Even in Acts, when Paul’s at in Athens, what does he do? He reasons. Even from secular literature. In Acts, he says, you know, even your own poets have said, you know, we all come from his offspring and in him we move and have our life and have our being. That’s secular, secular poetry that Paul’s quoting. He said, hey, you know that poem y’all got? Hey, let me tell you what it really means. So so Paul is flexible. Paul’s willing to give up on preferential things so that he has an open door to preach the gospel. Paul says the only thing I am is under the law of Christ. The only thing I am is under Christ. So what do we mean when we say under the law of Christ? Here’s what we mean. We mean we have the spirit of Christ in us, governing us, teaching us what is true, what is not true, what is ethical, what is unethical. So when I turn to the Old Testament, OK, I can read the Old Testament and go, there’s so much here for me as a Christian to benefit from and learn from because it’s God’s word. Now, we have to understand what Jesus said when he said, I have fulfilled the law. In other words, those customs, observances of Jewish life before Christ came, those things are fulfilled. So I don’t need to do those. So what’s left of the law then if we’re going to remove ceremonial and temporal and civil laws? Moral laws. OK, the Ten Commandments. I don’t care if it’s five thousand years ago today. You can’t cut somebody off. You can’t cut somebody ’s head off. OK, you can’t cheat on your wife. You can’t steal money. So God’s word, Old Testament, New Testament is most realized, loved and obeyed when we have the spirit of Christ in us. That’s what Paul’s saying he is under is the law of Christ. So then we’ve got to be really careful here. And I want to take a minute and talk about this when Paul says that he will be all things to all people so that by all means he may some. We got to define for a second means all means. Now, if we’re very sloppy Bible students, we go great. All means I can literally do anything if I’m saying I’m doing it in Jesus name. It’s not what Paul’s talking about. Paul is talking about being flexible on surface deep, superficial preferences, not morals, things that would unnecessarily offend someone going out of his way. OK, so.

Example, your neighbor across the street is from South Louisiana and he’s having a crawfish boil. OK, now I like crawfish. Not everybody does. My wife thinks it’s disgusting, whatever. So this is good instruction for her. If your neighbor comes up to the door and he says, hey, I’m your neighbor across the street and I’m having a crawfish boil Friday. Love you to be there. You see, it’s a good neighbor. You know, in your mind, like it’s not your thing. You don’t say, oh, this disgusting who would eat such a mud bug. I mean, that’s gross. Even thinking about it. What have you done? You’ve just you’ve just shut a door to a relationship in which you could have, you know, preach the gospel. But now you have, because of your own preferences and selfishness, shut one. You should have said, absolutely, I would love to come and party with you. That would be great. Let’s hang out. You just eat the vegetables around it and you don’t, you know, you don’t make a big deal about it. Right. Now, let’s go to the other side. A guy from work, he says, hey, you want to come over Friday? Me and a few guys. And, you know, they’re not believers. And like we are going to get smashed, like we’re going to get drunk and it’s going to be awesome. Why don’t you come? And you go, yes, I’m going to go and get drunk for Jesus. I’m going to go. I’m going to go. I’m going to go. going to be all things to all people, and I’m going to go and be with them in this. That’s a non-means. So if we’re ever going from, and this is just an important lesson from Paul on how we reach lost people, if we’re ever transgressing between preference to sin, that’s the boundary and what is a right mean by which I could win someone, okay? So you could say, hey, yeah, so you’re going to be watching this. I would love to come for until the first half. I would love to come and just watch football with you guys. That would be cool, and maybe do that, or, and I’ve heard people do this, I would love to be the designated driver so you don’t kill yourselves. I’m not going to drink, and I will drive you all home. There are ways to connect still without like putting up an unnecessary boundary because it was convenient for you, and that’s what we’re getting at here. Let me give you some more examples of this because I know we could talk about this in a lot of different ways. If you had someone who, was a friend, maybe you have a new friend, a new acquaintance, and they were a hardcore Hindu. Jessica and I’ve had some Hindu friends in the past that we’ve known studying at UAH, you know, just trying to get their engineering degree. I’m not going to have them to my house and have beef, okay? Beef to Hindus, you know, cows are sacred. That’s just a huge part of like, you know, Hindu theology. I’m not going to unnecessarily, offend them by being like, here, have a team-built steak from Texas. It’s an American thing to do. Like, that’s just, it’s an unnecessary offense. Like, I’m going to have something that’s not going to put up this wall and be talking to them about some things. Jessica, well, Rebecca, y’all have gone to India as well. Chase and Rebecca have been to India. In India, women wear headdresses, and it’s just cultural. It’s cultural. So you knock on the door and put a headdress on because it’s culturally appropriate, and then you get to go in their home and you get to share the gospel. So, so it’s, it’s being sensitive to others, and it’s having the humility to say, you know what, I need to just take a, you know, a huge pill and, and calm down and stop thinking about me, and what do I need to do for the sake of other people? You know, and I was talking to Jessica about that last night, and her, you know, India, and like some of those examples, and she said something I thought was really good. We don’t, we don’t always, you know, in the church take time to learn about the people we live life with and around, you know? We’re all going so fast-paced. We’re living with like a camera, like, you know, literally, we’re living with camera in our face to talk about our own selves on social media, and we’re not really doing the legwork for the sake of Christ of figuring out who other people are so we can meet them where they are to share the gospel with them. So, so let’s, let’s love people well and care about them, meet them where they are, and secondly, I say let’s have carefulness and wisdom in how we approach those kinds of situations.

So, again, though, back to Paul in this, why, why does Paul bend so much? Why is he so willing to do this? Because he’s a happy servant of men, because he’s a happy servant of God. Look at what Jesus says in Matthew chapter 20, verse 25. Now, this is James and John, his disciples, arguing about who’s, who’s more awesome. And Jesus called them to him and said, you know, the rulers of the Gentiles lorded over them and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant. And whoever would be first among you must be your slave. Even as the Son of Man came not to be served. What did Jesus do? He came to serve. He came to give his life as a ransom for many.

So this radical selflessness, again, it’s not rooted in the Apostle Paul. It’s rooted in Jesus. It’s rooted in Jesus. And I want you to see in verse 23 how much further Paul goes, because he says in 23, he says, I’m going to serve. I’m going to serve. I’m going to serve. I’m going to serve. In verse 23, I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them and its blessings. That’s one thing, you know, when you like have to do right by somebody, like I did it, you know, like I did the good thing. Leave me alone. I’m leaving now. That’s not what Paul says. Paul says, I want them to have the gospel so that I can with my enemies share in the blessings of the gospel. That’s an amazing thought. I don’t just want to air drop in. I did what God told me to do for you people. Now I’m back out. Paul is so radically just sold out on the idea of Christ being crucified even for His enemies, that Paul says, I want to have a chair in the eternal blessing of Christ with them. With them.

Do you love your enemies? Because this stuff is… It’s more than I can handle. It really is. And I can be like, Jesus, if You don’t do this to me, I can’t do this. I can’t do this.

So, look at Jesus and see not just how He is worthy for you to give up yourself. See how Jesus also though is so worthy that I’m going to give myself up so that others can know Him because I’m not worthy to have Him either. And He is loving me. He is loving me. No room for prejudice. There’s no room for preferences. Among us as slaves of Jesus, only radical obedience.

C.S. Lewis has said, humility is not thinking less of yourself. It’s just thinking of yourself less. Humility is not beating yourself up. Like, oh, I’m such a terrible… It’s just not caring too much about your own preferences in life. It’s just being so outwardly focused on God and people that I don’t have time to think about me because I’m too busy about the work of the kingdom.

Do you love others the way that Christ has loved you? You know, I love it because Jesus didn’t airdrop into heaven. Out of heaven, like do a 9 to 5. And like, I’m going back to heaven and I’ll see you all tomorrow. I’m going back to the warm bed. I’ll be here tomorrow. What Jesus is, He comes and He’s with the disciples. He’s here. Here He stays. And I just think Jesus is so clear and just a perfect model of what it means to be, you know, His hands and feet and be the church. It’s being with people. Meeting them where they are. So we’ve got to die to pride. And we’ve got to look forward to spending eternity with our enemies in heaven. You know, I think I said that a couple months ago. I think God’s going to make our next door neighbors in heaven our worst enemies on earth. You know, I think you should be looking forward to that. You should be looking forward to that. Verse 24.

Paul ends by saying, 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. Control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath. But we an imperishable. So I don’t run aimlessly. I don’t box as one beating the air. But I discipline my body and I keep it under control lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. So here we are left with this imagery again of an athlete. We’re left with this imagery of someone spending themselves fully and completely to win a prize.

And Paul just told us what it looks like for you and I to win that prize. And it doesn’t look like living for number one. It looks like dying to number one. It looks like being in love with Jesus so that I’m a radical servant of God and I’m a radical servant of men. And in that losing, there’s my victory. There’s your victory. There’s a healthy church. There’s a useful church. There’s an effective church. There’s an eternal life. In that and in that alone.

But friends, let’s not be aimless. Let’s not be Christian in name. Let’s love Jesus and let’s love people. Which, surprise, surprise, Mark chapter 12,

and one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another and seeing that he answered them well, asked, which commandment is the most important? Which, so what is it? What Jesus says most important is, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength. Radical. And the second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. There is no other commandment greater than these. So it’s only in Jesus that we can obey God. It’s only in Jesus. That we have the victory. And Christ is our victor, who by His life, death, and resurrection empowers us for that kind of obedience. Amen? Let’s pray together.

Father, we don’t come this evening as those who have figured it out. Who have all the answers only that we, we appeal to Your Son Jesus that He would be with us, Lord. That we would see You as we ought to see You. That we would desire greatly, Lord, to know You more. That in knowing You, we desire to make our lives only about You.

Father, we confess that we are prone to wonder and we’re so quick to think about how we, want our own lives to go. How we want certain results, Lord. How we think we should be spending our time. What we think is our due. What we think is our right. But God, if You could turn us to the cross, we would see Jesus who gave it all up for Your glory. And so also, Lord, let us die that we may live in Christ. Let us give up ourselves that Christ would be all in all. Let us love others with the love of Jesus.

Let us love others with the love of Jesus. She would be, oh God, glorified.

Lord, how often have we gone through the motions.

Lord, let it end. Let it end. Let it end. Let it end. Giving You some. Giving You what we think would just make You happy. Just trying to put You in a box.

Jesus, would You so fill our hearts and minds and all of our senses that we just can’t help but as fire shut up in our bones, just give You everything. Well, that’s our plea. That we just see You, Jesus, and live for You alone. And we pray that in Christ’s name.