What Does It Mean to Be "All Things to All Men"? — 1 Corinthians 9

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Okay, good to have everybody back again, and for those of you in various other parts of the country, this happens to be one time we had an afternoon of taping when Oklahoma weather just hasn't cooperated all that much, but we're thankful for these that were able to come in and be a part of this teaching ministry. And again, we thank you for all of your cards and your letters, your phone calls. What an encouragement. And as I mentioned before, don't apologize if you're not in a position to help us financially. You back us up with your prayers, and we'll just depend on those that can help, because as I've told people over and over, you know we've never asked for a dime on this program, and yet the Lord just keeps providing all we need whenever a station has another opening, and after a lot of deliberation, we decide to take it. The funds come in, and so we just have to rest assured that the Lord is providing it. But again, we have new listeners every day, so we have to always keep everything kind of up to date. All the past programs are available on videotapes, and the videotapes have been transcribed. Let's see, Jerry, can you get Jerry on the camera once in a while? We like to let people know who does all this work voluntarily, but Jerry Poole transcribes all the videotapes of these programs onto the printed page, and then of course they're finally brought into print. And so if you're interested in either the tapes or the books, why, you call us or write to us, and I'm just sort of waiting for him to get Jerry on the screen, because he does. He has just done a fantastic job of getting this off the tape, into print, and fortunately like Jerry says, he's been hearing me teach for, my land, how long Jerry? Ten? Well, see, since 1981. So he says a lot of times he said, I know what you're going to say before you ever say it. And it has kind of helped him, I think, in his transcribing. But anyway, there he is. Jerry has just done a fantastic job and won't take a dime of compensation for it all. So Jerry, we appreciate you so much. Okay, I guess that's enough for introduction. And as I said, we've got new listeners coming in every day. And then it dawned on me, I think just the other night, that it's been a long time since I put our timeline on the board and sort of reviewed it. For those of you who have been with us all the way from Genesis, it's old hat to you. But I think for the benefit of our new listeners, we'll just run by it again and show you where we've come from since we started in Genesis. And I usually like to put it in this kind of a timeline, starting back there in Genesis 1, where we feel that Adam was probably created at. Now all these dates, of course, are approximate. I don't set these things in concrete, because after all, over thousands of years of time, it doesn't make that much difference whether it's 100 years one way or the other. But as near as chronologists can ascertain, Adam came on the scene at 4004. Then the Flood was the next big event in Genesis, of course, chapters 6 and 7. And that was about 2,400 years. I haven't got the time up here, but the Flood would be about 2,400 B .C., or 1,600 years from the creation of Adam until the Flood. And then there was another 200 years in between here from the Flood, when Noah and the three sons come out, until that whole new generation of folks come together at the Tower of Babel. And then from the Tower of Babel until God realizes that the human race is just, well, what? He can't do anything with them on the basis that He's been doing. So He does something totally different, and He calls out one man, Abram, and deals with him down at the city of Ur, down in Babylon, and promises him, and we call that the Abrahamic covenant, of course, that out of him will come a nation of people. And through that little nation of people, God is going to consummate then His whole plan of redemption. So Abram comes on the scene back here at 2,000 B.C., 500 years later, Israel is now a nation. They've come out of Egypt under Moses, and they receive the Law. That'd be 1,500 B.C. Then we have this whole period from Abraham until Christ comes in His earthly ministry, is strictly, with exceptions, I guess, I shouldn't say strictly, but almost exclusively with the nation of Israel. There are exceptions that He deals with Gentiles, but that's all they are. It's totally God dealing with the nation of Israel. And then, of course, once the Law comes in, and they get the tabernacle and the temple, then this is the whole makeup of our Old Testament, is Israel under the Law with the priesthood and the temple worship and all that. That, of course, was interspersed with the Babylonian captivity from 606 B.C. until 70 years later, what would that bring in, about 540 -something? But anyway, during the Babylonian captivity, after Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed Jerusalem in 606 B.C., then God made commandment through Cyrus, the king of Persia, to go back and rebuild the temple. That was under Ezra. And so Ezra rebuilds the temple, and a little remnant of Jews come back from Babylon and begin to set the stage for the nation of Israel at the coming of Christ. Then a few years after Ezra had built the temple, then another Syrian king, the next one in line, Artaxerxes, gave commandment to Nehemiah to come back to Jerusalem and now to rebuild the city wall, because, you know, a city wouldn't last long without the protection of a wall. And so Nehemiah and some that came back with him then began to rebuild the wall. Then we know from Daniel's prophecy that from the date of that command to go back and rebuild the walls of the city, there would be 490 years of God's timetable, prophetically fulfilled in the nation of Israel. And that, of course, is back in Daniel chapter 9. Then we know from history and from the dating of it, that from the time of that decree until Christ was crucified was not 490 years, but it was 483 years. Which means that when God left off dealing with Israel here early in the Book of Acts, we know that that last seven years have not yet been accomplished. And so then Bible scholars began to realize that these seven years were some place out in the future. We don't know when, but we know that we've already come almost 2,000 years and we feel we're getting close to it. But these seven years of what we call the Tribulation belonged to that 490 year prophecy given by Daniel. Alright, now if we back it up and Israel rejected the Christ, Peter and the 11 continued to preach to Him in the Book of Acts, and you know the account, and Israel just will not believe that Jesus was the Christ. And finally, finally, God, I guess, I wouldn't say He lost His patience, but finally when He saw that Israel was not going to believe and receive her King, He raised up another little Jew, the Apostle Paul, and the first thing He made known was that He was going to send that man to the Gentiles. And of course that opened up then the Age of Grace, the Church Age, and Paul immediately goes to the Jew, but then to the Gentile. And that of course was the whole period of Acts until finally Paul takes over in the Book of Acts, and we've studied all that in the past. And then he turns to the Gentile, and so from the time that I feel that Paul began ministering to the Gentiles with the Gospel of Grace, we have this undetermined period of time. We don't know how long it'll last, we only know it's now come 1900 and some years, and then the Church will have to be taken out of the way so that God can pick up where He left off with Israel, because that all belongs back in the prophetic program. Now then, after the Tribulation, Christ will return, set up His Kingdom, and we who are raptured here will of course come back with Him, I think, to rule and reign with Him. But back here is where we are now studying the writings of Paul. Now chronologically again, Paul does most of his ministry amongst the Gentiles and establishing the churches from the time about 40 A.D. up until he ends up a prisoner in Rome in about 65. And in that period of time, he not only establishes all these churches throughout Asia Minor and Greece and Antioch in Syria, and then from about 058-59 he starts writing his letters. Because the churches have been established, and now they need doctrine, they need correction, they need instruction, and so the Holy Spirit, of course, is behind it all, and he begins to prompt the Apostle to write these various letters. And so that's why, as we've been coming through now, we went through his letter to the Romans, and now we're in his letter to the church at Corinth. And then I guess, excuse me, I guess what we have to emphasize is that this letter of 1 Corinthians, as we've been showing now for the last many programs, he is dealing with the problems in this local church that they had evidently written to him and asked questions. Well, how are we supposed to deal with this? Well, we've got this problem, we've got this problem, and for sake of reference, just come back with me a minute to 1 Corinthians chapter 7, because here's where it makes it so obvious that Paul is writing this letter in response to their inquiry. How do we do it? And here's our problem, see? You've got 1 Corinthians 7, right there in verse 1, 1 Corinthians 7, verse 1. Now he says, "...concerning the things whereof ye wrote to me." See how plain that is? So all these things that he's been covering now in this letter of 1 Corinthians were in response to the congregation's questions. And of course, all their questions were resting on problems. And again, I've been emphasizing ever since we started 1 Corinthians that the Corinthian church was the most carnal, it was the least spiritual of all the churches that Paul had anything to do with. And compare the letter to the Corinthians with, for example, the letter to the Ephesians, or Philippians, or Colossians, it makes all the difference in the world. And so we have to understand the setting. In fact, I was thinking last night, in all my years of teaching I've used various portions of 1 Corinthians, but I have never taught it verse by verse. And naturally now as I'm teaching it on television, I'm learning as much as you are, because there's so much in here that I guess I had just passed over and just thought wasn't important. But my, it's like, it's like T-bone steak spiritually. And all these things that so often we just sort of slough off as unimportant, they're basic. And for that reason I trust that we'll continue. I've been getting a lot of good comment on the programs that have already been on the air in Corinthians, and I trust that you'll continue to feed from this little letter even as we have. All right, now then, understand that we're in the Church Age. We're calling out the Body of Christ, waiting until the Body is complete, and we've explained that in earlier programs, that when the last person is saved, and the Body is complete, then the Lord will come and deliver it from this old sin-cursed world, and we'll be moving on into the Eternal State. But we're not there yet, so we just keep on teaching. All right, now 1 Corinthians 9, Paul is again defending his apostleship to these carnal believers at Corinth, who remember are in a city of abject idolatry, horrible immorality, and with that kind of a background they have come out as believers. But naturally there's still that draw to go back into that old life, and so consequently as Paul writes, he has to defend his apostleship, because after all, I think especially the Jewish element in Corinth must have said, well, who do you think you are? You're just an imposter. You didn't walk with Jesus of Nazareth. You didn't spend three years with Him like Peter did. And so Paul has to overcome that constantly with various statements, and one of his favorites is, you Corinthians are the proof of my apostleship, and we pointed that out in our last program. They having been saved out of abject paganism as a result of his preaching, hey, they were proof enough that he was an apostle. All right, now then he comes on to show that he is not going to take advantage of that tremendous responsibility by taking a lot of material reward. He said, I just won't do that. He did it when he was in Judaism, and that's why he said in Galatians, and I think we looked at that in the last program, that he profited more than his equals as he was a practitioner of Judaism, as a Pharisee of the Pharisee. All right, now then we came all the way down in our last program through chapter 9, verse 18. Now let's pick up in verse 19 for the few moments we have left, and remembering in our timeline, we're back here still in the period of the Acts, and Paul is writing these various letters to all the churches there in Asia Minor and Greece, and we are still using them now then of course to complete the Body of Christ, to bring Gentiles as well as some Jews out of their lostness and into a knowledge of salvation. Now verse 19 on down, Paul makes some kind of hard to comprehend statements. He says, For though I be free from all, and is all men, yet I have made myself servant or a bond slave of all, that I might gain the more. Now you see, Paul had only one driving desire and motivation, and what was it? To see lost people saved. He didn't care about material things, he didn't care about comforts, all he wanted was lost people saved. And now read on, verse 20. Now this wasn't always easy, and he says, Unto the Jews I became as a Jew. Now this is kind of hard to understand, because back in the Book of Acts, you know, when he has been decrying law and legalism and temple worship, yet what does the man do? He takes a Jewish vow, and goes back to the temple in Jerusalem to fulfill it. Well, this is hard to put together, when the very thing he had been preaching against he's now practicing. Well here's the answer. He did all this in hopes that he might awaken some interest amongst his fellow Jews. So verse 20 again, And unto the Jews he said, I became as a Jew. That I might gain the Jews spiritually, see? And to them that are under the law, as under the law. That I might gain them that are under the law. And I think there he's probably referring to the more religious element of Judaism. Now even today in Israel, you know, once in a while I'm almost afraid that the Jews will end up in civil war themselves, because of the tremendous confrontation between the secular community, who have no time for the things of God. They have nothing in the area of faith. And then you've got your Orthodox people, who are just so wrapped up in Judaism, that they even kind of lose touch of reality. And so I think it's the same way here. Paul had to approach the Jews that were not that steeped in their religion, but to those who were under the law, and were practicing it. And you remember I made comment here a few weeks ago, that when we speak of the law of Judaism at the time of Christ and of Paul, it wasn't the pure law of Moses day. This thing had been so watered down with man-made ideas, that the law of Paul's and Christ's day was a whole set of six hundred and some rules and regulations. Now that was the law that the Jews really attained to, was the law that the rabbis had kind of put together, studying the various aspects of the Old Testament. Alright so Paul says, "...but to those who were under the law, I became under the law." Now he says, verse 21, "...to them that are without law, as without law being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ." In other words, Paul never forsook the morality of the law of God. Paul never went down and said, well I'm free from the law, I can do as I please, so far as moral things were concerned. No way. Alright, now verse 22, "...so to those," he says, "...that are weak, I became as weak that I might gain the weak." And so he says, "...I have made all things to all men." For what purpose? That I might save some. Now he knew he wouldn't gain the whole world, but oh, if he could just win some. Now those of you who have contact with missionaries, let's see, Bill, there he is. Bill and his wife have a daughter in mission work down in Peru, and we've had contact with missionaries over the years. And there's one thing I think every missionary learns real fast when they get into a foreign field. They have to live like the people amongst whom they're working. They cannot just all of a sudden come in and live with Western culture and Western habits and Western food. They would never touch anybody. But they have to go into that foreign culture and begin to eat their food. I'll never forget, I don't want people to turn their stomach. But I can remember we had a missionary friend who brought back a tremendous movie that he had made himself. Now this was way back in the time of the 08 millimeters, I think. But he was on a mission field in Indonesia amongst pretty much uncivilized people. And the favorite food for those kids back there in the jungle, equal to any American candy bar, was a big black beetle. And boy, those kids would chomp into that beetle, and then they'd give him one. Well, you can about imagine what that would do to a poor American. But he said, if you wanted to gain them, you had to eat that beetle just as well as those kids did. And there were some things even more gross, but I won't pass them on, because somebody in television may be having lunch while we're doing this. But nevertheless, this is the idea of mission work. You have to step into the very same mold that those people are that you're trying to reach. And it began with Paul. So Paul says, whenever I came to people who are spiritually weak, I understood their weakness. And I didn't come in like some spiritual giant and coming down on them and ridiculing them and criticizing them. He understood where they were. And regardless of what their status in life, Paul would identify and try to be on an equal with them. Verse 23, and again he repeats it, all for the sake of the Gospel. That's all the man had on his heart, was to see lost people saved. And then he comes down to verse 24, almost shifting gears, isn't it? Now he comes into a whole different train of thought. He says, No you not, that they who run in a race all run, but one receives the prize. Now remember, Paul must have been a, what shall I say, I think he was a fan of the Olympics because he refers to them so often in his writings for analyses and so forth. And this is what he's referring to here. Now when they had the Olympic Games, and of course in Corinth it was the Isthmian Games. They were the second greatest set of games in the Roman world after the Athenian Games, the Olympics. All right, so now he's coming back to this whole concept of the Olympic races. And he says, Don't you know that when these men race, what are they running for? Just the fun of it? No, to win, to be number one, see? And so he says, You do the same. You run your spiritual race that you may obtain, not salvation. See, he's been referring to these carnal Corinthians all the way since chapter 1, as believers, as brethren. So he's not talking about running to gain their salvation, but to gain reward. All right, read on. And every man that striveth for the mastery, now he's talking about the Olympic people, they trained in order to win the race. Did they go clear overboard and just eat, eat, eat, eat because it took energy to run? No. On the other hand, did they starve their bodies so they wouldn't have to carry so much weight to the finish line? No. So what was the whole idea? Temperance. And I wrote someone again just the other day about being temperate in all things. It doesn't just refer to the booze. That's the only people think of when they think of temperance is, what was it, Cary Nation? And no, the word temperate means in any area of life, you maintain a balance. You don't go clear off that end. You don't go clear off this end. But you base everything, of course, on the Word of God, and then you maintain a balance. All right, now he comes back to the runners then. And he says, So they train temperately in all of their intake and in their food and their drink. They do everything temperately to enhance their body strength. And now he says, Why? Well, to obtain a crown, a reward, see. But he says, We are running the spiritual race, not for a crown of leaves and vines that will die and amount to nothing. We're running for an incorruptible crown, one that will last for all eternity, see. So he says in verse 26, I therefore run not as uncertainly. I'm not going to run not really knowing what I'm after. He said, I know what the prize is. And remember, I think it's in Philippians, I think it is. He said that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, see. And what was the purpose? That He might win the prize. And then he goes on in verse 26, and so he says, I therefore so run, not uncertainly. In other words, he says, I'm not going to just shadow box. I'm not going to just beat the air. I am going to train myself spiritually to run this race of life that I might win the prize. Now then, that last verse, I'm glad I got time to cover it. I've got one minute left. This last verse has been so misconstrued because of the term in the King James. And he says, I keep under my body. In other words, I'm going to keep everything under control. And I'm going to bring it into subjection so that I can run the spiritual race, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I have fulfilled my missionary work, that I myself should become a castaway. Now that doesn't mean that he would lose salvation. But it goes back now to a term in the potter's house. And if a potter would work a work on the wheel, and it was a beautiful, we'll say a beautiful vase, and it was supposed to contain a liquid, and he had it all painted, and he had all the designs on it, and it was beautiful. But after it had dried, and it was ready to go for sale, he checked it, and it had a leak. Maybe it had a little fine crack in it, that it could not be used for holding water or other liquids. So rather than just pitch it on the trash pile, it was too beautiful for that. What would the potter do? Well, he'd set it on a shelf, and he would sell it only as an ornament type vase. See? Now the term was a castaway. It was too good to just throw on the trash heap, but it would go up on the shelf because it was no longer of any workable use. Now this is what he's talking about. He wasn't going to lose his salvation. We won't lose our salvation, but oh that we might work and maintain our testimony so that we won't be put on the shelf as no longer usable, even though we may have all of the outer decorations of being a believer. But oh that we might also be functional, that we can do that with which the Lord saved us to do. Thank you for watching Through the Bible with Les Feldick, a weekly Bible study. If you would like more information about the Les Feldick Ministries, a Bible study in your area, or about this program, write to Les Feldick Ministries, Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. That's Route 1, Box 760, Kinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated. Thank you, and be sure to tune in next time for Through the Bible with Les Feldick.