Run the Race (Part 2)

Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Avendrop. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the Scriptures, verse by verse, with No Compromise.

Running the Christian Race with Self-Control

Number two, the second cross-training tip, training hints for the Christian faith in the context of liberty. As Christians, number one, run to win. Number two, run with self-control. Run your Christian life with self-control, the first part of verse 25.

And of course, runners have to have self-control, and if we're in the Christian life, we have to have self-control as well. The runner in the temporal world, we in the spiritual world. He says every athlete exercises self-control in all things.

Self-restraint, self-control, strict training, strict diet. To me, our society is indulge, consume, gorge. Paul uses an athletic metaphor, and he says if you're striving for the glory of God and excellence, you've got to run with self-control.

One historian back in the day said, I wish to win an Olympic victory, then here's what you should do. You have to submit to discipline, follow a strict diet, give up sweet cakes, train under compulsion at a fixed hour in heat or cold.

This is a funny one. You must not drink cold water nor wine just whenever you feel like it. Sweat, training, striving. Look at the word there, exercises, in your text. In English, exercise, compete. That's where we get the word agony.

I wonder, do you agonize in your Christian faith? Is it agony, straining, toiling, one goal winning the prize? Now, if you're not careful, you look at this passage and you think, you know what, spiritual, it has nothing to do really with physical.

And in one sense, you're right. This is a metaphor for the spiritual Christian race. But Paul isn't so naive, nor is he, if you want some big words, nor is he a neoplatonic dualist. But if you think body bad, spirit good, this kind of dualistic thing, you're not thinking the right way.

And there's a very real sense where Paul says, this is a spiritual race, but your body matters. Because the body God has given you is the instrument by which you perform spiritual activities. And so there's a very real sense where you say to yourself, do you know what, I have to be careful to take care of my body for many reasons.

And you can go back into chapter six where Paul says, honor God with your what? Body. It's a sexual deal there. But even now, Paul is saying, there's a spiritual race that I'm in. But the spiritual race that I'm in, I have my own body to run it.

And by the way, if you say to yourself, I want to run with excellence, I think you'll pay attention to your body. What you eat, what you don't eat, what your sleep is, exercise, and everything else. Because when you exercise and eat well, your body can perform better so that you're able to run the race better.

You say, well, bodily exercises, you know, doesn't profit much compared to spiritual exercise. That's true, but it does still profit. The reason why I work out the way I work out is because I've got one shot at this.

And when I overeat or eat poorly and don't rest well, I can't perform in my duties as well as I could. So what I don't want you to do is say, it's just a spiritual metaphor and I'll just do whatever I want with my body and just gorge myself with whatever I want.

That's not the case. If you're going to run the Christian race and you've got the body you've got, you're supposed to take care of it. Spiritual, yes, but your body is not the enemy of your spiritual life.

It's the instrument of that life. Number three, run to win, run with self-control, run with confidence, run with confidence, run knowing it's all going to be worth it. There's a prize, there's faithful reward.

God is faithful to reward those who do things in honor of his son with those motives. Verse 25b, they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. I forego pleasures now because later it's worth it.

I say no to things that I could say yes to, but the race is going to be worth it. God will reward me that day. And I did some study on how people were given rewards back in those days during the Olympic and Ithmician games.

They gave wreaths out of parsley, sometimes of pine, pine cones. And when you really did a great job, you got a withered celery wreath. So the argument is lesser to greater. Bruce Jenner did everything he could for a piece of gold, a gold medal.

And what did it get him? Michael Phelps, how many Olympic golds does he have? On that day, on Judgment Day, the scales of God. Here Michael Phelps put all his gold medals and says in light of all the gold medals, light of the six world championships of Michael Jordan, puts them all seated right down there.

Here's the scales of God, will not balance out anything. It's all in vain. It's all works righteousness. But if in fact you have been saved and then you run to win, there's a reward later. Of course God might bless you today, but the real reward is coming later.

Beyond this passing age. A crown, 2 Timothy 4 that I read before, which will last forever. Instead of some dried up limp celery crown. Pushing to the limit for the gospel. And you know what? It would be right if we never got rewarded for it, wouldn't it?

Just God for what you've done for me and how you've saved me and delivered me and given me Christ's righteousness and the hope of heaven. That's worth it. No reward in heaven would still be worth it. And yet God in his mercy, he dangles out.

Yes, you can know about a reward. People say, well, it's impious to try to do things for a reward. No. If you're only doing it for reward and not for the glory of God, okay, I see. But Paul is trying to motivate Christians by saying there's a reward from God.

It's not made of laurel or pine or parsley. 1 Peter calls it an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that doesn't fade away. Reserved in heaven for you. So when you're serving and striving, you think future.

You think with hope. God's not going to overlook those who have served according to Hebrews 6. Okay, number four, we're moving right along. Number four, cross-training hint, how to run the Christian life.

Number one, run to win. Number two, run with self-control. Number three, run knowing God's faithful to reward. Number four, run with purpose. Run deliberately. Have a plan. Look at verse 26. He uses two metaphors in sports, running and boxing.

When I went to the Olympics in 1984, not as a participant but as a spectator, I ordered two kinds of tickets. I ordered boxing and basketball. Boxing and basketball is what I wanted, and you just order tickets.

And I think for the basketball games, I got Croatia versus Latvia or something like that. So I went to the booth, and I said, I'd like to exchange these in. And they said, yes, you could exchange them in.

And I said, I'd like one of the American teams. It was the year we had Jordan and Patrick Ewan and Chris Mullen and Leon Wood and a bunch of other guys and Raymond Tisdale. And so they said, oh, we have one ticket for the American game.

I said, great. No, she said, as a matter of fact, there's two games open. She said, they're good seats too. I said, great. And so I walked into that first game that we were playing, and I walked out. And I kid you not, my seat was behind Bobby Knight, the coach.

So there was Bobby Knight. There was Jordan right next to me. And so one time, Jordan stole the ball and went up for a dunk. And I stood up, and I went like this, like, yes, we're number one. Bad news is I was supposed to be at work that day.

It was 1 o 'clock in the afternoon. And on ABC, NBC, and CBS, it showed me going up like this. And number one, sin's always going to find you out. I can tell you that right now. I was an unbeliever, of course.

Now, can you imagine Michael Jordan when he got that ball, and he went down to the other end of the court, and before he did, like, a little cradle jam, he just took the ball and kicked it up into the ceiling, one foot underneath the basket.

You think, you've got to finish. We call that finishing. We call that not finishing, but you should finish. Paul says, when you run, you just don't run around with a chicken like your head cut off. And when you box, you just don't start boxing in the air.

You ever see somebody that does that? They just start boxing up in the air indiscriminately. So look what Paul says. You can tell even by earlier in chapter 9, when he talked about purpose and determination and goal.

He does the same thing here. I do not run aimlessly. That's the first example. Notice he's switched to first person now. Here is Paul the example again, not the ultimate example. Chapter 11, verse 1, Christ the ultimate example.

But here Paul has lived among them, and now he says, first person singular, I do not run aimlessly. There's a deliberation to my life. There's a purpose to my life. There's a purpose to ministry, and of course, we.

But think about those Corinthians. They needed purpose. They needed goals and directions. Paul said, you run to win, and you run with purpose. I can say it maybe this way, congregation. Busy isn't the answer.

I just have to be busy. It's not just activity, but focused on the exaltation of Christ, the building up of the church, loving one another. And then he says another example here. I box in such a way as not beating the air.

He's not a shadow boxer just punching things. It could either mean shadow boxing or just missing the opponent by swinging wildly. So that's not how I fight. Now, when I was younger, I used to think goals for ministry were kind of dumb because God's sovereign.

Mike, what are your one-year goals? What are your five-year goals? What are your ten-year goals? I used to think that was just dumb. I changed my mind because we should be making goals for gospel ministry because it should be a deliberate planning, of course, open to God changing in his sovereign ways, God rerouting.

But I have certain goals, and then when God says no and God says something differently in terms of circumstances and opportunities, then we fall in line. You've got to aim for something or you'll be hitting nothing.

I wonder if you ask yourself the question, the ministry that God has given me at Bethlehem Bible Church, there's a reason why I do it. There's a reason why you change the diapers in the nursery. And the reason is not only that the babies are dirty.

Paul said in Philippians 3, I run in such a way not losing aim, forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead. I press on to the goal to win the prize which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

Running to Avoid Disqualification

Number five, how do you run your Christian life? Cross-training tips. And again, these are very imperatively driven because that's the tone of Scripture here. Paul's already told them who they are in Christ in chapter 1, verses 1 to 8.

Number five, run without getting DQ'd, without getting disqualified. Run to win, run with self-control, run knowing there's a reward, run deliberately, and now run without getting disqualified. There's a lot at stake.

I'm going to tell you this ahead of time so you get it. I believe in the perseverance of the saints. Do you? Preservation by God, eternal security, however you want to parse that. I believe that if God gives you fate, it lasts till the end.

How about that? Eternal life begins when you believe. But the way to get a persevering Christian to persevere is regularly through commands and exhortations that say you better be careful or you're going to lose it all.

It doesn't mean you can lose it all. Is Paul going to say, you know what, if I don't run this race well, I'm going to lose my salvation? No, but God uses exhortations that seem like they're on the brink of, I'm going to lose my salvation to get people to follow through all the way to the end.

So in other words, how do we persevere? Well, God makes us persevere, but it's through a faith that knows that on each side there's a precipice and if I fall over here, it's going to be bad. So God says, don't fall over here.

So let's see how this fleshes itself out. Verse 27. It's interesting to see how the body and the spirit are, there's no bifurcation. Now the ESV many times is a great translation. They botch it here. Let me read you the NAS, which is better.

But I discipline my body, and instead of saying keep it under control, what's the ESV say? I make it what? A slave. And the word discipline is a fascinating sports term. It means to hit under the eye and give somebody a black and blue eye.

Yesterday Micaiah was here, getting ready to be babysat before the Christmas party, and thankfully, well not thankfully, he injured himself, but when he injured himself, thankfully it wasn't bad, and it was not during the time my kids were babysitting.

It was while Bob and Nyada were still here. And he whacked himself on the head and the blood started to go down under his skin and pool on his eyelid. And I thought to myself, that's a good sermon illustration.

That's 1 Corinthians 9. No, I made sure I went over and hugged him. Paul is not saying self-flagellation in a Roman Catholic way to be better pleasing to God. He's saying when it comes to discipline, I'm not punching in the air randomly.

I'm basically punching myself as it were to be disciplined for the run, for the match. Whatever rigors I have to go through for an apostle, I'll go through it. And he's telling the Corinthians, whatever you have to go through.

Imagine it's like a boxer who says, I need to know how to take body blows better, and he opens up his arms like this, and other people come and punch him in the stomach over and over and over, so then when somebody really punches him in the stomach to make it a match, he'll be able to take it.

Paul says, I basically, I give my body a black eye. I make it my slave. I subdue it. Body, get in line. Body, you don't run me. I always loved it when MacArthur would say, many times I go out to have dinner, and I say no dessert for only one reason.

Because I want to tell my body, you're not in charge. I own you. You don't run me. I run you. Now when he says that I might be disqualified, I think what he's saying is, I'm going to control my life and my lifestyle, so that whatever I do, none of these Corinthian false teachers could say, you know what, he doesn't practice what he preaches.

He preaches a big game about God's grace, but he doesn't live it out. By the way, if you were disqualified back in the Olympic or Isthmian games, you would lose your reward, but you wouldn't lose your citizenship.

I think that's a fair way to think about this. If you're really a Christian, are you still going to heaven, even if you run a sloppy race? Yes, but you're going to lose your reward. So Paul says, I don't want to be disapproved.

I don't want to run to lose. I don't want to be disqualified. I think it was 1972, Omaha, Nebraska, and I was on the swim team. And I swam 100-yard fly, and I got fifth in the city, 100-yard fly. Well, the reason why I got fifth in the city was there were only six entrants.

And the sixth guy couldn't get his arms up and out of the water, and if you just slide your arms along during butterfly, you get disqualified. So I was fifth in the city, although what I didn't tell my friends at the time, but what I will tell you, because who wants a boasting pastor, is that the sixth guy got disqualified, and it was the only heat.

Paul sees the Corinthians, and just now in chapter 10, he's going to say, you know what? These guys are getting disqualified by the thousands, 23 ,000, 24 ,000 Israelites disqualified with sexual sin.

And you just look back, and you see just the flotsam and the jetsam of all these just people who were in the race, and they fail, and he says, Corinthians don't run to lose. You know, it's just in the race.

This is everything, one life to live. He says, that's a dangerous position. And I'll tell you, I'll look you in the eye and say, it's a dangerous position to say, I'm a Christian, but I'm not running this to win.

It's dangerous. This is not a good church to be in if you say, you know what, I just want to coast. I want you to be found out, not by us primarily, but found out by God. So you're just compelled out of gratitude to say, this is it, this is my life.

You can do that if you're on staff, or you can do that if you're a mother. This has nothing to do with full-time ministry. You can coast if you're in ministry. You can burn out if you're not in ministry.

Paul's not trying to say he's losing his salvation, but he wants to satisfy the Lord of glory. Paul says, forget your rights, Corinthians. Go after the imperishable reward. And lastly, but not leastly, we have to do this quickly.

Running with a View to Christ’s Race

Number six, sixth cross-training tip or hint, run to win, run with self-control, run knowing there's going to be a reward, run with purpose, run with discipline so you don't get disqualified. And number six, run with a view towards Christ's race.

Run with a view towards Christ's race. This is not found in 1 Corinthians. It's found in Philippians 2. So let's just look over to Philippians 2. I want you to see Paul, but more importantly, I want you to see Jesus in a way that's very similar, Philippians chapter 2, to this obedience reward pattern.

Jesus is the one. For those of us that haven't run well and we need a representative, we see him here. For those of us who have sinned and we need a savior, we see him here. And for those of us that need a good example of how God the Son runs a race, we see him here.

It's a good way to end a sermon looking at Christ Jesus and his life. Philippians chapter 2, verse 1. So if there is any encouragement in Christ, you can just feel the pastoral heart ooze out here. Any comfort from love, any participation in the spirit, any affection and sympathy.

Complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. But what a good context, tie in to the context of liberty in 1 Corinthians 8, 9, and 10.

But in humility, count others more significant than yourself. Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but to the interest of others. I want you to be harmonious in soul, Paul says. I want you to think the same thing.

For what reason? Well, before I answer that, listen to the opposite of what Paul is after. Shirley MacLaine, quote, the most pleasurable journey you take is through yourself. The only sustaining love involvement is with yourself.

When you look back on your life and try to figure out where you've been and where you're going, when you look at your work, your love affairs, your marriages, your children, your pain, your happiness, when you examine all that closely, what you really find out is that the only person you really love is yourself.

And so Paul says, look out for the interest of other. You know what a microscope means? It's to look at something small. Scope, scope it out, small. Paul said, scope out the interest of others. And now look at Christ's example of humble service, of strenuous running, I could say.

Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus. This is an oceanic passage, as one man said. Verse six, who through, excuse me, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself.

How do you empty yourself? Here it's subtraction by addition, by the addition of taking the form of a servant. Subtraction, saying no sometimes to the privileges of exercising divine deity. Always being divine, but sometimes saying no to using some of those privileges by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of man and being found in human form.

I mean, how humbling is that for God? Christ being the other oriented servant, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. He emptied himself by adding human flesh.

He didn't give up any part of his true deity. His glory now veiled. But here's the good news. Remember Paul said, run, and there's gonna be a great reward. Self-sacrifice, pay off. Look at how God honored Christ Jesus.

Verse eight, and being found in appearance of a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death. Even the worst kind of death, even death on a cross. So one man said, nail on a tree like vermin.

Voluntarily, deliberately. Therefore, here comes the exaltation. It's worth it. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, which is what name? Lord, Yahweh.

So that at the name of Jesus, every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He's our real example. Friends, beloved, you're in a race, and the elders wanna help you in this race any way we can.

I wonder how this message will affect your Christmas holidays. I'm telling you this, the world is racing towards Christmas Day as the end all. And we with our minds can race towards it because it symbolizes for us everything and it shows the incarnation.

For me, by the grace of God, I wanna run this Christian race with a gospel focus till the day I die. Don't you?

I'll be worth it. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's Word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 8 .30 and 11 a .m. and Sunday evenings at 6 p .m. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston, Massachusetts. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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