The Posture Of The Christian

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. Welcome to Thrive. It's good to have you here today. We are finishing our sermon series, our message series called Unexpected. And it's taken from the book of 1 Corinthians. That's what we're in. What no eye has seen, no ear heard, no heart imagined, that is what God has prepared for those who love him. That is from 1 Corinthians 2. And we have seen, I think, through the eight weeks, this is week eight, how, first of all, Paul himself was unexpected as an apostle. He was one who was born late or out of touch with the realities of Jesus. He met him, or Jesus met Paul, on the road to Damascus. So, totally out of the blue, unexpected. And the message of the gospel happens to be the unexpected, unanticipated word, out of the blue, in some ways. It doesn't connect, thank God it doesn't connect to my track record in terms of it's not something I could anticipate from the way I've lived, how I've thought. No matter how pious I might be, it is all about God's grace and God's goodness and the breaking in of God's grace and goodness in the person of Jesus Christ. So, we're kind of ending in an unexpected place, and that is in the middle of the letter of 1 Corinthians. We aren't finishing it all up in this series. We might come back to it sometime, maybe over the summer. But we're going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 9 today. And specifically, I think this is a good place to end the series because I think this is a key verse for why Paul does what he does, what ticks him off, and also what makes him tick in a lot of ways. And so, we're going to see that. For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant of all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win the Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law, though not being myself under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law, not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ, that I might win those outside of the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. I don't know if you notice why I picked this as kind of the closing of this series, but I think this is a key verse as well to our ministry, as we started this Thrive Community Church years ago, why we do what we do here. I keep coming back to this verse in one form or another and go like, what's getting in the way? What is sharing the gospel? How does the gospel come across to people? Whatever culture, whatever background they are from, how am I relating to them? How am I connecting to them? How are we doing that? So today we're going to explore these three points, the place of culture, the power of the gospel, and the posture of the Christian, the place, the power, and the posture. First of all, the place of culture. Notice what Paul says. He says, to the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win the Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law, that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law, that I might win those outside the law. Paul knows everyone comes from and is embedded in a culture. In a place, in a specific geography, in a specific ethnicity or background. We don't come in as blank slates to hear the gospel. We're not notabula rasa here, where it's just like, oh, just blank slate. And then, no, we come with all sorts of cultural baggage. And Paul says something radical here. He didn't expect anyone to leave their culture. What? Yes, this is radical. Paul says, I'm going to join them in their culture as much as I can. I'm going to be the bridge into their culture, and I'm going to use their culture, see their culture, understand their culture, be with them in that culture and share the gospel from that vantage point. And for those in Judaism, that means I will go into that and speak about Jewish concerns. And from a Jewish perspective, I'll use the Hebrew Bible. I'll do the proof texting from it, from the prophets. But he didn't expect the Jews then to become like Gentiles. To be Christians or to leave all that Jewish stuff behind. And then in the Gentile culture, he didn't expect them. First of all, I'm going to have to teach you, first of all, the Hebrew so that you understand the Hebrew Bible, that you understand the Old Testament. And before that, then I'm going to finally get you to the point where you might become a Christian. No, he spent and spoke to their heartfelt needs within their culture, from their perspective. He didn't expect them ever to become Jews in order to become a Christian. Do you get what's going on here? And Paul himself didn't invent this idea. It's just part of what the gospel d...