First Baptist Church: Sermon

Message for May 5, 2002
by Pastor Glenn Layne
1 Corinthians 9:19-23

THE BIG IDEA:
The first step in sharing Christ with the world is a lifestyle of integrity, servanthood and passion.

It’s shocking! But true:

Surveys conducted over the last 20 years all agree: about 25% of people in America who do not now attend any church would respond positively if someone they know would invite them to attend worship.

25%!

That means, in round terms, that if every believer invited every "unchurched" America to attend worship next week, an additional 35,000,000 people would attend a place of Christian worship next weekend!

Amazing!

But there’s some other news. For the vast majority of those 35 million people, the experience of attending worship would have a negative spiritual influence on them!

Why? Because there’s a reason that these 35 million don’t come already—and the problem often isn’t God—it’s the church.

Most of those 35 million would come to churches that are boring, weird, irrelevant, self-centered, maybe legalistic (or maybe sappily "nice"), formal, cold, and or impractical—with no connection to his or her real daily life.

And the next week? Most of those 35 million would not be back—and they’d be more determined that ever never to return.

This should be our greatest heartbreak. A world without Christ; people who are dying slowly because of the absence of Jesus from their lives, people hollow on the inside, biding time until they slip into eternity lost forever.

Would you agree with me--that the world needs Christ!
But there are two big barriers:

1. Human sin and resistance against God.

The human heart, the Bible tells us, is resistant to God. As sinners, we all in our natural state resist His Lordship. The Bible says no one seeks after God—no one!

If that were all, then that’d be it. If someone’s problem with God were just God, then they’d be nothing I can do about it. I can’t do anything about people’s sin and their spiritual state of rebellion against God. But there’s more. The other big barrier is…

2. The unwillingness of the church to accept the challenge and to be a servant to the lost.

If people have a problem with God, so be it. But for many God isn’t the problem. The church is. So often the church is boring, weird, irrelevant, self-centered, legalistic, formal, cold, and or impractical. Now I don’t think that God is boring or irrelevant or nasty or cold. The church can be, though. The church becomes the barrier between God and people. That’s a crime. God designed the church to be the opposite: a bridge, not a wall!

If we are concerned for the eternal souls of men and women, then this is the starting point. We must make it a matter of urgency that we as individuals, and we as a church be a door, not a barrier for people to see what God is like.

John MacArthur put it this way:

If a person is offended by God’s word, that is his problem. If a person is offended by biblical doctrine, standards or church discipline, that is his problem. That person is offended by God. But if he is offended by our unnecessary behavior or practices—no matter how good or acceptable those may be in themselves—his problem becomes our problem.

Paul addresses this issue here in 1 Corinthians 9. We’re going to look at this in two parts: verses 19-23 this week and in two weeks, after Mother’s day, verses 24-27.

The big issue in chapters 8-9 of 1 Corinthians is freedom. The church members at Corinth were big believers in freedom. But Paul says that there are times when you self-limit your own freedom for the sake of other people. There are times you set aside your rights for the sake of the well being of people around you.

For example, a big issue for them was meat for sale in the Corinthian marketplace that had been slaughtered as part of idol worship. (This is in chapter 8.) Paul says that on one level—who cares? An idol’s an idol. Looks like a nice cut of beef to me.

But on another level, if you find it hurts your conscience, don’t buy it and don’t eat it. And if your "freedom" is offensive to someone who feels that way, then don’t do it. It wouldn’t be right to exercise that right if it messes up a fellow-believer’s mind.

That’s why you surrender your rights. Paul surrendered a right in his ministry in Corinth. He said that he had a right to be paid for his labors by the church, but he gave up that right in their case. (This is the first part of chapter 9.) Instead, he lived on mission support from churches in northern Greece (the Roman province of Macedonia), and on what he earned as a tentmaker. The reason for this extra degree of caution was that in Corinth, there were all kinds of philosophers and soothsayers who charged for their services, and he didn’t want to be confused with them for one minute. He didn’t want his "rights" to get in the way of the gospel of Jesus. He knew that when he surrendered his "rights" that that would remove a significant barrier for the message of Jesus getting out.

Let’s have a close look at the passage.

1. Fruitful evangelism always involves the voluntary surrender of your "rights." (1 Corinthians 9:19)

19Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible.

Paul is a free man. He is free from being an "employee" of the Corinthians. He is also free from Old Covenant rules. Paul, the Jew, would never have eaten meat that had been offered to idols. But Paul, the new man in Jesus, says that that’s part of his freedom. But—in spite of his freedom, he’d made himself a slave—get this: to EVERYONE.

Probably Paul has in mind the custom recorded in Exodus 21:5-6. Hebrew servants could not be made slaves—lifelong servants—by other Hebrews against their will. They could be held as debtor servants for only six years. After 6 years, the debt was considered paid in full, no matter what, and no matter how much he’d owed, and he was free to go.

But what if a servant said, "I like it here. I don’t want to go." That was another matter. That servant gave up his rights voluntarily. To mark him out as a volunteer servant for life, his ear was pierced in a distinctive way.

Paul says he’s voluntarily surrendered his freedom for this cause: "to win as many as possible." We surrender our rights to win people to the gospel of Jesus.

ERROR! 2 freedom, he’d made himself a slave—get this: to EVERYONE.
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4 Probably Paul has in mind the custom recorded in Exodus 21:5-6. Hebrew servants could not be made slaves—lifelong servants—by other Hebrews against their will. They could be held as debtor servants for only six years. After 6 years, the debt was considered paid in full, no matter what, and no matter how much he’d owed, and he was free to go.
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6 But what if a servant said, "I like it here. I don’t want to go." That was another matter. That servant gave up his rights voluntarily. To mark him out as a volunteer servant for life, his ear was pierced in a distinctive way.
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8 Paul says he’s voluntarily surrendered his freedom for this cause: "to win as many as possible." We surrender our rights to win people to the gospel of Jesus.
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2. What sort of "rights" do we surrender for the sake of making Christ known? (1 Corinthians 9:20-22a)

20 To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. 21 To those not having the law I became lik

the sausage!

The same would go for his approach. He would appeal to that 1st century AD Jew on the basis of how Jesus fulfilled the prophecies of the Scriptures.

Let me give a contemporary example. I have a friend, Steve Tsoukalas, whose life burden it is to evangelize people who have