Christians are called to live as soldiers, athletes, and farmers, embodying specific characteristics and fulfilling corresponding duties in an era of spiritual darkness. As soldiers, they must endure hardship and avoid entanglements of this life, much like soldiers in training who sacrifice to overcome obstacles. As athletes, they are to strive lawfully in the race of faith, training diligently and adhering to God's rules to win an incorruptible crown, not a temporary one. Finally, as farmers, they must labor diligently not just for personal growth but to produce fruit that nourishes others, reflecting God's purpose for their lives. The sermon concludes by emphasizing that these roles require conviction, not mere convenience, and a commitment to God's will, leading to a fruitful Christian life.
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I want everyone to get there because this is a very important chapter to me and I began this morning and I want to repeat. I'm attempting to bring out seven pictures of what should be evident in the Christian's life today, the day that you and I live in. We live in an enlightened land according to education. But you know, really there's a lot of spiritual darkness. Oh, there's a lot of religion. There are a lot of glass-fronted palaces called churches today. There are a lot of of those things going on, but what we want to be is spiritual according to the Bible. And so really as far as the true spirituality today, it's time of spiritual darkness.
And we want to be able to know how to walk for God, how to conduct our lives in days of spiritual darkness. And, you know, again, let me just tap the note. Most people think that we're in very enlightened times. But, you know, I think we're kind of retrogressing rather than progressing in the things of the Spirit of God sometimes. Now, I'm not talking about you or Lyman, but I'm talking about, in general, the true Church of God today is in the Laodicea attitude. You know, we are spiritually lax and kind of lukewarm, and we need a stirring up. We need to come to our senses, as it were, and go back to this book and say, okay, it's tough times.
How do we walk in these tough times? So I'm attempting to show you seven pictures of of how we should conduct our lives and what we should be like, some of the characteristics that should be evident in our lives as Christians of nineteen and eighty-seven. But along with these pictures comes corresponding duties. That is something that we are to carry out in order that these things might be evident to others that they're in our lives. You get what I'm saying? It's not just that we want to look at the pretty pictures, but we want to read the bottom line and see what goes along with the pictures, see the responsibility, and not just see what we should be, but see what then if we do that, what God expects from us in that regards.
And I've got the hymn book open here to number one ninety-five again, because it just really, the third verse, gives what I ended with this morning, so to speak. It says the third verse, sing above the battle strife. Jesus saves. Jesus saves. And the point that I want to make is, sing above the battle strife. And this morning, my second picture was the picture of a soldier here. The first being that we're sons. We should be sons and therefore carry on the work of the Father. that as sons also we have a duty to commit to others, to pass it along, regenerate as it were, to carry it on by passing it on to other faithful men who shall be able to teach others also.
Not going to go back over that too much. I mentioned we're all teachers with our lives. It's not just the preachers that are teachers, but every Christian teaches something with their lives. You can say, well... Maybe I don't teach the right thing, so I just won't teach anything. It doesn't work that way. As I've said so many times before, in World War II, in the convoys, we could paint them up, make them look like the water. We could do a lot of things to camouflage where we were going, except we never found out how to get rid of that wake. You know, when a ship moves through the water, It leaves a wake.
It leaves a trail, an evident trail behind it. And we as Christians, you know, we may say, well, I'm not the best Christian, and you know, so my testimony is not too good, so I'm just going to camouflage up, or I'm just going to be quiet, I'm just going to go along, and then I won't teach the wrong thing. Aha, your wake is with you. As you move along in this life, you're going to leave something behind. Maybe it's like they used to, you know, the old boy would go to the stern to throw out the garbage. That was the wrong thing to do because that too left a trail. Now I'm not calling you garbagey, but I'm just saying we sometimes don't look at some of those little things in our lives.
I never thought about garbage letting the submarines know where we were, did you? But if you just pitched out the raw garbage without having it finally ground up in what the ladies would call a disposal, only this thing was huge, if they didn't grind it up and then put it into the water to where it would be distributed and couldn't be noticed, if you just went to the back, you know, and heave whole through the old garbage over, the potato peelings and all that would just lie on the surface for the longest and float along. And it's just like leaving your calling card here, Mr. Enemy, here we are, come get us. There's our old garbage out there. We forget the little things that we do leave behind in our lives. We don't really clean up our lives and take care of those things. So that is what I mean when I say that we're all teachers.
You understand we do teach something even with our lives. But to get back to the soldier, and let's read our verses three and four of Second Timothy chapter two again. Therefore, thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man that warth entangles himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier." And of course I said, this is the picture of a Christian, and that's what should be evident in our lives of a soldier, one who is prepared for battle, one who is trained for war. Now we don't want to go to war, but we need to be trained for war.
We need to be able to defend ourselves don't we and even as Christians we need to be able to defend ourselves against the fiery darts of Satan I mentioned about the armor that we find in Ephesians chapter six all being for the front not to turn around and run you'll get stung if you do because the shield of faith and so forth it's all the breastplate is all in the front and not behind so we mentioned that also we mentioned that a soldier is to endure. You know, we used to run the obstacle course. I bet old Bill's done this. Of course, he probably didn't need to. He looks like he's pretty enduring anyway. But we've learned to run the obstacle course, and I thought that was pretty dumb.
But it was to teach us, or not to teach us, but to build into us endurance. Sometimes God gives us an obstacle course. And it's not there just to fret us, to aggravate us. To make us mad, and because God doesn't like us, it's there because God likes us. They used to take us out on the obstacle course after they gave us shots. And I thought, how dumb that is, that arm is killing me. In fact, we got them in both arms. We went up for shots. We usually got one in one arm and one in the other arm. In those days, they didn't have the guns or anything. They poked you with the big old dull needles. And they used to stand there and laugh the corpsman did as they poked you, you know, because they didn't care if the needle was dull. But then immediately almost they take us out on the obstacle course.
I found out they were pretty smart because that got your blood to really circulating and it moved that knot that came up from the shot and that soreness and kind of distributed it. So they weren't so dumb when they take us out and make us run the obstacle course. It was to build into us endurance in order that we might be what? Good soldiers. Good soldiers of Jesus Christ. Now down to verse four we'll speak a little further. about the soldier, and his duty, of course, is to endure hardness. There it says, thou therefore endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. No man, now here comes where we begin to separate the mediocre Christian from the other Christian, from one who really wants to go on for God.
No man that warth entangles himself. You know, that's a very important thing. that Christians learn that we are to war for God. And if you're in the warfare, you don't carry anything but what you really need. Now you see these big old field packs and all that. But if you were up on the front lines, you had your little shovel and your rifle, a belt of ammunition, the very lightest you could go. The supplies were behind you and coming up, but you didn't need a tent to fight the enemy. You didn't need to set up housekeeping and put on the mess kit to fight the enemy. You needed your little shovel to dig your hole and dig in and face the enemy and get after it, you know. And so you carried your rifle and necessities.
And we as Christians need to take away some of the entanglements. I may have mentioned this here before, but I hate to keep making personal references, but I don't know how to get around it when you're talking about if you've been in the service. There's the big bobwire. Do you ever go through bobwire entanglements in the service? They would build up, and there was one they called a Constantina. Constantina. And what it was, it was a huge roll of bobbed wire, just like a lady's curlers. That's the best way I know to describe it. Well, they were huge. They would stand, you know, about four foot tall, and they were stringy like this. There was one huge bob wire entanglement, and it'd go down there for a mile.
Just a big, like a lady's curve, just big round thing, and you'd see no way to get through it. If you tried, you know, to just go up to it and go through it, you'd get all tangled up. And you couldn't, and then that's when they got you. You know, when you got all tangled up, they just shot you. There you were struggling fighting around and using a good target. And they just shot you right in the spot because you weren't making progress or doing anything else. And sometimes we as Christians get entangled and Satan gets those old fiery darts in. But you know the way that we learned to overcome the Constantina, Bobwar entanglement, somebody had to sacrifice. And I mean sacrifice. So finally one GI would run full steam ahead with his rifle over his head and he'd throw himself up on top of this huge coil of Bobwar and wait it to the ground.
Maybe it'd take two or three of them, but they'd wait it to the ground and we ran over on their backs. never got entangled. So the first two or three guys would run for it and, as it were, sacrifice themselves, throw themselves up and on top of the barbed wire to press it down and they made the bridge for the rest of us to run over. Christians, we need to love one another. We need to learn to sacrifice for one another as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. If we see that God wants to make progress with someone else, let's be willing to become the sacrifice. Let's be willing to to be one of the ones that will help them to overcome some of these entanglements of life. It's amazing.
God is so wonderful because, look, I see the greatest Constantina and yet it's the most unsuspected one right in this verse four. I see the thing that hinders me most right here. It says, No man that warth entangles himself with the affairs of this life. That's what gets me down. It's not the great big glaring things and I, you know, I see the absolute sin of that, the absolute sin of that, the absolute sin of that, clear cut why I'd never do that. I can steer around that. That's no problem. You won't catch me out drinking and carousing anymore. You're not going to catch me out dancing in the taverns anymore.
Not me. I'm a Christian. But hey, it's just the affairs of this life. The things that come along that are legitimate. but they become an entanglement. We don't give them their proper place. We don't give God his proper place. Nothing wrong with having to carry on the business. Nothing wrong with farming. Nothing wrong with me when I used to be in electronics and have to work sometimes twelve hours a day. But it's what I did with the first of the day and the ending of the day that really counted. And above all, it's what my attitude of mind and heart was. It's where my heart was. What was my motive for doing what I was doing? And was I willing when that thing becomes, even though it was legitimate, a hindrance, an entanglement, a barbed wire in my life?
Was I willing to lay it down? Was I willing to let it go? Was I willing to put it aside? That's what trips me up today in my Christian life, is just a little routine, sometimes necessary as we term them, things in life. But beloved, nothing is necessary but loving God. and doing his will. God is no man's debtor. And you'll never starve. You'll never starve. You may have to put a notch in your belt in the wrong direction. Mine's usually going towards the end, but God may call on you to put a notch the other way and kind of suck it up, you know, a little bit.
But that'll be all right. It'll just trim you up your life. Your wife will think you're prettier than ever. neater and like you used to be forty years ago. But anyway, it's really true. It's these affairs of life. It's the things that are legitimate, the things that are necessary. But you know, there is an order and there is a quantitative. There is a quantity that you've got to watch out for. We can't let these things become an entanglement. And we are soldiers and we are warriors. For God, we are. Whether we realize it or not, because the verse goes on and says what? That he may please him, meaning Christ, that he may please him who hath chosen him to be a soldier.
Do you realize you're chosen? You are chosen. God has chosen every child of his to be a soldier and to be a good soldier. And he wants us to war. He tells us plainly that our warfare is in spiritual things. in the wickedness in high places. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't affect my natural life. We're not so theoretical that we say, well, I'm fat that, excuse me, fight the spiritual battles and it won't affect me physically, mentally or emotionally, or I don't have to let it interfere with my life. Oh, yes, you do. God's things will interfere with your life.
But which is most important. Who gave you the breath Who gave you the great eyes? Who gave you the hands? Who gave you the seats? Who gave you the intelligence? Who gave you that that you have to make your living with? The talent that may lie in your hands if you're a carpenter? God gave it to you. God gave it to us. God gives us to be soldiers and He wants us to be good ones. And the danger is, as I pass from this, watch out for the affairs of life. Not the taverns, not the carousing, but the affairs of life usually are what really start to trip us up.
So like the scripture, isn't it? It's the little foxes that spoil the vine. It's the little things that creep in that get us. And suddenly we realize we wake up one morning with a start and we're away from God. One or two little acts innocent in themselves, but they were the stepping stones to get us away from God. There's nothing, brother and sister in Christ, worth that. There's nothing worth that. Money cannot buy peace. But you need money, don't you? I realize that. But only God can give peace.
Well, so much that's the soldier. I'd like to spend a lot of time on him because I know a little bit about that. Having been in the service, I kind of realized a little bit about that. But now let's drop down to verse five here and look at another picture. And if a man also strives for masteries, yet he is not crowned except he strives lawfully. Now you may not see the picture here, but I see an athlete. You know, we're crazy about our athletes today. Everybody wants to see an athlete perform. I mean, America is wild with this good athletes. We're full of it.
The Olympics, NFL, and all those things attract us because we like to see a real good athlete. God likes to see a good athlete, too. But notice it says, and if a man, God puts you in the race, when you become a Christian. First Corinthians chapter nine, we're not probably going to have time to go there. We may. I'll see. I'll watch the clock for you. And we may go there to better illustrate this point. But every one of us, when we received Christ, we were entered in this race for God. In this race of the Christian life, we became athletes for God.
God entered us. We're just going to Hold your place here. We're going to have to go to First Corinthians chapter nine. I just believe that's that important to spend the time, even if we don't get through the rest of these, some other time will come back and give you the rest of these things. I'm just looking here. It's hard to say, but let's begin our reading. Oh, here, we've got to begin our reading with verse twenty-four. It's going to skip down, but we're going to be First Corinthians chapter nine, verse twenty-four. Know ye not that they which run in a race run all? Now I mentioned you're entered in this race, and God wants you to run, and He wants all of us to run.
Notice, but one receiveth a prize, so run that ye may obtain. Now Christian, where this illustration breaks down a little bit is the fact there is a prize for everyone. who finishes the race and who runs well for God. In this case, the illustration is only one receiveth the prize. But in the true Christian race, it's possible that we all could receive a prize because we will be rewarded according to our works in this body at the judgment seat of Christ. We will be rewarded. And that's, as it were, the end of the race.
You'll no longer be serving for reward after you leave this life after the Lord comes in the air and catches us up and we face the judgment seat of Christ which is for our works then we'll be rewarded so you see it's possible that if you run for God and run well for God then everyone will get a reward so I just wanted to show you how the illustration breaks down a little here but the point is so run that you may obtain this is a personal thing We need to take this personally and realize that God wants us all to run. And so let's run well and let's run hard. Verse twenty five.
And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown, but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly, so fight I not as one that beat at the air, but I keep under my body and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway. All right, now I read those verses. Let's go back to Second Timothy. I read those verses to get us in the picture of the races, in the pictures of the races. Because you know what happens when an athlete decides that he wants to run or she wants to run.
Do they just say, well, I'll put on my business suit today and I'm going to go out and run tomorrow for the gold medal. Is that the way it's done? Hey, I want to run. Okay, well, I'll have my chocolate and my caffeine and all the good things that Glenn likes and I'll not get my rest. And then when the race comes, I'll run. No, what they do, these athletes begin to train the moment they decide that they're going to run. Whether it's three years old, four years old, five years old, I know some of these athletes who just give themselves totally to training. Their whole life is wrapped up in the ultimate race and in the training part.
They get up in the morning and their whole day is spent with one object. to equip themselves, to train themselves, to run. And as Christians, you know, that's really how we should be. We should awake each morning, realizing that God has set us to run, and we need to be striving in the right sense. We need to be training in the right sense, as verse five of second Timothy chapter two says. And if a man also strives for mastery, God wants us in the right sense of the word strive, to want to win this race, to want to gain the reward, to want to run, and to pay the price.
You know, I know some of these athletes that they haven't had time for anything but training. But they're willing to give up everything in order to train. And we as Christians sometimes, we want to give God. I want to give God. I know you're different. I want to give God only five minutes a day in the Scriptures. My training book. my book of rules, my book of life, and I give him five minutes, and I expect God to give me twenty-four hours a day. That's not reasonable. God loves you, but you love your children, but you expect more than that out of them.
God expects more than that. He deserves more than that. If we're willing to do that for the carnal crown, the corruptible crown, You all know that story, don't you? I mean, you all know that story about the races, why it's called a corruptible crown there in First Corinthians. Because even in the early Olympics, when you ran and you did your best, you burst your heart almost. At the end of the race, they gave you a crown of beautiful laurel leaves. Oh, they were beautiful green laurel leaves. Oh, you could stand proud and tall. I've won. I've got the laurel leaf crown. By three or four o'clock in the afternoon, that green, beautiful crown had withered and crusted and become an old, faded, corruptible crown.
You see, it decayed. But the crown that God promises us, the rewards that God promises us are forever and they're incorruptible. They won't corrupt. They won't fade. They'll be there. And so it's nice to know that. that if we really train and really run, God has something like that. Notice, though, yet he is not crowned except he strived lawfully. Now, this is the thing. If I were an Olympic racer and I got out there and you've seen the tracks, haven't you, with all the lanes? And number one, the outside lane is further around, isn't it? We all know that.
So what do they do? Well, they move that person up a little bit, don't they? Well, if I was running, I'd say, hey, you stay back there, and I'd take the inside lane. I'd set up my own rules. I'd let all of them race on the outside lanes except me, and I'd run on the inside where it's shorter, and I'd be sure to beat them. But you'd say, hey, that's against the rules. So what? We sometimes say in our Christian lives, we forget that God has rules. We just expect God to give us all the inner court, all the inner circle, all the easy going, and we forget that God has rules. It says plainly here, yet he is not crowned, except he strives lawfully or according to the rules.
God has rules, and they work two ways. If we abide in the rules and run lawfully, we'll receive a reward. We will have God's favor. But, beloved, we can't break the rule and expect God to bless us. And so it is. As athletes, we need to run according to the rules. It's very important that we run according. And the only way to know the rules is to be in the rulebook. I don't mean we're under the law, but we are under the law of Christ. There are things that we need to know. Okay, this is the one I really been wanting to get to. I knew I had to get to this one if I didn't get to any more.
Because I'm going to... I'm going to wound about ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of my men in the audience and their mates also. Notice verse six. Guess what picture this is. It says, the husbandman that labreth must be first partaker of the fruits. What's a husbandman? Somebody that's married? Not hardly. It's a farmer. Plain and simple. You didn't know a farmer was in the Bible, didn't you? Here he is. Farmers think they're left out of everything. All the good prices, everything, but you're not left out. God has you right here. God has the farmer right here because really this is what this is talking about.
This is a picture of a farmer. In the Bible, a husbandman was one who tended the vines or tended the fields or raised the crops. So here's the farmer. You know, God wants every Christian to have that aspect in their lives of the farmer. Now, What do you suppose the main duty of a farmer seems to be? Labor. Labor. Man, I see them. They work twelve hours a day and they work hard and you go out to see them and they're not dressed in a botany five hundred thousand dollar suit. I went out the other day to a certain place, I won't call any names, but that guy was bespeckled and he wasn't bespeckled with flowers.
He'd been driving a certain cart, spreading certain things, and he was bespeckled, but not with flowers. And it didn't smell like flowers. And so he worked, a farmer is a laborer. That's the first thing I really think of when I think about farmers. I remember where my dad used to say, boy, we're going to be out in the field before the sun gets there. And I want to see that hole in your hand. And I want to see you chopping something besides dirt. In those days, our money crop was cotton. And the old plates in our planters, you know, the plates with the whole, you guys are farmers.
The plates in our planters weren't like they were today. And we farmed with mules and horses. And so it wasn't always the best, and our old planter plates would drop two or three seeds when they should have dropped one. And so when the cotton came up and was about six inches tall, maybe a little better, we'd have to go out there and thin it. In other words, give it the right spacing so that the stalk would have its room to breathe and get the moisture in the air and all those good things and grow up with lots of fine cotton on it. If nothing else, we had to just simply chop the cotton. I'd look around to see where Dad was, and I'd lay down in the row, and he'd find me.
He'd see me, and boy, get up there and get to chopping that cotton. I thought, man, I'll never, ever be a farmer. As soon as I can run, I'm going to run as far and fast as I can, especially as far. I don't ever see a row or a hole or a mule again. I'd look at mules so much the ears are flopping and the going, and I was so mad by the end of the day that I couldn't see straight. I thought, you know, because it's work, work, work, and so I assumed that that's all there was to be in a farmer's just labor. And, you know, that's true. A great deal of the farmer's life is labor, isn't it? If you fellas ever ride an old, what they call a wiggled tail cultivator, pulled with two old mules, What it was is a two-row cultivator, and of course the mules were ahead there, and you sat on an old iron seat, and boy, could that thing get hot if you got off of it for lunch and got back on it.
But anyway, you'd be sitting on that iron seat, and your feet would be stretched out into stirrups, and you're not riding the horses. They'd be out in foot stirrups, and as you went down the row, the way you kept your sweets coming in close to the cotton to get all the weeds you possibly could, you'd push on those stirrups. And they'd pull your sweeps in towards the cotton, or they'd pull them out, you know, as you went down the row. And when my dad let me plant some, you can imagine how crooked it was, because I'd sleep from one end to the other if I could, and the row was awful crooked. So it's a good thing the old cultivator would wiggle and follow the course of the row. You know, God wants us as farmers to cultivate, and he doesn't want us to injure the plants, though.
Maybe we're not the best farmer, as it were, but God says, hey, I'll give you a little leeway. I'll put you on the cultivator of my word. And I want you to tend these plants. And I want you to ride out there. And I want you to get the weeds out of the way so that the Christians can grow. And it is labor. But look at the rest of verse six. The husbandman that labreth. And that was the first thing. And that's why I brought it first. That's really must be first partaker. of the fruits. Beloved, a farmer is to produce fruit. He's not only a farmer, and his duty is not only to labor, because listen, you'll never have a farm without labor, will you?
We're trying every way today to make it push a button, but you still got to get up and get out there and labor. So the labor's there. But is it just so that we can grow a pretty thing? No, it's so that we can produce fruit that will feed others. And in our Christian lives, we need to be like the former. We need to be willing to put the sweat of our face into our labors. We need to be willing to dig and mine in the Word of God and to cultivate it and to be out and out for God in a real way. We need to labor fervently for God. But it's always with the object to produce something that's good, some fruit, some edibles, some things that will feed others.
We need to learn to be farmers that are producing for God, producing for God. We as Christians, you know, we need to be producing more than we're using. Sometimes I say, well, boy, God, I'm going to just read this and I'm getting great things out of this. But we're always to be doing that in order that we may share with others, we may share with others and be a good farmer for Jesus Christ. I'm not going to go any further tonight. I'm going to let you out. You gave me a good start here, a good amount of time. But I do want to impress you so strongly again, we are to have the picture and the aspect in our lives of a Son so that we may commit to others the Word of God and see them carrying on for God.
We are also to be this soldier and to learn to endure. And that takes a little bit of training. And we're not to let the affairs of the life be the object of life, but let Christ be the object, overcome the Constantinian obstacle of the affairs of this life. And then we need to go on down to the athlete. And we need to be willing to spend the time to train for God and to build our spiritual muscles in order that we may race for Him and win that incorruptible crown. But always remembering that, you know, some Christians today are not where they're at because of conviction, but because of convenience.
I love to see Christians being in the assemblies because they're convicted, not because it's convenient. Because if you're only here because it's convenient, you won't stay too long. Or at least you might not stay too long. But if you're here because you're convicted, then when the going gets rough, you'll say, ah, but the rule book says, and I'm running. I may have the outer circle, but I'm running. And the book says, and know what the book says, so that we strive lawfully, so that we run the race according to the rules of God's book, and not according to my heart. My heart might tell me to do one thing and be totally contrary.
to what God says. Finally as we're closing, back to the old farmer that I just finished with, a man of labor, brazened, as it were, face and hands, equipped by the winds and the suns and the waters of time, but all toward producing something for God. Fruit in our lives, first of all, and that fruit that it might be shared with others For Christ's sake. That'd be marvelous if we could close out this time and know that we'll go away from this meeting and these series changed indeed and have some of these aspects, some of these pictures, but also realize the duties that go with them really present in our lives.
Wouldn't that be nice? I wish that would be in my life. Y'all pray again for us for boldness and for God's blessing on this little assembly here. We covet it for God. We hope in His will, if He be not come, to see again one of these days and enjoy your fellowship. Let us pray. Father, in heaven, we commit our ways to thee, and we thank thee for your lovely son, the Lord Jesus Christ, that just brings it all together and makes it all worthwhile. When we see Jesus, we sometimes sing, it will be worth it all when we see Him. God bless. We pray in Christ's name, amen.