The Apostle Paul's final address to the Ephesian elders in Acts 20 serves as a powerful example of faithful ministry, emphasizing the importance of serving the Lord with humility, tears, and unwavering commitment. Paul recounts his ministry, highlighting his dedication to declaring God's full counsel without holding back, even in the face of impending persecution and suffering. The core lesson is the profound significance of finishing one's course with joy, not by avoiding hardship, but by not counting one's life dear unto oneself and by remaining faithful to God's calling. This commitment to finishing the race well, as exemplified by Paul's readiness to face martyrdom, calls believers to live with purpose and integrity, ensuring their lives count for eternity.
Restored with Diffio
Audio restored with Diffio. Diffio processed the original archive recording to reduce noise and produce a cleaner listening version; the original stays available.
Speech quality score (model-estimated, SCOREQ): before 2.21 → restored 4.82
in their twenty-th chapter. Acts chapter twenty. I guess it's always with hesitation that I say certain passages of God's word are my favorite because it's all of God's word, but I guess if we're going to be real honest, you know, real candid, don't we enjoy some passages maybe more than reading in the book of Haggai or Habakkuk or Zephaniah? Okay, let's give ourselves enough liberty to say that There are passages that we particularly enjoy, not that anyone is more important perhaps, but we particularly enjoy. And some passages that really touch our souls in a way that's kind of special. Acts chapter twenty is one of those.
Second Timothy chapter four is one of those. And there's something very common to both of those passages. In Acts chapter twenty, Paul is speaking for the last time to some very dear friends of his, people that he himself said would never see him again. And that's those elders at Ephesus and then at second Timothy chapter four is the passage in which Paul speaks the last time ever for anybody to ever hear or see him again because that was shortly before his martyrdom you would expect something sentimental about passages like that wouldn't you you would expect a softness a tenderness Something really touching about passages such as Acts chapter twenty, Second Timothy chapter four and so on.
And there is. We're going to take a quick look at Acts chapter twenty and then we're going to pass along to other passages. But I'd like to start reading with verse seventeen. I think we'll just start at verse nineteen. Verse seventeen and eighteen is telling us that he called the elders from Ephesus to meet him at Miletus. And then in verse eighteen it says that they were come and and he began addressing them and he says among other things in verse nineteen serving the Lord with all humility of mind and with many tears and trials which befell me by the lying in wait of the Jews and how I kept back nothing that was profitable unto you but have shown you and have taught you publicly and from house to house testifying both to the Jews and also to the Greeks repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, behold, I go bound in the Spirit unto Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befall me there, except that the Holy Spirit witnesses in every city, saying that bonds or imprisonments and afflictions abide or await me. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and a ministry which I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of God. And now behold, I know that you all among whom I have gone, preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more. Wherefore I testify unto you this day that I am pure from the blood of all men.
For I have not shunned to declare unto you all the counsel of God. Take heed, therefore, he says to the elders at Ephesus. Take heed, therefore, unto yourselves, first, and to all the flock over which the Holy Spirit hath made you overseers to feed the Church of God, which he has purchased with his own blood. And the story continues, but that's as far as we're going to read now. I really want to talk for a little bit about something in verse twenty-four, especially that expression so that I might finish my course with joy. thing we'd like to center our thoughts about for a little while this evening is finishing our course in verse nineteen he talks about serving the Lord and he tells us that he served the Lord with all humility we know something about Paul we know what kind of a person he was we know something about how much he suffered We get a pretty good reading on this man's character, don't we, from what we know in the scriptures of him as we listen to his writings and sort of imagine that we're listening to his preaching and see some of his actions from the scriptures.
I think we would have to agree that he was a very great man but a very humble man. Those are two things that make a beautiful blend. To be a great preacher and be humble is a kind of a rarity. There are those. Not a lot of great preachers. Not a lot of humble preachers. But there's a few that are one and a few that are another. And then there's some that are both. Don't say anything about where I fit into that. But this was what Paul was. He was a truly great man. And probably he was great because he was so very, very humble and unassuming. A real man with a real pastor's heart.
A real... shepherd of God's people, a real caring type of a person. Soft-hearted, the man who knew how to let the tears flow profusely. Wasn't ashamed of that. He didn't have that macho image that is terrible for a man to weep. He didn't play on that string. He was not afraid to let his emotions come to the surface. Neither was he a sissy type of a person that was just balling all over the place and working on people's emotions you know like the one man who preached his sermon and he dropped his notes I think probably you have heard John Elliott tell this story because I think that's where I got it but the story goes that he dropped his notes and left them and somebody picked them up afterwards and they looked at his notes and at a certain point it said at this point you cry and at this point you laugh and at this point you cry and at this point you laugh and and he had it all down in his notes as to what he was going to do at certain points Now, that wouldn't be exactly spirit-led crying.
That wouldn't be a very touching type of a message, I don't think, because it would all be such a play. But Paul was not that way. He was really a humble man, and he said he served the Lord. We have to say, yes, Paul, you really did serve the Lord, and you did it with humility of mind, and you did it with many tears. The Apostle Paul said that, you know, in Corinthians, where is it? Second Corinthians, eleven, when he was enumerating all the things in life that he went through, shipwrecks, and the times that he was in perils of the deep, and perils of robbers. My dad wasn't always just quite up on his English, and he used to say pearls of the deep, pearls of robbers.
Well, that isn't so bad. Perils can become pearls, you know. and uh that was um that was the things that he was enumerating in second corinthians chapter eleven and then and he said in that whole list of experiences and the cares of the church remember that i did just almost in the same breath as it was all of a sudden he said and the cares of the churches as if to say that was as heavy on my heart and that was as much of a real concern to me as it was to go out and face the lions and the bears and the angry Jews and the hostile people of his day. Serving a Lord with trials which befell me by the lying in the way to the Jews.
And then he says in verse twenty, and I didn't keep back anything from you that was profitable. That's a good servant of God. That's a nice thing to be able to say as you get toward the end of the life of service that I haven't kept anything back from you. You know, back in the days of Israel, God sent out his prophets like Jeremiah. And he said, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Isaiah, I want you to go preach to those people. But now you wait a minute. Before you go, I'm going to tell you what kind of people you're sent to preach to. They're hard, hard, and stiff-necked. They're not going to listen to you. But you go preach to them anyway. So Jeremiah went and preached to them.
Jeremiah was called a weeping prophet, by the way. You read about Jeremiah's tears a great deal. In fact, there's one whole book written on his tears, and that's the lamentations of Jeremiah. The laments of Jeremiah. Jeremiah doesn't crack any jokes in his preaching, or at least not in his writings in the book of lamentations. He's very serious about these things. Jeremiah wept a great deal. Suffered a lot of persecution. But there was one place you remember in the book of Jeremiah where the people came to Jeremiah and said, Now Jeremiah preached to us new things. Tell us things that we like to hear. Tell us things that make us feel good.
That's the only way you're going to be a popular preacher in these days is to tell people what they like to hear. and things that will make them feel good we all want to feel good you know but paul says i'm not concerned about people's feelings i am concerned about my responsibility to the lord as his servant first yesterday we were having a seminar in willowbrook and there were a number of people there young people who were from different churches in town they were not it was not an assembly centered seminar it was advertised to several of the churches in town. I remember there. And I remember at one point I was speaking about our responsibility in the church.
I just made one little statement. I said, our first responsibility in the church is not to please people or make them feel good. Our first responsibility is to be faithful to God. And I saw a couple sitting over in there. And they communicated with each other. I'm not sure of what they said, but I don't think they liked what I said. I don't think they agreed with me. I expected some encounters with them afterwards, but they didn't come and say anything to me. But I saw a little huddle with those people in the middle afterwards, and maybe they were saying nice things, and maybe they weren't. I don't know what they were saying, so I can't judge that. But I could tell that they weren't exactly agreeing with me.
We want nice things first. And that is a priority over being faithful to God. No, that's not Paul's philosophy. Paul's philosophy of preaching was that you're faithful to God first. Then you let the chips fall where they will. No, I don't mean to say that by that, that I think Paul was just out cutting people's ears off and seeing how hard he could be and how he could hurt. I guess there's such a thing as preachers getting their mindset that the more people you can shoot down in one sermon, the greater a preacher you are. The more people you can hurt, the more people you can chew up and cut the pieces and nail them to the wall and all that, and then you become a hero. Well, if that's the way I have to be a hero, just don't include me in with the who's who of the great creatures of America.
You weren't planning to anyway, but that's not where it's at, folks. Paul was a man who preached faithfully, and he could say at the end of his ministry, I have not shunned to declare to you all the counsel of God. That was his responsibility. Then he went on to say in verse twenty, verse twenty one, testifying to the Jews and to the Greeks repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus. That was his message. His message was repentance and faith. And then he said in verse twenty two and twenty three, now I'm going to go to Jerusalem. You see, because he was leaving that part of the continent for the last time he was going to go to Jerusalem and he already got his message that at Jerusalem he was going to be bound and he was going to suffer tremendous persecution, even death.
And so he says, I'm going to Jerusalem and I don't know exactly what's going to happen to me there, but I know one thing that the Spirit of God has made clear to me that whatever city I go to, I'm going to suffer persecution. So I'm going anyway. So he did. Ba's inflections abide me, he said. And then we come through that beautiful, powerful verse twenty-four. But none of these things move me. I know what's going to happen in Jerusalem. I've been told, I've heard the prophecy of Agabus, but that doesn't move me. I'm afraid it would have moved me, me. But it didn't move Paul. He says, I go anyway. I go to Jerusalem.
I know it's going to be a rough go. But I go. Well, how could he say that? How could he be so determined to go? Well, because of the next expression. Neither count I, my life, dear unto myself. There is a secret. The secret of his being willing to go to Jerusalem when he knew that it was going to be to suffer persecution and ultimately martyrdom. The secret was that he didn't count his life dear unto himself. And I think a lot of us would get further ahead in the things of God if we didn't count our life so dear unto ourselves. And then he said that I might finish my course with joy.
Isn't that something? He says that I might finish my course. I'd like to talk about that for a little while this evening. Finishing my course. with joy. Paderewski was a famous pianist, did great, great professional concerts in his day many, many years ago. He was putting on a great concert one night in a vague concert hall and it was going to be top brass, high glass, very, very stiff, formal, classy musicians were going to be in the audience. and it was going to be done to perfection as Paderewski only would do.
Into the meeting that night or into the concert that night came a lady who wanted her son who was nine years old to hear Paderewski play on the piano. She wanted him to be a musician and she thought he would be inspired by hearing Paderewski play. They were waiting for the performance to start. Now while the people were sort of talking in hushed tones but visiting together as they will do before the concert starts, This boy got bored. He slipped out of his seat when his mother didn't see him and he went up to the great piano. The great, what would it be a Steinway? What kind of Steinway would Petrusky play? Anyway, he got up there on the stage and he began playing, of all things, chopsticks.
People began to say, where did that boy come from? Stop him. Who had the audacity to bring a kid that age in here? And all such remarks were beginning to come from the audience. Paterusky was in the backstage, and he quickly sensed what was happening. And he went out on the stage, got behind the boy, and he began playing the counterpart, a counter melody to the little boy. He was playing chopsticks. While he was doing so, he kept whispering in the little guy's ears, Keep going. Don't quit. Don't quit now.
Stay at it, son. Doing fine. Sometimes I think we need somebody to whisper into our ear. Keep going. Don't quit now. Let's finish to the end. Paul would be that kind of a person who would do that very thing. Paul would love to put his arms around some of us who are ready to throw in the towel and quit and say, don't quit now. Keep going. Don't stop.
Paul isn't here, but the Lord Jesus is. And I think he would do the same thing. And I think he does the same thing. I think there's many times when the Lord bends down and whispers into our ears just about the time we're at the bottom of the pits, so to speak. He says, don't quit now, Milo. Keep going. Another day. Another year. Keep moving. Don't get discouraged. Let's go. The Apostle says, I want to finish my course. And how did he want to finish his course? He wanted to finish his course with joy. I think that should be the prayer of every last one of us.
You know, there's one thing that we observe with each other when we don't see each other all the time. I haven't seen some of you folks for over a year. You know what I observe? I observe that you're a year older. And I observe that many of us, including myself, are not kids anymore. And for some of us, this becomes a matter of grave concerns. Do you ever get really concerned about the fact that, well, take myself for instance, I'm fifty-six years old. I know I don't look that. I probably look seventy. But I'm not a young kid anymore. I've been around a little while.
Fifty-six times two would make me a hundred and twelve years old. I ought to be pretty good by that time. But I don't think I'll be around by that time. I think either one or two things are sure to happen. within the next fifty-six years surely the Lord will come before that or I'll die of old age either one but it makes you begin to realize as you get older and you start looking back over those years that have come and gone nineteen fifty-seven when Gladys and I left the farm where does that put us how many years in the Lord's world I look back and say where's those years gone what's happened here What has been accomplished for God?
How does my records look with Him? I'm not really concerned about how my records look to people here, there, or elsewhere. My record before God. How does that look? What about the years that lie ahead? You're kind of concerned about this, don't we? We have a right to. And I hope that we can say with the Apostle Paul or Paul the Apostle, I want to finish my course because our course we are going to finish. But I want to do it with joy. And as one man so well prayed, O God, don't let me die a wicked old man. Maybe we could take the word wicked out and say, Lord, don't let me die a grouchy old man.
Lord, don't let me die a cynical old man. Lord, don't let me die a foolish old man. Lord, let me die in peace and let me have joy to the end of the race. You know one of the greatest things that has been a blessing in my life through the years, especially as a younger preacher. I could talk about stories for a long time, but I'm not up here to tell stories, but let me tell you just one or two. Being around old people. I mean old people. No, there aren't old people.
They're older people. I'm thinking of one particular person who was older. He was older than I was by about seventy years at that time. He lived out in the state of Kansas. I wouldn't be surprised if I mentioned his name. Some of you might even recognize his name. Remember a fellow by the name of old Mr. Nash? Sam Nash? Well, Sam Nash never preached a sermon in my presence. But I'll tell you the thing that impressed me the most about San Nash is when Don Elliott and I used to go to Long Island, Kansas and go visit in his little humble home with crooked floors, sagging roof, outdoor plumbing, no conveniences, hard chairs, no carpet, and we used to spend each day of the week, maybe an hour or two, with old Mr.
Nash. Doing what? Praying. getting on our knees with that old man praying. He couldn't have preached sermons that impressed me as much as he impressed me with praying with him as a younger preacher. And to see the radiance and the joy that old man had, you say, how old was he? Fascinating me. I believe that old man died with joy, happiness, radiance. in fellowship with God. I covet that kind of a life. And I say, Lord, if I have to get old, in fact, Lord, if you don't come, I hope you let me get old, because there's only one other alternative.
So, Lord, I don't mind getting old if you let me grow old gracefully. Wouldn't you like to grow old gracefully? There's really nothing too wrong or too bad about getting old gracefully. And I think that's one way to finish our course with joy. I don't think if we're graceful, we're going to be very happy, are we? So it's a real, real beautiful testimony to those who are coming on behind us to see us grow old with all of our accumulated wisdom that we get along the way, but to balance that off with gracefulness. And I love to be around graceful older people.
I mean people who really have been mellowed through the years. And that's what the years ought to do. Oh, that I might finish my course with joy, says Paul. And to testify the gospel of the grace of God, I want to finish my course with joy. Do you want to finish your course? Well, do you want to finish your course with joy? Let's see if Paul did. Maybe this was something that he was asking for that never happened. Maybe he was asking out of the will of God. Let's go to Second Timothy chapter four. Second Timothy chapter four, Paul gives us some insight. If we had time to spend on this whole chapter, it would be well worth our while, but we want to go to another passage of scripture, so we'll just kind of check in here on the way through.
Chapter four, Second Timothy, verse six. Paul has been exhorting his young son in the face, Timothy, about the responsibilities of the ministry that he would be involved in as a faithful servant of Christ. And now he says in verse six, this is Paul writing among his last words, I am now ready to be offered. I'm ready to be offered. Tremendous words, aren't they? In other words, Paul is saying, I feel satisfied. I feel accomplished. I feel I'm ready to go. I don't feel like I have to beg the Lord for another twenty years like Hezekiah did and make a mess of it in the end.
That's what he did. I don't feel like I have to plead with God for more time. I'm ready to be offered. And of course we know how he was offered. He was laid on the shopping block. I'm ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand. I'll tell you there is no passage in the Word of God with more pathos than that one I don't believe. And Paul says my time of departure is at hand. And then he says, I have fought a good fight. Great for you, Paul. I'm going in with a victor's crown. I've fought a great fight. I have finished my course.
I have kept the faith. three beautiful things that Paul says about himself. I have, I have fought a good fight. I have finished the course. And I have kept the faith. And you would have to say, I agree, Paul. This is exactly what you did. Praise God. And he says, because of this there's laid up for me a crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous judge is going to give me at that day and then i like what he concluded that verse with but he says you know what not to me only i'm not the only one that gets that crown he says it's unto all those who what who love his appearing he didn't say it was to all those who preach great sermons and hold great revivals in the world or who do some great thing that gets their name over all the major Christian magazines that swarm our country?
No, they didn't say that. Not that there's any wrong with that, but that's not what he said. He said, it's unto those who love his appearing. Now let me say something. It's easy for us to sit in our padded queues and say, yes, we love his appearing. That's verbiage. And verbiage doesn't cost us anything. It's as easy as anything to say, oh, yes, I'm... In fact, I have a friend. I had a friend. He's now in heaven. He's still my friend, I guess, but he's not here on earth anymore. He's in heaven, and he used to say repeatedly when we labored together, well, I just hope the Lord comes. I hope the Lord comes today.
I'm just ready for the Lord to come. And he was always talking about being ready for the Lord to come. Now, bless his dear heart, I certainly don't want to sit in judgment on him. Maybe he meant it. But sometimes I wondered if he really did. Sometimes I wondered if it wasn't just phraseology that sounded nice. Whether he was trying to impress people or not, I don't know what he was doing, but I just wasn't impressed because I knew him so well. I wasn't impressed that he was that tremendously anxious for the coming of the Lord. I have to be honest with you. when I'm feeling as good as I feel now, and when I'm as happy as I am tonight, and when my wife loves me as much as she does, and when my grandchildren are as cute as they are, and when everything is going so well, do I really just, oh, I just long for the Lord to come.
I just can't wait for the Lord to come. Do I have to be honest enough to tell you I stepped into confession box? No. No. I'm having a lot of fun down here. Now I'm glad the Lord is coming. I'm glad I'm ready to go when He does. But I have to honestly, if I'm going to be totally transparent with you, I have to honestly say when things are going well, I don't get that over anxious for the Lord to come. I project it into the future. I say, someday, yes, yes, yes, someday. Oh, it'll be nice when he does come. Yes, yes, yes, yes. And preach big sermons about him. Why am I not so super anxious? Why am I not as anxious for the Lord to come as Paul was?
I'll tell you why. Maybe you want to get in confession box with me. There's room for two. Maybe it's because there's not too many of us who can say, I have fought a good fight. I have kept the faith. and I have finished the course. Paul says, my ambition is to testify the gospel of the grace of God. I could write a book on the things that I want to get done yet before I die. I couldn't live long enough to accomplish the things I would like to accomplish in this life. I couldn't live long enough. If there were three of me, we couldn't live long enough to accomplish the things that I would like to do with this little bit of time I had left. And yet, you know what?
I'm not at all sure I'm utilizing the time I've got. I feel ashamed sometimes when I look at my own neighborhood and see how many people have lived there. I really felt ashamed the other night. I went over to a neighbor that lived just up the street from us a very short ways. Wave at them when we go past. I went over to, I said, I had to change this. I've never gone over and talked to those people about turkey and straw, much less. the Lord. I just haven't spent any time with these people. I haven't even made myself friendly to these people, except for a casual way out the car window. He wasn't home. I stood at her doorway.
She invited me in, but I didn't go in because he was not home. And I said to her, how long have you lived here in the neighborhood? And then I really stumbled into it. I said, two or three years? She said, we've lived in this neighborhood ten years. I says, you mean we have lived neighbors to each other? Just a ten years and I have never even made myself known to you. And I had to apologize. Let me just say this in that connection. That wasn't a good time for me to start talking to them about the Lord. That would have been one of the worst things I could have done at that point. Just talk to them about the Lord or even invite them to come to the chapel.
I better make friends out of these people first. They live neighbors to me. I better let these people know I care about them and their kids and about their house and about their yard and whatever else they may be concerned about that I may not even be concerned about. But I better let them know I care about them because you can't separate people's lives or souls. You can't do that. So I want to finish my course with joy and I want to be able to say at the end of my life, I fought the good fight and I want that to be sure of the Lord's fight and not mine. lot of christians are going to be able to say at the end of the life i've sure done a lot of fighting but i don't want that kind of fighting to be the record i want my fight to be the lord's battles the battles are the lords and he draws the lines and you and i are just soldiers in his army and i want to be able to say i have finished my course i've kept the faith i haven't slipped away from the faith the truth of god's word His desire was realized.
Living gets kind of solemn, doesn't it? Only one life will soon be passed. There's no instant replay. That's why it's so serious. That's why you begin to think about this as you get past the fifty mark or forty mark. I don't know where you start thinking about this, but I'm past the fifty mark and I'm thinking seriously about this. I've only got one life and more than half of it is gone. Well over half of it is gone. It will soon be passed. Only what's done for Jesus will last. No instant replays. No time out in the game of life. Someone has said that a man spends his first twenty years being asked by his mother, where are you going? The next forty years of his life, he is asked by his wife, and where have you been?
And then the last hour of his life at the funeral, they say, and where has he gone? A little more truth than joke about that, isn't there? Where have we gone? Oh, well, we may say, yes, I know we've gone to heaven, but where's our life gone? And what little impressions have we made on the sands of time? There was a fellow who one time was confronted by a preacher about giving his life to the Lord. He lived in Sweden and he said, yes, I will give my life to the Lord, but I want God to sell my farm and then I'll go.
The next day after he had made that promise to the servant of the Lord who was talking to them, somebody came and offered to buy his farm and he sold him his farm. Then he made another covenant with the Lord and he said, well, Lord, if somebody would come and take my Sunday school class, then I'd go. This fellow found out that he had said that and he says, you know, I've been wanting a Sunday school class for I don't know how long. He says, I've never had a chance to teach a Sunday school class. I'd be happy to teach your Sunday school class. So he got rid of his Sunday school class. The Lord took charge of that. Instead of using the money that he got from his farm to put into the work of the Lord, he decided to come to America and he invested in the hardware business. He had some sons who went into business with him and after a short time he went bankrupt because his boys robbed him blind.
They stole the money out of the till and he went broke. He recovered himself, but he never went into the Lord's work. And sometime later his business went bad and he went for the second time around for bankruptcy. And then at the point of time that we're talking about, he was dying with cancer. And it was at the end of his life. Don't know how many years, but a few years had he come and gone and he lapsed and all of his promises to the Lord never developed. Now his life is gone and on his deathbed he weeps bitter tears of remorse. I've wasted. My life. Now that doesn't mean that everybody that gets into the hardware business is wasting their life.
There's nothing wrong with the hardware business, is it? There's nothing wrong with coming to America from Sweden, is there? What was wrong? The wrong was that he was out of God's will. If it's in God's will for me to go to Sweden, then there's nothing wrong with that. If it's in God's will for him to come here, there's nothing wrong with that. But when you don't do what God wants you to do, that's where the wrong is. This man wasted his life, striking example of one who wasted his years. Peggy Lee years ago wrote a song. I heard it one time on the radio when I was traveling as a younger preacher and I thought, man, that is a song that I've got to remember. It wasn't an ounce of religious material in it.
It was a story of this girl and how she had experienced things in life. Her name, I don't know if this was the experience of the author of the poetry or not, but Peggy Lee wrote the song. It went something like this. She watched her house burn when she was a girl and all of their family possessions went up and smoke and she said, Is that all there is? She grew up to be a young woman and she had a bad romance and she was jilted and left brokenhearted. And she said, Is that all there is? And she went on through life. And she went through a number of various devastating experiences like that.
And after each one, she said, is that all there is? And that's the content of the song. It ends with asking the question, is that all there is? Is that all there is to this life? What's this all about, anyway? I mean, what's the meaning to all of this? There's got to be a deeper fulfillment in life than doing what we're doing just for the doing of it and see if we can spin our wheels right into eternity and really miss God's will. If I'm farming in God's will, fine.
If my farm is serving God, fine. If that farm becomes my master, bad. If my truck is my servant for God, super. When that truck becomes my master, bad. When my body is my servant, this piece of clay, when that body is my servant, Romans six, and I'm using it for God, good. When my body becomes my master, no good. You know what I mean? We want to finish our course with joy.
Somebody has said that as we get older, we have to realize that we'll soon be beating out our candles with a cane instead of blowing them out with a breath of our mouth. Can't you just visualize some of us beating our candles out with a cane? Bruce, you've got a good sense of humor. How does that look to you? Doesn't that look like a thrill of a lifetime? Because we're going to be running out of breath one of these days. Well... Let's find out how we get this thing all together. First Corinthians chapter nine. Doesn't do any good to talk about all the idealism unless we find out some solution to our problem or some way to accomplish our goals. That's what we want to do.
There's a number of scriptures that deal with this subject. We won't look at just this one tonight. Barnabas all have time for it. First Corinthians chapter nine, verse twenty four. know ye not that they who run in a race run all everybody is in the race all right but one receive a surprise now what race is paul talking about well let me suggest to you that he's not talking about the christian race at this point he's talking about the olympics or some race that he had observed some physical race you know why i believe that because he said they all run but only one gets a prize That's not true in the Christian race.
He's using this as an illustration. But we always have to be careful that we don't ban illustrations out of shape. In the Olympics or any other kind of a marathon, everybody runs. One person gets the prize. Now, is that true in the Christian race? No. You know what's nice about the Christian race? We can all run and we can all get the prize. The prize isn't left for Billy Graham's. And the rest of us sit along the sidelines and look. Everybody can get the prize. In the race of the Christian life, it's not who gets there first. It's who gets there. Period. The Christian life is not a marathon.
It's not a fifty-yard dash. It's a lifelong process. And it goes on and on and on and on until either event takes place. The Lord comes. or I breathe my last goodbye here upon this earth. Notice what Paul said here about this. He said, one received a surprise and then he said, so run that you may obtain. Now I believe that in the Christian race I should run as though only one person gets a prize. You know what I mean? You see what I'm trying to put together here? I think we should have this mindset. I've got to run with the diligence that there's only one prize and I'm going to get it.
And if we don't run with that diligence, then we sloth along like the turtle and say, well, it doesn't make too much difference. When I get there, I'll get there someday. No, I don't think the Christian ought to take life that lackadaisical. I think we ought to get serious about our life and our Christian race, but we ought to know that we're going to get the prize and we ought to keep moving ahead. So he says, Verse twenty five, every man that strives for the mastery is temperate in all things. If we're going to get into this race, this Christian race, then we've got to be temperate in all things. You know what temperance is? Sure you do. Self-control, discipline. I give a lot of people, hope you won't look scant at me for this, but I give a lot of couples, young people, temperament analysis test to get a profile reading on their temperaments before I start counseling with them in premarital counseling and sometimes in post-marital counseling where they're having difficulties.
Give them a temperament analysis test, the TJTA for those of you who know about that. You know one thing I discover in reading the profiles of those tests that it's rather difficult to find a person who has a good showing on self-discipline. Just the most people, especially younger people, fall way down on self-discipline. That's why they say that ninety percent of our buying in the supermarkets today is done on impulse. That's why people use plastic money. Ninety percent of the marketing in supermarkets is done on impulse with no consideration at all.
As to whether this is a good thing to buy, whether it's got quality value, or whether it needs it. You see, we're living in the day of I want, I get. If it pleases me, who dares deny it? Who dares deny it me, I should say? Now, Paul said in verse twenty-six that he ran with a purpose. He ran with discipline, and he ran with a purpose in verse twenty-six. He says, therefore I run not as uncertainly. Uncertainty. What that is saying is that Paul knew where he was headed and why. I think there are so many, many Christians, especially of the younger generation today, who are wandering around in this world and they don't know where they're going or why.
They've lost a sense of direction. Who took it away from them? The people who do the thinking for us today took it away from them. That's who. Who does the thinking for us today? That green-eyed monster sitting in the corner of our living rooms is the one who does the thinking for us today. That's why our thinking is wrong. Because our thinking is patterned after the thinking of this world. And that machine is projecting philosophies of life at us all the time. Even the good shows sometimes.
whatever they call good shows. He says, I run with a certainty. I know why I'm here. I know where I'm gone. I know what it's all about. And he says, I fight not as one who beats the air. Can you imagine a person in a boxing arena and he's just waving his arms frantically and he's making his punches and he's got a right and he's got a left and he's got a hook and whatever else, you know. I don't follow those things very closely, so my radiology is not the best, but you know what I mean. But he doesn't have any direction. He misses the target. I mean, he's going through all the mechanics, but he isn't making any count. His punches are not accomplishing anything because there's no anything except beating the air.