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Pistol Shot - 2019
Race One: Derek Redmond’s Olympic story. In this physical race we see Derek virtually unable to finish the race on his own after a terrible injury to his hamstring. Watch as his earthly father comes to his aid and helps him to the finish line. This physical father is likened to our Father helping us to the finish line as we run our race.
Derek Redmond’s Incredible Olympic Story 3:20
Girl takes a fall during a race 2:39 So run - Does that mean ‘Run so that ye obtain?’ Most people, I suppose, superficially reading the words, attach that significance to them, but the ‘so’ here carries a much greater weight of meaning than that. It is a word of comparison. The Apostle would have the Corinthians recall the picture which he has been putting before them-a picture of a scene that was very familiar to them; for, as most of us know, one of the most important of the Grecian games was celebrated at intervals in the immediate neighbourhood of Corinth. Many of the Corinthian converts had, no doubt, seen, or even taken part in them. The previous portion of the verse in which our text occurs appeals to the Corinthians’ familiar knowledge of the arena and the competitors, ‘Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize?’ He would have them picture the eager racers, with every muscle strained, and the one victor starting to the front; and then he says, ‘Look at that panting conqueror. That is how you should run. So run-’meaning thereby not, ‘Run so that you may obtain the prize,’ but ‘Run so’ as the victor does, ‘in order that you may obtain.’ So, then, this victor is to be a lesson to us, and we are to take a leaf out of his book. Let us see what he teaches us. I. The first thing is, the utmost tension and energy and strenuous effort. It is very remarkable that Paul should pick out these Grecian games as containing for Christian people any lesson, for they were honeycombed, through and through, with idolatry and all sorts of immorality, so that no Jew ventured to go near them, and it was part of the discipline of the early Christian Church that professing Christians should have nothing to do with them in any shape. And yet here, as in many other parts of his letters, Paul takes these [worldly] things as patterns for Christians. ‘There is a soul of goodness in [some worldly things], if we would observantly distil it out.’ It is very much as if English preachers were to refer their people to a racecourse, and say, ‘Even there you may pick out lessons, and learn something of the way in which Christian people ought to live.’ On the same principle the New Testament deals with that diabolical business of fighting. It is taken as an emblem for the Christian soldier, because, with all its devilishness, there is in it this, at least, that men give themselves up absolutely to the will of their commander, and are ready to fling away their lives if he lifts his finger. That at least is grand and noble, and to be imitated on a higher plane.
In like manner Paul takes these poor racers as teaching us a lesson.
Though the thing be [of the world],
we can get one valuable thought out of it, and it is this-If people
would work half as hard to gain the highest object that a man can set
before him, as hundreds of people are ready to do in order to gain
trivial and paltry objects, there would be fewer stunted and half-dead
Christians amongst us. ‘That is the way to run,’ says Paul, ‘if you want
to obtain.’
Look at the contrast that he hints at, between the prize that stirs
these racers’ energies into such tremendous operation and the prize
which Christians profess to be pursuing. ‘They do it to obtain a
corruptible crown’-a twist of pine branch out of the neighboring grove,
worth half-a-farthing, and a little passing glory not worth much more.
They do it to obtain a corruptible crown; we do not do it, though we
professedly have an incorruptible one as our aim and object. If we
contrast the relative values of the objects that men pursue so eagerly,
and the objects of the Christian course, surely we ought to be smitten [to
repentance] of our own unworthiness, if not of our own
hypocrisy.
It is not even there that the lesson stops, because we Christian people
may be patterns and rebukes to ourselves. For, on the one side of our
nature we show what we can do when we are really in earnest about
getting something; and on the other side we show with how little work we
can be contented, when, at bottom, we do not much care whether we get
the prize [any prize] or not.
II. The victorious runner sets Christians an example of rigid self-control.
Every man that is striving for the mastery is ‘temperate in all things.’
The discipline for runners and athletes was rigid. They had ten months
of spare diet-no wine-hard gymnastic exercises every day, until not an
ounce of superfluous flesh was upon their muscles, before they were
allowed to run in the arena. And, says Paul, that is the example for us.
They practice this rigid discipline by way of preparation for the race,
and after it was run they might dispense with the training. You and I
have to practice rigid [discipline]
as part of the race, as a continuous necessity. They did not abstain
only from bad things, they did not only avoid criminal acts of sensuous
indulgence; but they abstained from many perfectly legitimate things. So
for us it is not enough to say, ‘I draw the line there, at this or that
vice, and I will have nothing to do with these.’ You will never make a
growing Christian if abstinence from palpable sins only is your
standard. You must ‘lay aside’ every sin, of course, but also ‘every
weight’ Many things are ‘weights’ that are not ‘sins’; and if we are to
run fast we must run light, and if we are to do any good in this world
we have to live by rigid control and abstain from much that is perfectly
legitimate, because, if we do not, we shall fail in accomplishing the
highest purposes for which we are here. Not only in regard to the gross
sensual indulgences which these men had to avoid, but in regard to a
great deal of the outgoings of our interests and our hearts, we have to
apply the knife very closely and cut to the quick, if we would have
leisure and sympathy and affection left for loftier objects. It is a
very easy thing to be a Christian in one aspect, inasmuch as a Christian
at bottom is a man that is trusting to Jesus Christ, and that is not
hard to do. It is a very hard thing to be a Christian in another aspect,
because a real Christian is a man who, by reason of his trusting Jesus
Christ, has set his heel upon the neck of the animal that is in him, and
keeps the flesh well down, and not only the flesh, but the desires of
the mind as well as of the flesh, and subordinates them all to the one
aim of pleasing Him. ‘No man that warreth entangleth himself with the
affairs of this life’ if his object is to please Him that has called him
to be a soldier. Unless we cut off a great many of the thorns, so to
speak, by which things catch hold of us as we pass them, we shall not
make much advance in the Christian life. Rigid self-control and
abstinence from else legitimate things that draw us away from Him are
needful, if we are so to run as the poor heathen racer teaches us. III. The last grace that is suggested here, the last leaf to take out of these racers’ book, is definiteness and concentration of aim.
‘I, therefore,’ says the Apostle, ‘so run not as uncertainly.’ If the
runner is now heading that way and now this, making all manner of loops
upon his path, of course he will be left hopelessly in the rear. It is
the old fable of the Grecian mythology transplanted into Christian soil.
The runner who turned aside to pick up the golden apple was disappointed
of his hopes of the radiant fair. The ship, at the helm of which is a
steersman who has either a feeble hand or does not understand his
business, and which therefore keeps yawing from side to side, with the
bows pointing now this way and now that, is not holding a course that
will make the harbour first in the race. The people that to-day are
marching with their faces towards Zion, and to-morrow making a loop-line
to the world, will be a long time before they reach their terminus. I
believe there are few things more lacking in the average Christian life
of to-day than resolute, conscious concentration upon an aim which is
clearly and always before us. Do you know what you are aiming at? That
is the first question. Have you a distinct theory of life’s purpose that
you can put into half a dozen words, or have you not? In the one case,
there is some chance of attaining your object; in the other one, none.
Alas! we find many Christian people who do not set before themselves,
with emphasis and constancy, as their aim the doing of God’s will, and
so sometimes they do it, when it happens to be easy, and sometimes, when
temptations are strong, they do not. It needs a strong hand on the
tiller to keep it steady when the wind is blowing in puffs and gusts,
and sometimes the sail bellies full and sometimes it is almost empty.
The various strengths of the temptations that blow us out of our course
are such that we shall never keep a straight line of direction, which is
the shortest line, and the only one on which we shall ‘obtain,’ unless
we know very distinctly where we want to go, and have a good strong will
that has learned to say ‘No!’ when the temptations come. ‘Whom resist
steadfast in the faith.’ ‘I therefore so run, not as uncertainly,’
taking one course one day and another the next [1 Corinthians 9:26]. Now, that definite aim is one that can be equally pursued in all varieties of life. ‘This one thing I do’ said one who did about as many things as most people, but the different kinds of things that Paul did were all, at bottom, one thing. And we, in all the varieties of our circumstances, may keep this one clear aim before us, and whether it be in this way or in that, we may be equally and at all times seeking the better country, and bending all circumstances and all duty to make us more like our Master and bring us closer to Him.
The Psalmist did not offer an impossible prayer when he said: ‘One thing
have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after, that I may dwell in
the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of
the Lord and to enquire in His temple.’ Was David in ‘the house of the
Lord’ when he was with his sheep in the wilderness, and when he was in
Saul’s palace, and when he was living with wild beasts in dens and caves
of the earth, and when he was a fugitive, hunted like a partridge upon
the mountains? Was he always in the Lord’s house? Yes! At any rate he
could be. All that we do may be doing His will, and over a life, crowded
with varying circumstances and yet simplified and made blessed by
unvarying obedience, we may write, ‘This one thing I do.’ But we shall not keep this one aim clear before our eyes, unless we habituate ourselves to the contemplation of the end. The runner, according to Paul’s vivid picture in another of his letters, forgets the things that are behind, and stretches out towards the things that are before. And just as a man runs with his body inclining forward, and his eager hand nearer the prize than his body, and his eyesight and his heart travelling ahead of them both to grasp it, so if we want to live with the one worthy aim for ours, and to put all our effort and faith into what deserves it all-the Christian race-we must bring clear before us continually, or at least with the utmost frequency, the prize of our high calling, the crown of righteousness. Then we shall run so that we may, at the last, be able to finish our course with joy, and dying to hope with all humility [knowing] that there is laid up for us a crown of righteousness. ~ Alexander MacLaren commentary Now from the Barclay commentary…
1 Corinthians 9:24 In this passage, Paul sets out a kind of brief philosophy of life. (1) Life is a battle. As the American philosopher William James put it, ‘If this life be not a real fight, in which something is eternally gained for the universe by success, it is not better than a game of private theatricals from which one may withdraw at will. But it feels like a fight – as if there were something really wild in the universe which we, with all our idealities and faithfulnesses, are needed to redeem.’ A flabby soldier cannot win battles; a slack trainer cannot win races. We must regard ourselves always as being engaged upon a campaign, and as pressing onwards to a goal. (2) To win the fight and to be victorious in the race demands discipline. We have to discipline our bodies; it is one of the neglected facts of the spiritual life that very often spiritual depression springs from simply being physically unfit. If we are going to do our best work in any aspect of life, we must bring to it bodies that are as fit as we can make them. We have to discipline our minds; it is one of the tragedies of life that many may refuse to think until they become incapable of thinking. We can never solve problems by refusing to see them or by running away from them. We must discipline our souls; we can do so by facing life’s sorrows with calm endurance, its temptations with the strength God gives, and its disappointments with courage. (3) We need to know our goal. A distressing thing is the obvious aimlessness of the lives of so many people; they are drifting anywhere instead of going somewhere. The Dutch novelist Maarten Maartens has a parable: ‘There was a man once, a satirist. In the natural course of time his friends slew him, and he died. And the people came and stood round about his corpse. “He treated the whole round world as his football,” they said indignantly, “and he kicked it.” The dead man opened one eye. “But,” he said, “always towards the goal.”’ Someone once drew a cartoon showing two men on Mars looking down at the people in this world scurrying here, there and everywhere. One said to the other: ‘What are they doing?’ The other replied: ‘They are going.’ ‘But’, said the first, ‘where are they going?’ ‘Oh,’ said the other, ‘they are not going anywhere; they are just going.’ And to go just anywhere is the certain way to arrive nowhere. (4) We need to know the worth of our goal. The great appeal of Jesus was rarely based on penalty and punishment. It was based on the declaration: ‘Look what you are missing if you do not take my way.’ The goal is life, and surely it is worth anything to win that. (5) We cannot save others unless we take control of ourselves. Sigmund Freud once said: ‘Psychoanalysis is learnt first of all on oneself, through the study of one’s own personality.’ The Greeks declared that the first rule of life is: ‘Know thyself.’ Certainly, we cannot serve others until we have taken charge of ourselves; we cannot teach what we do not know; we cannot bring others to Christ until we ourselves have found him. ~Barclay CommentaryHaving gone to this depth to show the meaning of the two-word phrase, “so run” let us read those verses again and notice with me the astounding declaration Paul makes: 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 24 Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. 25 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. 26 I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: 27 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. “I therefore so run.” He declares his discipline to this aim in verse 27. Like Paul: 1] Fight the battle. 2] Invoke discipline. See the sermon, Zucht 3] Know the goal. Take sure aim. Contemplate the end line. 4] Know what that goal is worth. The pistol has fired…so run!! Videos to watch on Olympic training: Training at an Olympic level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpH99EX1Enw Gymnastics – Level 10 Training: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWmP73WQyHQ A Day in the life of Alex Meyer, USA Open Water Swimming National Champion and 2012 Olympian: Listen to what he says https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RS-hOduPxck
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