Self-control - 1 Corinthians 9:25

Self-control in all things

So our text for tonight is 1 Corinthians 9.25. And while you're turning there, I'm gonna ask you to think with me for a moment about the sorts of compliments that church folks give each other, or the nice things that we sometimes say about others. For example, Say I have a friend named Thomas, let's say. So I so enjoy spending time with Thomas. He's such a kind and gentle young man. I'm always so encouraged by spending time around him. You get what I'm talking about here? This is how we talk about each other, right? These are the nice things that we say about each other, especially church folks. I really appreciate another example. I really appreciate my friend Gwendolyn. She's so patient and she's so generous towards others. Or, Mark is such a faithful man, always there when you need him, always so dependable. I don't know what we'd do without him. Or, you know, it's really remarkable with all that Becky has suffered, how much joy and peace she radiates in her life. Or, I just love spending time with my friend Barry. He's so temperate. He's so sober-minded and self-controlled. Wait a minute, we don't say stuff like that, do we? Yeah, the first four were believable, right? We say things like that, but that last one, we don't talk that way about self-control, do we? Right? We might acknowledge the importance of self-control. We might admire those who possess it. But do we take pleasure or delight in this virtue the way that we do some of the others we've been talking about on Wednesday night? I'm gonna be honest, I don't. Maybe that's why I was assigned to this then. But I think, as we think about the virtue of self-control tonight, that there's real joy to be had for us if we will attend to it. As we look at this one verse tonight, I'm going to go ahead and give you my main idea here, the key thing that we need to see. The character quality that is necessary to enjoy the eternal happiness that is found in Jesus Christ is self-control. I'll say it again. The character quality that is necessary to enjoy the eternal happiness that is found in Jesus Christ is self-control. Let me read the text for us now. 1 Corinthians 9.25.

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

The character quality that is necessary to enjoy the eternal happiness that is found in Jesus Christ is self-control. And we're going to see this idea in this one verse develop in three stages. It's going to progress in three stages. So we'll talk about the first one, which will also be the longest one right now. So the first stage in this text is that every athlete exercises self-control. What we have here is a Bible-sanctioned sports analogy. That's fantastic. So I will not be using all sports analogies through. this little message, but that's what we have here. It's a Bible-sanctioned sports analogy. The imagery here is from the Ismian Games, which were second only to the Olympic Games in prestige in ancient Greece. They were hosted every two years by Corinth, written to First Corinthians, written to the Corinthian church. So every two years, hosted in Corinth, and the athletes who competed entered a strict 10-month training program. in order to compete. Now let's not, as we're thinking about the sports analogy, I don't want to get confused about what Paul is saying here. He's not saying that the Christian life is a race with only one winner. That may be the way the Ismian games worked, but here the invitation to run and to receive the prize is extended to all Christians. The competition is not the point, the self-control is. So let's not get confused about that. I also don't want us to get confused about the idea that Paul might be preaching some sort of salvation by works. He's not doing that either. That would fly in the face of the rest of the letter and of the rest of his writings. For example, 1 Corinthians 1.30 tells us that Christ is righteousness and sanctification and redemption for us. 1 Corinthians 6.11 says

you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified. in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

So the reality is that all of us stand guilty before a holy God. If we run this metaphorical race in order to earn salvation, then all of us lose. None of us win. So the Son of God becomes a perfect man. He dies on the cross. He rises from the dead so that everyone who believes in him exchanges places with him. Christ takes the blame for our sins and we get the credit for his perfect life. Forgiveness is free. And Christ gives us an additional gift. This is actually one of the main themes of 1 Corinthians, the gift of the spirit dwelling within us, making us new creatures, giving us hearts that want to please God, not in order to receive forgiveness, but because we've received forgiveness. So let me change the metaphor. If you build a dam across a stream, you will get a lake. Or if you close a circuit, electricity will flow. If you trust in Christ, then Christ's own life is working in you so that you come to love what he loves and that you come to live as he lives. So before we go any further in this text, I know it's a Wednesday night prayer meeting, but I don't want to make any assumptions. Let me ask you this, have you trusted in Jesus Christ to pay for your sins and to grant you new life? There's no prize to be received if you have not. But if you have, then you have everything to run for. So do you see what Paul is saying here? He's using sports to make a point about self-control. Christian, live your life with the same determination and focus as the competitor who runs to win a race, or later on in this chapter, as the boxer who trains to defeat an opponent. You don't run without purpose. You train and you're focused. And one more thing, it isn't optional. It says every athlete. You can't opt out by saying that you've never been much of a runner or that you don't like pushups. It doesn't work that way. Have you been purchased by the blood of Christ? Is his life working within you? Then you are in training. We'll talk about the nature of that training now in the second stage in the text. First stage, every athlete exercises self-control. Second, every athlete exercises self-control in all things. Remember how we talked about our lack of delight in self-control? This little in all things might be part of the reason why. So we need to talk about what self-control means. It's one of those terms that might seem so obvious that we might not think about it much, but I think we need to stop for a minute and ask the question, what does Paul mean by self-control in this text? He uses it in other places, Titus 1, 7, and 8. The idea of self-control is contrasted with being quick-tempered, or a drunkard, or violent, or greedy for gain. Earlier in 1 Corinthians, in chapter 7, verses 8 and 9, we're told that those who cannot exercise self-control in regard to their sexual desires should marry. We're told here that athletes in training exercise self-control in all things. And I think the idea seems to be self-mastery. Or for the athlete in training, the ability to say no. The ability to say no to some things in order to say yes to others. And if you're looking for a quick and dirty definition of self-control, that'll work. Self-control, the way that Paul is talking about it here, is the ability to say yes to the proper things and the ability to say no to the proper things. Now, something that always, I played sports competitively through high school. One of the things that always drove me nuts, as a wannabe athlete, at least, was that many of my teammates could eat stuff and do stuff that I couldn't get away with. Right? Does anybody know what I'm talking about here? Right? So, I mean, there were some things that none of us could get away with, but it seemed that if I even looked longingly at the wrong sorts of foods, then that was going to mean at least 10 extra flights of stairs at practice. So I was a soccer player. We ran a lot of stairs. But that was me. It wasn't the way that my teammates worked, but that was how I worked. And if I wanted to compete, that's what I had to do. Make sense? Friends, we're all kind of in that same sort of a place. We're all in training. And all of us, well, there's some things that we all have to say yes to. We all need to say yes to. Regular Bible reading and prayer, family worship, sitting under the preaching of the word, regular participation in the Lord's Supper. There are things you need to say yes to. And there are things that we all need to say no to. Breaking the Ten Commandments, pornography, drunkenness. You can begin to think of other things. But then there are those things in between, right? Some of us maybe can do and others can't, and it's going to be different from person to person, right? Do you know what those things are for you? Do you know what those things are for you? Or if you don't, do you have people in your life who know you well enough to tell you, right? My wife knows for the most part, and she does tell me. Hopefully I listen, right? Or say that you have a goal that requires self-control. Say you want to read more or you want to spend less time on social media. Well, that doesn't just happen, those require self-control, right? But that doesn't just happen through sheer willpower. That's not actually how self-control works, at least not in this text. What do you need, if you want to read more, or you want to spend less time on social media, or you fill in the blank with whatever that thing is for you, what do you need to say yes to? And what do you need to say no to? And do you know what those are, right? What do you need to avoid and what do you need to embrace in order to train well? Because every athlete exercises self-control in all things. So every athlete exercises self-control. Every athlete exercises control in all things. Now we get to the reason for our training, the third stage in the text. Every athlete exercises self-control to win an imperishable reward. Verse 25 talks about how every athlete competes, every runner competes to win a wreath that fades, a wreath that is perishable, but we run to win an imperishable reward. This crown of victory for the Isthmian games was a wreath that would decay. And truthfully, just about any crown or reward for which you live your life is going to decay as well. But the Christian lives for a different wreath. The Christian lives and runs for a different reward. It's a crown of glory given by Christ to all who stay the course, who don't drop out and disqualify themselves, who remain faithful till the end. Will it be an actual crown? I don't know. I don't know how much of this is a metaphor. I don't know if it'll be an actual crown. Maybe it will simply be the words of the Lord Jesus upon his return.