A stewardship entrusted

This morning you have on your handout a message focused on this word stewardships. And so we'll begin there. I want to kind of give some summary comments about the passage we're looking at. And one of those is to say that the passage has three main areas that it focuses upon, three main topics, if you will. There is a common thread through them. And that is, it's all related to rights and freedoms and grace obligations of apostleship. And it certainly has applications to our own lives and ministries here. His teachings can be summarized in these three ways.

First one being his stewardship given by Christ and what motivates him. What is the thing that drives him and draws him along in his carrying out of his ministry, this stewardship given by Christ himself. Secondly, he talks about the self-limiting rights and freedoms for the sake of gospel. Things that he has a right to, things that he has the freedom to do, but he deliberately chooses to hold back from, to not claim, for the sake of the furtherance of the gospel.

And thirdly, spiritual principles that he draws from the field of athletics. Those three things are what constitute this chapter. One other thing that's important to understand, one of the things we've done from time to time is explain kind of the mindset of the culture that impacts how the Apostle Paul and other authors of Scripture wrote. One of the things we said, for example, some years ago when we were going through the book of Philippians, is Philippians is four chapters of Paul saying thank you in a culture that did not allow you to say thank you.

One of the things we have to point out here is throughout the Roman Empire, and this was only an exception in some cases, humility was not looked upon as a virtue. And that was certainly true of this Corinthian culture here. Humility was not looked upon as a virtue. In the pagan cultures, claiming all the rights and status that was due you, that was virtuous.

But humility, to them, that was rather disgusting, at least puzzling. So Paul had actually two kinds of problems as he tried to address these believers in Corinth. And the two kinds of problems that he had were these. The believers in Corinth looked up to looking down on lesser people. They looked up to looking down. Someone who looked down on others, well, that was rather heroic. At least so they thought.

And the second problem he had is the believers in Corinth looked down on Paul's humility. Here is Paul, they're saying, you're an apostle, but you're not acting like an apostle, claiming all the rights and privileges and the prestige that goes along with an apostle. They said, so you're rather puzzling. So Paul had a lot to explain in terms of how they thought and in terms of how the culture had taught these believers to think.

So the main theme in these verses is not claiming one's right, deliberately for the sake of the church body and for the furtherance of the gospel. That's the main theme that carries through this chapter. He's continuing, in fact, though he doesn't mention it in the chapter, he's continuing also to answer their question about meat offered to idols. How is he doing that? He's doing that because he's telling them Here is how a believer refrains from the rights and privileges they might otherwise have for the sake of the body and for the sake of the gospel.

He's also going to continue as we step through these verses to respond to their questioning of his apostleship. It's apparent as we see even from the last chapter that they were puzzled about his claiming, I'm an apostle and yet not claiming all the rights and privileges, is claiming, yes, I'm an apostle, but not pursuing the prestige that goes along with being an apostle. Why on earth would Paul not seek to have everyone look up to him? Why would Paul not claim all the rights and privileges and every aspect of the prestige that certainly do him? Now, we put here, this is also on the first page of your handout, as one writes about one's rights, a man's motives matter massively. And that's not a tongue twister.

Yeah. Okay. Paul has a real challenge in writing to these believers. On the one hand, he has to write and say, most certainly I'm an apostle. I really am. I genuinely am. I talked with the Lord Jesus Christ personally. He personally appointed me. and I meet all the biblical qualifications of an apostle.

In addition to that, and included in that, is the right for support from the churches that I founded, even though I'm not claiming it. On the other hand, however, he has to tell them why he's setting aside the claim to support that he otherwise would have. He certainly has it as a right as an apostle.

It gets more complicated. He has to tell them that without making them think that he's looking for support. Oh boy. He's stepping through a real minefield here trying to explain these things. They don't understand it. And because they have a worldly and fleshly mindset, it's an even tougher job.

So one of the questions we would ask here is what makes Paul tick? Okay? What makes Paul tick? Why does Paul do the things that he does? Why does he not do the things that they expect him to? What makes Paul tick? What's his motivation behind everything that he does here?

So, he's telling them that though he has a right to support, he could claim it, he's telling them that his motivation for offering the gospel is not money. which is evidenced by the fact that he does not charge them for graciously offering the gospel. Doesn't charge.

By the way, I was talking to someone recently and they said, well, I went to this supposed Christian counselor and he charged a bunch of money. I mean, we forked out a pretty good chunk of change to talk with this guy for an hour. I said, well, Paul didn't do that. That's exactly what you see set aside here, charging money for the gospel.

Instead here, Paul, as he is speaking to these Corinthian believers, sees himself as before the Lord. He says, it's ultimately before the Lord that I stand. It's not before you. Oh, yes, you're the church that I founded. Oh, yes, you're the ones that I'm ministering to. I'm writing you letters. So far as we have any record, he wrote actually four letters to the same church. I am an apostle appointed to you and the one that founded that church.

But he sees himself not as before them, but as ultimately before the Lord of glory. He says, I am going to stand before the Lord, and that's the day that I'm thinking about. That's what's in my mind. As we put it previously here, Paul is doing what we also are called to do, to live this day for that day, that day when we go to see the Lord face to face. That's the perspective that Paul has and that he presents here. That's what makes Paul tick. In his heart of hearts, that's what motivates him. What does the Lord think? How will the Lord view it? For that day when I go to see the Lord and to see Him face to face, what will matter now for them? You've heard the phrase, between a rock and a hard place.

Well, in verses 15 through 18, Paul's between a choice and no choice. Paul did tell them that he did have a choice in how he would be supported when he preached the gospel. He could choose. It was his option. He was free to choose. Even though he had the right, he was free to choose to either support himself or he could rely on the support of the churches. He could do either one. So he did have a choice in that matter. He could choose to be supported or to support himself. That was an option, so he did have a choice there.

Paul also told him in these verses that he really had no choice as to whether or not he preached the gospel. Matter of fact, he puts it, he must preach the gospel. He had been entrusted with doing so by the Lord himself. I suppose in one sense you could say he had a choice, but to him that was no choice at all.

A stewardship means that you've been entrusted. A lot of times when we speak in a church context, people tend to think of stewardship as all about the money that you give. And of course, here at Holly Hills, you'll have to beat us bloody before we'll talk about money. But, oh, by the way, that's entrusted, not encrusted. Okay? All right. Just so you know. Okay.

The higher the level of the person or the one doing the entrusting, and the more critical the task that's assigned, the more important the stewardship that's been entrusted. Paul sees himself as having been given this assignment, his assignment as an apostle, to preach and to teach the gospel, and to found these churches, he sees that as it can't come from a higher authority in the entire universe. And he sees the assignment to himself as something that's not just for a time and then he'll let it go, but to his very last breath. There is nothing, so far as Paul sees it, any more critical. Since Paul had been given this lifelong assignment by the Lord Jesus himself, Paul viewed his stewardship as of the utmost importance.

And that's why he could write, woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. It comes from an understanding of the nature of his stewardship. Now, when he says, woe is me, do you think that he is worried that he's going to lose his salvation if he doesn't carry this out?

No. That's not his concern. It's not a question of condemnation for him. It's a question of how will the evaluation go when I stand before the Lord. Evaluation for rewards. That's what's in his mind and on his thoughts. Woe is me if I do not preach the gospel. Not for fear of eternal condemnation. Not for fear of where he's going to spend eternity. Not even for fear of who he's going to spend eternity with. But what's the quality of that eternity in terms of his capacity to glorify the Lord?

So here, in verses 19-23, the Corinthians are puzzled. They're apparently having a tough time understanding Paul's seemingly inconsistent behavior. Wait a minute, here's Paul, he says he's an apostle? That should give him these rights and freedoms and privileges and prestige right at the top. I mean, after all, the Corinthians were all into climbing the social ladder. That should put Paul at the top of the social ladder. So why is he not choosing to get support? Why is he not claiming all the prestige and honors and privileges that go along with his being an apostle?

Furthermore, they were also puzzled about something else. Was he going to act like a Jew or act like a Gentile? Here's Paul. They knew he was Jewish, and yet he wasn't doing all the Jewish things. Sometimes he would behave as the Gentiles do. Sometimes he would behave as the Jews. He would use Jewish language and Gentile language.

They were puzzled. They didn't understand. They thought, Paul, we're not quite sure about you. I know years ago, I was talking to my grandmother one time. This was the one that was a missionary to the cannibals. And she said, everyone in the world is crazy except me and you. And sometimes I worry about you. They had this concern over Paul. They looked at Paul and they said, boy, I can't quite figure this guy out.

Why on earth, it didn't make any sense to them, would he set aside his total right to compensation and all the other rights of apostleship and yet still claim to be an apostle? Why wouldn't he just grab for it? Why wouldn't he press for it and insist upon it? For the sake of the gospel, for the sake of the gospel, he would set aside the things that don't matter for what really matters. Paul had determined what really matters. He says, I know what matters and I know what doesn't.

And whether I look like a Jew or look like a Gentile doesn't matter a whole bunch. Whether I eat this or don't eat this or drink that or don't drink that, that doesn't matter a whole bunch. The clothing doesn't make a difference. I probably wore clothing, but what kind?

That's a different matter. But what does matter, what does matter is the gospel. Practically everything else is negotiable. Everything else is subject to I could do it or not do it. I could pass on it or have it. That's not the issue. What matters is the gospel. So the main thing is that we keep the main thing as the main thing. Got that? Okay. The main thing, right? All right. The main thing is we keep the main thing as the main thing.

Since the believers in Corinth did not seem to understand the great and ultimate importance of the gospel, by the way, that's the main thing, they didn't understand God's perspective on anything else very well either. They didn't understand why Paul would put the gospel first. And by the way, when I say the gospel, I include the gospel that leads one to salvation.

Let me summarize it briefly, just to be clear. Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again. Do you believe it? That's the gospel leading to salvation. But then the next aspect of the gospel is the wider sense. Everything that the Bible teaches is the gospel, and that's the gospel truth. Paul, however, saw that spiritually and morally neutral matters of food, dress, clothing, all those things, okay, could not touch the importance of his preaching in reaching others so that they receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. He says, there are all this other stuff's negotiable. You know, what kind of meat do you get from the meat market? You know, how is that vegetable prepared? You know, does it have a French name? He didn't care. What he really cared about was the gospel. He says, everything else really doesn't matter a whole lot. Now the Apostle Paul steps into sports analogies. And what's interesting, I was thinking of, oh, I could develop a whole thing on all the sports analogies in Scripture, but there's too much. There's too many.

This is one place where he uses it, and it goes into all sorts of It continues on, steps through scripture. Philippians, he talks to them, basically uses an analogy from chariot racing. Hebrews, well, we'll get to that in a bit here. Even Jude, the book of Jude, only one chapter long, verse 3.

Jude says, I urge, I urge you, okay, and he uses an athletic term. I urge you to carry out this Olympic effort. It's a super Olympic effort on behalf of the gospel that was once for all given to the saints. So he uses this athletic term, basically an ultimate athletic term, in order to get across how we ought to contend for the gospel. So Paul and other New Testament authors drew upon intense analogies from sports. Why the intense analogies?

Many of the people could see athletes working out. They would work out in town at a lot of the gymnasiums that were there. They would work out out in the fields. You would see athletes in various places. Some of them would demonstrate not only at athletic events but in the theaters if they had an event that would fit there.

It was something widely and highly regarded throughout the entire Roman Empire. So he knew that if he drew upon a sports analogy, ah, that would get their attention. Everybody would understand it, even if they weren't personally involved in the athletics. In this case, Paul made the point that the athletes make multiple sacrifices intentionally in both training and competition, setting aside their rights in order to win.

Could they eat this? Yes. Could they also do this other thing and take some time off and do this other activity? Yes, they could. But intentionally, in order to win, they set aside things that they could do, that they have a right to choose. privileges they most certainly could have in order to win.

Runners in the New Testament times would train for 10 months nonstop before each race. That was the tradition. The last month before each race would be spent at the training site of the race itself. They would become very familiar with the particular situation and ground conditions and anything else about the environment. They would train for the last month right at the site. That was the tradition in terms of getting ready for a race.

All the usual enjoyments and leisure activities, all the rights and privileges would be set aside for the sake of one thing, athletic advantage. The athlete would say this is more important than that. Therefore, I will set aside those things for the sake of what the athlete considered important, winning. Every movement, even the rest that they took, intake of food and drink was part of the training, part of getting ready.

I'll set aside this for the importance of that. That's Paul's point here. Now, real athletes don't do empty training, okay? They don't just box into the air as Paul puts it. They don't just run wandering and meandering about. And so it's empty training and ineffective competition is what he's saying. They just don't do that. That's not how it's done.

I have to tell a story on myself. I hope you can put up with it. Here we are in Denver or thereabouts. And I went to high school in this little town called Boonville, Northern California. And here is the area around the high school in Boonville. Here is the high school where I went. There is the airport that Nancy came in on a private plane every weekend while I was engaged to her. Well, she'll have to tell you that story anyway.

And here is the track where I would practice and run. My freshman year, it was the last competition, the last track meet of the year. I was to run the two-mile, the last event of the day. All would have gone fairly well, I'm pretty sure. I had trained plenty, except for the fact that it was 108 degrees outside. And so I began the competition and was doing pretty well.

First lap, second lap, third lap, fourth lap. Around the fifth lap, however, I noticed that things started turning alternately orange and yellow and black. That wasn't a good sign. I got in front of the stands and all of a sudden the orange and the yellow stopped and all I saw was black.

Now, this I'm going to have to tell you on faith from what I was told, not because I remember it, but the people who were at the stands said that I kept running. I fell over and kept running. And they pulled me in front of the stands to get me out from underneath the sun and cover me up and recover. But all that running, it looked like I was doing something, but I wasn't getting anywhere. That's the kind of useless running that Paul was talking about.

Okay? The runner actually runs and goes somewhere. He has direction to what he's doing. He's not just running while he's laying on the ground. Okay. So Paul makes the point that runners in both training and competition run with purpose and direction there, not with random wandering and casual pace.

Likewise, a boxer trains and competes by making contact with precision. He doesn't just wildly throw his fists into the air without content or direction. He has purpose and specificity. He wants to make contact and wants to have accuracy and force with his blows.

So Paul makes both those comparisons. The real athletes don't do empty training because they don't want to do empty competitions, not like the one I did. Our living as Christians is to have direction and impact and significance too. And that's one reason why here Paul actually ceases talking about just himself and points to them as well. But Paul does more than just explain himself here. Paul's point in telling them that the only ones who follow the rules can win the prize is not to say that only one of them will end up being saved or one of them will be rewarded.

You know, it's funny, we've got a series of reality TV shows, and it seems like most of the TV show is consumed with who's going to get eliminated. You notice that? I mean, we'll have two dozen people, and all this angst and trauma is all about who gets eliminated. A great deal of that and whether it's in the corporate boardroom or whether it's in an exercise program or out on some island somewhere or whether people are picking brides and bridegrooms. It all seems to be about that.

Who's not going to get there? That's not Paul's point here. He says only one wins the prize and it's the one who wins following all the rules. His point isn't that we be under a bunch of rules, but in order for us to win the spiritual race before us, there are guiding principles that call for us to place high value on the spiritual race that we're running.

Now, you and I are running a race. That's the comparison he makes, and other authors of Scripture do as well. We are, in fact, running a race. In Hebrews 12, 1 and 2, which I think makes the point well, it says, therefore, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, let us also lay aside every encumbrance in the sin which so easily entangles us, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross. despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God."

Now, there are two places in this passage where it says, let us. Right there and right there in verse 1. That has nothing to do with let us, just so you know. But, we've pointed out, and this was several chapters back, starting in 1 Corinthians 4, when you see let, in the New Testament from the book of Acts to the very end, it doesn't mean allow. Let does not mean allow in this passage or, in fact, anywhere from Acts to Revelation. Rather, this let means must.

You must. So therefore, and I took the liberty of making the substitution, since we have so great a cloud of witnesses surrounding us, We must also lay aside every encumbrance in the sin which so easily entangles us, and we must run with endurance the race that is set before us.

Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Who for the joy set before him endured the cross. What's interesting is we have a race before us And the way this passage puts it, Christ had a race before him. We are to keep our eyes on Christ, the runner of the race before us.

Keep our eyes fixed on him. During New Testament times, the competitors would fix their eyes on the goal. That's where we get our word scope, skapos. That's the place where they would put their eyes and fix it on the goal and run for the goal line. So this fixing our eyes on Jesus, beholding him, continuing to look at him, that's the key. I'm going to ask for your, what's the word, patience and perseverance here.

I'm going to sing alternate words to a chorus to a song that you've probably heard before, We Shall Behold Him. The chorus words that are in the original song are just fine. This is just an alternate meaning to that chorus. And so if you'll bear with me, I've changed the words to fit kind of the passage we just looked at here.

And we now behold him. We now behold him. We are transformed from glory to glory. We now behold Him. Yes, we now behold Him through His Word, our Savior and Lord. We now behold Him. We now behold Him. We are transformed from glory to glory. We now behold Him. Yes, we now behold Him through His Word, our Savior and Lord.

But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit. Let's pray. Lord, as we see this passage here, as we see what you've written for us, we pray that we would take what Paul has written to mind and to heart, and to see and understand what the Corinthians apparently never understood, and that is the importance of the Gospel. And Lord, as we look at This passage, as we look at the words that are in it, we pray that above all that our hearts and minds would be drawn to fix our eyes upon you, the eyes of our hearts, that indeed by faith we would be transformed as a work of your Holy Spirit, as we behold you, as we behold your glory, as you've revealed it to us. Thank you for the miraculous transformation that you do even as we meet here this morning. We pray in Jesus' marvelous and wonderful name. Amen.