Missionary: Your Life Reimagined

For many of us, life is busy and chaotic.

If we're honest, on many days we may feel like we're all clutching onto a raft, going down class five rapids, spinning and shooting out here and there and grazing past rocks that could be our end.

Maybe there's others among us who feel that life's not that way at all.

Maybe you're in a season of singleness or you're an empty nester or a retiree.

And you may feel like you have enough discretionary time, but but what you do lack is maybe a sense of purpose, a sense of like meaning in why you're even here.

For those of us caught up in the rapids, I want to offer us a stabilizing, unifying, life-orienting way to integrate all the rushing tributaries into our lives into one flowing river of purpose and mission.

And for those of us who may feel like we are aimlessly winding down the river of life, through the Apostle Paul, I want to stir up a little bit of turbulence in your water.

Our text does this for us in both ways.

Our sermon series, Bearing the Marks, is what we're kicking off today, exploring the idea of being missionaries, our life reimagined.

The context of 1 Corinthians chapter 9 is the first 18 verses.

1 Corinthians 9 · chapter mention

So we are really entering into a conversation that's halfway through the conversation.

You ever done that before?

I'm kind of bad about that.

You kind of walk up and there's people talking and it sounds interesting.

You're like, wait, what are y'all talking about?

And they look at you with that knowing look like.

Just catch a different uh bus, right?

Um, but we're actually doing that here in 1 Corinthians.

We're jumping into chapter 9 of a letter.

Now, thankfully, the apostle Paul arranged his letter very orderly, and the the the exact conversation that we're entering into begins in chapter 9, verse 1.

So, really, we just had to catch up on verses 1 through 18.

I'll do that for us real quickly.

What's going on here is the apostle Paul is defending his ministry as an apostle and as a minister of the gospel because there were some critics who were telling the Corinthians, you really ought to watch out for this guy named Paul, because he's really in it for the money.

You just watch him, mark my words.

Before too long, he's gonna be asking you for something from your pocket.

Guaranteed.

The apostle Paul takes this opportunity, uh, and if I were writing the letter and I was defending my honor, I'd probably make that chapter one.

I'm trustworthy.

The apostle Paul, very humble, comes in chapter nine and says, Oh, yeah, by the way, that outlandish allegation about me being in the ministry just for your money, not even close.

The apostle Paul spends the first 18 verses building an airtight argument.

This is really neat how he does this.

He builds an argument for why he is entitled as a gospel minister to ask for financial support.

He likens, he uses the argument of secular workers.

He's like, How many secular workers are out there?

They're gonna come to your house and do some work in your house, and then they're not gonna ask for remuneration?

Of course not.

He even calls upon the testimony of the apostles themselves, the other 11 apostles who were still in Jerusalem, who, if you remember in Acts chapter 6, had said, you know, we're doing all this like administrative stuff and we're serving tables.

Acts 6 · chapter mention

We need to have other people that are not called to the full-time work of the ministry to come and take this load off of us.

And if you remember, they said, so that we can give ourselves continually to the word of God in prayer.

Well, how do they live?

The church supported them.

So in chapter one, uh chapter 9, verses 1 through 18, he talks about secular workers.

He talks about even the apostles, they receive support.

And then the big finale at the end of his big argument that this is a legitimate thing for ministers to be supported by the gospel, he says, and I haven't asked a penny from you.

In fact, in verse 15, he says, I would rather die than impose a financial burden on you.

We see Paul's heart shining through.

So all of this can be sort of encapsulated, I think, in verse 18 to summarize the first 18 verses.

He says, in verse 18, What then is my reward?

Like, what's my payment?

My payment is that in my preaching I may present the gospel free of charge so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel.

He says, I'm entitled, since I'm serving in the gospel, I'm entitled to financial support, but it's my reward to forego that right in freedom so that there'll be no obstacle to the gospel.

Now it leaves the question up in the air.

Well, shouldn't all ministers do that?

Should we have uh uh full-time ministers at all?

Should churches support ministers and that sort of thing?

And we would be overlooking the fact that he spends 18 verses arguing that this is something that God wants ministers to be supported by, the church.

He calls upon the testimony of Leviticus that says you shouldn't tread the muzzle of the ox while they're going through the, you shouldn't muzzle the ox while they're treading out the corn.

You know, the ox is doing all this work, but you're gonna put a muzzle on it, so he can't even partake of a few little kernels on the way.

Jesus quotes that same thing, and then Paul quotes it in 1 Timothy chapter 5, each with respect to the ministry of the gospel.

1 Timothy 5 · chapter mention

So we would be missing the entire point of the passage if we said that, oh, we're supposed to live like the Apostle Paul.

So why is Paul doing this?

Paul is a frontier missionary, he's on the cutting edge, he's going into cities where there's no believers, he's going to the local synagogue, or as he did in Athens, going to the Areopagus, he's arguing with people who want to talk about ideas, he's proclaiming the gospel, and he wants to remove every obstacle that's in the way.

And money is one of the one of those universal obstacles that comes up, right?

So Paul's like, I'm just gonna forego my Old Testament uh uh privilege, my Jesus privilege of asking for remuneration as I labor so hard in the gospel, and I'm gonna content myself with being bivocational.

Acts chapter 18, verses 1 through 3 show that Paul was a tent maker and he made his living on the side making tents.

Acts 18:1–3

He was an artisan.

And so he chose to sacrifice in order to remove this specific uh obstacle to the gospel, namely financial support.

And so when we come down to verse 19, we read this for though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them.

This is part of his missional strategy.

Notice he says that I uh for though I am free from all.

What does he mean by that phrase?

Well, if you see down in chapter 9, verse 1, this is how he started this segment of the conversation, and with this very phrase, am I not free in chapter 9, verse 1?

Am I not free?

Am I not an apostle?

Have I not seen our Lord?

Are you not my workmanship in the Lord?

In other words, I'm not a slave.

No one has a gun to my head, I'm doing this willingly, I'm free.

Aren't I a legitimate apostle?

Haven't I seen the Lord as he was discipled by Jesus himself in the desert of Arabia?

Galatians 1 tells us elsewhere.

And haven't I been working more abundantly than all of you?

Check, check, check, check.

Yes.

In 1 Corinthians 15, he says that in verse 10, I've I am what I am by the grace of God, and his grace wasn't given to me in vain, because I labored harder than anybody, he said.

So that's what he means here by, are you not my workmanship?

So when we get down to verse 19, and he says, Am I, when he says, For though I am free from all, in other words, I'm I don't have to serve anybody.

I don't have to do this for free.

I don't have to inconvenience myself, but though I'm free from all, I have made myself a servant to all that I might win more of them.

We should ask, what was his motivation in this?

And is this that I might win more of them?

Paul understood that there were certain ways he could leverage and arrange his life to optimize gospel impact in his relationships.

And that's what I think that's the main idea of the text, and that's what our message is really all about this morning.

So the main idea of our text comes there from verse 19, namely that as missionaries, we sacrifice to win others to Christ.

There are gonna be some sacrifices.

There are things that we're not required to do that we're gonna willingly do.

There's things that we could totally do, but we're gonna curtail ourselves in certain ways to make our testimony more effective.

Now, as a non-staff pastor myself, uh just a glorified volunteer here this morning, um, this passage inspires me.

I'm incredibly thankful for our lead pastor Justin, who has supported full-time, and I'm so thankful for the first 18 verses of this chapter that say that that's normal and that's good.

And 1 Timothy chapter 5 that talk about uh showing honor to those who labor full-time in the gospel.

1 Timothy 5 · chapter mention

Praise the Lord that our church is able to support Pastor Justin full time, and for others who give their lives fully to the work of the gospel.

But churches also, following Paul's example here, need lots of bivocational and even more volunteer laborers in the gospel of Jesus Christ.

I'm so thankful for each of you that labor week in, week out, every week, every other week, every three weeks, serving in children, uh cleaning, keeping the facility stocked and cleaned up, uh, greeting people and uh creating a very um hospitality, I almost said hostile environment, but hospitable environment, let's say that.

Um two words that are opposite, but they sound almost the same.

It's tricky.

Um I'm so thankful for all the ways that that you all serve in in the gospel of Jesus Christ as we follow the Apostle Paul's example.

We're not asking for payment under the table.

Hey, can you just give me some tax-deductible gift, please?

No, we're here doing it.

We don't have to.

You don't have to sign up for kids.

You don't have to sign up to empty a trash can, you don't have to sign up to uh help out with uh the food distribution every two weeks or whatever.

But you do it willingly, like Paul, for the advance of the gospel.

I'm so thankful for my fellow pastors, Jordan, Rick, Jared, and Tyler, who are also non-staff pastors who labor by vocationally, and we can find a lot of inspiration here in the words of the Apostle Paul, as I have done.

So, our passage, all that to say, it's for every believer here.

If when you saw the title of the sermon, it said Missionary Life Reimagined, and you automatically thought, Oh, we're gonna be talking about professional missionaries.

People who go over the seas and they train maybe for a couple years and they get theological education and they learn a new language or two, and they do some translation classes and then they move overseas.

And well, that's a type of missionary, and arguably we could say we need to save the word missionary for them.

I like the idea of us saying they're missionaries with a capital M and it's a life vocation, it's full-time, they're being supported, they're giving their life.

What about the rest of us?

We're just Christians?

Yes, but we're we're to live as missionaries locally.

So I like the word for everybody, but don't be offended at me if you want to say the word missionary for those people that that do their entire life uh oriented that direction.

Our passage is for everyone here because all of us are to be an army of volunteers, not in it for the money, don't even need the money.

We are doing it because we want to see the gospel spread.

Notice how he continues in verses 20 through 22.

In verse 20, he says this, talking about how this plays out in his missional lifestyle.

He says, To the Jews, I became a Jew in order to win Jews.

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

This was a huge, especially early in Paul's ministry.

Paul was spent a lot of time around Jews.

As he as the gospel was spreading and he was going out, uh there were still a lot of Jews that he would go to a local synagogue was his typical pattern.

He would go to a new city on the Sabbath, he would hit up the synagogue, and he would start asking some annoying questions about Old Testament prophecies, and then they would just start talking about Christ and how he fulfilled them.

Well, when he was around those Jews, he he lived in such a way that wouldn't be offensive to them.

He wasn't trying to please them.

He wasn't trying to be, you know, have a fear of man that governed his life.

He was using his words and his actions around them strategically so that the gospel could be spread more easily.

For example, if you turn the page one time back in 1 Corinthians in chapter 8, he spends the whole chapter talking about how, even though we're free from all the Old Testament restrictions on dietary laws like those under the Mosaic covenant, we shouldn't use that freedom in such a way that causes a stumbling block for someone who still is in their conscience bound to not eating shrimp or pork or uh observing a strict Sabbath or whatever.

And so the Apostle Paul in chapter 8 is arguing that we are free to not do these things.

We're free in Christ from a lot of those aspects of the Mosaic covenant that were satisfied by Jesus.

But we ought to, at times, curtail those freedoms so that we can assimilate with other people who share those values.

In verse 21, he continues, he says, So those outside the law.

I became as one outside the law.

Of course, not being outside the law of God, like a lawless man, but but rather under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside the law.

Here he's talking about the Gentiles.

Acts chapter 17 is a great example of the Apostle Paul uh walking into a city, Athens, Greece, the cultural center of the day.

Acts 17 · chapter mention

He gets to Athens and he starts walking through the streets, kind of like if you've ever been to New York and you're walking through New York and these huge skyscrapers, and you come to Times Square and you recognize this from TV, and it's kind of cool.

Here he walks through Athens, and what he observes, most of all, was that there were idols everywhere.

People everywhere offering incense and bowing, and the whole city, he said, was just devoted to idolatry.

His spirit was heavy within him.

And instead of turning around and walking back the way he'd come, thinking, well, this city is completely reprobate.

Maybe sitting on a hill like uh Jonah did, overlooking Nineveh, just praying that God would send down fire from heaven.

Lord, just purge this place.

In the name of the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, please purge this place.

No, the Apostle Paul entered into the city, into the cultural center, to the hill called Mars Hill, the Areopagus, where there were philosophers and educated people sitting around, always just wanting to debate and hear new ideas.

And the Apostle Paul said, I've got a new idea I want to share with you.

But the way the Apostle Paul did it, he didn't go in there in this Gentile city and say, I want to talk to you guys about some Jewish dietary laws and maybe Jewish genealogies.

And no, he used their language that he had learned.

He quoted their poets, their philosophers, and he argued from their philosophers.

I mean, if you go, if you read some Plato, it's amazing the light that uh he had, right?

If you just like Plato complete is Jesus, the the eternal word, right?

Um, so he was quoting from some of their prophets about God and this the one true God and this sort of thing, and we're his offspring, and he quotes them to point to the one true God, and then Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, who died in our place and was resurrected, and who will come and judge the world.

So he preached the gospel, but the way he got there was using their language on their turf in their terms.

Really, really remarkable how Paul assimilated to them.

He did this that he might win them to Jesus Christ.

Now, we can over-assimilate, right?

We can over-assimilate in the sense that we can start uh winning Rome, do as the Romans, alright.

No.

And in fact, I'm not suggesting that you need to get the, you know, the neck tattoo of the of Jesus crushing the head of the serpent, whatever, to try to reach your biker gang neighbor.

I've actually had to talk my wife Brandy down several times from getting that tattoo.

She just has had a heart for Hell's Angels for many years now.

When I consider the Apostle Paul laying aside some of his rights and his freedoms and doing willingly, leveraging his entire life for the sake of the gospel, I can't help but think of a few ways that we we don't do it very well.

Not to diminish all the ways that we are winning at this, and we'll be able to talk about that a little later as well.

We might call this our story.

Our story is that we live selfishly separate lives far too often.

Selfishly separate lives.

That is, lives that are separate from the world to such a degree that we simply do not interact with people in any meaningful way that are outside of Christ.

For many Christians, God's call for us to separate from the world, to not be a friend of the world, to, in fact, to not love the world, take all that, well, that means we need to only have significant relationships and friendships with Christians in our immediate family.

And if you're not a Christian, not immediate family, I'm gonna keep you at arm's length.

That's a temptation.

What's interesting is statistics show that the most evangelistic Christians out there are new believers.

Because they all their friends are unbelievers for the most part.

And so they just came to know Christ and they're excited about this, and he's changed their life, and they've been converted, and they look around to tell people, and it's all these unbelievers, and they're the most evangelistic.

As we remain Christians over time, we tend to sequester ourselves more and more, where we have fewer and fewer relationships outside of the church, and so we have fewer and fewer opportunities to share the gospel with people who don't know Christ.

We live selfishly separate lives.

I love the vision of our deacons of mission groups, Tyler and Emily Payne, that one day their entire mission group that meets once a week in their home would be comprised of their neighbors in their immediately immediate neighborhood.

I love that idea.

Not that it's bad that they have friends from church that are part of that group, but just to think strategically in that way and prayerfully.

No, I want to be increasing the interface, the the circle of influence I have with unbelievers rather than tightening that up all the time.

This is a great time for me to mention an elephant in the room.

And I wanted to know like how much it would cost to get the zoo to bring an elephant here, but some illustrations just aren't worth it.

But just think about the elephant in the room.

And this elephant in the room, when you're talking about missional living, is introversion.

Because statistics say that about half of us here are introverts.

If you're an extrovert, would you raise your hand?

Extrovert.

Praise the Lord.

Notice I didn't ask the introverts to raise your hands because you don't want to raise your hands at church, right?

I get that.

It's tempting for us to associate missional living, sharing the gospel, just immediately write it off as, oh yeah, I know a few people that are good at that.

I'm certainly not.

Introvert me.

There's no way I'm gonna do that.

Unbelieving friends?

No.

Um, but while we are quite aware of the natural skills and abilities of extroverts to never meet a stranger and they're the first person to talk on an elevator and all those wonderful things that can be useful for the sharing of the gospel, we shouldn't and must not underestimate the unique skills that God gifts.

Introverts, if we can just use that term in a very broad sense.

Some of the most missional people I know are not extroverts, but true introverts that could curl up with a book for 18 hours and come out of hibernation the next day and be completely happy with that.

And they're the most missional people I know every week having people from their neighborhood over, or someone they met at the rec center, or someone at the YMCA, or a friend of a friend, having intentional gospel conversations, and they're as introverted as anybody.

It's remarkable.

But God has gifted introverts in ways that we often overlook when we think about missional living.

For instance, introverts are often better listeners, they ask better questions, they tend to be more reflective, to read more, to be more thoughtful in their responses, and more intimate in their actual relationships, though the circle tends to be smaller.

Introverts often excel at being authentic and building trust over time with a few.

They're often really good at creating low-key, low-hype opportunities for people to engage in spiritual conversations.

They're often good at sharing their story one-on-one and making their message credible and relatable.

Those are all missional qualities.

You don't need someone who can who can be a sales, uh, you know, lead of sales at PG necessarily to be missional.

Every single one of us is part of the body of Christ with our gifts, our interests, where we're at in life, are called to leverage our lives for the sake of the gospel.

Now, in calling out our our tendency to live selfishly separate lives, which can include both introverts and extroverts, I'm in no way suggesting that we add a bunch of things to our lives.

Because some of you have heard that.

You're thinking, wait, you started the sermon talking about clinging with, you know, with white knuckles to this raft, thinking it's about to capsize, and that describes my life at the moment.

And now you're telling me I've got to be missional too?

Well, the wonder, the beauty of being a local missionary is that we work mostly from within our own contexts and routines.

Let me explain.

Some of you like to jog, right?

I don't, but um, some of you like to jog and you jog regularly.

Why not ask a neighbor who also likes to jog?

Maybe you pass them occasionally, hey, why don't you ask him or her to run with you one time a week for fitness accountability?

Can you imagine the kind of opportunities that arise after a year of running, maybe once every week or two together?

Just the kind of like you start hearing what's going on in their lives, you start hearing.

And some of the things that they're happy about and sad about.

And you're invited into that relationship and the numerous opportunities to share your hope in Christ with that person just by being intentional about something you already are going to do.

Does your family like to play board games?

Why not have a different family over from your neighborhood or even the same family over every week to play on a game night?

Build that relationship and then be authentic with your own family before your kids go to bed.

You pray with them, you sing over them, you read a passage of scripture, and people get to see the way you do family.

Instead of asking them to leave and like, okay, and then the family can be religious.

But being authentic and opening your home in that sort of way, you're not adding a game night, you're just doing what you're going to do already.

Does your kid play soccer or another sport?

And then after the games, most times, right, you go and get some ice cream.

Why not invite a family to go with you?

Hey, we're grabbing some ice cream.

Why don't you come with us?

We tend to go here and you do that a couple times and you see them and you remember the name, you remember their spouse's name and their dog's name, and you remember the fact that someone's dad had was in the hospital, and you you uh you can follow up on that, and you build this relationship not by adding something to your life, but just by using what you're already doing.

Do you have any neighbors who like to read books or talk about ideas?

Why not suggest, hey, I ran across this really cool book.

It's the Bible's view of X, Y, or Z.

If that sounds like something you might be interested in, um, whether you agree or disagree, would be really fun to meet up every week or two, sit around the campfire and uh and just kind of compare notes.

If they really like to read, they might take you up on it.

The possibilities are as diverse as our interests in our routines are diverse.

Now, I'm really happy to recommend a resource to you.

If you feel like you're not integrating your faith in your life, you've got all these routines and all this busyness, but Jesus is over here in this little box called church.

There's a book I recommend to you by uh Jeff Vanderselt called Saturate.

Being disciples of Jesus in the everyday stuff of life, saturating your life.

It's all about integrating your faith into daily life and in a way that gives us a sense of missional purpose where you can seize mundane daily activities as opportunities to advance God's kingdom.

Put that one on your reading list and master its content.

I want to ask us a challenging question now at this at this point.

We're thinking about being selfishly separate Christians.

The question is this: Am I living in social separation from those without the gospel?

Not necessarily intentionally, but that's just where I'm at in life.

Or am I intentionally, sacrificially, consistently and prayerfully creating and taking advantage of opportunities to build evangelistic relationships with non-Christians?

I guarantee you, in all those routines, there are non-Christians around you.

The question is, are you building that bridge?

I want to celebrate the ways we're doing this.

There are numerous testimonies in this room and in the 9 o'clock service.

I almost feel like I hear myself thinking.

What was I gonna say?

Oh man.

Oh, yeah, there are testimonies here.

We're just gonna play the sermon there.

Thanks.

Thanks, Paul.

That's heresy right there.

Don't listen to it.

Um so there are testimonies of people who are actually members of our church who are regular attendees who how do they get here?

A Christian neighbor, there's a member here, started meeting up with them and talking about stuff, or something traumatic happened in their life, and they were there for them, and they started meeting up to read scripture, and then they eventually invite them to church, and and now they're the ones who are living missional with their neighbors, having been baptized and following Jesus.

So we have numerous stories that we could cite about the way this works as God honors our efforts.

But we also need to recognize that there are ways we need to repent of neglecting the Great Commission in our own context.

I love how Matthew chapter 28 says it.

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

He doesn't say, it's usually translated, go and make disciples of all nations.

A literal translation is as you go, make disciples of all nations, which means it includes the current context.

It isn't this message isn't meant to undo the call of the church to send full-time people to be missionaries across the globe, but this particular sermon is about us as we go, in the routines of life, living on mission for Jesus.

There's a separate part of our story that's sort of the flip side of this.

We can live socially secular lives.

Socially secular lives.

Some of us are quite social and have numerous acquaintances and relationships.

Maybe if you pull out your phone and you have like 10 different text threads with all these different people, coworkers, and this, and you're chatting about there's very social.

But maybe you never bring up your faith in Jesus.

Maybe you never ask others what they believe about religious matters.

Maybe you never share your concern for God's justice, the fact that we're all gonna die.

And what do you think about God's justice?

And yeah, scripture teaches that God has an impossibly high standard of righteousness that only his perfect son has met.

And if you trust in him alone, that's how you can be counted righteous and escape God's judgment.

And I that's a source of joy and peace in my life, knowing I'm accepted by God through faith in Jesus Christ.

You have all those relationships, all those circles touching everywhere, but you're living like a non-Christian.

You're secular.

Maybe you've bought into the lie, the cultural lie that religion is to be kept in a private box only to be pried open for a few minutes or maybe an hour or two at church on Sunday, close it again.

The rest of our lives remains unaffected.

We've heard of the cultural term secularization.

That's where used to religion was so um was so it permeated society so much.

You would have uh maybe three churches in town, a Methodist, a Presbyterian, and a Baptist, and everyone went to church.

And then as the Industrial Revolution happened and people started stopping going to church and the wonderful 60s happened and then the 70s, and you can imagine, so now we're we're moving towards secularization where we're like, hey, keep we're turning into secular people.

What's actually happened, because Europe has turned more secular, what's actually happened in the U.S.

is privatization.

Where people are almost just as religious as they used to be, but they don't talk about it.

Europe is just very irreligious.

The U.S.

is very religious and very private about it.

We've bought into this lie that we can we need to keep our lives private and just keep work at work, church at church.

Every holy ambition, brothers and sisters, begins with prayer.

So if you're here this morning, you're thinking, Lord, I'm not I'm not obeying the Great Commission.

Jesus says, as you go, make disciples of all nations.

And we look at that and we say, not me.

I want to call us to honest, raw, fervent prayer.

Every holy ambition begins with prayer.

If you see, like me, room to repent and obey Christ in this area.

I want to call us to pray.

And I want to call us to develop uh, here's a vocabulary phrase.

I want to introduce an idea to you.

It's called missional radar.

We've all seen the World War II reruns, right?

The radar, beep, beep.

As these planes are coming in, you see the radar, you've seen Pearl Harbor, right?

We know what the radar is.

Missional radar.

There are people in your life that should be pinging on your radar.

You meet someone, your neighbor, and you actually hit it off, and you see him, see, you know, once or twice a week, and you talk about how good the grass is looking and stuff, man, missional radar.

He should be pinging on your radar.

Um someone joins your family, marries your niece or your cousin or whatever, and they're unbeliever and they and but they're friendly, and you have a relationship with them rapport, missional radar pinging.

How can you build that bridge?

Someone at work has just kind of confided in you that their spouse was just, you know, had had a biopsy for a lump in her breast and they're a little concerned about that.

Missional radar pinging, bro.

If you're not planning on sharing the gospel with that guy, wake up.

Who's on your missional radar in your life?

The co-ho, the the the coach who's coaching with you, your little league team.

Missional radar, who's on it?

And what do you have planned to facilitate sharing the gospel with these people?

Now, if you're not absolutely nailing this aspect of sharing the gospel with your friends, maybe you're doing a good job of integrating your relationships and that sort of thing, but you don't know just how to share the gospel with them.

There's this wonderful guy named Jeff Vanderstalt who wrote yet another book, and he calls it Gospel Fluency.

Speaking the truths of Jesus into everyday, into the everyday stuff of life.

I invite you to buy these two books and don't leave them on the bookshelf.

Master the content.

Here he emphasizes developing the skill of being able to weave gospel truths into virtually any conversation.

How can it's a really good uh drill for like a mission group or something?

Here's the conversational topic.

Uh the Reds are really bad at baseball, okay?

How can you take that to the gospel?

It can be done.

You can just remind brothers and sisters, our hope is not on the Reds, it's in Jesus Christ.

Praise his name.

There's always a road to the gospel, right?

How good are we, how skilled and adept we are taking someone confessing a sin to us?

Someone telling us they're concerned about their child, who's who's not reading at the level that they would like them to read, or someone who makes the comment that, you know, well, I used to be into religion, but I got out of that as fast as possible.

These are the opportunities that are just getting plopped in our laps all the time when we're actually talking to people where if we had the skill to take it to the gospel, we could do it.

And Jeff Vanderst can help you do that.

I hope you take advantage of that.

This brings us to our gospel conviction that there are unimaginable blessings and joys associated with being a missionary of Jesus.

This isn't something we just have to grit our teeth and endure.

This is literally something that could be the thing that enriches your life the most, this side of heaven.

Being missional could be the thing that enriches your life the most, this side of heaven.

That's what Paul says.

As missionaries, our gospel conviction is we share in the benefits of the gospel.

Verse 23.

I do it all, he says, for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

We would expect it to say that I might share with them in terms of like, I'm just gonna share that, giving them the message.

Like I'm gonna share it with you.

But the literal translation of this in Greek is, I do this because of the good news that I may become a fellow partaker of the gospel with them.

There's a participation in the gospel message when we share the gospel message.

That whenever we are actually sharing it and we're weaving it into conversations, we're taking this tragedy that just happened in someone's life, and then we're praying, and then we're ministering the gospel in this way, there's a cutting-edge, missionary, frontline kind of way that this pushes us to the frontier in that relationship.

That just hiding back and be like, all right, we'll be thinking about you, doesn't do.

We enter into the gospel more fully whenever we share the gospel more fully.

In other words, we're not just about making other people share in the gospel, but we ourselves are participating more deeply in it when we share it.

Show me a selfishly separate Christian.

Think about that in your mind, a selfishly separate great person, but they don't make, they don't go out of the way to have any relationships outside of other Christians.

Um sort of circle the rack wagons kind of mentality.

And I'll show you someone who likely isn't drinking deeply from the fountain of the good news in their own lives.

The gospel becomes very easily something they used to believe when they got saved, and then now they're just focused on their family or something.

Show me someone who's socially secular, who's doing who does a great job at keeping their fun life and their church life separate and the twain shall never meet.

I'll show you someone who's not living in the robust promises of Jesus Christ and clinging to those in his or her life.

Show me someone who isn't organizing their life around and leveraging their routines as a platform for Jesus, and I'll show you someone who isn't receiving moment by moment the joy from the gospel themselves.

There's a story just to illustrate this joy piece.

A couple years ago, a man came to our door at the house and he knocked on the door.

I answered it as a Saturday.

He was going around the neighborhood trying to get us to enroll in his pest control program.

And after talking about that a little bit, somehow, in the Lord's mercy, I was able to take it from pest control to Jesus.

And we got to Jesus after about 25 minutes and we had this really lively and friendly conversation talking about like who Jesus really was.

Like he had a lot of strange ideas, and I'm like, well, the Christian scriptures say this, and I really believe that because I find him trustworthy for these reasons, and and by the end of the thing, I'd shared my faith with him.

I had to end the conversation.

I'm like, that's all I have to say.

All right, we'll see you later.

No, he realized after about 25 minutes that I was the biggest pest in our house.

He actually asked me to drink some of the stuff in a bottle.

But, anyways.

The reason I share that is because after that experience, and it still stands out to this day, after I closed the door, I said to myself, that was the most fun I've had in years.

I need more of that in my life.

Not because I was arguing, because I was on the front edge.

I was I was in the battle.

I was taking shots on the enemy, Satan and his lies.

I was in the game.

How many people have you seen?

How many movies are based on the idea of someone who used to be an athlete or used to be in the army or used to be a law enforcement, and then they've gotten out and they're they're sort of uh a has been person, and then life's really humdrum and they're depressed, and then someone gives them a call.

It's time to get back in the game.

There's a part of us that wants to be in the game, right?

And we live very sad, depressed lives whenever we're not in the game.

There's nothing that'll put you in the game more than planning to share the gospel with someone and actually doing it.

Talk about putting a shot of vitamin V in your life.

Paul concludes the passage in with a memorable illustration I want to read in verses 24 to 27.

He says, Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize?

So run like you want to win.

Run that you may obtain it.

Every action athlete exercises self-control in all things, and they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we in imperishable.

So I do not run aimlessly.

I do not beat, I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified.

Numerous times in this text, he's using Olympic competition language.

The idea of being disqualified, the idea of being an athlete that trains, the idea of discipline, of running, of boxing.

Paul is here speaking of the fact that there is a prize to be won, and our faithfulness to Jesus Christ in this way is going to impact our reception of and our enjoyment of that prize.

It'd be a whole nother sermon to go through the New Testament and find, I don't know, 20 or 30 passages that talk about eternal rewards and how God does things in the end when you stand before his judgment seat and awards everyone according to their works.

This in no way means that salvation is by works.

But there is such a thing as rewards, and there's degrees of rewards, and there's degrees of punishments, and that's a whole nother sermon.

But lest we think that that's not biblical, here's an example of the apostle saying, We have an imperishable crown laid up for us if we win.

This brings us to our gospel vision.

As missionaries, we seek an eternal reward.

As missionaries, we seek an eternal reward.

This past week you've likely either watched the Olympics or seen a few highlights from the Olympics.

And isn't it just amazing to see uh the swimmers and the runners and um the gymnasts, and just to see that these are people who've literally, for the last 15, 20 years, have been doing this every day, every week, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of hours, and here they are, the best of the best, throughout all the countries of the world coming together to compete.

And sometimes what separates the gold and silver and bronze from someone who doesn't get a medal is just 0.8 seconds or one point.

It's amazing to see these people.

What we most admire about them is the fact that they are so disciplined that they couldn't haphazardly arrive at France, Paris, France.

They didn't just have this like swimming hobby.

Yeah, you know, I'm always splashed around on the tub occasionally, and then I got this flight to France, and when I showed up, they're like, hey, we need you to swim.

No one goes to the Olympics haphazardly.

They've been devoting their lives.

And Paul picks up on that language.

The Greek Olympics were celebrated in Olympia, Greece from 776 BC till almost 400 AD.

So when Paul wrote this, everyone knew about the Olympics, they'd been gone for about 800 years.

Paul gives two illustrations about Olympic athletes, a runner and a fighter.

And I'm tempted to talk about my two-year-old here because she's both a runner and a fighter.

But I digress.

One of the most amazing characteristics we admire about them is their single-minded focus on winning a medal.

Paul says here, if you're gonna run, run like you want to win.

I want to leave you with this mental picture.

Jesus is your trainer, he's your coach.

And let's say we're on the triathlon, because it's Christian life's a long time.

And there's different terrains.

You got to swim and you got to bike and you got to run.

And imagine seeing in the distance Jesus with his arms open, just like smiling big, saying, You got this, let's go, cheering you on.

And you're so tired, and there's you're leaving everything on the field.

You're literally running a race as fast as it could possibly be run.

And crossing that finish line, you couldn't have taken another step, and you collapse into his arms, and he holds you and he whispers in your ear, Well done.

Well done.

Good job.

Jesus literally says he's gonna say that to people at the end of time who've been faithful servants in his kingdom.

Imagine by contrast us running our race by just kind of kicking some stones and taking it easy.

And we look down the line and Jesus is looking at his watch, like, really?

Come on, you're in a race.

Act like you want to win it.

The apostle Paul says, Man, I am I'm an I'm a gospel athlete.

Every day is leverage for the gospel.

Every conversation, and I don't want to exhaust us comparing us ourselves to Paul, like the Michael Phelps of the gospel proclamation or something, but we can be inspired by him to leverage our lives, to move away from, shift away from social separation, social secularity, so that we are leveraging our homes and careers and our school and our sports and our daily routines into levers for kingdom advancement here in Mason, Westchester, and surrounding regions.

And I'll close with this.

I know there's a lot of busy mothers and fathers here who may be thinking in this moment that's all nice what you're talking about.

I understand Paul's in a league of his own.

That's all fine and good, but I my mission field is my children.

Right?

To that I say, Amen.

Praise the Lord, so let it be.

But I'll also also ask the question Does that mean that you never leave your house?

Does that mean that your kids that you don't attend your kids' sporting events?

Does it mean that you don't read books, you don't exercise, you don't have any neighbors, you don't have any unsaved family members that you interact with, that you don't talk to visitors at church, that you don't know any unbelievers who like to play games or eat food.

Never forget this.

One of the most profound ways we can disciple our children is not just by telling them the things, parroting what Scripture says, but by them seeing us give our lives for those things.

We can tell our kid Jesus is worth it, Jesus is worth it, Jesus He's valuable, he's everything.

But they don't see us ever get inconvenienced for the sake of the gospel.

They never see us risk or sacrifice or live with gospel purpose and intentionality.

Do they really see us live by faith instead of by self-interest?

If we disciple our kids, no matter what we tell them, if their whole lives is geared around self-interest, the tyranny of the urgent, they may well follow our example rather than our words.

God is relentlessly on mission, seeking and saving people all around us.

So may we go from this place with our missional radars pinging, God bringing people to our minds that maybe it's two, maybe it's three, maybe it's five people in your life that you're gonna start praying for every day.

So when you see them, you know them by name, you're looking forward to asking them how that test went, how that that situation was, how that job search is going, and you're able to turn those into gospel opportunities because you're praying daily for them.

They're on your radar and you're sent on mission to make disciples and make much of Jesus Monday through Saturday as much as on Sunday.

I pray that we would go from this place, re-energize as local missionaries that God has embedded in the greater Cincinnati area.

Let's pray.