Roughly speaking, the job of a salesman is to convince you to buy something you don’t want or need. In truth, though, the best salesmen understand that their job is to help you discover what it is that you do need, and to then help you see that need met. In sharing the Gospel in a post-Christian context, we are surrounded by people who don’t really understand what they actually need. It is our job as followers of Jesus to help them with that. In order to do that, though, we first have to establish a relational connection with them. That means learning to operate on their turf. This all what we are talking about as we continue our teaching series, When Faith Isn’t Assumed. Let’s dive right in.

Turf Wars

There’s nothing quite like a home field advantage. Personally, with the exception of the Royals, I’m pretty accustomed to cheering for teams with incredible home field advantages.I know this season was somewhat of a disappointment, but the Chief’s Arrowhead Stadium is the loudest stadium in the NFL. Props on their dominant win last week aside, Seattle fans tried to make a counter-claim that, actually, theirs was the loudest NFL stadium a few years ago. Chiefs fans promptly demonstrated the error in Seattle’s thinking by responding with the cold, hard reality of 142.2 decibels, a Guinness World Record that, no, Arrowhead really is the loudest NFL stadium. 

Or we could talk about my Jayhawks’ Allen Fieldhouse, which Sports Illustrated once called the greatest home-court advantage in the whole history of college basketball. Other teams just don’t win there. I mean, they do occasionally, but less often than any other team experiences on their home court. Over the course of our history we have won 84.4% of our home games. That’s a higher percentage than anybody else with a similar sample size. Just this past week we took on number 1 Arizona without our leading scorer and best player and still won. The Phog effect is real. (And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, go home and look up Phog Allen this afternoon.)

The reason a home court advantage matters so much is that the home team is comfortable there. That’s where they spend the vast majority of their time. They practice there. They know the field or the court and all of its idiosyncrasies. They are used to the fan noise. The sights and sounds and smells are all familiar to them. With a place like Allen Fieldhouse there’s the history and tradition of the place fueling a team’s energy and focus. If you want to beat another team on their home turf, you’ve got to work extra hard. You’ve got to be willing to give more than you’ve ever given before. You’ve got to meet their energy and dedication with even more of your own if you want to have a chance. But even if you lose, playing another team and giving it your very best on their home turf shows a level of respect and appreciation for them that is typically reciprocated (unless it’s your arch-rival, and then all bets are off). It is a good way to build a relationship with them that can create a lasting bond of respect, even if begrudgingly so. 

Well, for the last three weeks we have been on a journey together in our teaching series, When Faith Isn’t Assumed. Along the way, we have been talking about how to share the Gospel in a post-Christian environment such as we are facing in the world around us. As much as some conservative voices like to insist otherwise, we do not live in a Christian nation. Technically speaking, we’ve never lived in a confessionally Christian country. Our Constitution wisely and rightly prohibits such a thing. But it is nonetheless true that our nation was founded on ideas that have only ever come out of, only make sense in the context of, and will only be upheld by a Christian worldview. Accordingly, Christianity was the dominant worldview force in our nation for a very long time—for many of the folks in here, that’s the only worldview you’ve ever really known. Until the last 25 years. Even though some of the vestiges of our foundational worldview remain, we have shed much of it, and continue to turn away from it on the political and the cultural left and right. We are rightly called a post-Christian culture. 

Now, this means a number of things, but for us right now it means that sharing the Gospel isn’t the same as it once was. Used to, when you shared the Gospel with an unbeliever, you could assume on a number of basic ideas in your approach that allowed you to essentially skip right to the good stuff. Those days are mostly gone. If you are going to tell somebody else about Jesus, you have to start with entirely more foundational ideas than that Jesus died for your sins. 

You have to start with the existence and objective nature of truth in the first place. So, in the first week of our series, we established that truth doesn’t come from within. Our post-Christian culture insists that truth is malleable. It is whatever we make or wish it to be. That idea, though, taken to its logical conclusion is culturally disastrous. If you don’t believe me…just look around. Truth is something revealed to us by God. To put that more directly and in a way that fits with what we talked about in the second part of our series, truth is someone revealed to us by God, namely, Jesus. As Paul gloriously declared in Colossians, Jesus is in a class all to Himself. He is not just the source of truth, but God incarnate come to open the doors to salvation for all people. And, as we talked about last week when we were finally back in person, that whole saving thing really is the heart of His mission. We may not be able to start with that when sharing the Gospel in a post-Christian culture, but that’s where everything has to go eventually. Jesus saves all those who trust in Him. 

All of that brings us to this morning. We have spent the last three weeks doing important foundational work. I told you at the end of our time together last week that in these last two parts of our series we would be shifting gears to talking more specifically about some of the nuts and bolts of sharing the Gospel in a post-Christian context. The first thing to know here has everything to do with home court advantage. 

In order to understand what I mean, let’s take a look at something the apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. If you have your copy of the Scriptures handy, join me in 1 Corinthians 9. The Corinthian church was one of the ones Paul planted. He spent a fair bit of time there and knew the believers there and the kinds of issues they struggled with pretty intimately. From some of the comments he makes in this letter as well as in his second letter to them, they obviously shared more correspondence than just these two letters, but these two are the ones God saw fit in His perfect wisdom to preserve for us. While Paul’s second letter to them is pretty mellow in tone, this first one tackles a whole variety of pretty thorny issues the church was dealing with. Suffice to say for now: they were a mess. 

Right in the middle of the letter, Paul spends some time addressing the issue of Christian freedom from several different angles. There were some believers in the church there who claimed that their freedom in Christ allowed them to do all sorts of things that were offensive or hurtful to the people around them. And while they were technically correct—their freedom in Christ did allow them to pursue these things to the glory of God if they so chose—exercising that freedom in ways that needlessly caused others pain or frustration was not the right approach. In chapters 8 and 10 Paul deals with the matter directly and in ways that spoke right to some of the challenges they were facing as a church. In chapter 9, Paul roots all of his comments on the matter in a personal example of a freedom he had but chose not to indulge for the sake of the Gospel. This is where we find the wisdom we are pursuing this morning. Check this out with me in 1 Corinthians 9:1. 

“Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you, because you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord.” Paul spent a fair bit of his ministry defending his ministry. The fact that he wasn’t one of the original eleven apostles was something a number of his critics used to attack and delegitimize his ministry. Paul was constantly having to fend off and counter these attacks and insist that, yes, he really was an apostle with a commission from Jesus Himself. What he says next is rooted in that context. Paul essentially is arguing that since he is an apostle, he is right to expect to be treated like an apostle with all the benefits that brings. Stay with me in the text in v. 3 now. 

“My defense to those who examine me is this: Don’t we have the right to eat and drink? Don’t we have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife like the other apostles, the Lord’s brothers, and Cephas? Or do only Barbanas and I have no right to refrain from working? Who serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat its fruit? Or who shepherds a flock and does not drink the milk from the flock? Am I saying this from a human perspective? Doesn’t the law also say the same thing? For it is written in the law of Moses, ‘Do not muzzle an ox while it treads out grain.’ Is God really concerned about oxen? Isn’t he really saying it for our sake? Yes, this is written for our sake, because he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes should thresh in hope of sharing the crop. If we have sown spiritual things for you, is it too much if we reap material benefits from you? If others have this right to receive benefits from you, don’t we even more?” 

Skip the rest of v. 12 for a minute and let’s keep rolling in v. 13. “Don’t you know that those who perform the temple services eat the food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in the offerings of the altar? In the same way, the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should earn their living by the gospel.” 

Are you with Paul here? He’s basically arguing that because he is an apostle, he is right to expect to be compensated for the apostolic work he is doing just like the other apostles do. He should be able to make a living preaching the Gospel. He should be able to make sufficient living to support a family like the other apostles do (a pretty clear indicator that many if not most of the apostles got married at some point after Jesus left the scene). Just like the Corinthian believers were insisting they had the right to this or that because of their freedom in Christ, this was something Paul had the right to because of his position as an apostle of Christ. This was his home court advantage, if you will. 

But did Paul insist on exercising this freedom as he was entitled to do? No, he did not. Come back to the rest of v. 12 with me: “Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right; instead, we endure everything so that we will not hinder the gospel of Christ.” If the exercise of this right was something that could potentially get in the way of advancing the Gospel—and, given Paul’s enemies, it was definitely something that could have potentially gotten in the way of his advancing the Gospel—then Paul was going to leave it alone and not do anything about it. He was going to voluntarily relinquish his right because advancing the Gospel was way more important than insisting he get what he was due. God was perfectly capable of taking care of him without his worrying about the how. 

“For my part I have used none of these rights, nor have I written these things that they may be applied in my case. For it would be better for me to die than to anyone to deprive me of my boast! For if I preach the gospel, I have no reason to boast, because I am compelled to preach—and woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! For if I do this willingly, I have a reward, but if unwillingly, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? To preach the gospel and offer it free of charge and not make full use of my rights in the gospel.” 

In other words, preaching and proclaiming the Gospel was something Paul had to do. He couldn’t not do it. God had called him to it. Jesus had commissioned him to it. He could do it willingly and gladly and enjoy the sweet fruit of obedience, or he could do it simply because God told him to do it and he wasn’t going to have any peace until he submitted himself in obedience to God’s call like Jonah experienced or like God told Ezekiel. Either way, he was going to preach the Gospel. If refusing to collect on the support he was due helped to keep doors open for doing that which might otherwise be closed, then he wasn’t going to take a dime for his efforts that he didn’t earn on his own. That may have meant a harder road for him to walk, but advancing the Gospel was worth it. 

Okay, but what does any of this have to do with sharing the Gospel in a post-Christian environment? That’s what comes next. This may have been Paul’s home court advantage, but in order to share the Gospel effectively and well, he wasn’t going to be able to do it using his home court advantage. He was going to have to go play on the other team’s court, because unless he did that, no one was going to listen. Check out how Paul puts this starting in v. 19. 

“Although I am free from all and not anyone’s slave, I have made myself a slave to everyone, in order to win more people.” Pause there just a second. Paul is not endorsing slavery here. He’s not expressing any kind of support for it at all. He is using an example that would have been incredibly familiar to his audience to help make his point. His audience understood that a slave was bound to please someone other than himself. He had to obey the will and whims of his master whether he agreed with them or not. It meant being put in situations that he would not normally seek on his own and function there regardless of how he felt about it personally. For the sake of advancing the Gospel and winning more people to Christ, Paul was committed to serving the will of His master, Jesus, who had called and commissioned him to proclaim the Gospel to everyone regardless of who they were. But in order to gain that hearing, Paul was going to have to first establish trust and a relational context which itself meant meeting those people where they were on their terms. He was going to have to learn to play on their home court because they weren’t coming to his. 

As a result of this commitment on his part, “to the Jews I became like a Jew, to win Jews; to those under the law, like one under the law—though I myself am not under the law—to win those under the law.” Don’t miss the reminder there that we who are followers of Jesus don’t live under the authority of the Old Testament law. That’s an old covenant that was fulfilled and replaced by Jesus. We live under the authority of the new covenant God made with us through Jesus. His word is the one we must obey. “To those who are without the law, like one without the law—though I am not without God’s law but under the law of Christ—to win those without the law. To the weak I became weak, in order to win the weak.” 

And if at this point you are sitting there thinking, “Paul, it kind of seems like you are just infinitely malleable. It’s like you don’t have an identity beyond being who Jesus tells you to be.” Paul’s response would be, “Yes, you are exactly right.” That was precisely what Paul was doing. He was walking onto all of these different courts as the visiting team in hopes of their being willing to engage with him, in hopes of gaining a hearing for the Gospel. Continuing in v. 22, Paul makes this explicit: “I have become all things to all people, so that I may by every possible means save some.” People who never hear the Gospel never receive it. Paul was willing to do anything short of sin to gain that hearing. If someone heard him and refused the invitation, that was on them. Paul couldn’t do much about that. But he was going to do absolutely anything and everything within his power to the glory of God to at least make sure they heard it and could reject it informedly. 

“Now I do all this because of the gospel, so that I may share in the blessings.” Sharing the Gospel was the thing. Everything else was secondary to that. If dropping one custom or picking up another was going to make sure he was going to get to share the Gospel with someone in terms they could understand, so be it. His own preferences and customs and even rights weren’t nearly as important as that greater and higher end. If he had to go to places he normally wouldn’t go and participate in things he normally wouldn’t participate, as long as he wasn’t violating his own conscience or the moral commands of God, pretty much everything was on the table. His own freedom in Christ allowed him—and allows us—to do all sorts of things we might prefer not to do as long as we pursue them to the glory of God. 

The real key here is our willingness to do all of this on the other person’s home court, on the other person’s turf. When we step into their world, we immediately gain more credibility and even authority than when we are insisting they come to ours. We are showing them respect and acknowledging their dignity. When someone butters you up a bit in the right way you are far more likely to listen to what they have to say. And if that seems like a bad idea to you because of all the ground we could possibly be ceding by doing that, think again. Who is the Lord of all creation? It’s still Jesus the last time I checked. There isn’t any ground that doesn’t belong to Him. As David declared in Psalm 24, “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it.” Because of that everywhere is our home court. It’s all God’s turf. Of course, the world doesn’t understand this, but what it means is that we can meet them on their turf without having to worry much about what might happen to us there or what God is going to think about it. If we are pursuing the task of making disciples to His glory and the church’s joy, He’s happy for us to go just about anywhere. 

When we walk onto someone else’s turf and successfully use their rules to present the Gospel to them, they are far more likely to hear us. They are far more likely to listen to us. They are far more likely to respond in faith and become a part of the body of Christ. Because all the turf we might explore is really God’s turf, we can meet them right where they are and use the natural advantages of its being God’s turf to share the Gospel with them in terms they can understand from their limited perspective. This doesn’t bring any guarantees with it, but it makes them a whole lot more likely to hear what we have to say and that’s really all the room the Holy Spirit needs to operate. The best place to share the Gospel is on someone else’s turf. 

If that idea sounds a bit odd to you at first, I suspect you’ll understand it pretty quickly when you think about it. I’ll be honest: I can be pretty skeptical of salesmen. When someone comes knocking on my door, my first instinct is to tell them no thank you and close the door. And a bad salesman will take that rejection and go to the next place. But the best salesmen know that’s not the best approach or the best place. Hold on, didn’t I just say the best place to present the Gospel is on someone else’s turf? What’s wrong with the salesman coming to my turf to sell me something? That’s not the turf I’m talking about. I’m talking about my worldview turf, my opinions turf, my foundational beliefs turf. I’m talking about relational turf. The best salesmen know that you have to establish a relationship basis with another person first. They are far more likely to buy something from someone they trust than someone they don’t. You’ve got to meet them where they are, establish a solid rapport, and then you can start the pitch. Until we have become all things to all people and used every possible means we will not start seeing people saved. This was true in a Christian cultural environment. It is vastly more true in a post-Christian one. The best place to share the Gospel is on someone else’s turf. 

Let’s be clear, though: This isn’t an easy thing to do. It takes effort on our part. Sometimes a lot of effort. The best salesmen work hard—really hard—to close the deal. This same thing is true when it comes to entering into someone else’s home court in order to share the Gospel with them. Paul addresses this at the end of the chapter in a passage that seems out of place or like a change of subject until you realize it is perfectly consistent with what Paul has been saying about his intentional efforts to share the Gospel. 

Verse 24 now: “Don’t you know that runners in a stadium all race, but only one receives the prize? Run in such a way to win the prize.” We normally think that Paul is talking about the prize of salvation here, and that’s not completely wrong, but given the context, it seems a whole lot more likely that he is talking about the prize of being able to share the Gospel with another person and lead them to Jesus. If we are going to “run in such a way to win the prize,” we are going to have to do the hard work to enter fully into their territory in order to establish the kind of trust we need to have in place to gain a meaningful hearing from them. The best place to share the Gospel is on someone else’s turf. 

This takes work. It takes effort. It takes great intentionality. And we have to be ready to give that. “Now everyone who competes exercises self-control in everything. They do it to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable crown. So I do not run like one who runs aimlessly or box like one beating the air. Instead, I discipline my body and bring it under strict control, so that after preaching to others, I myself will not be disqualified.” 

The best place to share the Gospel is on someone else’s turf. How do we get there? We learn the best arguments for the faith. We learn the best arguments against the faith and how to respond to them. Rest assured, you won’t encounter any arguments from a skeptic—or even just a disinterested unbeliever who has learned a few smokescreen techniques to keep pushy believers at bay—that haven’t already been responded to multiple times by really smart followers of Jesus who have thought about these matters a whole lot more than you and I will ever think about them. We learn the worst arguments against the faith, why they’re bad, and how the responses to them are typically pretty simple. We learn to see through a smokescreen to get at the heart of a person; to gain the wisdom to discern when an intellectual objection is really just an emotional or relational one tied to past pain. We think through why we believe ourselves. We engage in conversations with people about why they don’t believe, why we do believe, and how we got from one place to the other. In short, we put in the work to meet them where they are on their own home turf. The best place to share the Gospel is on someone else’s turf. 

So then, who are the people around you who aren’t currently following Jesus and what can you do to get onto their turf. Once you do that, some people will fall pretty quickly to the power of the Gospel and you’ll walk away with a new brother or sister in Christ. Some people, though, have turf that’s a bit harder to conquer. It’ll take a whole lot more to gain the imperishable crown there. But if you’ll stick with it, patiently growing your relationship with them and gaining those Gospel inroads, you just might be surprised at what He can do, at whose heart He can turn. The best place to share the Gospel is on someone else’s turf. Let’s start venturing out and making more disciples.