SERMON _4_27_25 Clay King preaches 1st Corinthians

Clay King 4/27/25 – 1 Corinthians 9

Big Idea: TO WIN THEM

1. There are times to surrender our freedoms/rights.

Vs 1-7

Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are not you my workmanship in the Lord? 2 If to others I am not an apostle, at least I am to you, for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.  3 This is my defense to those who would examine me. 4 Do we not have the right to eat and drink? 5 Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife,[a] as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? 6 Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? 7 Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard without

eating any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock without getting some of the milk?

12 If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we even more?

14 In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.

15a But I have made no use of any of these rights

2. Self denial. Vs. 19-23

19 For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. 20 To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win 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. 21 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 the law. 22 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. 23 I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.

2. Self control.

24 Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. 25 Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. 26 So I do not run aimlessly; I do not box as one beating the air. 27 But I discipline my body and keep it under control,[b] lest after preaching to

others I myself should be disqualified.