All Things For The Gospel

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Well, this week we are officially coming back, as I said in the announcements, to our

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Called to be Saints series. So after a five -week detour as we looked at the nature, the privileges, the responsibilities of church membership, now we're coming back to the book of 1

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Corinthians. And I don't know about you guys, but I have been hungry to get back into expository, systematic study of the text.

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And so I, for one, am excited about it. And what we're going to do this week is fairly simple.

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We're just going to pick up right where we left off. So last time around, you'll remember we were in 1

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Corinthians 9. And we just heard the text that we'll study today, 1

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Corinthians 9, 19 to 23. And as I was preparing, I'll be honest, you'll actually see in our bulletin, we have a longer section identified.

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And as I was studying it, I called Steve and I said, hey, Steve, do you mind if we just switch things up and you preach on the second half of this next week?

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Because it's just too good to try to fit into a single Sunday.

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And so we're beginning again in 1 Corinthians 9, verse 19. And it might be helpful, especially if you weren't here beforehand, but even if you were here, for us to do a bit of a review, to kind of orient ourselves to find our bearings in the text of 1

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Corinthians 9. And so I'll do a bit of a brief introduction. And for some of you, hopefully it'll be beneficial, and for some it'll be review.

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But you might remember that the Apostle Paul wrote the book of 1 Corinthians, a scholar's figure, in about 54

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AD. And so that would have been shortly after his visit to the Corinthian church.

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And if you want to read about that visit to the Corinthian church, you can look in Acts chapter 18, in the first half of that chapter.

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So Paul went to Corinth. He ministered amongst the Corinthians. And then after he moved along, probably to Ephesus, he wrote this letter to the

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Corinthians. And if you don't know much about the layout of the book, or if you forgot a little bit of the layout of the book, we'll go first to 1

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Corinthians chapter 1. We'll turn there together and do a bit of a survey. In 1

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Corinthians chapter 1, all the way to chapter 4, Paul has one issue that he is addressing to the

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Corinthian church, or with the Corinthian church, and that is the issue of unity. Or in contrast, the issue of division.

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And so there were Christians in the Corinthian church that were saying, I am of Paul. I am of Paulus.

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I am of Cephas. And Paul says with a resounding, no, absolutely not.

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No, it is not about Paul. He says, Paul is nothing. Did Paul die for your sins?

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Were you baptized in the name of Paul? He says, no, this is empty philosophy.

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This is an empty love of wisdom, which really is philosophy.

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The love of wisdom. And he says in his own words, Paul says, you're acting merely human.

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And so Paul says in the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians, he says, do not pledge allegiance to a man.

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Do not align yourselves with a man. Pledge allegiance to Christ.

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And as we heard a couple of weeks ago during Reformation Day, to Christ and to Christ alone, pledge your allegiance.

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He alone, he says, is the power of God and the wisdom of God. And then if we look in our

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Bibles in 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and 6, Paul addresses there the issue of lawsuits and sexual immorality in the church.

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There's people in the church. Picture this, someone on this side of the room, suing someone on that side of the room before an unbelieving court.

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And Paul says, this is a shame. And if I can quote from Luke last week, that's lame.

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You've got one Christian suing another Christian. He says, this is already a defeat to you, you immature

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Christians. And then in 1 Corinthians 6 verse 18, he says, flee from sexual immorality.

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Literally, run for your lives. He says, no other sin so affects the body as this sin of sexual immorality.

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To sin against your body in that way is to desecrate the temple of God.

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When a man or a woman commits a sexually immoral act, what they are in essence doing is desecrating

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God's residence. Your body, he says, is the temple of the Holy Spirit.

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And then in Acts chapter 7, he answers questions about divorce, sorry, marriage, divorce, and singleness.

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And you'll see in Acts, or sorry, 1 Corinthians 7, 1, he says, now concerning, and then we're going to see that pattern throughout the text.

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He's now answering questions that the Corinthians have written to him about. He says, now concerning the matters about which you wrote.

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And so he does marriage and divorce and singleness. And then in Acts chapter 8 and 9, he starts to deal with issues of Christian liberty and idolatry.

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And in 1 Corinthians 8, 1, he writes to the Corinthians, he says, knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

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And then in these two chapters, 1 Corinthians 8 and 9, he shows the saints what this kind of sacrificial love looks like.

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It's the kind of love that lays down its own rights, its own Christian liberties.

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What I get from God, I lay down again for the sake of my brothers or my sisters and for the glory of God.

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And we're going to look at this a little bit more today. And what we discovered right before our five -week hiatus, if you wanted to summarize chapters 8 and 9 in just a sentence, is this,

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Christian freedom is not a license. Your Christian liberty is not a license to do whatever it is that you want to do, but it is liberation to do what you ought to do.

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What you ought to do. And so that's where we left off when we last looked at 1

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Corinthians chapter 9. Then we took our five -week detour, and now we are back.

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And so here in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, Paul has just laid out this case. If you'll remember it,

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I said it was an awkward one to preach to some extent, that Paul has just said that he has laid down his right to be compensated.

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He has the right to be compensated for his gospel ministry, but he has surrendered that right to offer the gospel to the

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Corinthians, he says, free of charge. And so he has laid down this right, and he exhorts them, these

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Corinthians, to do the same. And so now we're going to hone in on 1

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Corinthians chapter 9 in verse 19. And if you haven't heard me preach expositionally,

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I will always, always lay out the big idea before I get into the text. And so if you want to know what this text is about, if you want to anticipate where it is that I'm going, this is what verses 19 to 23 are about.

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In this passage, the Apostle Paul shows that he is fully and gloriously free.

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He's made the case, he will make the case, that this is for all Christians, fully and gloriously free in Christ.

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And yet, he will show us, as he has already, that he has not used this freedom for his own selfish interests, for his own cause, but he's used the freedom that God has given him through Christ, he says, to be a servant.

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And to be a servant for the sake of the gospel and for the salvation of the lost.

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And so this sermon is essentially going to be about evangelism. If you want to give it a topic.

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I love reading books about preaching, and I like to look at the way that different people define the word preaching, the act of preaching.

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I like what Martin Lloyd -Jones said, that preaching is truth on fire, or logic on fire.

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I like especially what another man said, that preaching is convincing, compelling, reasoning with God's people to obey what

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God has said. And really, that's my task ahead of you, because I don't know many people personally who are enthralled with their own evangelism, with their own zeal, with their own boldness, with their own clarity in sharing the gospel.

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And so that's what we're going to look at today, is this topic of evangelism.

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So that's our introduction. We're going to go then right into verse 19. So Paul says at the beginning of verse 19, he says this, he says,

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For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant of all, that I might win more of them.

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In our study today, we're going to look at three main truths, three big points in the passage.

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And this is the first one. Paul used his freedom to become a servant of the lost.

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That's an interesting idea. Paul used his freedom to become a servant of the lost.

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If you were to read verse 19 in the original text, in the Greek, you discover that Paul begins verse 19 with a very intentional word choice.

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The opening word that he uses in the Greek is this, free. He begins the sentence with this word free, and it's an emphatic free, and he's trying to convey something.

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He begins the sentence with this to emphatically declare his Christian liberty.

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He says in verse 19, the full sentence, that he is free from all. And this is not a hypothetical kind of freedom.

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This is not a metaphorical type of freedom. It is a real freedom that Paul is talking about.

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A real freedom that is experienced by, should be experienced by, and enjoyed by every

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Christian in the world. And he says this, essentially, or we learn,

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I should say, through Scripture, that this freedom is a freedom that was purchased by Christ on the cross at Calvary.

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It's freedom at Christ's expense. And so when Christ lived a perfect life, when he fulfilled all righteousness, when he died on the cross, when he was buried, when he rose from the dead on the third day, as Steve has already pointed out, as our great high priest, he fulfilled all of the requirements of the law.

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He fulfilled all of the law. He fulfilled all righteousness. When Christ went to the cross, he satisfied the just wrath of God in our place.

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When Christ went to the cross, he paid, every Christian in this room, all of you, he paid your debt, your debt, in full.

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And then all, and then some, and then all. Like you've heard me say before, he didn't just bring your bank balance to zero.

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He brought your bank balance to nine, nine, nine, nine, nine. And every time you go to the account to take out a withdrawal and then check your balance, the balance is the same.

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Christ paid it all for your freedom. And by his own blood, he freed every man and woman and child, whoever has, whoever does, whoever will, place their faith in him.

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And so Christ starts, verse 19, by saying this, I am free, perfectly free, holy free, free from the requirements of the old covenant law, free from the dominion of Satan, free from the power of sin, free from guilt before a holy and righteous

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God, free from the fear of men, free from captivity to the consciences of other men, from superstitions and false gods and the hopelessness and the fear of death.

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I know I'm laying it on thick, just stay with me. Free to enjoy the grace of God for all of eternity.

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Paul says at the beginning of verse 19, I am fully and unreservedly free in Christ.

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And that was the reality of Paul's life. And as I've already alluded, that's the reality of every

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Christian's life in this world. I don't know if you have any friends that are into multi -level marketing, but I often have conversations, every once in a while I get a, and I say this respectfully,

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I get an opportunity to do business with them. And to earn some supplemental income.

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And almost every time that I sit down at Starbucks and I hear the pitch, they will ask the question, they will say, what would you do if you had total financial freedom?

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If you could just wake up in the morning, and I remember one person saying, you know,

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I would move to the mountains, I would buy a house on the beach. Another guy, that was about a 4 a .m.

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multi -level sales pitch, he said he was going to buy an island and luxury cars and give those luxury cars away.

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Financial freedom. Well, brothers and sisters, we may not have financial freedom, but we have a freedom better than that freedom that they are trying to sell at the end of that marketing plan.

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And that is a freedom in Christ. When we wake up in the morning, we are more free, just as Paul was, than Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, or the wealthiest man or the freest man in all the world who is still enslaved to sin and the devil.

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And so when Paul begins verse 9 with the word free, he means that the Christian, because of what Christ has done, we are free.

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Now, if we are going to ask that multi -level marketing question to the Apostle Paul, Paul, what would you do if you had complete freedom?

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Absolute freedom. What would Paul answer? This is what Paul says in the second part of verse 19.

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He says this. Let me find it. Sorry. He says, Though I am free, free from all,

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I have made myself a servant, a servant of all that I might win more of them, that I might win more of them.

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And so Paul says, I am free. I'm emphatically free. I'm fully free.

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And yet, I will trade this freedom. I will trade my rights.

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I will trade my Christian liberty for a servant's apron, for a servant's role in the kingdom of God.

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And he says this, that I might win more. He's talking about people. That I might win people to Christ.

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And as long as there are people in the world who are without hope and without Christ, Paul would say,

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I will make myself a servant of all. And so, Paul is free. Christians, brothers and sisters, we are free.

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And yet, Paul says, and I will trade it all. And he uses that word servant. I'm not sure if you've looked at that word servant in the

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Bible, but this is that word, the Greek word doulos. And the ESV is a faithful translation.

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That's what I'm preaching out of. Read the ESV. But there's a lot of debate about whether doulos is best translated as servant or as slave.

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If you're reading the NASB, it's translated as slave. And there is a real distinction between the two.

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What Paul is talking about is not the kind of slavery that we have in mind when we think about African slavery or American slavery in the 1700s and the 1800s.

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But what Paul is talking about is Greek slavery. And this is the difference. To be a servant, if I am a servant,

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I am employed. I can move at any time. I can seek other employment.

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I can try to negotiate better compensation. At the end of the day, I am my own. When Paul uses the word doulos, what he means is this is someone who has, for whatever reason, from whatever circumstance, they have sold themselves into slavery.

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Whether from poverty or indebtedness to someone or a crime, they have sold themselves into slavery, and they are no longer their own.

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And so it's interesting that Paul would say, I am free, and now with this freedom,

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I am going to be owned by something else. I'm going to put myself under the ownership of something, and that something, he says, is that I might win more to Christ.

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And so here Paul, we see his example. He is completely, completely devoted to the task of evangelism.

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He is dedicated to the salvation of sinners. His love for the lost souls of his neighbors is not just a casual interest on his part, but preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ was his life.

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It's not a hobby. It's his all. It's his life. You could say he was sold out, quite literally sold out, to reaching people with the gospel, the evangelization of the lost.

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And there's an example in church history, I think, that perfectly illustrates this type of scenario.

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You might have heard this story before. Forgive me if you've heard it from me. But on October 8, 1732, a group of Christians from a

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Moravian community in Hernhut, Germany, went to Copenhagen. They traveled together to Copenhagen, Denmark, and they were going to send two men away that they expected never to see again in the ports of Copenhagen, Denmark.

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And what had happened was this, that these two Moravian men, their names were

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Johann Leonard Dober and David Nietzschmann, they had heard about an island in the

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Atlantic Ocean where a British slave owner had taken 2 ,000 or even 3 ,000 slaves and he had put them on this island to labor for his profits.

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And this British slave owner was an atheist, and he was quoted as saying this. He said, no preacher, no clergyman will ever stay on this island, even if he's shipwrecked, will make him stay in a separate house until he has to leave, but he is never going to talk to any of us about God.

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And so these Moravians from Hernhut, Germany, went to the port at Copenhagen, Denmark, and there they bid their farewell to these two men.

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And this was the reason. These two men had heard about the plight of these African slaves, and they were so grieved by it that when it came to the point that they could bear it no more, they went to this

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British slave owner and they said, we would like to sell ourselves into your slavery, into your ownership.

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And so before this British slave owner, these two Moravian men sold themselves into a life of slavery for the price of two male slaves, adult male slaves.

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And so at this port in Copenhagen, as the moorings were cast off, the ship drifted away, and the

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Moravians said goodbye to their friends and to their family, these two men, these two

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Moravian men. And as the ship drifted away from the port, the men linked arms, they raised their hands, and they said, may the

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Lamb of God receive the reward for his suffering. They had enslaved themselves.

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They were free, but they had voluntarily enslaved themselves, that they might win some, as Paul would say it.

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And so these men went out enslaved for Christ, and history tells us actually that the men at some point returned to provide an update, and what had happened on that island is that through their witness and through the witness of others who also sold themselves into slavery to reach those slaves, thousands of those slaves came to faith in Christ.

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And so even though they were still slaves on the island, in Christ, they were already free.

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That's what Paul is talking about here, to give yourself fully to the mission of reaching the lost.

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That was Paul's mindset. He took all of his time, all of his energy, all of his reputation, all of his intellect, every one of his faculties, all of his freedom, and he put that to service.

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And oftentimes we think of service to Christ, yes, but also, as he says, a servant to all, a servant to the lost, that he might win them.

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Now, for us in this room, I'll ask, is this our mindset?

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Would you agree with me? Yes, I am free in Christ. Praise God, I'm free in Christ.

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And would you also say, not only am I free in Christ, but I am a servant to all, that I might win them with the gospel.

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How are you using your freedom if you are free in Christ? Is your life like Paul's?

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Or maybe I should ask it this way. Are you, like Paul, given to the mission of reaching people with the gospel?

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If you were to examine yourself honestly. At the end of this whole spiel that Paul is giving, in 1

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Corinthians chapter 11 and verse 1, he's going to tell us, he's going to tell the reader, he's going to tell the Corinthians, he says, be imitators of me as I am of Christ.

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And so he's giving his example in chapters 8 and 9 and 10, and then in chapter 11 and verse 1, he's going to say, now imitate me.

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And I want to ask, are you imitating Paul in this regard?

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The author of Proverbs tells us that this is one of the fruits of a wise and a righteous life.

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In Proverbs 11 .30, this author writes, he says, the fruit of the righteous is a tree of life, and whoever captures souls, that's an interesting way to put it, whoever captures souls is wise.

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So the wise and the righteous Christian actively labors to lead the people around him or her, around you, to eternal life.

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That is one of the fruits of your life. It's like a tree of life. It produces eternal life.

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Wherever you've been, there is the scent, as it were, of light or of life or of death because you're there preaching the gospel, testifying to Christ.

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And the marks of a wise and a righteous Christian is this capturing of souls.

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And what that means, pictured this way, is to go behind enemy lines. To go behind enemy lines and to capture the soul of your brother, of your sister, of your dad, of your mom, of your son, of your daughter, of your friend, of your neighbor.

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That's a wise person gives themselves to capturing souls. Again, it's a funny, it's an interesting picture.

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Not many of us think of it that way, but are you a soul capturer? Do you live in that way?

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Or are you living, in contrast to that, as a foolish Christian, using your

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Christian liberties for your own selfish interests, for your own pursuits?

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It's possible to do that. Paul warned the Galatians in Galatians 5 .13. He said, you were called to freedom, brothers.

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You were called to freedom. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another.

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And so, brothers and sisters, in Christ we are free. Fully free, as I've explained.

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But are we using it now for Christ? Next, we'll look at verse 20.

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Paul says this, To the Jews I became as a Jew in order to win the Jews. To those under the law

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I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law.

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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.

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To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means

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I might save some. And so, if you're taking notes, the second truth that we encounter is this, that Paul used his freedom to make the gospel as accessible as possible.

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He used his freedom to usher people, as it were, to the gospel, to remove barriers.

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It meant giving up his own preferences. It meant giving up his way of life. It meant giving up his newfound

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Christian liberties to remove obstacles between the lost man and hearing and understanding the gospel message.

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Now, don't mistake what I'm saying. I'm not saying that Paul watered down the gospel message.

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There's a lot of books today being written about contextualization, and a lot of those books,

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I find, are just rubbish, if I can use that word. A watering down of the gospel.

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A dressing up of the gospel to make it more palatable to the lost person.

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That's not what Paul is talking about here. It's not about dulling the edges of the sword.

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But what Paul is doing, as a mature Christian, as a wise Christian, as a righteous

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Christian, is he is going to the blind. He's going to the deaf. He's going to the spiritually dead, those who are dead in their trespasses and sins.

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And he's bringing the gospel to them in a way that is accessible and that does not add needless offense to the message.

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That does not add needless offense. And so Paul didn't view, as some people do, he didn't view the gospel as a hammer and every person as a nail.

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And he just has to get it off his chest, and it's the same spiel every time with every single person.

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No, Paul had a far more nuanced view, almost like I think of a skilled warrior with a sword.

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Children, I want to ask you guys, if we gave a three -year -old a sword, what would we have on our hands?

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We'd have trouble. That's a perfect answer because a three -year -old with a sword would swing without distinguishing one thing from another.

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But if you have a warrior, maybe a samurai with a sword, can you trust that you're probably going to be safe as long as you're a good guy?

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Probably, right? As long as he's a good guy and you're a good guy, you're going to be safe if you have a skilled person with a sword.

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And what we see here is Paul is not taking the sword of the Spirit, the

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Word of God, and just swinging it indistinguishably, just any which way, haphazardly, but he is skillful.

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Like I said, nuanced. Paul was mindful of the sensibilities and the hang -ups of each of the people groups that he was trying to reach.

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He knew that the gospel, he wrote these words, the gospel is the power of God for salvation.

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That's Romans 1. He knew that, but he also knew that that power needed to be used wisely.

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It needed to be handled carefully. And so he says to the Jews, in verse 20, he says, to the

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Jews I became as a Jew. Paul was born and raised and educated as a

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Jew, but when he became a Christian, Judaism was no longer the center of his universe.

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He became a new creature in Christ, and Christ became the center.

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Christ became the focal point of his life. Before anything else, he was now a Christian, and yet he did not insist on his own way.

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When it came to reaching the Jews, when we read in the book of Acts, for instance, we find Paul, and we've had conversations after church and at different times about the relationship between the

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Christian and the Sabbath, but in the book of Acts, we find Paul on the

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Sabbath going to the synagogues to reason with the Jews. We read about that, for instance, in Acts chapter 17, verses 1 to 3.

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Paul there, it says, he was passing through Amphipolis and Apollonia, and they came to Thessalonica, where there was a synagogue of the

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Jews. And Paul went in, as was his custom, and on three Sabbath days, it says, he reasoned with them from the scriptures, explaining and proving that it was necessary for the

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Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead. This Jesus whom I proclaim to you is the

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Christ. So that was his custom. When Paul was amongst the Jews, he was as a Jew.

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He went to their place on their day, according to their cultural norms, to save their souls.

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It was him going to them. Paul could have asked the Jews, come to church on Sunday.

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We'd love to share the gospel. He didn't do that. Maybe he did, but first he went to them on their terms, on their turf.

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And then we see, in verse 21, to those outside the law, it says this.

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He says, to those outside the law, I became as one outside the law.

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So when Paul went to Athens, if we look at Acts chapter 17, let's turn there together. Acts chapter 17, when

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Paul was in Athens, not only did he go to the synagogue to win the Jews, he did that. He went to the synagogue, but he also went to the

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Gentiles in the marketplace. It says, every day to reason with them. And when he got an opportunity to speak publicly on Mars Hill at the

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Areopagus, in Acts chapter 17, in verse 22, he tailored his presentation of the gospel to their culture.

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And so he even quoted some of their pagan poets that they would have been familiar with.

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And so Paul did his homework. He made every effort to reach them, and yet he did not dull the blade.

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And if you're in that Acts 17, in verse 30, he says this. He says, the times of ignorance

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God overlooked, but now he commands all people, that means you

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Gentiles in Athens, all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

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And of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. And so when

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Paul went to Athens, if you look at Paul's missionary maps, Paul was everywhere.

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He was always going. He was going to the lost. He was being all things to all people.

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In Athens, again, he went to their place. He went to the marketplace. Maybe in Edmonton, where's the marketplace?

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I don't know. The farmer's market on White Ave? The marketplace is everywhere, but he went to the marketplace.

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He spoke their language. He acknowledged their worldview, and yet he preached the same message, repentance and faith in Christ.

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And he did all this while obeying, he says, the law of Christ. I didn't acknowledge it in the last verse, but Christ has, through his death, he has fulfilled the law.

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The old covenant has become obsolete. All of those laws, the 600 and some laws of the

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Old Testament, have become obsolete, have been consumed by the

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New Testament and by the new covenant. And so Paul says he is free from the law, but in this case, going to those outside of the law, he has kept the law of Christ.

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And what he means, I like what one commentator said. They said the law of Christ is simply this.

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We read about it in Galatians 6 -2 as well. It consists of the teachings of Christ.

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So go into all the world and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the

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Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. So it is the teachings of Christ, and it is the moral commands of the

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New Testament, which absorb many of the moral precepts and principles of the

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Old Testament. And so as we've had conversations in the last few months about, for instance, Sabbath keeping,

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I find it interesting that all nine or nine out of the ten commandments are repeated, are taught, are expounded upon in the

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New Testament. The moral laws, some people would call it, except for, for instance, Sabbath keeping.

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That is the only law that is not repeated, that is commanded in the New Testament. So Paul said,

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I went to those under the law, and for their sake I submitted. I went to those outside of the law, but I wasn't without principle.

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I obeyed Christ. I preached the gospel. Then he says that he even interacted with the weak

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Christians. These weak people are weak Christians now.

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And he's referring probably to 1 Corinthians chapter 9 and verse 9. If we remember, there are those weak

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Christians that were just torn up about food sacrificed to idols.

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And he says that when he went to the weak Christians, he became weak. He allowed himself to be bound by their consciences for their sake.

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He became a servant of the gospel, even to his brothers and sisters in Christ. And then he summarizes everything in verse 22.

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In verse 22, he says this. Got to get on the right page, verse 22.

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To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means

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I might win some. And if you're a student of church history, if you like church history, as you know

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I do, you'll know that some of the most effective, some of the most faithful, some of the most maybe extraordinary missionaries in the world, missions and revivals and all of these things that we see in the history of the church, the men or the women that were at the center of those revivals that God used were men and women that understood this principle.

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All things to all people, that I might win some. And a good example, perfect example of that is

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Hudson Taylor. If you've heard anything about Hudson Taylor, Hudson Taylor went to China in the 1800s when going to China was probably as difficult as it is now, maybe just for different reasons because of disease and war and conflict and all of those things.

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And Hudson Taylor left England and went to China. And when he arrived in China, what he found is that many of the missionaries lived in this settlement or this compound where all of the foreigners came to China.

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They never moved inland. It was just on the coast in the settlement. And the missionaries refused.

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They saw it as being foolish to wear any of the Chinese clothing, to adjust to any of the

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Chinese culture. And so to the ridicule of some of his colleagues, Hudson Taylor shaved his head except for a ponytail on the top.

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He adopted Chinese dress. He moved into the Chinese communities, eventually went into inland

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China. And there's probably a reason why we know his name and not the names of those other missionaries.

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That's because if you were to go to China today, you'd find not tens of thousands, not even hundreds of thousands, but probably millions of people that could trace their conversion back through the decades to Hudson Taylor.

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And that's because Hudson Taylor was what I'll call a wise gospel minister, a skilled gospel minister.

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Not just one hammer and a bunch of nails, but he could wield the sword wisely, as it were.

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Not a three -year -old, but a warrior. So what does this mean for us?

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Should I go out now and buy designer jeans and a luxury car? Maybe designer skinny jeans to win my materialistic neighbor?

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I knew skinny jeans would get somebody. But what do we do then to contextualize, if we're to use that word?

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I like, again, what one person said. This means that we must adopt an approach that is nuanced, that is thoughtful, that serves the hearer.

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When you become a servant for the sake of the gospel, you serve the hearer, not the preacher.

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And so anytime someone says, well, I'm doing this to reach the lost, and it serves the preacher, you can call them out.

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No. To contextualize, to meet people where they're at, to be all things to all people is to become a servant.

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And so for most of us in this Canadian context, we don't need to change our clothes.

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We probably don't need to change the cars that we drive or the houses that we live in. I think probably the most appropriate application from this text for us in terms of contextualizing, being all things to all people, that by all means we might save some, is simply,

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I'll say, is one word. It's the first word in the Great Commission. It's go. It's get out of these four walls.

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Get out of your house. Maybe God has called you to remain in Edmonton and to be a gospel servant here in Edmonton.

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If that's the case, if your call is to go by staying, then go across the street.

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Go to your neighbor. Go to your colleagues. Go to your friends and family. Love the people enough to tell them the truth, that they are without hope and without God in the world.

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I remember being on White Avenue one time. Some people might not think that this is contextualized gospel ministry, and you might be right.

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I'm not sure, but I was down on White Avenue sharing the gospel with strangers on White Avenue, and someone said, just leave me alone like you're crazy.

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I wasn't really pestering him that much. I was just trying to share, and I said, Sir, I would be crazy if I believed this and did not tell you.

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It is the most loving thing that we can do. I think about Paul trying to reach the

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Jews, talking about contextualizing, what you're willing to give up to reach somebody.

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He said, I could wish myself a curse for the sake of my kinsmen. So if you're called to stay, then maybe the best thing to do, the best way to apply this is tomorrow, is this week, begin by sharing the gospel with the people around you.

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I had a phone conversation earlier last week with a brother who was talking about planning a church in New Brunswick, and what he was telling me was that with one of his neighbors, he moved into this new community in New Brunswick, he was sharing the gospel with his neighbors, and he had the benefit of going around and saying,

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Hi, my name is so -and -so, and I'm a pastor, and we're starting a church in this area.

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And there was one woman where they formed a connection. So every time she would come by, he would say hi.

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Sometimes they would talk about the things of God, and the gospel, and the Bible. Other times they would talk about the weather, or the flowers, or whatever the case was.

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He just tried to meet her, where she was at. And one day she asked him,

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I would like to come to your church. Can I come check on your church? Absolutely. Come this Sunday. And so she came that Sunday, and she started coming.

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And then one day, not yet a believer, one day her son took his own life. And then she came to church, and they gathered around her, and they loved her, and they ministered the gospel to her.

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Told her about the love of Christ, about what Christ had done for people like her. They gave her a study

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Bible, and she went home, and then her husband reported back and said, she has just been living in this study

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Bible. And by God's grace, the Lord saved her, and then he saved her husband. And then through her, saved her brother -in -law, who shortly thereafter died of cancer.

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And just through this one individual, just by sharing the gospel with a neighbor, there's a whole new line in the family tree of God.

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So go. Now if God has called you, and I hope and pray that God has called some of the people in this church to go, not just across the street, but across the world.

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I shared that there's MSC, and they're going to come speak in a couple of weeks. I hope that for some of you, you hear that and think that I could be sent across the world, and that you might entertain that idea, and that God would send you to reach a people that have never, ever, ever heard the name of Jesus.

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Not once. That God would give you the conviction that Paul had in Romans 15 -20, he said,

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I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation.

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That you'd go to one of the tens of thousands of villages in India where they have never heard the name of Jesus.

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And that we would have the privilege as a church of sending you, and of supporting you, and of praying for you, and of holding the rope as you go down into the well.

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And so, God has called us to be servants for the sake of the gospel. God commands us, he commands us, or maybe not commands us, he gives us the liberation to make the gospel as accessible as possible.

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And then lastly, this is my last point, Paul used his freedom to share the blessings of the gospel with others.

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He used his freedom to share the blessings of the gospel with others. Now, if you've been listening to me up until this point, and you've said, you know, that sounds good, evangelism is biblical,

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Christ said, go into all the world and make disciples, he said, preach the gospel to all creation, I understand it, but I cannot muster it up.

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I don't know how to do it, I don't know where to find the power to do it. Here in verse 23, the apostle

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Paul gives us the motive, and what I would say, gives us the generator, the power plant of faithful and obedient gospel missions.

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He says in verse 23, he says, I do it all, everything that I do, all of this all things to all people by all means, all of this servant to all, he says,

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I do it all for the sake of the gospel that I may share with them in its blessing.

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There's a reason, whenever I teach or preach on evangelism, things like evangelism or prayer,

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I try as hard as I can possibly try to not motivate people with guilt.

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Guilt is a terrible motivator. I try as much as possible not to motivate people by duty.

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Guilt and duty do not work, but what Paul is saying here, his motive for evangelism, his motive to be this servant, to do all things, is this, it's the beauty of the gospel.

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It's the beauty of the gospel. It's the power of the gospel. It's the glory of the gospel.

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He says, I do it all for the gospel. And so if you find yourself here, if you find yourself either deficient or lacking in the area of evangelism, it might just be that you have a deficient view, a deficient understanding, a deficient appreciation of the gospel.

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So for those of you that might say, well, I'm just not an evangelist, or I'm not good at evangelism,

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I don't know how to start, I don't know where to get the boldness, my first counsel to you would be this, meditate on the gospel.

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Become a student of the gospel. Look at, dwell on the gospel.

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If you want to be all things to all men, you must first be moved by the message that we are bringing to all men, to all women.

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So meditate on the gospel. I haven't shared a Robert Murray McShane quote for a while, so I'm going to do that now.

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But Robert Murray McShane is a 19th century pastor that pretty much everything he's written is pure gold.

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And one of the things that he says is this, he says, for every look at yourself, take ten looks at Christ.

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Take ten looks at Christ. He is altogether lovely, such infinite majesty, and such meekness and grace, and for all sinners, even the chief.

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Live much in the smiles of God, bask in His beams, feel His all -seeing eye settled on you in love, and repose in His almighty arms.

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He continues, he says, let your soul be filled with a heart -ravishing sense of the sweetness and the excellency of Christ, and all that is in Him.

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Let the Holy Spirit fill every chamber of your heart. And so there will be no room, there will be no room, he says, for folly, or the world, or Satan, or the flesh.

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And I will add, and there will be no room for dullness or the lack of evangelism.

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The Lord Jesus, in Matthew 12, 34, He says, out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks.

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And so if you want the gospel message on your lips, at work, and amongst your neighbors, and amongst your friends, and amongst your family, then fill your heart with the gospel.

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Fill it to the brim. Fill it to overflowing. As McChain says it, fill every chamber.

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And what you can do is, as you've heard me say before, is preach the gospel to yourself.

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Preach the gospel. Meditate on God. For the ladies group that met yesterday, you guys are studying the attributes of God.

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Meditate on the attributes of God. Men, if you want to know about the attributes of God, let's talk about it in the next men's group.

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Let's talk about it afterwards. But meditate on the character, the nature, the person of God. Meditate on man.

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Meditate on your own sinfulness, our helpless estate as sinners, our own sinful, and vile, and wretched, and miserable selves.

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And then like Robert Murray McChain, after this look at ourselves, take ten looks at Christ, God, and man, and then

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Christ. Look to Christ. Even while we were yet sinners,

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Christ died for us. What an amazing truth. And He died not just for sin in general, but He died for your sin.

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Sin with your name on it. Your name on that cross. He died for you.

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And by His blood, He has justified every Christian, every believer. He's made propitiation.

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He has reconciled us to God. In Christ, there is no condemnation. We were singing that hymn earlier today.

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Full atonement, can it be? Yes. Complete.

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It is finished. Full atonement in Christ. And so, if you want to be a gospel minister, meditate on the gospel.

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God, man, Christ, and then a renewed response, repentance and faith towards God.

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Martin Luther, in his 95 Theses, one of the things that he said is that repentance is not a one -time event.

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It's something that the Christian does every single day. And that's what we do. We meditate on the gospel, and then we repent anew.

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We turn to God, we conform ourselves to Him, and we look to Christ. We look to Him.

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And then when you're full of the gospel, you'll want to share that blessing with every person that you know.

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Paul says at the end of verse 23, that I may share with them in its blessing.

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You know, when we eat at a good restaurant, we want to tell other people, right? Nicole will come home and say, oh, someone so -and -so said that this is a great show on Netflix.

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Well, my goodness, how does that pale in comparison to the greatest news in all the world, the salvation of our souls freely and fully through Christ?

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There are very few things in the world that are worth living for, even fewer things in the world worth dying for, but I assure you the gospel is that thing.

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If there is that thing, there is that thing. It's the gospel. Sorry, but it is the gospel.

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I remember being in Indonesia. That was very circular. I remember being in Indonesia, and we were driving on a jungle road, literally in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by volcanoes, and there was a marker on the side of the road, and we asked the driver of the car what that marker was, and he said there were two missionaries that came from America, two

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Baptist missionaries. They landed in Sebulga in North Sumatra in Indonesia on the coast of the

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Indian Ocean, and in the blistering heat, they scaled up, and we drove down.

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After that, we drove down. It seemed like forever, but they scaled up into the mountains of Indonesia in this blistering heat with bugs and tropical plants, and it was true bushwhacking, and when they got to that point where the marker was, they were met by the

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Batak people in the inland, the inner interior of Indonesia, this Batak tribe, and one would hope that if you've traveled across the world to bring the good news of Christ to a people, and you've bushwhacked for two weeks, and now you're there, you're making first contact that you'd be welcomed warmly, that you'd be received, but instead they were received by the warriors of the tribe with spears, and that marker on the side of the road was where they were killed and cannibalized on the spot.

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Why would people do that? Would someone do that out of guilt? Would someone do that out of duty?

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Maybe I suppose a few, but really, it's the beauty of the gospel.

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It's the glory of the gospel. It's the excellency of Christ that would drive a person to do that, and friends, beloved, we need to be filled with the excellency of Christ.

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We do. So, if you're free in Christ, are you free in Christ today?

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Then exchange your freedom. Become a servant for the sake of the gospel.

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Exchange it now for the good of others. Be all things to all people that by all means we might save some, and when we do that, not only do we obey

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Paul when he says in verse 11, the imitators of me, but in doing that, we are imitators of Christ.

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He became a servant. He humbled himself for our sake. He became all things to all men.

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He came to this earth. He came to our place. He spoke our language. He reached us in our context, and he's given us this glorious gospel.