A Winning Witness

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And when I was a kid, a missionary came and spoke at our church about their work in, I can’t even remember which country, but I remember it being in Southeast Asia. And they were in this community that had people of different ethnic groups, and they were working on reaching people. There was a more tribal group of people who had recently moved into the community, and they were trying to reach them.

And the man was talking about how his wife was trying to connect with some of the women from that group that lived in this village. And he said she had had no success for the longest time. That as she tried to engage with these women, they wanted nothing to do with her.

They were not interested in what she had to say. They were not interested in her. And she began to watch them and see how they lived.

And one of the things that they had that was not in common with the other people in the village is the people from this group, instead of using the showers and things in their houses, the women would dress, and I forget what he called it, but it sounds to me like a giant sheet, and they’d wrap it around themselves and go down to the river and bathe in this giant sheet. And one day his wife got the wild idea, I’m going to get myself one of those sheets, and I’m going to go down to the river and bathe like they do. And when she did that, suddenly the women were willing to listen to her.

And it still took some time to build relationships with them. But just that little step of saying, I’m going to try to meet you where you are, began to open doors for these missionaries in that little village in Southeast Asia. And I remember as a kid, even then thinking how weird it is that somebody’s going to listen to you or not listen to you based on how you bathe.

but you know if if somebody didn’t bathe at all we might not listen to them when they came to talk to us right so we I mean we have our cultural standards too I ran into this myself several years ago on a mission trip in canada and we think of canada as being just like our just like us and there are places where it’s very similar I went to help out some friends who were who were starting a church in kind of a rural area in a French-speaking part of Canada. Now, in this area, most of the people also spoke English. And at that time, I was in college.

I majored in French. I could speak to these people. But at the same time, I’m an Okie, and English just comes more naturally.

And if they speak English, why not? Just walk up to them and try to talk to them in English if they speak English. And people just were not having it.

And all I was there to do in most cases was go and invite them to this church. It wasn’t even a complicated gospel presentation thing because there were other people in the group who spoke no French at all and had come from the States to help with outreach. Just inviting them to church, handing out tracts, but these people were not interested at all in what I had to say.

And it took me about two days into the trip to figure out that there were some political things wrapped up in what language you spoke, and there were resentments based on whether you spoke English, whether you spoke French. So I said, okay, I’m going to try this. I’m really not super fluent in speaking French.

I can read it and write it. But again, I’m from Oklahoma. I haven’t had a lot of opportunities.

There are no French tribes wandering the state, right? But what I found out was that my broken French, my tentative, nervous French opened more doors than my perfect Oklahoma English. Because suddenly I was not carrying the baggage of all their political arguments that they were having in that province and in that area.

I was coming and meeting them where they were. And that’s the sort of thing that Paul talks about as we’re in 1 Corinthians chapter 9. We talked about this a little bit last week with Paul saying, I’m not going to exercise my rights.

He talked about his rights to support as minister, as an apostle. He talks about these rights that he had and makes a really solid case to where it almost sounds like he’s saying, you guys are not paying me enough, but he says, that’s not my point. My point is I’m entitled to pay, I’m entitled to support, and yet I’ve refused every offer of it from the church at Corinth and will continue to do so because of these reasons that I outlined last week, because he said he did not want to hinder the spread of the gospel in that particular community.

Well, we’re going to pick up in the middle of where we were last week, just so we can kind of get the full context of what we’re looking at, and go a little further. We’re going to look at verses 15 through 23, as he begins to take that point that he’s made about himself and apply it to the people at Corinth, and how they were supposed to do outreach in Corinth. And so if you haven’t turned with me, please turn with me to 1 Corinthians 9.

If you are there, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, and if you can’t find it, can’t find 1 Corinthians 9 or don’t have your Bible today, it will be on the screen for you. But we’re going to start in verse 15 and go through verse 23 today. And here’s what Paul says under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

But I have used none of these things, talking about his rights, and I am not writing these things so that it will be done so in my case. for it would be better for me to die than have any man make my boast an empty one. And here he’s talking about how he had the right to be supported, but he was not going to come into a place like Corinth that was already obsessed with money and give them any reason to think that as he’s preaching humility, that he’s using that as an opportunity to amass wealth.

And he’s also not going to go into a brand new place that’s never heard the gospel and say, now that you’re a believer, give me stuff. because he didn’t want to be like all the other pagan priests that were skulking around. So he said, I have these rights, but I’ve never exercised them and wouldn’t because I’d rather die than hinder the gospel.

He says in verse 16, For if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast of. For I am under compulsion. For woe is me if I do not preach the gospel.

For if I do this voluntarily, I have a reward. But if against my will, I have a stewardship entrusted to me. What then is my reward?

that when I preach the gospel, I may offer the gospel without charge, so as not to make full use of my right in the gospel. For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews.

To those who are under the law, as under the law, though not being myself under the law, so that I might win those who are under the law. To those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God, but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law. To the weak, I became weak, that I might win the weak.

I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some. I do all things for the sake of the gospel, so that I may become a fellow partaker of it. And you may be seated.

A few things I want to clarify from the text, a few things that kind of tripped me up as I was studying through it that I want to point out to you, and then we’ll dig a little deeper into Paul’s point here. So when we go up to verse 17, he says, if I do this voluntarily, Paul is preaching voluntarily. Paul was called, yes, he felt this compulsion to preach the gospel, and yet he doesn’t have a gun to his head.

When Paul says, if I preach voluntarily, what he’s talking about there is doing this because it’s his own idea. Paul is not preaching voluntarily in the sense that he’s preaching out of ambition, that this is what he decided he wanted to do, that he’s trying to build a career and a following for himself. He’s doing this because he was called, and anybody preaching the gospel should be doing it because they’re called and not because, hey, this just sounds like a fun thing to do.

Because it might sound like a fun thing to do, but it’s not always. It’s rewarding, but it’s not always fun. So when he says, if I do this voluntarily, he’s talking about this being his own idea.

So there’s this idea, if I do this because it’s my own idea, then I have a reward. If I do it against my will because I’ve been forced to, I still have a stewardship entrusted to me, I have this responsibility. So he says, I’m really not in either of these camps, so what is my reward, verse 18, that when I preach the gospel, I may offer the gospel without charge.

He said, so why do I do this? Why have I made the choices I’ve made? And he says, so that I can come to the people at Corinth, and this whole idea of money doesn’t become a stumbling block to people when it comes to the gospel.

Now, I think it’s worth looking at, too, this discussion he has about being under the law or not being under the law in verses 20 and 21. Excuse me, I’m still dealing with the allergy stuff I was last week, so if my voice kind of breaks, that’s why. To those who are under the law, as under the law, though not being myself under the law, he’s talking about not being subject to the Old Testament law as a way of salvation.

We can look at the Old Testament law, and there are principles there that are still applicable. There are principles there that we can still learn who God is and what God wants from us, but the Old Testament law does not apply in the same way that it used to in the sense that that’s how we’re looking for redemption or a connection with God. Jesus Christ fulfilled the demands of the law, and so we’re under the law of Christ, which he talks about in verse 21, to those who are without the law, the Gentiles.

He relates to them as somebody who’s without the law. He says, not that I’m not without the law of God, but under the law of Christ. He says, it’s not that I just have no law I follow. I’m under the law of Christ. And so we get this idea from Paul that you and I as believers in Jesus Christ, we can read and appreciate and apply parts of the Old Testament law, but we are not bound to it the way the Jews were under that covenant.

We are bound to the law of Christ, which is explained in the New Testament. And that doesn’t mean, again, that we ignore the Old Testament or and it has no value for us. We just understand it in its proper context that you and I, our salvation does not depend on the kind of food we eat, the kind of clothes we wear, how we run our civil laws.

That was given to the nation of Israel. And then we come to the later part of this where he talks in verse 23, I do all things for the sake of the gospel so that I may become a fellow partaker of it. If we just read over that really quickly, it sounds like he says, I do this work in the gospel so that I can partake of the gospel, as though I work really hard so that I can have a share of the gospel so that I can earn my salvation is almost what it sounds like.

But this word in the Greek partaker really means partner. He’s partaking in the work of the gospel, not the benefits of the gospel. He’s already received the benefits of the gospel because of what Jesus Christ did for him.

That’s the good news that Jesus finished the work of our redemption at the cross. And so Paul’s not looking to be a partaker in what Jesus did through his work. Paul’s looking to be a partaker in the work of the gospel through his efforts.

Paul’s saying, when I come out here and I work and I preach the gospel, I am working together with the gospel in order for God to do what only God can do. But he begins with where we were last week, this idea of setting his rights aside, this right that he had to be paid. I gave you the example, we are free to do anything that doesn’t contradict God’s word.

I gave you the example that if I wanted to, I do not. But if I wanted to, I have every right to paint myself blue and run up and down Gore Boulevard, which is probably a funny image. I have no interest in doing that, but I’m free to do that.

However, especially in my position, I have to wonder how that’s going to hinder the gospel. Because for one thing, it might end up on the news. People are going to say, I told you those Christians are nuts.

There are already people who think we’re crazy because of the things we believe. Is my exercising my rights going to give somebody more of a reason to reject the gospel? And so we take our rights that we have and we set them aside for the sake of the gospel when necessary.

And what I explained to you last week, we’re not talking about civil rights. We’re not talking about human rights. I’m not encouraging you to sit back and be a doormat and let everybody and the government and whoever else do whatever they can to you, talking about these rights that we have that we’re free to do anything as long as it doesn’t contradict God’s word, that at times we may need to set aside what we’re allowed and entitled to do or to receive if doing so, if doing so helps move somebody closer to Jesus Christ. And so Paul’s discussion of setting our rights aside, it’s not because our rights don’t matter.

It’s not because our freedom in Christ doesn’t matter. It’s just that our witness matters more. And so the reason why we would set any rights aside, the reason why we would say, you know, I have every right to do this.

I gave you the example last week of going and eating a steak at the casino. I had every right to go and have a steak, but I knew that it would be devastating to that man in my church who had had the history with the casinos, and I knew the struggles he had, and I said it’s not worth it. Now, I had every right to go eat a steak at a casino, but my witness to that man mattered more. So I very deliberately said, yes, I have this right, but I’m going to set it over here, and I’m going to not use it for the purpose of helping this man in his relationship with Jesus Christ. Paul gives us these examples.

Verse 15, he says, I’m not going to exercise my rights for the sake of the gospel. We see in verses 16 and 17, as I’ve already pointed out, his ministry was not a matter of personal ambition, but it was service to God. He was called to do this.

And so when we realize that we are, depending on the translation, we are servants of God, we are slaves of God, depending on how you want to translate that. Basically, we belong to God. When we begin to view ourselves in that light, then it becomes a much different discussion about what rights I have and what I’m entitled to.

Suddenly, when I realize my life is not my own, but it belongs to Him, then it’s much easier to set those rights aside and say, I’m going to focus on what He wants me to do. And because of this, Paul tells us in verse 18 that he’s committed to proclaiming the gospel in a way that minimizes obstacles. And that’s what we should seek to do.

Anything in our lives that is not a command of God that presents an obstacle to somebody else coming to Christ is negotiable. It’s something we can put aside. And I’m very careful to qualify that anything in our lives that is not a command of God.

Because it’s very easy, and it’s been very easy for a lot of professing Christians in our Western culture to look at things about Christianity, to look at things that are taught in the Bible and say, you know what, that offends the sensibilities of the people around us, so we’re just not going to believe that anymore so that we can bring them to Jesus. But we’re not giving them the whole picture of who Jesus is. If we begin to compromise on what he says is right and what he says is wrong, If we begin to embrace sin, if we begin to keep holiness at an arm’s length, if we begin to soften our discussion of who Jesus is, the idea that He’s a judge and focus exclusively on the love, if we begin to take things that are the commands of God and put those aside, then it becomes a very different discussion.

But what we’re talking about here are the things that are already negotiable because they’re not things that He’s told us we have to do. Things like, am I going to go into that village and talk to people in English or French. I knew the majority of them spoke English.

I had every right to speak English. It was a free country. Well, free-ish country.

Well, they’re all free-ish countries at this point, right? I had every right to go in and speak English. I’m going to set that aside.

That woman had every right to shower in her own house because she’s an American and that’s what we do. But she put that aside and went and bathed in the river because for whatever reason, there was a cultural obstacle there that she said, you know what, that’s negotiable. I can put that aside.

And being a wise witness means keeping our ultimate goal in mind. You know, Paul was focused on winning. That’s one of the things that jumped out at me as I was reading this passage again.

Paul was focused on winning. He used the word, what are there, nine verses here? And he used the word win five times.

He wanted to win. But it was a very different kind of winning than the had. As we’ve read through 1 Corinthians several chapters already in this study, we’ve seen that they were always trying to one-up each other.

They would take each other to court just to see who could get the advantage on the other one. And they were all about their prestige and their wealth, and they all wanted to win and be the best. It was a very competitive culture, apparently. And then Paul comes in and talks about winning.

But they were focused on winning against each other, and he was focused on winning each other, winning the other person. That was the goal. So five times in this passage, he tells the Corinthians that he’s focused on the chance that he might win. But if you look at the object of those sentences, it’s always a person or a group of people that he’s seeking that he might win.

Not a prize, not a contest, it’s people. Verse 19, he tells us he treats himself as a slave to all men, even though he’s free. He treats himself as a slave to all men so that he might win more of them, of those people that he sees himself as enslaved to.

Verse 20, he tells us he’s concerned with winning the Jews. Verse 20, he also tells us he’s concerned with winning those who are bound by the law, and there’s a lot of overlap in those two categories. Verse 21, he tells us he’s concerned with winning those who don’t know the law.

He’s all their lives that they’re God’s chosen people. He’s concerned with winning the pagans over here. And then in verse 22, he’s concerned with winning those who are weak, those who are lowly, those who are sinful, those who are the outcasts of society.

Paul is very focused in this passage on winning, but the goal is to win the people. And what does he mean by that? That word that he uses there means converting someone to faith in Jesus Christ. It means winning them to something, and that something is Jesus Christ. That was Paul’s goal. As he was concerned about his witness, as he was concerned about the image that he portrayed to the people of Corinth, as he was concerned about the message that went out, Paul’s concern was always about his witness so that he could win people to Jesus Christ. Now, ultimately, we know that winning them is out of our hands.

And once you realize that, it’ll take a lot of pressure off of you. I don’t know how many times I’ve told you, I’ve spent more years of my life than I should have, thinking if I could just come up with the right arguments and the right configuration of words, if I could come up with that magic bullet, I could make everybody I know become a Christian. It doesn’t work that way.

Because the people around us have the same free will that we do. And it depends on the Holy Spirit working in them and drawing them to Christ. And it depends on them yielding to that drawing. And some people just flat out don’t to.

I saw a video this week where a woman on, I don’t have TikTok, but they sometimes put TikTok videos on other platforms. This woman was recording a TikTok and said, this is to all the Christians. Please leave us alone. Just let me go to hell.

That’s where I want to go. And she was very calm and very matter of fact. I don’t think she was trying to be outrageous or exaggerate for for clicks and shares or whatever they call it on TikTok.

She sounded to me like somebody who understood the gospel and wanted no part of it. Folks, you and I can’t fix that. That’s something that the Holy Spirit and her are going to work out one way or the other.

So the idea here is not that, oh, if we just do this perfectly, we will win everybody. The issue is whether or not we’re going to throw up additional obstacles. The message of the gospel, as simple as it is, that Jesus Christ to pay for our sins and rose again to prove it.

And now offers forgiveness at no cost to us if we’ll simply believe, trust in Him. That message of the gospel, as simple as it is, is a high enough hurdle for some people to get over. I don’t want a show of hands, but I do want to ask how many people in this room trusted Christ as their Savior the first time they heard the gospel.

And it would probably be a small minority. I trusted Jesus as my Savior at five, but that was not the first time I heard the gospel. That was after years of hearing the gospel over and over in children’s church, in Sunday school, at home.

The gospel comes with enough obstacles built right in because we have to acknowledge our sinfulness, because we have to acknowledge our dependence on God. We have to acknowledge our need for forgiveness. We have to acknowledge the fact that we’re powerless to do anything to save ourselves, that we’re powerless to contribute anything to our salvation.

All of these are are obstacles that our human flesh doesn’t want to go over. So just the pure gospel message can be challenging enough for people. I don’t want to add to it unnecessarily and throw extra obstacles in there that are going to keep people away from it.

And so being a wise witness means thinking strategically about the way we present Jesus to others. How did Paul do this? He says in verse 22, I have become all things to all men, so that I may by all means save some.

Now Paul here is not saying I became a chameleon. I blended in. I joined them in all the stuff they were doing.

I acted just like them. That’s not what he’s saying. This is not telling us as the church to abandon all principle, to abandon the non-negotiables of the gospel message, to abandon the truth of scripture and just go with the flow of culture.

But it is telling us to engage people where they are in a way that they can understand where we don’t present any more obstacles than the gospel message already does so that they’re willing to give the gospel a fair hearing. And he gives some examples of this in the four verses we’ve already looked at. Verse 20, he talks about becoming as a Jew to the Jews.

Now he also talks about those who are under the law. He became under the law. These are similar but a little bit different.

When he talks about becoming as the Jews, the Bible scholar David Garland points out where Paul talks about how many times he had been beaten in the synagogues. And apparently there was a tradition that the penalty for blasphemy was to be put out of the synagogue and excommunicated from the Jewish people, if not outright executed. And they viewed him preaching Christ, particularly him preaching the resurrection, as being blasphemous because you’re taking Jesus and you’re saying he’s God.

And that was offensive to them. And so when he would stand in the synagogues and preach, he’d be accused of blasphemy. They’d go to throw him out.

Sometimes they’d try to kill him, try to cut him off from his people where he’s not welcome in the synagogue. The other option was to take your punishment, which he says according to their tradition, is 39 lashes that Paul talks about receiving on multiple occasions. And so the point being that Paul was willing to submit to discipline in the synagogue that he didn’t deserve because he knew he wasn’t a blasphemer, but because bearing that punishment kept him from being cut off from the Jewish people so that now he has the right to return to the synagogue and preach Jesus again.

So when he says, to reach the Jews, I became as a Jew, he says, I was willing to submit to whatever punishment they wanted to dole out in order for me to still bear the title of Jew so that I could come into the synagogue and continue to preach Christ. That’s a level of commitment I would like to think I have, but I don’t know. But that’s how concerned Paul was with meeting his people where they were, that he was willing to bear those punishments. For those under the law in verse 20, again we’re still talking about the Jews, but we’re talking about the practicing of the Old Testament law, he was willing to accommodate their sensibilities.

If he wanted to come into a Jewish community and get to know them and preach Christ to them, he didn’t say, you know what, we’re going to have a pulled pork barbecue right afterwards, which I’m excited we’re having, by the way. But why would he not do that? Why wouldn’t he do that?

Come on, I know you know. They didn’t eat pork. It was in the Old Testament law.

I know you know, but I think sometimes you think I’m trying to trick you. That would have just shut down all discussion. Did Paul have every right to eat pork?

Did Paul have every right to do some of the other things that are not part of the moral law of the Old Testament? Yes. But he said, you know what?

If I have to go back to wearing certain fabric and cutting my hair a certain way and eating certain things just so I can sit down with you and share Jesus, then that’s what I’ll do. Now, to those who were without the law, to the Gentiles, it doesn’t mean that he came and join them in their pagan feasts and festivities. Part of our discussion has been about the meat sacrifice to idols and whether or not they should go to the festivals at the pagan temples.

And he was not in favor of that. But he was willing to come and not flaunt his Jewish background. He was willing to dress like them and eat like them and do anything with them that didn’t violate the law of Christ. To those who were weak, it says he became weak in verse 22.

Elsewhere in the New Testament, Paul lists his credentials and they were impressive. He was a Pharisee. He was one of the top Pharisees.

He was one of the most educated men. He had this prestigious lineage. He was practically one of the nobilities of the Jewish people.

One of the nobility. Paul put that aside. He didn’t go to the gutters and lord that over people.

You’re sitting here in the gutter and you need to know about Jesus Christ. I’m going to come sit down there with you. Not walk by on my high horse and shout down at you. He was willing to become weak to reach those who were weak.

And verse 23 sort of ties a ribbon around all of this and explains why he did it. I do all things for the sake of the gospel so that I may become a fellow partaker of it. And it makes me wonder about the criteria that we make choices by and make plans by.

And even for me, so much of my day, so much of my life is driven by my to-do list and my calendar. And sometimes, let’s be honest, just by what’s easiest, we all fall into that trap. But Paul said, I do all things for the sake of the gospel.

Paul had that strategy at the forefront of his mind. What am I going to do today? How do these plans advance the gospel?

Who am I going to go see today? How does that advance the gospel? That was the first calculation.

I do all things for the sake of the gospel so that I may become a fellow partaker of it. because I want to be part of the work that the gospel’s doing as it goes forth. He wanted to see lives changed.

He wanted to see people who were dead live again. I don’t know who originally said it, because I’ve heard it attributed to so many people, that the gospel is not about making bad people good, it’s about making dead people alive. And that’s what he wanted to see happen.

The most important calculation we can make when we’re making choices, the most important calculation that it can involve when we’re planning our day, is how do these plans, how do these choices advance the gospel? And if you’ve never thought about it that way, I’m not saying that it’s an easy thing to make that shift overnight. But we start where we are and think, okay, I’ve got some free time today.

What can I do to use that to advance the gospel? I’ve got a choice here in what I do this afternoon. How can I use it to advance the gospel?

If we start to think that way, we’ll think that way more and more. And we’ll begin to see and begin to recognize the most important thing is for people around us to know Jesus Christ. And that’ll help us tear down the obstacles that we present. That’ll help us to put things aside that are going to be a distraction and do all things for the sake of the gospel.

And if this is foreign to you, sitting here today listening to this, what is the gospel? The most important thing you can take away from this this morning is the gospel. And the gospel is very simple, as I’ve outlined a little bit already.

We have sinned, all of us. We’ve sinned. We’ve disobeyed God.

And because God is holy and just and perfect, our sin separates us from God. And you and I can’t ever do anything to fix that. Even if from here on out we did only good things, it still doesn’t erase the wrong that we’ve done.

And we can’t make things right with God by going to church, giving money, taking care of people. All those are good things, but they’re not going to fix it. That sin has to be punished.

It has to be paid for. And we could spend eternity separated from God. We could do that.

We have that choice. But God’s made another way. That’s why he sent Jesus Christ, his only begotten son, to come to earth to take responsibility for my sin and responsibility for your sin and to be nailed to the cross where he shed his blood an