Run to Win

Good morning. I didn't know that about the weddings. Yeah, that was a fun time. Uh, it's good to be with you this morning. Uh, I was scheduled to preach on this Sunday, I think long before any decision was made about, uh, who the elders will be recommending to you. So I'm not a special preacher on a special Sunday or anything like that, uh, but I hope that what I bring to you will be a word from God and will encourage you in this time.

Would you please pray with me? Father in heaven, I ask that you would work through my voice and my words to speak your will to your people. We praise you for the ways you've provided for this church, uh, over its years of existence and even over the last months of difficulty. We pray that you would continue to shepherd this flock through your Son as your own flock, and that you would build up and strengthen them in unity and in grace. We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

How many of you like running? Wow. Surprising. I mean, that might be more than half. Uh, how many of you hate running? Oh, well, okay, yeah. I don't- it's a surprisingly even split, though. Uh, I started running cross country in sixth grade, um, and as a sixth grader, I was pretty good. Um, I was one of the fastest guys on our public school middle school team, often in the top 10, sometimes top 7.

Um, for some reason, I got like bronchitis or something in seventh grade, and something else happened, and by the time I got to freshman year of high school, I was still running cross country, but I hadn't gotten any faster, and everybody else had, which by the time you get to high school is a bit of a problem. Um, and eventually in ninth grade I had an epiphany, which was I'm bad at this, and I don't even like it. What am I doing? So I quit, I quit cross country.

Now, whether or not you like running, you have races to run in your life. Anything that has a defined start and a distinct end point can be considered a race. You have a project to finish. You have a deadline to meet. You have homework to get done. You have a house to sell, or you have a driver's license to get, high school to graduate from. Maybe you have retirement that you're waiting to get to. Maybe you have treatment that you need to finish or healing to undergo. I'm sure, I think at least a few of you feel like you're maybe reaching the finish line of a race of a season of this church that you'll be ready to be done with. Many of you are well into the race of another school year.

As we approached this school year in our home, my son Arthur was dreading his own grueling race at home this year as he anticipated having to endure nine more months of his brothers being gone from home most of the day. Now there's nothing long- wrong with looking ahead to the finish line of these races. It's good to reach the end of something, isn't it? But what happens if you quit before the end of your race? What if you never cross the finish line? Then you're disqualified. There's no gratification, no award, no sense of accomplishment, no nothing. One essential aspect of running any race is getting all the way to the end.

The Bible talks a lot about running in a race. It's actually one of the Apostle Paul's favorite analogies. He mentions running in Romans 1, sorry, Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians, and he mentions athletes and the work of being an athlete in other places in Scripture. Our passage this morning is one of those places in 1 Corinthians 9. Would you please stand with me as we come to God's word and hear from his word together?

This is 1 Corinthians 9, verses 23 to 25, and this is the word of the Lord. The Apostle Paul writes by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he says, "I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker of it. Do you not know that those who run in a race all run, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way that you may win. Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things. They then do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. Therefore, I run in such a way as not without aim. I box in such a way as not beating the air, but I discipline my body and make it my slave, so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified."

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Would you please have a seat?

These words were written by the Apostle Paul to Christians in Corinth, which is a city in Greece. By the time the Apostle Paul traveled to Greece on his missionary journeys, prestigious athletics competitions had been a central part of Greek culture for hundreds of years. Now, you might know that our modern Olympics today are modeled after the ancient Olympic Games, which took place in Olympia in Greece every four years. Now, there was another set of great games very like the Olympic Games that took place in or near Corinth every two years. So Paul referring to those who compete in the games was a cultural analogy that meant a lot to the Corinthians. It was a lot like referring in our day to our own Olympic athletes.

The Greeks revered their athletes, so much so that athletes often took on a god-like status in Greek culture because of their impressive achievements. This is an ancient analogy which we can understand pretty well. Thinking about top tier athletes competing in a physical race is a perfectly relevant illustration for us today. Paul says, "Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things." Now, what do you think he is talking about when he said athletes exercised self-control in all things? Well, he meant exactly what it still means today.

So to take as one example, Michael Phelps, one of the most famous Olympians of our day, had a very rigorous schedule of training for at least 6 hours a day, you know, at the height of his Olympic work. He had a very rigorous diet, which wasn't rigorous in the sense that we usually think of a rigorous diet. He often consumed 10,000 calories a day because of all of the energy that he was expending, and it actually took great discipline to put into his body as much as he needed to feed him for his athletic work. It wasn't just gorging himself, it was very disciplined.

He was also disciplined in his sleep. He slept 8 hours a night, often in a hyperbaric chamber that made simulated high altitude of, you know, less oxygen so that his body would be producing the red blood cells it needed for his aerobic work that he was going to be doing. Plus, he would often take a nap in the afternoon, even with those 8 hours of sleep. Beyond that, being an athlete requires, for Olympians at that level, sacrificing social opportunities, giving up other work opportunities, saying no. They organize their entire lives around their training.

Recently, with my sons, I watched the movie Miracle, which is about the 1980 USA men's hockey team who defeated the Soviets at the Olympics. One of the things that characterized that team was incredible discipline. One of the reasons they were able to beat the Soviets, who were arguably, arguably of greater skill than they were, was because they dedicated themselves to rigorous conditioning that enabled them to keep skating with their opponents for more than an hour of intense competition on the ice.

Olympic athletes demonstrate incredible self-control and self-discipline, sometimes for many years of their lives. But for what purpose? What motivates them to make sacrifices, to discipline their bodies to the extreme, to exercise self-control in all things? Why do they do it? Well, they do it to win. Today, the prize for Olympians is a gold medal. And it's not just about having a heavy circle to hang around your neck, right? It's everything that medal represents: strength, power, endurance, skill, dedication, and ultimately victory, being the best. And there's a feeling of immortality that goes along with winning that gold medal. When you win it, you know your name will end up in the history books, and the glory of your name will continue even after you pass on.

At this point, it would be helpful to understand something about those ancient Greek games that might not be as obvious to us about our modern Olympics. The ancient games were as much religious festivals as athletic events. The games were part of larger sacred celebrations held in honor of particular gods. They were acts of worshipful devotion, not just for athletes to win glory for themselves, which is often how we think of it, but so that they might honor their gods. The Isthmian Games, which were the games in Corinth, were dedicated to the god Poseidon, and champions were awarded a crown made of pine leaves because pine was considered sacred to Poseidon.

Now, this religious element of how the Greeks saw athletics is essential to the Apostle Paul's analogy. When he mentions the wreath, or crown is another way of translating it, that's what he's talking about. He's talking about this wreath that was a sign of approval from the gods. The gods say, "You won." That's what the wreath represented. Now let me ask you a question. Which god do you want a crown from? The Greeks sought their crowns from Zeus or from Poseidon. The Apostle Paul was teaching the Christians here in Corinth not to seek their crown from vain idols, but from the living God who made heaven and earth. Amen.

Now, I don't think anyone in this room, probably, is seeking a crown from Zeus or Poseidon, and I don't think our modern Olympians are either. In our enlightened, humanistic day, we tend to think we've evolved beyond that kind of devotion to the gods. But I think what has really happened is that man himself has simply become our god. We give our highest praise and honor to men and their accomplishments. We build statues and write songs and hang posters of mere men. We treat men like gods, forgetting that they were made by someone. Now, this isn't all that different from the Greeks I mentioned. Their Olympians were sometimes elevated to godlike status, the men themselves.

But not only do we give our praises to men, often the highest praise and honor we seek is the glory that comes from man. We seek man's approval above anything else, which is another way of treating man himself as a god. Brothers and sisters, we must seek the crown that comes from the Most High God.

The Greek word Paul uses in this passage is the word for crown, which is what some of your translations probably say. Other translations go with wreath, probably because that gives a more historically accurate picture of what Paul was actually talking about, which was something made out of leaves. And that, in Paul's analogy, highlights the corruptible and perishable nature of the crowns that were sought after by his, those Olympians. After all, how long would a crown of pine leaves last? It's helpful to think of it as a wreath, right? Because it doesn't even hang around for a year, you know, it gets brown and crinkles and falls away.

Now, crowns can seem kind of abstract to us, even when we think of ones made of gold. And it's probably even more abstract to think about winning a crown of pine. Well, it would have meant far more to the Corinthians than it does to us. It would have been more along the lines of what winning an Olympic gold medal means to us. And how does that sound to you? If you thought it was within your talents and your resources to win an Olympic gold medal, would you do it? Almost anyone would. Which one of us has not imagined ourselves up on the podium, flag behind you, national anthem playing, feeling the weight of that medal around your neck?

Many think it's so worthwhile that they dedicate their whole lives to achieving that goal. And I bet if we actually had the talents and the potential to get there, many more of us would actually pursue it. Olympians are willing to give up everything. Comfort, friends, family, other hobbies and pursuits, money. They're willing to sacrifice their bodies and even risk death. So, I don't know if you read about the downhill skier Lindsey Vonn, 40 years old, thought it was a good idea to go 90 miles an hour down, uh, a ski slope again, and, uh, completely mangled her leg and almost died from compartment syndrome in the last, uh, Winter Olympics. But that's the kind of dedication that the Apostle Paul is talking about, that these athletes have, willing to sacrifice everything.

Now they do it for gold, our Olympians do, which is better than pine leaves, arguably, but Paul's analogy still holds because even gold is perishable. That's the word that the Apostle Peter uses. He says, "gold, which is perishable" in 1 Peter 1. Gold gets lost, it gets stolen, it can be corrupted, and most importantly, you can't take it with you when you die.

And we can learn Paul's lesson here by looking at our Olympians. We can say of them, they exercise self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable medal, but we an imperishable. If the worshippers of false gods disciplined themselves for the pursuit of a wreath that would dry up and fall apart, how much more should we dedicate ourselves to receiving an imperishable medal of achievement from the true God who made us? On Judgment Day, don't you want Christ himself to say to you, "You win"? I sure hope so.

This is what the Holy Spirit is calling us to through the Apostle Paul when he says, "Run in such a way that you may win." Aim for the right prize and do it with everything you have. Now, in order to win that prize, we have to bear in mind a few things.

Many in this world are running their hardest in life, giving it their all, but for the wrong prize. So the first thing we need to bear in mind is that you must be in the right race. Only those who step onto Christ's path by putting their faith in him and in his atoning death, and then by following in his righteous footsteps, pursuing the glory of God, only those will receive a crown of life.

In the kingdom of heaven, there's no panel of judges measuring you against a bunch of other competitors to see how you compare. Jesus Christ will be the judge who determines who receives the prize. So you must seek his approval through walking according to his gospel. You must be in the right race. But not only that, you must run in such a way as to win. Now, thankfully, God is gracious and generous.

There's not a podium where just one of us gets to stand at the top, and it's mutually exclusive where everybody else doesn't make it. God is gracious and generous, and there is more than one winner in the heavenly race. Anyone who, through the power of Christ, overcomes sin, the world, and the devil will be awarded the victor's crown. The point of Paul's race analogy is to teach us about how we are to run, not about how many will receive that crown of life.

So what does it look like to run in such a way that we may win? Well, Paul focuses largely on the importance of self-control. This comes directly from the example of the athlete who exercises self-control in all things. The elite athlete is remarkable for what pleasures and pursuits he is willing to give up for the sake of his prize. He is governed not by passing pleasures, but by his goal, which may lie months or even years into the future.

And the fact that he does not get distracted shows the sincerity of his dedication. The pursuit of what is to him a higher good enables him to be the master of even the strongest desires. Hunger, thirst, sexual desire, comfort, freedom, money. These are all things that the elite athlete is willing to say no to in various ways. We too must be willing to say no to any desire that gets in the way of our pursuit, not of a perishable prize, but of the kingdom of heaven.

We could start with the life of the athlete and make some direct parallels. Do you think the athlete gets a good night's sleep before race day? Let's think about the Olympic athlete. I know some of us here who have been amateur athletes, uh, the answer is probably no, but that sets us apart, right? And the Apostle Paul is pointing to those who are at the top. Do you think they get a good night's sleep, those Olympians, before race day?

Absolutely. Do you get a good night's sleep before the Lord's Day? Does it matter? Do you think the elite athlete gets drunk when he performs poorly in his first event when he has a race the next day? Do you get drunk or binge on YouTube or on video games when you perform poorly at work or when home life overwhelms you? Brothers and sisters, we must not live according to the flesh.

The Apostle Paul speaks of his own bodily discipline in this passage. Now, I don't think Paul was literally training to run f- run in a marathon or preparing for a physical boxing match, but I do think there's a significant bodily reality to the things that he is talking about. He's not teaching here that there's some spiritual good that flows directly out of treating our bodies harshly. We know this because in Colossians 2, he says that harsh treatment of the body is of no value against fleshly indulgence.

It's Colossians 2:23. So what's he talking about when he says he makes his body his slave here in 1 Corinthians 9? Well, he has just been writing in this letter in 1 Corinthians about how he is willing to give up something as wonderful as meat if eating meat causes his brother to fall into sin. In other words, Paul's use of food is ruled by a higher aim than the satisfaction of his bodily desires.

He knew that the crown of life is laid up for those who are willing to give up everything for the kingdom of God, which we know is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. If Paul were ruled by his belly, instead of by love for his brother in the pursuit of the kingdom of God, he would have chosen to eat meat and offend his brother rather than give up such a pleasurable thing for the sake of his brother.

Paul's point is not that food itself is bad. The point is that our use of food must be governed by higher pursuits than just the satisfaction of our bellies. For the athlete, food can actually be used strategically for the pursuit of his gold medal. You can see that in the example of Michael Phelps, right? Food was a tool. For the Christian, food can be used strategically for the pursuit of our heavenly prize.

This includes using it to keep our bodies strong for the service of the Lord, but more often, scripturally speaking, the use of food for the kingdom of heaven means giving it away or giving it up for the sake of someone else. It means joyfully sharing what God has given to us and showing hospitality. This is a way of letting our use of something like food be governed by our pursuit of the kingdom of heaven rather than by our flesh.

Food is not to become our god, either through gluttony or through pride. The same is true with many other earthly things that are gifts from God. You can't take money with you to heaven, but you actually can use money to build the kingdom of heaven and even store up treasure for yourself in heaven, not by putting your money up there waiting for you, but by being generous with it and giving it away, to which Jesus says, "You will store up treasure for yourself in heaven."

Wine is a gift from God, but our use of alcohol must be governed by higher principles than just doing whatever we want with it. That may even mean joyfully giving it up for a meal, for the sake of our brother, or for our entire lives, for the sake of our family. And what a joy to get to do so when we know we don't have, we won't have to worry about it in the kingdom of heaven, where we have an imperishable crown waiting for us.

Sex is a gift from God, but our use of sex must be governed by God's laws and used according to his rules for building up his kingdom. And how amazing that such a wonderful thing can be used to that end. And even if we are limited in our pursuit of certain kinds of pleasure, either by our circumstances, like singleness, or by the law of God, which limits how we use our bodies, it is no trouble to the Christian who knows that the God who made our bodies has fullness of joy and pleasures forever at his right hand for those who obey him and running run according to the rules of the race that we're in.

In 2 Timothy, one of these other places where Paul talks about being an athlete, he says, "If anyone competes as an athlete, he does not win the prize unless he competes according to the rules." We can think of God's laws as good rules which tell us how to get to the end without being disqualified. Are there pleasures of yours that are threatening to become hindrances to your pursuit of the kingdom of God?

Are there indulgences of the flesh that are hindering your fellowship with God's people? Think on your prize and lay hold of the Holy Spirit's power to give you self-control. He has that power. It's the fruit of the Holy Spirit, and he delights to give it to those who are in Christ Jesus, because it brings much glory to Christ in this life when we exercise self-control. When we do so, we testify to our hope in the blessings that are stored up for us in heaven, and we testify to the superiority of that promise that God has waiting for us over anything that this world can offer to us.

I want to close by reading Hebrews 12, verses 1 through 3, yet another place that talks about running in our race. This is what it says. It says, "Let us lay aside every encumbrance and 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."