Well good morning everybody. Hey, it's wonderful to have you here. If you brought a Bible today, we're going to invite you to open that to the New Testament, the first letter that Paul wrote to the church of Corinth, 1 Corinthians 4. And if you remember last week, We began a brand new series focusing on the life of the Apostle Paul. And last week, we looked at Paul's early life before his encounter with Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus.
And we saw how God had used every single experience in Paul's background to prepare him for his destiny as a servant of Jesus Christ.
Now, today, I want to do one more preliminary thing before we dig into looking at Paul's life event by event by event. And that is, today, I don't want us to look so much at Paul's background, but I want us to take a look at Paul's attitude, his outlook on himself and his ministry. And the reason that I want us to do this is, friends, because as followers of Jesus Christ here in the 21st century, God wants our attitude to be the very same attitude that the Apostle Paul had.
So I'm hoping that what we're going to learn today is going to change your life, change the way you see yourself and your ministry.
So come along with us. Let's look together. Right here, 1 Corinthians 4, look at verse 1. Paul writes and says, So then. Men ought to regard us as servants of Christ.
Now friends, there's a context to this comment. If we look at the three chapters that go before this, we find that the Corinthian believers had a severe problem that had developed. 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verse 1. When I first came to you, Paul writes, I could not address you as spiritual people, but as worldly, as mere babies in Christ, verse 3. And you are still worldly.
For since there are jealousies and quarreling among you, where one says, I am of Paul, and another one says, Well, I am of Apollos. Are you not acting like mere men? Verse 5, what is Apollos? And what is Paul? Only servants through whom you came to believe.
I planted, Apollos watered, but God made the seed grow.
So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who makes things grow. The problem these Corinthian believers had is that they had enthroned the Apostle Paul as kind of the grand poobah of Christian leaders. They had enthroned Apollos as kind of the assistant grand pubah of Christian leaders. And then they had begun ranking themselves in order of importance based on how much Paul or Apollos had to do with their conversion. In other words, there were some people going, well, Paul led me to Christ.
I'm obviously more important than you are. And others who said, Well, at least Apollos led me to Christ, and neither one of them led you people to Christ, so I'm more important than you are. And Paul writes in chapter 4, verse 1, and says, No, no, no. What is wrong with you people? You got the whole thing wrong.
Let me tell you how I want you to see me, how I want you to see Apollos, not as grand poobahs, not as celebrities, not as big shots. Here's how men ought to regard us, Paul says, as servants of Jesus Christ.
Now, this word there that's translated servants is a rich word, a picturesque word, a fascinating word in the Greek language that as we understand it, we'll really understand the attitude that the Apostle Paul had about himself. The Greek word that's here is the word huperetes. It literally means an under-rower, an under-rower. And let me tell you a little bit about the background of this word to help you more fully appreciate it. In the time of the Apostle Paul, the backbone of the Roman navy were ships called triremes.
These were ships that had a bronze-plated battering ram right at the water level, and they rammed other ships and sank them.
Now of course to ram another ship and do maximum damage you need maximum speed. And to get maximum speed, you need the maximum number of rowers. But these ships also had to be small, short, maneuverable, so they could outmaneuver their opponents at sea.
So the question is, how do you get the maximum number of rowers on board and at the same time keep a ship small and maneuverable? And the Romans came up with an ingenious way to solve this problem. Instead of putting the rowers long, lengthwise, just one after the other, they came up with the idea of stacking them, one set of rowers on top of another set of rowers on top of another set of rowers, so that they could keep the ship short and still get maximum row power. And these triremes, as you might imagine, were ships that had three levels of rowers stacked one under the other.
Now, we have a picture of this ship that we can show you this in reality. If you look here very carefully, you'll see there's three sets of oars. There's one. Below it, there's two. Below it, here is your third level of oars.
And here's this battering ram that I was telling you about: one, two, three levels of oars.
Now, what was life like for the men who lived down in the bowel of this ship and rode this ship?
Well, our clip from Ben Hur gave you some idea what life was really like. These were all condemned men, they were all slaves from all over the Roman Empire who were put on this ship for their lives. They never got fresh air, they never got a chance to go up and get sunlight. They had horrible diets, they got rickets and scurvy and every kind of other disease you can imagine, and they were chained to the ship at all times at the leg, so that if the ship went down for any reason, a storm, in battle, wherever, they went down with the ship. They were just part.
Of the ship's accessories. And a hooper ATACE, an under-rower, where do you think an under-rower would have been on a ship like this?
Well, if you guess that the under-rowers lived way down here on the third row down, the bottom level, you're absolutely right.
Now, friends, this was a bad place to be. Because when it came to bodily fluids, gravity was not your friend. You all understand what I'm saying? This was a nasty place to be down as an underrower at the third level down in these ships. And being an underrower was the lowliest The most inferior, the most ignominious role anybody could have in the days of the Apostle Paul.
There was no glory in it, no honor in it, no prestige in it, no glamour in it. There was just a lot of sweat and a lot of hard work and a lot of suffering. Paul said. Here's how I want you guys to regard me. Regard me as an underrower for Jesus Christ.
And friends, that's the life he lived. Skip down with me if you would in this chapter to verse 9. For it seems to me, Paul says, that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the parade. To this very hour, we go hungry. And thirsty.
We're in rags. We are brutally treated. We're homeless. We work hard with our own hands. When we're cursed, we bless.
When we're persecuted, we endure it. And when we're slandered, we answer kindly. Up to this very moment, we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.
So let's go back and look what Paul said. 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 1. He writes these guys and goes, Hey, you guys, me and Peter and James and John and Apollos and all the rest of the apostles, we are not Prima Donnas. We are not big shots. We are not celebrities.
We are not grand poo-bahs of anything. Yeah. We're just underrowers. down here in the bowel of the ship rowing our guts out. And all we care about Is that the captain of the ship?
Get the glory. The Lord Jesus gets the glory. That's all we care about.
So, if you want to regard us as something, please. Don't regard us as big shots. Don't boast about whether one of us led you to Christ. We're just Underrowers. And that's how we want you guys to regard us.
Now, that's the end of the passage, but it leads us to ask a really important question. And you all know what the question is, don't you? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, okay.
So, deep breath, here we go. One, two, three. No! That was lame.
Now, you guys can do better than that.
Now, come on. Come on. I mean, this is 10 o'clock in the morning. You're awake. Ready?
One, two, three. Ow! Ah, much better. You say, Lon, so what? I mean, that's a great history lesson.
We appreciate this. I mean, God bless you for explaining underrowers to us. But big whoop. What difference does this make to us in our everyday life? Not one.
Well, wait a minute. Let me see if I can't explain it to you. I think understanding this truth will transform your life if you'll let it. You know, my mom and dad did not have what you'd call a good marriage. They fought all the time.
They were separated for years. They almost got divorced. And yet, after my dad died, I noticed something very curious. What I noticed is that my mom began to reminisce. and talk about my dad in the most glowing and complimentary of terms.
As a matter of fact, my mom said more nice things about my dad in the six months after he was dead than she'd said about him in the whole thirty years they were married. And I tried to figure out now what in the world is going on here. And then I realized my mom had done. What so many widows and widowers do, she had romanticized her marriage. She had forgotten all the bad parts and tried to remember the few very good parts, and she had romanticized this whole thing into something it never was in reality.
Her marriage was never like that. But, friends, our ability as human beings to romanticize the past is phenomenal, amazing. I mean, just think about it. King Arthur's court was not like Camelot. You know that, right?
And I mean, the Civil War was not like Gone with the Wind, and the Old West was not like Bonanza, and the Vietnam War was not like Good Morning Vietnam. None of that was true. But we've romanticized all of those things in the past into something they never were in reality. Say, Lon, this is very interesting. What is the point?
Well, the point is, friends, we've done the very same thing with the Apostle Paul. And with all the early Christian leaders, when you see pictures of these guys today, you see them, they're all dressed very nice and very dignified in these beautiful portraits. And sometimes they're floating a couple feet off the ground, and they've got big gold halos and crowns on their head, and they're carrying gold-covered Bibles and making the sign of Mr. Spock at you. Friends, this is not life for these people.
This wasn't reality. This is a bunch of romanticized fantasy. We even got a picture of what some people think the Apostle Paul might look like. Can we shoot this up here?
Now, this was not the Apostle Paul. He didn't walk around in a nice robe with a little halo and a gold-gilded Bible waving at everybody. This was not Paul. What did Paul say about himself? Paul said, I am hungry, I am thirsty, I am in rags, I am brutally treated, and I work hard with my own hands.
That's reality for the Apostle Paul. And yes, it's true. The Spirit of God used the Apostle Paul and the early leaders of the church to make a huge impact on their world. Absolutely true. But there was nothing glamorous about it, friends.
There was nothing romantic about it. This was just a lot of men and women who were willing to embrace their role as underrowers and work hard for God. That's all it was.
Now that's the reality of this man and the reality of every other person around him in the early church. And we hear all this preaching today about America needing a revival, which I agree with. And yet you're left with the impression that the way this is going to happen is that all of a sudden wiffle dust is going to fall on us from heaven, and we're going to rise up and change the world with this wiffle dust on us. That is a bunch of romanticized nonsense. It's not how it's going to happen.
Friends, if we're going to advance the kingdom of God in Washington, D.C., if we're going to make an impact on this city the way Paul and the other leaders of the church made an impact on the Roman world of their day, we're going to have to do it the same way they did it. We're going to have to do it the same way the Apostle Paul did it. And how did he do it? How did they do it? I'll tell you how.
A whole bunch of them just agreed to be underrowers. That's all there was to it. They just agreed to be underrowers. They agreed to get down in the mud on their hands and knees, put their shoulder to the wagon, and push the wagon of the kingdom of God forward with everything they had in them. And if we're going to do it in Washington, a whole bunch of us are going to have to agree to become underrowers just like they did.
And then we trust God. We trust God to trust. to use our efforts for His glory. But this isn't about wiffle dust. There's no such thing.
This is about underrowers. Being willing to give it all they got. To row their guts out for Jesus Christ. That's all this is about. You know, one of the greatest underrowers in Christian history was a fellow named George Whitfield.
If you know anything about American history, you know about George Whitfield. George Whitfield was the man who was singularly responsible for the Great Awakening here in the United States between the years of 1730 and 1770. And what George Whitfield did is for 40 years he rode up and down the colonies on horseback preaching in the open air, in the city squares, wherever he could get an audience. He carried a little collapsible pulpit on the back of his horse, and when he'd get to a field or a city square, he would simply put it together, stand up about 18 inches on it, and he'd preach his heart out. In fact, historians tell us that he averaged 1,000 sermons a year.
Now that's three a day. In the open air, Each one lasting an average of two hours in length. And you think I'm bad. This guy went two hours every sermon. And he did this for over thirty consecutive years.
He wrote a letter to his friend Charles Wesley in England and said this: He said, My frequent vomitings have left me. And though I ride whole nights without a break, And have frequently been exposed to great thunderstorms, violent lightnings, and heavy rains. Yet I am rather better than usual. This guy. He said, The heat is trying to me, but the Lord enables me to ride many miles and preach twice a day.
And about one of these, he writes and says, I mounted my field pulpit, and people flocked around me. I was honored. With having a few stones, pieces of dirt, rotten eggs, and pieces of dead cats thrown at me. He then concluded by saying, Within the last five weeks, I have ridden a circuit of 400 miles. And I intend to go on till I drop.
I had rather wear out than rust out. End of quote. George Whitpiel. God used this man to shake an entire continent for Jesus Christ. Was he a celebrity?
Uh uh Was he a big shot? Uh-uh. You know where all the big shots and the celebrities were in his day?
Well, they were in Boston. preaching in the churches, and New York preaching in the churches. They didn't go out in the open air like this. And how many of them did God use to change this continent? Zip.
Zero. He used an underrower. A guy who let people throw rotten eggs and dead cats at him? A guy who let people throw rocks and stones at him, a guy who rode all night, got rained on, thundered on, lightning on, vomited off the side of his horse, for goodness sake? This guy was willing to be an underrower.
He was the one God used. And, friends, the point is the kingdom of God has always moved forward on the backs of underrowers, not celebrities. And if the kingdom of God is going to move forward here in Washington, it's going to move forward on the backs of underrowers, not celebrities. Men and women who don't mind getting down in the mud and putting their shoulder to the wagon of the kingdom of God and pushing with everything they got. Men and women for whom no job is too menial, for whom no treatment is too unkind.
Men and women for whom no sacrifice is too great and no demand is too extreme if God asks them to do it. Those are underrowers. And you listen carefully. You give God enough underrowers at the same place At the same time, doing it for the right motive, you give God that at any point in human history, and God will fall on that place. God's Spirit will begin to rock that place.
Revival will happen in that place, but it has nothing to do with whiffle dust, friends. It has to do with underrowers being willing to pay the price that it takes to take the kingdom of God where it needs to go. What I'm really trying to say to you today is that our mission as a church family is to rock Washington with the message of Jesus Christ. And the only way we're going to get this done is if every one of us who claims to be a follower of Jesus Christ here is willing to become an underrower. Folks, we live in a town that worships power.
We live in a town where everybody wants to be a big shot. Everybody wants to be a celebrity. Everybody wants to know and be known. That's the Washington power scene. But I'm here to call on you, if you're a follower of Jesus Christ, to reject that power scene, to reject that way of life, to reject that worldview.
And instead, I'm calling on you to get into the underrowing business. To come join the rest of us and help us push the wagon for Jesus Christ. And will you get a lot of it to celebrity attention? No. Will anybody maybe ever know what your name was or what you did?
No, but friends, under-rowers are not celebrities. They just get down in the bowels of the ship and row their guts out. Paul said, That's what I am. You say, well, On, if I wanted to be an underall, what would I do? Ooh, I got lots of jobs for underrowers.
We are loaded with jobs for underrowers. You could serve in our children's ministry. You could work on our traffic squad. You could be a small group leader. You could be a Stevens minister.
You could work on our tech crew. You could serve children with disabilities in access ministry. You could go down into Anacostia and serve at our house ministry down there. You could be a person that works in the women's ministry or sings in the choir or plays in the orchestra or you could be a junior or senior high youth coach. You could be a person who's a greeter or an usher.
You could volunteer with our caring ministry and go out and rake leaves and clean gutters and repair cars and fix meals and visit elderly and sick people and distribute food and clothing to people in need. Oh, we got lots of jobs for underrowers. We don't have any jobs for celebrities. But we got lots of jobs for underrowers. And the question I want to ask you today that I want you to ask yourself.
Is where in my life as a follower of Jesus Christ am I showing up for duty as an underrower? Where is that happening in my life? And folks, if you can't answer that question, in Houston. We have a problem. He said, Well, Lon, um, got a question.
What's in it for me? I mean, what do I get out of doing this? What do I get out of being an underrower?
Well, that's a reasonable question. Let's answer it. Number one, you get the joy of living for something higher than yourself. Number two, you get the thrill of seeing people's lives transformed for eternity. Number three, you get the excitement of seeing God change this city, rock this city.
And number four, you get the pleasure at the end of your life of hearing Almighty God say to you, well done, good and faithful underrower. And fifth, You get the rewards in heaven that God's reserved for people who are willing to live this way. But could we be honest? Could we really be honest? Not a one of those five reasons is going to prompt you to be an underrower.
You know the only reason people ever show up for duty as an underrower? The only reason anybody ever agrees to do this? One simple reason. And that's that they love Jesus. more than they love themselves.
It's the only reason people do this. They love Jesus more than they love themselves.
So whatever demand he makes, Whatever job he's got to do. Whatever sacrifice is called for, it's okay. Because if that's what the Lord wants, I love Him more than I do me, I'm willing to pay it. That's the only reason people do this, friends. If you're here and you've never trusted Jesus Christ as your real and personal Savior, this has some tremendous implications for your life.
Because you know, folks, I learned this in the first 21 years of my life. The greatest prison anywhere in this world is when we're prisoners to self. Self-indulgence, self-interest, self-centeredness, self-promotion, that's the greatest prison in the world. And you know, I tried to get out of that prison every way I could think of, and there's no way to get out of that prison. You can go to every seminar in Washington, every self-help group, you can go to every therapist in the city.
You'll never get out of that prison until you meet somebody who is so worthy and so deserving that the only logical thing for you to do is love them more than you love you. That's the only way out of that prison. And when I met Jesus Christ at age 21, that's how I got out of that prison. And that's what needs to happen in your life. If you're a prisoner to yourself, Man, that's the saddest prison going.
If you'll ask Jesus Christ in your life, you'll meet somebody worthy and deserving enough that He can free you from that prison because you'll learn to love Him more than you love you.
Something to think about.
Okay. Hey, you know what? When I came to Christ, I was a brand new follower of Christ at 21 years old. 30 years ago. And um I really thought, because I came from a Jewish background, I really thought I was the first Jewish person to believe in Jesus since the Apostle Paul.
I really did. I thought it was like, you know, Peter, James, John, Paul, earned nobody, 1,900 years, me. I really thought that.
Well, I never heard anybody Jewish ever believed in Jesus before. And so I began reading the life of the Apostle Paul as a brand new follower of Christ, and I thought, man, what a wonderful guy. I mean, what an impact he made. That's who I'm going to be. I'm going to be like that.
I want to be a Christian big shot like Paul. And so I went off to seminary. And my intent, I might not have admitted it because, you know, I wasn't sure I would have been that honest, but the truth in my heart is my reason for being in seminary was I was training to be a Christian big shot.
Well, anyway, we were in class one day going through in a Greek class, going through verse by verse in Greek, the book of 1 Corinthians, and we got to this chapter, chapter 4, verse 1. And my Greek professor, wonderful man, Dr. Tom Edgar, explained to us about underrowers everything I've just explained to you as a class. And then he pointed out a very interesting verse. Look down at verse 16.
He said, now men, here's the verse I want you to see. Verse 16, therefore, Paul says, I urge you. to imitate Maze. I'm an underrower. And I'm calling on you guys to imitate.
Me. Man, I got to tell you, I sat there at my desk in that seminary class, and God spoke to me in my heart just as real, just as clear as a bell. And what he said to me is, Hey, Lon, Man, you got this whole thing backwards, son. You got this whole thing wrong. You came here to be a Christian big shot.
And Lon, I got to tell you something. I have no jobs for big shots. I can't use celebrities. And if you want to be a big shot lawn and you want to be a celebrity, then that's okay. That's what you want.
But don't go into ministry to do that. Go someplace else. But long when I need underrowers.
Now if you want to come out here and serve me, son, you come out here as an underrower. Not as a big shot. Man, I got to tell you that that day changed my life. I'll never forget it. I remember it just like it was yesterday.
That day changed my whole worldview of what I was doing, what I wanted to be as a Christian. I'm underrower. And friends, for the last 20 years here at McLean Bible Church, I have tried to be a faithful underrower. I'm not sure how successful I've been in giving a good example, but to whatever degree I've been able to give off a good example, I'm here to say to you this morning: imitate me. as I try to imitate the Apostle Paul.
This is not about who's a big shot, who knows our name, who gets their name in the paper, who's a celebrity. That has nothing to do with this. This is about advancing the kingdom of God in this city. This is about the glory of Jesus Christ in this city. This is about changing people's lives for eternity in this city.
And if nobody ever knows our names, so what? It doesn't make any difference. Our job is to get down in the bowel of that ship. and row our guts out. And the only thing we care about is that Jesus gets the notoriety and the recognition.
So you want to be an underrower? Hey friends, we got lots of room for you. The ship's got lots of room. Want to be a celebrity? I got no jobs for celebrities.
But we got lots of jobs for underrowers. And if we can succeed in becoming an army of underrowers, We're willing to do whatever it takes to advance Jesus Christ in this city. I'm telling you. We can rock this city. We can rock this city.
That's all Paul did. He was just an underrower. That's all George Whitfield did. He's just an underrower. But those are the people that God takes and the kingdom of God moves forward on the backs of underrowers.
So I'm inviting you, come join us. I'm inviting you. to come experience the joy of rowing hard for Jesus. and watching him change people's lives. Let's pray together.
With our heads bowed and our eyes closed, I'd like to give you just a moment if you need to do business with God today. Because maybe God's spoken to you from this passage like He did to me 25 years ago. And maybe there's a need for low course correction in your value system. If you're willing to embrace the role of becoming an underrower. Then why don't you take a moment and you tell God that today?
Now, Lord Jesus. You know us better than we know ourselves, Lord. And you know that inside of us, there's not one bone in our body that wants to be an underrower. None of us want to be treated like an underrower. We all want to be big shots.
We all want celebrity status. You know that's true of us, God, but my prayer today is that you. by the power of your Spirit in our lives, would lift us above our humanity. And Lord, grant that we might be in love with you enough. Keep our dream.
of rock in this city for you. Change our lives, Lord, because we were here today. And I pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Mm-hmm.
