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These are my notes on the sermon preached by David Jones on the occasion of the setting apart of Kevin Murray as the director of Mission Partners at Hurstville Presbyterian Church on February 1, 2011.
This is not a transcript and should not be taken as David’s words verbatim.
Any inelegancies in expression or composition should be understood as being because of mistakes on my part in taking these notes.

Cross Culture – 1 Corinthians chapter 9

1 Corinthians 9:13 poses a challenging question.
Would I still be doing this job, (ministering the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ), if I wasn’t paid for it?
Maybe not a question best asked on Monday morning.
Why do we do it: pay, lifestyle, recognition?
Why would someone be a director of the world mission body of the Presbyterian Church of Australia?
For Paul, Gospel preaching was not a profession. It was not a career move. Paul, and we, are not professionals. (cf John Piper’s book of the same name) Not merely a past-time either. Nor a hobby.
It is his all consuming passion. The whole passage throbs and hums with Paul’s passion for the Gospel.
Verse 23: I do all this for the Gospel.
Verse 12 expresses this principle from the negative, he would not do anything to hinder the Gospel.
We are evangelicals. We are gospel people.
Presbyterian is a good adjective, but an idolatrous noun.
We are not Presbyterians.
We are presbyterian Christians.
We are presbyterian evangelicals.

3 ‘F’s
Freedom
Flexibility
Effort. (sic. With great apology from David)

1. Freedom.
Vss1-14: lists rights and entitlements as an apostle. Almost sounds like a shop-steward. His summation brings good biblical principles to bear on pastoral financial support. The same applies to missionaries.
But Paul would rather die than be paid for what he does. Very emotional language used demonstrates his convictions on this matter. Broken sentences.
Public speaking is lucrative: Tony Blair was paid £400,000 for one 2½ half hour talk. Inspirational speakers were also present in the ancient world. Great orators paid by wealthy patrons. The prices paid for their services were an implicit statement of their value.
Paul would rather die than be paid.
Verse 16: Paul is compelled to preach. In the Roman world 60% were slaves, not volunteers. Paul is a slave when it comes to Gospel work. Necessity is laid upon him. He didn’t volunteer. Jesus Christ laid hold of him.
Consider the way he introduces himself in some of his letters: Slave Paul to the saints…, not Saint Paul to the slaves.
We want to maximise our personal freedoms, and resent obligations.
You have been set free for a purpose.
Preaching for nothing is Paul’s reward.
David spoke about a sport’s chaplain who receives nothing for his work and pays his own way and buys his own tickets so that the team he serves know he’s there to give, not receive.

2. Flexibility.
Warren Wiersbe: Did not have right to give up liberty in Christ, but had liberty to give up his rights.
Why is anyone in Gospel ministry? For the people.
Not to be paid as much as he can, but to win as many as he can.
Vicar of Bray kept changing his convictions from Henry to Mary to Elizabeth to James. We are not all things to all people in that sense.
Paul keeps his convictions rock solid.
We are unbending when it comes to the essence of the Gospel.
But flexible in finding every way in conveying that message to them.
What do we need to do to win as many as possible?
Not simply an international concern.
Local needs must be considered.
He kept going to synagogues, though not of his own need.
Five times he received 39 lashes, even though a Roman citizen and not subject to Jewish ecclesiastical discipline.
It cost him. It hurt. He didn’t want it, but accepted it time and again so he could communicate the Gospel to his own people.
Hudson Taylor became a Chinaman to the Chinese. England thought him a traitor and he lost support.
A person who nurses a sick man becomes a sick person in their mind and emotions, so he might imagine how they would be treated and empathise with their patient.
Only two things we do here we can’t do in heaven sin and witness to unbelievers.

3. Effort.[E’ff’ort]
Verses 24 and 27.
Paul wants us to focussed, intentional and productive. Disciplined, hard, focussed.
Are we that disciplined?
We need mission partners to stir us up.
Paul the intellectual scholar, star student of Gamaliel, became a leather worker, engaging in dirty, hard stinking labour so he could bring the Gospel free of charge at the point of delivery.
What’s the alternative? Disqualification!
This cannot be countenanced.
David was ordained in the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales in 1973.
The early Methodists remained Anglican clerics, though not welcome in the church.
It was their choice to minister the Gospel of Jesus in the fields because ministering of the Gospel was not accepted in the church.
When a denomination loses the Gospel it gets side-lined.
We were that 35 years ago in the Presbyterian Church of Australia. As a movement we were not willing to hold to the Gospel.
But we returned back to the old paths.
Some denominations live in verses 15-18 and never get into verses 19-23.
These are faithful, but not flexible. Be faithful and God will do the work.
Hold the right doctrines and growth will come.
Just circle the wagons.
Where we find ourselves further and further removed and insulated from those for whom Christ died.
Some live in verses 19-23 and have moved out of verses15-18 and altered what it is they are committed to proclaiming.
Hear a subtle change among some in the emergent movement where the focus is on incarnation, not on cross.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ is handed down to us as a stewardship, we may not change it.
But we must bend over backward to get that truth out into the world.
Would Paul be willing to minister to a church planted in a gay pub? Yes, he would say much about the homosexual lifestyle, but he would be where people are?
Would Paul be supportive of traditional observances that hinder opportunities for Gospel communication. Not at all.
(David then told a story from Don Carson, relating how a group of Muslims left an outreach event before the featured teaching about who Jesus is and what he accomplished due to a song that was sung before the meeting commenced. The singing of the song was not wrong, but it was not necessary and effectually hindered the desired outcome, the communication of the Gospel.)
What are we doing that discourages people from entering and places, and why are we even waiting for them to come to us in the first place?

Jesus gave himself for people on the cross, and communicates the message of the redemption he accomplished there through people like us.
Paul demonstratively does it for the sake of the gospel so he can share in the Gospel at the point of delivery utterly free from mixed motivations.
Would I [David] do it if I didn’t get paid for it?
Of course.
Every paid Gospel worker must feel the same way.
Every Christian should be motivated by a desire to see others know Christ and not any benefit which may come to them because of it.

David closed by introducing the hymn by John Wesley, ‘Jesus, The Name High Over All’ commending Wesley’s sentiment:
Happy, if with my latest [final] breath,
I may but gasp His Name;
Preach Him to all, and cry in death:
‘Behold, behold the Lamb!’
‘Behold, behold the Lamb!’