What Disqualifies Us From the Prize

This sermon reflects on 1 Corinthians 10 and Paul’s warning to run hard after the lasting prize of Christ. Through the cautionary example of Israel in the wilderness, we are reminded that persistent, unrepentant sin and idolatry can pull us away from faithful endurance. Yet God is faithful, providing a way of escape from temptation and calling us not only to flee from sin, but to flee toward Jesus, the true prize our hearts were made for.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

The sermon reading text for today is 1 Corinthians chapter 9, verses 24 and 25, and chapter 10, verses 1 through 13. You can find this passage in the Sanctuary Bible on page 1741. Please read as I or please listen as I read God's Word. Do you not know that in a race all runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to get a crown that will not last, but we do it to get a crown that will last forever. For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate of the same spiritual food, drank of the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them. Their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. We should not commit sexual immorality as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand of them died. We should not test Christ as some of them did and were killed by snakes, and do not grumble as some of them did and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. So if you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. No temptation has ever overtaken you except what is common to mankind. And God is faithful, he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so you can endure it.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

As we come to the passage this morning, uh before we get there, let me just uh briefly mention this that if you are someone who's newer to Elmwood, whether you are here for the first time today or whether you have uh come to Elmwood in the last couple months-ish, uh, we have something just for you coming up on Sunday, June 7th, right after the service. It's called the Welcome Party. Uh, this is really just a time to connect with other people who are new to Elmwood, uh, get to uh learn about some next steps and ways to get connected. And so if you're newer to Elmwood, uh we'd love to invite you to put this on your calendar and join us for this upcoming welcome party on Sunday, June 7th. It's gonna be right after the service. It's gonna be about 20 minutes long, so it's short. You get out before lunch starts, and uh we just would love to invite you to that. As we come to these verses today, let me invite you to join me in a word of prayer. God, on this Memorial Day weekend, we pray for all those who are a part of our church community who are traveling, who are out of their normal rhythms of life and are at some other place doing some other thing. We ask that you would please keep them safe. That you would give them rest and refreshment and their time away. And God, we also pause to remember those who lost their lives in service to our country. We ask that you would please never let us forget uh the sacrifice or to take the for granted what they have done. And we ask God ultimately that you would uh allow their lives to remind us of the even greater sacrifice that was made by our Lord Jesus. Please help us, Lord, not to lose sight of that amidst everything we do and remember on Memorial Day. God, please be near to each one of us here today and provide from your word exactly what we need. We trust you for this, and we ask this all in the name of Jesus. Amen. Life is full of cautionary tales. If we have eyes to see it, uh there are very, very compelling cautionary tales uh that remind us of what we should not do. I remember when I was in high school and uh there were times where they would bring these mangled vehicles and they would put them right in the middle of where all the students are walking around, so you had to walk past it and you had to see it, and this uh this mangled, crumpled mess of a car was a cautionary tale of what can happen when you drink and drive. Of course, today that needs to be expanded and maybe replaced by texting and driving or doing something on your phone instead of paying attention to what you are doing. Or you can think of the TV shows where they take out-of-control teenagers and they bring them to prisons and they put them in all the prison garb and they bring them in and they have inmates that rough them up a little bit and they uh tell stories about how terrible it is to be in prison in hopes that it will scare these teenagers into good behavior. The stories of those inmates is a cautionary tale for those children of what not to do. Maybe you have been new to a workplace and someone has pulled you aside and said, Hey, I know that you're new here. I've seen people get fired for that very same thing that I just saw you do, so just be careful, would you? Former employee Susie is a cautionary tale of the things you should maybe consider not doing in that workplace. Or think of the warning labels that you see on different products. Behind every single one of those warning labels is a cautionary tale of someone who did something really dumb. Okay? There is a reason why the blow dryer has to tell you not to use it in the bathtub. Because someone did that. And now there is a warning label. And each one of those warning labels screams to us, please use common sense. Don't do stupid things. Please, just don't do it. Sometimes all it takes is seeing Uncle Jimmy or Aunt Matilda at Thanksgiving each year. And their lives, as you observe them from the outside, can become something for you of a cautionary tale of what life could turn out to be like for people who are like this, who make these kinds of choices. It can become a cautionary tale of the kind of person that you don't want to become ever in your life. These kinds of cautionary tales are all around us in the world, and the beauty of a cautionary tale is that it allows us to learn from someone else's mistakes instead of making those same mistakes ourselves. But the catch is it only works if you heed the warning. We're in a series of messages in the book of 1 Corinthians. It's a letter that was written by a man named Paul, who is a church planter who traveled the Roman world establishing new churches, and as he left those churches, he would often have correspondence back and forth. And this letter of 1 Corinthians that you heard read this morning, uh, the this letter is one of those pieces of correspondence between Paul and this church community. And really what he's been doing, if you've been with us for this whole series, you know that this is a really messed up church. And Paul is writing to address some pretty serious problems that exist within the lives and the hearts of these believers in the city of Corinth. And in this passage we come to today, Paul presents us with a cautionary tale. He points to the generation of Israel that rebelled against God in the wilderness, and he says, Don't make the same mistake. Learn from their example, learn from their mistakes. Don't make the same mistakes they did. So let's look at these verses here today that you heard read a moment ago, and as we do so, we're going to see Paul telling us three things that we have to do. So the first thing Paul tells us we have to do is number one, he says, run hard after the ultimate prize. Run hard after the ultimate prize. You hear this in chapter 9, starting in verse 24. He says, Don't you know that in a race all the runners run, but only one gets the prize? Run in such a way as to get the prize. Everyone who competes in the games goes into strict training. They do it to gain a crown that will not last, but we do it to gain a crown that will last forever. So in these uh two verses here, Paul he compares the Christian life, he describes it as an athletic competition. And all of the Corinthians would have known exactly what he was talking about because the city of Corinth was the location where the Isthmian Games were held every couple years. So, similar to the Olympics, these Isthmian games were held in Corinth, and so they they were steeped in this. They knew exactly what he was talking about when he talks about these athletic competitions and the strict training and all that that goes into a race like this. This past winter was the first time that our family spent time watching the Olympics together. Our girls are finally old enough now, and it pretty quickly became a routine that we would sit down after dinner and we would look at the, you know, broadcast to see what was the featured event for that night. And uh every time I watch the Olympics, I'm just astonished by the athleticism that you see in some of these folks. Like these are the best in the world at what they do, and none of them got to that place. None of them are on that stage of the Olympics without going into a ridiculous amount of very strict training from you know weight training to pliability to what they eat and how they sleep, and all of that goes into them competing in these games. And so Paul tells us, he describes the Christian life as an athletic competition, and as a result of that, he says he puts himself into very strict training so that he can win the prize. Now, the prize that he's describing here is not a crown like this. When he talks about the crown uh of life, he talks about a crown that will fade away. So we think of a crown and we think of a metal crown that like a king wears. This kind of uh leafy headpiece, crown thing, was a part of what you would receive if you were to uh place in one of these athletic events. And so this is what he has in mind. He has in mind a crown like this that will eventually just wither away and shrivel and be no more. And he says, I'm not competing for a prize like this. I'm competing for something that will last forever. And in the letter that he wrote, uh Peter, who was one of Jesus' own disciples, said uh described it as the crown of life. And that's what Paul says we should run hard after. His point in these verses is he's saying we should compete for the prize as if only one of us can get it. Listen to how he says this in verse 24. All the runners run, but only one gets the prize. So, in a way, he's pitting all of us against one another, isn't he? He's saying, compete as if only one of you will get the prize. So he's not describing like a first grade competition where everyone goes home with a participation ribbon. He's not describing that. He's saying we should live with a mindset that says, it's you or me, Chad, and I'm gonna win. You all laugh because you're like, no, you're not. You know, we should live with a mindset that says it's either you or me, Mark. It's you or me, Marilyn. We should compete as if only one of us can get the prize. That's the kind of urgency that we should have as we run the race of the Christian life. And as we run hard after the prize. So this is the first thing he tells us to do is he tells us to run hard after this ultimate prize. But we all know that in any athletic competition there are things you can do that will disqualify you from receiving that prize, and that is where he turns next. He points us to the example of Israel's history of the wilderness generation and tells us what can and what will disqualify us from receiving the ultimate crown, the ultimate prize. So he says, number one, run hard after the ultimate prize. And then secondly, he says, beware of what can disqualify you from receiving the prize. Listen to how he says this in verse one to five of chapter ten. He says, I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them. Their bodies were scattered in the wilderness. There is so much we could explore in what we just read in those verses, uh, but for the sake of time today, let me just uh summarize what Paul is getting at here. Uh he's he's pointing us to Israel's history, and he says, in the wilderness, the people of Israel experienced the blessings and the provision of God. They passed through the Red Sea on dry ground. He says, God provided miraculously for them, not only leading them out of Egypt, but he also provided food and provided water for them miraculously in the wilderness. So the wilderness generation experienced the blessing and the provision of God, but because of their unbelief and because of their sin and because of their idolatry, some of them were disqualified. Some of them never received the prize, which in this context of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, he's talking about them entering into the land of promise. That was the prize that they were after, and he says they fell short of it, they lost that prize because of their sin and idolatry. And when he talks about the wilderness generation here, you notice that he uses the wilderness generation lived under the old covenant. The Corinthians live under the new covenant, and you see him talking about the wilderness generation using new covenant language of spiritual food and spiritual drink and Christ. He's using this new covenant language because he's trying to make a connection in their minds. He wants them to see, he wants us to make a parallel between the experience of the Corinthian church and the experience of God, and some of them were disqualified from receiving the prize. And he's talking about the Corinthians here as well, and he says, The Corinthian church, they have experienced the blessings of God. Listen to how he says this in the opening verses of this letter that he wrote, he said to them, in verse 5 of chapter 1, he says, In him that is in Christ, you have been enriched in every way, with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge. God, this confirming our testimony about Christ among you. Therefore, you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly await for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. So he's saying, Corinthian church, like the wilderness generation, you have experienced the blessings and the provision of God, but you've experienced it in ways that the wilderness generation could only dream of. And some of you are in danger of being disqualified from receiving the prize. Paul wants them to see the example of the wilderness generation and to choose a better way. So, what exactly does he say will disqualify them? Let me summarize it this way. Living in persistent and unrepentant sin will disqualify us from receiving the prize. Living in persistent and unrepentant sin is what will disqualify us from the prize. Listen to how he says in verse 10, uh sorry, uh verse 7 rather. He says, Do not be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. And we should not commit sexual immorality as some of them did. And in one day, 23,000 of them died. We should not test Christ, as some of them did, and were killed by the snakes, and do not grumble as some of them did and were killed by the destroying angel. Now, these uh what he's doing here is he's taking some uh different passages, these narrative accounts that we find about the wilderness generation, and he's pushing, he's putting them together and giving us sort of a schmorgis board of the kinds of sin that we see in the wilderness generation in uh in Israel. And if you if you want to go read about this, if you want to go read those specific accounts, uh the two that are sort of uh underlying all of what he says here are Exodus chapter 32, that's the first passage, and the first part of Numbers chapter 21. So Exodus 32, Numbers 21, those are the two passages that are sort of at the at the foundation of what he points to to show the sin and idolatry of the wilderness generation. And when you read those passages, and you can see it here in Corinthians, what you notice is that the idolatry of the wilderness generation revolved largely around food and sexual immorality. These are the exact same things that Paul has for chapters in this letter been addressing with the Corinthians, that they're engaging in sexual immorality, that they're participating in and partaking of food that has been sacrificed to idols in these uh in these idol feasts. And so he's drawing this comparison between them so that they can see how in danger they are of disqualifying themselves from the prize. I want to be really clear about this that he is not saying that if you struggle with sin that you're disqualified. He's not saying that if you if you struggle with sin, if you struggle with uh thoughts or behaviors or actions or motives or or things uh internally about yourself that you're like, man, I wish I could stop this thing, but but I I I struggle so hard and I can't get over this thing, this vice, this sin. He's not saying that if you struggle with sin, uh that you should uh uh beware of being disqualified. What he's talking about here in the wilderness generation and in the Corinthians is persistent and unrepentant sin. So what he's describing in the wilderness generation was not a one-time thing. It's not like the wilderness generation got out into the wilderness and they complained and grumbled, and God was like, That's it, you're done. No, you read those stories and you see that God did a miracle with water. He led them through the Red Sea, and then the first thing they do is complain about not having enough water, and you're like, guys, he just did a miracle with water. And then they grumble about food, and they complain about, well, we don't have any food, and then God gives them food, and they're like, we don't like this food, we want better food. And it's a persistent grumbling and complaining and unbelief and a persistent rebellion against God, who is continuing to provide for them in the wilderness. And then you go to the church in Corinth, and it's the same exact thing. These Corinthian believers didn't like do this once, and Paul is like, drop the hammer. They are persistently living in this unrepentant sin and they are proud of it. They're doing so, believing that this is this is my spiritual right in Jesus is to participate in this. And Paul's writing to people who are following the pattern of the will. generation who are living in persistent and unrepentant sin. And those are the people that Paul says should be should have no confidence that you will ever receive the prize. Persistent and unrepentant sin is what will disqualify us from receiving the prize. If this is true we should be the kinds of people who ask ourselves probing and uncomfortable questions. My assumption is that if you're here today, that you don't want to be like the wilderness generation. That you don't want to be like the Corinthians. And so we should be the kinds of people that are willing to ask ourselves questions such as this do I have sin I refuse to fight? Are there areas into which I will not let the purifying light of Christ come into my life are there areas of my life I choose to remain in darkness and sin that I choose to keep a secret? We should be the kind of people that ask ourselves questions like this where in my life do I see greed and pride? It's not a question of if it's a question of where do I see greed and pride in my life? Where do I see arrogance? Where do I see condescension towards those I disagree with? That might be politically that might be theologically might be you know just clashes of personality where in my life do I see a spirit of arrogance and condescension towards people that I just don't like where have the good gifts of God become too important to me in what things do I overindulge because it just feels really good in the moment we should be the kind of people that are asking ourselves questions like in what ways do I indulge in sexual sin? Do I allow my mind and my thoughts to linger in places where they ought not to linger in what ways do I express my sexuality and use my body in ways that are outside of God's design for my life and relationships as we see it given to us in scripture these are the kind of questions that we must be willing to ask ourselves because living in persistent and unrepentant sin will disqualify us from receiving the prize friends we must not deceive ourselves into thinking that God will tolerate our sin because he won't we must not think we can live in unrepentant sin and get away unscathed because we can't so number one we have to run hard after this ultimate prize number two we have to beware of what can disqualify us from receiving the prize and number three we have to entrust ourselves to the sustaining faithfulness of God listen to verse 12 and 13 of chapter 10 where Paul says so if you think you are standing firm be careful that you do not fall no temptation has overtaken you except what is common to mankind and God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear but when you are tempted he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it so what he's getting at here is he's saying there are no new temptations. You know the the same kinds of things the same forms of temptation that we see in the garden in the wilderness in the Corinthians and in our own lives today is common to humankind is what Paul's saying he's saying guys you're not experiencing anything unique. You're not being tempted in you know in broad categories and in broad ways that no one else has been tempted. Everyone else has dealt with these same exact temptations. And in the midst of those temptations he says God is faithful. God will provide a way of escape. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can endure and beyond what you can bear. Now this is one of those places where the paragraph break doesn't do us any favors. Because as you're reading the Bible you see that there's paragraph breaks and sometimes there's new headings and when we see a paragraph break, a division between verses 12 and 13, we think well Paul's moved on to something different. He's talking about a different subject he's moved on from this but that's actually not true. Verses 13 and 14, we have to read them together. Listen to what he says God is faithful, he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but when you are tempted he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. Therefore my dear friends flee from idolatry. Now what these two verses together show us is the complementary nature, the two-sided partnership that exists between us and God as it relates to temptation He's saying God will provide a way of escape. So when we hear him say, you know, God's going to make a way out that can sound so passive to us can it? We can think well God's just going to make a way and he's just going to make the temptation go away he's going to make the thoughts go away he's going to make the you know the desire of my heart to pursue this he's just going to make it go away and Paul says no no there is a partnership between you and the Lord in this job is to provide a way out your job is to take it his job is to provide a path of escape for you your job is to say I'm going to walk the path that God has given me as an escape from this. So there's a two-sided partnership that exists here. In other words we entrust ourselves to his sustaining faithfulness by fleeing from sin and idolatry. That's the way that we actually functionally believe and trust in his faithfulness and trust in his provision to make a way out we functionally choose to believe that by choosing the path and fleeing from idolatry and fleeing from sin one of the ways that we functionally believe in his faithfulness and believe in his ability to make a way out is to actually take it is to flee from idolatry. We entrust ourselves to his sustaining faithfulness by fleeing from idolatry which means things like this. This is just some examples we flee from idolatry and we entrust ourselves to his sustaining faithfulness by pre-deciding. That's a really important word okay you should write that word down pre-decide. There's things you have to decide ahead of time you're going to do or not do because when you get in the moment we all know what's going to happen. Well is it really that bad well you know we have to predecide that we're not going to allow ourselves to be in certain kinds of situations. There's just certain places we're not going to go there may be certain people we're not going to hang out with. We have to pre-decide to not be in certain kinds of situations. We have to predecide that we are not going to engage in certain categories of conversation altogether we have to pre-decide that we are not going to allow ourselves to look at or engage with or spend time lingering with certain kinds of media or entertainment that maybe depicts certain things or has certain themes or certain subjects in it. We have to pre-decide by choosing friends very wisely choosing the people that we allow to get close to us to have influence in our lives we have to we have to choose those friends very carefully we entrust ourselves to his faithfulness by doing things like maybe using software that sends your browser history to a friend of yours so that every single potentially risky website you go to, you're going to get a phone call and they say, hey can you tell me about this? So that you can't hide what you do in the dark corners of the internet there's internet filters you can use for that as well. We do this by doing the hard work to know ourselves well. We do the hard work to know ourselves, to know where our hearts are most vulnerable to know the kinds of things we find ourselves most tempted with because that's going to be different for me than it is for you. Now there may be some commonality for sure but the way that you are tempted is going to look very different than the way I am tempted. And for a variety of different reasons that is the case. And so we entrust ourselves to his sustaining faithfulness by fleeing from idolatry by running as far and as fast in the opposite direction as we can. And we do that because living in persistent and unrepentant sin will disqualify us from receiving the prize we must flee from idolatry but here's one of the most important parts of this we have to remember that woven throughout all of this letter and all of Paul's writing and all the Bible basically the the good news about the person and work of Jesus is at the center of all of this and we have to remember that when Paul says flee from idolatry he's not saying that your life is to be spent consumed only with fleeing from something fleeing from idolatry means fleeing to Jesus. We flee from somewhere and we also flee to somewhere else. So verse 11, listen to what Paul says these things happen to them, that is the wilderness generation as examples and were written down as warnings for us on whom the culmination of the ages has come. Now what he's talking about here is he's he's he's unlocking this sort of this whole world and that phrase the culmination of the ages has come. And what's behind that is the Bible says that for generations God's people were looking forwards. They were looking forward anticipating awaiting the time when God would make good on his promises to save them and to rescue them. And Paul says in Jesus we now possess everything that the wilderness generation was longing for. And we possess even more than they knew was coming. So he's saying Jesus is the one in whom the culmination of the ages has come. All of God's plan to save and to rescue people comes to fruition in the person and in the work of Jesus. And so he's reminding them saying guys that the culmination of the ages has come on you. And he says that in order to say to them you have the one that you have been longing for why are you fooling around with food and drink and sex you have the one that you've been waiting for. Why are you messing around with idolatry? Why are you giving yourself to these things? You have so much better you have the one that you're truly longing for why are you doing all of these things we'd not just flee from things we flee to things. He's saying if you have Christ why in the world are you settling for all of this stuff? And of course the same question is what we need to ask ourselves too if in Jesus the culmination of the ages has come and if we have the one that our hearts are longing for if we have the one who can satisfy the deepest longings of our heart if we have the one who is our savior and our rescuer why would we fool around with things that that put us in danger of being disqualified from receiving the prize we have to flee from idolatry but the other side of that is we have to flee to Christ Paul is very clear God is faithful. He's faithful and we see his faithfulness to us most clearly demonstrated in the cross where Jesus gave his life in place of ours that he suffered and he died so that we could be made spiritually alive again. And what the cross shows us is it shows us two things. Number one it shows us how serious God takes sin. It shows us how serious God takes idolatry when we allow our hearts to be allow our hearts to love things and to prize things more than God that's what idolatry is shows us the the cost how serious God takes it that there are no amends we can make with our behavior that there's nothing we can do in our behavior to overcome the relational breach that we now have with our Creator because we have lived in rebellion against him because we have sinned and because we've given our hearts to idolatry. So the cross shows us how serious God takes sin. But it also shows us the unfathomable and inexhaustible depths of his grace and his mercy and his kindness towards us Paul says in a in another one of his letters he says while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Not when we cleaned ourselves up not when we made ourselves presentable not when we reduced the quota of sin in our life to lower than a certain percentage while we were still lost and dead in our sin God was faithful to his promises to rescue and to redeem and to save us so we entrust ourselves to his faithfulness so friends run hard after the ultimate prize and beware of what can disqualify you from receiving that prize and entrust yourself to the sustaining faithfulness of God. As we come to the communion table today I want to invite you to take a few moments I feel like it's especially appropriate with a a text like this that we spend some time in confession and we spend time in reflection and examining our lives and we do this each week as we come to the communion table as we examine ourselves. And so maybe you need to do business with God here this morning leave a few moments for you to spend in confession and reflection before we come to the communion table.