Godly Pride and Ambition

1:03Think of the talented CEO who built a successful company but ruined her health after years of working 100 hours a week. Think of the decorated athlete who won everything but lost all of their relationships with family members and friends along the way. Pride and ambition have ruined many well-known people. And pride and ambition have ruined many people that you will never hear about. So we don't think of pride and ambition as positive traits. We tend to think of them exclusively as negative traits.

1:49But is that always true? Are pride and ambition always negative? We're coming to the end of our study of the book of Romans, and for the past few chapters, Paul has been exhorting the believers to love one another in spite of their differences. In fact, you could say the theme of Romans chapter 14, 15, and 16 is unity in the midst of diversity. In the Roman church, you had stronger believers and weaker believers who disagreed about opinions, about matters of Christian freedom.

2:28And Paul charged them not just to love each other, but to welcome each other in spite of their differences, because Christ has welcomed each of them. And on top of that, the Roman church was made up of believers from two very different backgrounds. You had some coming from a Jewish background and some coming from a Gentile background. But Christ came for both Jews and Gentiles, as we saw in verses 8 through 13 last week. So Jewish and Gentile. Christians needed to love one another and welcome one another also.

3:07And remember, Paul, the author of this letter, was a Jewish leader who was called by God to serve as an apostle to the Gentiles. And beginning with our text today, Paul is going to help the Roman Christians understand his calling from the Lord and what that calling had to do with his relationship with them, the Roman Christians, in the years to follow. Paul had been faithful to his calling. And what you're going to see in this text, what we've already heard from the reading, is that Paul was proud of that.

3:49He was proud of what he had already accomplished for God. But Paul also wanted to do more for God because Paul was ambitious, possibly the most ambitious Christian who has ever lived. And that raises an interesting question. Is it even possible to be proud and ambitious without sinning? Is that even possible? Well, as we'll see today, that depends entirely on the grounds of your pride and the grounds of your ambition. See, our temptation, which is common to everyone, is to ground our pride and to ground our ambition in ourselves and what we have accomplished or what we will accomplish.

4:41That is ungodly pride. That is ungodly ambition. That's the kind of pride and ambition that we saw demonstrated in those thought exercises about the politician and the CEO and the athlete. But godly pride and godly ambition are different. And so here's what we're going to see in our text today. Godly pride and ambition are grounded in God's work through us. Godly pride and ambition are grounded in God's work through us. We're going to see two aspects of that in the text today. First, godly pride is grounded in God's past work through us, and godly ambition is grounded in God's future work through us.

5:37So let's go to the middle of the text, verse 17, and we're going to see that first truth. Godly pride is grounded in God's past work through us. Verse 17. In Christ Jesus, then, I have reason to be proud of my work for God. I love the word oxymoron. It's a great word. It's a fun word to say. An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two seemingly contradictory terms to make a point. And so oxymorons are things like open secret or jumbo shrimp.

6:23Godly pride certainly sounds like an oxymoron, doesn't it? It's a phrase that you hear and immediately think: how could pride ever be godly? And that's mostly right because, after all, the Bible does not have a lot of good things to say about pride. According to Scripture, pride can be idolatrous, deceitful, even an abomination to the Lord. It led to Satan's downfall, to Adam and Eve's downfall, and to the downfall of countless human beings since then. If you've ever read C.S. Lewis's classic book, Mere Christianity, he has an entire chapter on this where he calls pride the great sin.

7:09He argues convincingly that pride is the root of nearly every other sin you commit. And Lewis may be right. Pride may very well be at the root of nearly every other sin. But pride isn't always sinful. And I want you to consider a few. Examples from Scripture, which speak of both pride and the fruit of pride, which is boasting, in a positive light. Look on the screen at Psalm 34. My soul makes its boast in the Lord.

7:49Look at Galatians 6:14. Paul says, But far be it from me to boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world. Look at 2 Corinthians 1. That on the day of the Lord Jesus, you will boast of us, as we will boast of you. And then one more, Philippians 2, verse 16. Holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.

8:32So clearly, not all pride is sinful. It is a godly thing to boast in the Lord. It is a godly thing to boast in the cross of Jesus Christ. It's a godly thing to boast in the work that God is doing in and through other Christians. And it is even a godly thing to be proud of our work for God. And that is precisely what Paul says here in Romans 15. 17, he says, in Christ Jesus, then, I have a reason to be proud of my work for God.

9:08So, why is that? Look at verse 18. Paul says, for I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience. In this verse, Paul is explaining the grounds of his pride. He's explaining what it's all based on. And his pride, he says, is grounded in what Christ has accomplished through me. And then he explains that that is bringing the Gentiles to obedience. That is what Paul is proud of. In other words, Paul is proud of the fact that he had fulfilled his ministry.

9:59Paul took godly pride. He boasted in doing the work that Jesus had given him to do. So he can say there in verse 19, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. Paul fulfills that ministry in two primary ways. First, by building up the body of Christ, and second, through evangelism and church planting. So first, Paul fulfills his ministry by building up the body of the body. Up the body of Christ. Now we have to remember, Paul did not plant the church in Rome. In fact, at the time that he wrote this letter, he had never even been to visit the Christians who lived in Rome.

10:45And yet, look at what Paul can say about the Roman Christians in verse 14. Take a look there. First verse of the section. Paul says, I myself am satisfied about you, my brothers, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, and able to instruct one another. So think about that. Even without Paul's direct ministry, these believers could be described as full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able to instruct one another. In other words, on the whole, they were a fairly mature body of believers, and Paul didn't have much to do with that.

11:33But God still called Paul to write this letter to them. God filled Paul with the Holy Spirit, and he inspired him to write these exact words that we are reading today to help them grow in faith and obedience. Look at verses 15 and 16. He says, But on some points I have written to you very boldly by way of reminder, because of the grace given. Me by God to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles in the priestly service of the gospel of God, so that the offering of the Gentiles may be acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.

12:18So, first, Paul fulfills his ministry by building up the body of Christ. And friends, that is part of the work of every single Christian. And the way we do that, the way we primarily build up the body of Christ, is through reminder. That's what Paul says here. He says, by way of reminder. In other words, reminding one another of the gospel and reminding one another of the gospel's implications, how we are to live in light of the gospel, is some of the primary work that we do as Christians. That's just what Paul has been doing in this letter, isn't it? He spends Romans chapters 1 through 11 reminding the Roman Christians of the truth of the gospel. All that Jesus did in his sinless life and his death and his resurrection from the dead so that we could be reconciled to God through faith in Jesus Christ. That's the first 11 chapters. And now in chapter 12 through 16, Paul is reminding the Roman Christians that in light of that, in light of the fact that God has done everything we need. Through the person and work of Jesus. Now, how are we supposed to live? He's reminding them how we live in light of the gospel. This is the important work of every Christian, the work of reminding. That's the primary way we build up the body of Christ. That's what you and I are called to do as Christians. Friends, we've read the Bible. We know the Word of God. We know the gospel. We're not often teaching each other things that we don't know, things that we've never heard, things that we don't understand intellectually.

14:09What we're doing is we're reminding each other of precious and timely truths that we need for each moment and for each day, depending on our circumstance, depending on what we're going through, depending on what we're facing in life. And so, understand, part of fulfilling Paul's ministry was building up the body of Christ through reminder. And part of your ministry, the vast majority of your ministry, is not teaching Christians new things. The vast majority of your ministry is reminding each other of the things that we are so prone to forget, so prone to wander.

14:51But remember, with Paul, building up the existing body of Christ was not his primary ministry. Paul's primary Ministry was evangelism and planting churches. It was frontline pioneering work. And so, second, Paul fulfilled his ministry through evangelism and church planting. He refers to that in verse 18 and 19. Take a look there. Paul says, For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God, so that from Jerusalem and all the way around to Illyricum, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ.

15:56You may know that over a 10-year period, Paul went on three separate missionary journeys. And a lot of scholars estimate that he covered roughly 15,000 miles. That's five trips across the United States of America. And on those journeys, he was beaten, he was whipped, he was stoned, he was thrown into prison countless times. He was often hungry and thirsty. What was it all for? Why did he do all of that work for 10 years? Look at the end of verse 18.

16:48He says that the point of it all was to bring the Gentiles to obedience. In other words, to lead them to obey the gospel of Jesus Christ by word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God. In other words, Paul led the Gentiles to faith in Christ through what he said and what he did. Both what he said and what he did. He preached the sinless life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, but he also lived a life that was above reproach. He demonstrated the fruit of the gospel in his own life as he ministered. And in 1 Thessalonians 2, we have a description of how Paul just went about his ministry in every town that he went to. Look at how he describes his time in Thessalonica. He says, For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil. We worked night and day that we might not be a burden to any of you while we proclaim to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct toward you believers.

18:14So Paul preached the truth, but he also lived out the truth. He lived in light of the gospel. And on top of preaching the truth and leading this blameless life, he performed signs and wonders. We're told in the book of Acts that he healed many people. He cast out many demons. He even raised a young boy from the dead. And he did all of that by the power of the Spirit of God. And the result was that Paul saw many people come to faith in every city. He organized those believers into local churches who would carry on gospel ministry together long after he was gone.

18:58Paul fulfilled his ministry through evangelism and church planting. And so you see that because Paul worked to build up the body of Christ on one hand, and because he faithfully carried out evangelism and church planting on the other hand, he can say in verse 19, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ. He's able to say, in Christ Jesus, then, I am proud of my work for God. He was proud of the fact that he had done what God had called him to do. And it was a godly pride because it was grounded in God's past work through him.

19:45Friends, we want to have that same kind of testimony. We want to have the same kind of godly pride that Paul had. We want to be able to look back on our lives without regret, knowing that we fulfilled the ministry that God had given to us. If your life ended today, do you think that you'd be able to do that? Do you think that you'd be able to look back on your life without regret, saying along with Paul that you had spent the months, the years, the decades after your conversion to Christ, fulfilling the ministry that God had entrusted to you?

20:42Or do you think that you would have regrets about how you spent that time? Your ministry is not my ministry, and my ministry is not your ministry. Each one of us has. Been given a unique ministry from God. Each one of us is uniquely called and equipped to do exactly what God has called us to do. And our calling, each individually, is to fulfill that ministry. You are not called to fulfill anyone else's ministry. Paul told Timothy, fulfill your ministry. He didn't say, fulfill my ministry.

21:27And so that's what we want to do. We want to fulfill our ministry, the one that God has called us to. But to do that, you have to know what it is. You have to know what God has called you to do. You have to know the assignment that He has given to you. And friends, most of the time, that doesn't come through a dream. It doesn't come through a vision. It doesn't come through a burning bush.

21:55It comes through the ordinary means of grace. Studying the scripture and prayer. It comes through conversations with other Christians, with those who are discipling you, with pastors in the church. It comes from knowing yourself, your spiritual gifts, your talents, your personality, the way that God has uniquely wired you. It comes from considering your relationships and the opportunities that God has put in front of you. So, if you're already clear on your calling, if you already know the assignment that God has given to you, then my friend, fulfill your ministry.

22:42Don't put it off. Don't tell yourself, I'll get started after I graduate, after I get a job, once I get married, after I have kids, once the kids get older, once the kids are out of college, I can promise you, having lived a good amount of life by this point, you will put it off and put it off and put it off. The best time is now because the right time never comes. So, fulfill your ministry. We want you to embrace your ministry and fulfill it because when you do that, you can take godly pride in what God accomplishes through you. You will be able to look back as Paul did and say, I have fulfilled the ministry of the gospel of Christ, and I am proud of that.

23:35Godly pride is grounded in God's past work through us. And now, let's consider that second truth in verse 20. Godly ambition is grounded in God's future work through us. Look at verse 20. Paul says, and thus I make it myself. Ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation. But as it is written, those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.

24:21The word translated ambition in verse 20 means something like to earnestly aspire to something. To earnestly aspire to something. You might say it more simply as, ambition is your aim in life. It's the target, it's the bullseye, it's what you are shooting for in your life. That's what ambition is. But just like the word pride, ambition has a negative connotation in our minds. And again, according to Scripture, rightfully so. Because most of the time, when you see the word ambition in the Bible, there is another word right in front of it.

25:04Selfish. Look on the screen at Philippians 2. Paul says, do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit. Look at James 3, 14. But if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not boast and be false to the truth. Two verses later, James. Says this, for where jealousy and selfish ambition exist, there will be disorder and every vile practice. You see, sinful ambition is selfish. Selfish ambition is sinful. And Scripture always condemns that. It's fulfilling the sinful and selfish desires that we have. So, for example, you might want to become rich, but you don't want to become rich so that you can be generous to Christian ministries or to the poor or to righteous causes.

26:17You want to become rich so you can buy whatever you want, whenever you want. Or in our generation, you might desire to become influential. And you want to become influential. You want to have that platform, not so that you can preach the gospel, not so you can encourage Christians, not because you want to bring about necessary changes in our society, but you want to become influential so you can feel important, so that you can feel like you matter, so you can feel consequential.

26:55Those are examples of selfish ambition because the focus is on the self. Fulfilling the sinful desires of the self, that is ungodly ambition. But not all ambition is ungodly. Paul demonstrates godly ambition here in verse 20. He says that his ambition is to preach Christ where he had not been named, where people have never been told about Jesus. That is a godly ambition. Now, of course, there's nothing wrong with preaching Christ to people who already have heard of him. That's what I do. That's what lots of us do here in the United States of America. We preach Christ where he has largely already been named. That's important work, because in any community, there are people who have not heard, people who have not believed, and even those who have heard and believed still need to be built up in their faith. So that too is a godly ambition. And Paul talks about this in 1 Corinthians 3. Take a look what he says.

28:01He says, what then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to the one. To his labor. So the ambition to plant, to preach Christ where he has not been named, is a godly ambition.

28:42And to water, to preach Christ where he has already been named is also a godly ambition. Some believers plant and some believers water, but it is God who gives the growth and God who gets the glory. So nothing wrong with either of those things, but Paul's ambition was to preach Christ where he had not been named. He understood that God had gifted him primarily to plant, not to water. What got Paul's blood pumping, what got him out of bed in the morning, was thinking about going to new places with unreached people and proclaiming the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to those people. What got Paul excited was planting new churches, organizing new churches, raising up leaders for those churches, and then moving on to a new place. That's what got Paul excited. That's Paul's ambition. And it was a godly one because it wasn't selfish. It wasn't about Paul and Paul's glory. As he said in 1 Corinthians 3, what is Paul? He's Just a servant through whom you believed. No, it's all about God and God's glory. Paul's ambition was to preach Christ where he had not been named.

30:12And so, friends, I wonder: what is your ambition? What is your aim in life? You have ambition. So, the question is: is it godly? You know, many people aren't even asking that question. When I came to college, I certainly was not. As I share with you regularly, I came to college to get a business degree to make money. I wanted to buy the good life. That's why I wanted to get my education. That was my whole aim. God had nothing to do with my ambition.

31:04Other people are asking a question, but it sounds like this: How does God fit into my ambition? How does God fit into my ambition? So, a person might say, I'm trying to make as much money as possible, and I'm going to give 10% to God. But after I pay my God tax, the rest is for me to spend however I want on whatever I want. And so God is not absent from that ambition, but he's also not at the center.

31:52And so a different way to ask the question sounds like this: How can I glorify God through my ambition? How can I glorify God through my ambition? So maybe you want to be an engineer, a doctor, a homemaker, a welder. The question for you is, how can I glorify God through engineering, through medicine, through homemaking, through welding? See, godly ambition is grounded in God's future work through us. So we want to ask the question: what is my ambition? And is it godly?

32:46So, middle and high school students, I really want to challenge you here particularly because I'm concerned that some of this talk about ambition sounds really far off. Like, ambition is a gift that you Get for high school graduation, but that's not true. You have ambition right now as a seventh grader, a ninth grader, a senior. You have ambition right now. Maybe it's to graduate at the top of your class. Maybe it's to be first chair in the band or the orchestra. Maybe it's to get that leading role in the upcoming musical, to set records or to win a state title.

33:36You have ambition right now, and many of you are already following Christ. And so I want to challenge you this morning to really think about your ambitions, to really consider how you're living your life. Are you living each day to share Christ with your classmates, with your teammates, wanting to glorify God through your ambition and not just simply trying to fit God in somewhere to what you're desiring to do? Students, if you don't share Christ with your classmates, your teammates, who's going to do it?

34:23College students, I want to challenge you as well. I've lived in this community for over A quarter of a century at this point. And I have watched college students change. You and your generation are more academically serious than previous generations. And that, by and large, is a good thing. We were raised on animal house and American pie, and that did not do us any favors. But I am concerned that many of you are trying to fit God into your ambition.

35:08That your highest ambition is to get perfect grades so that you can get a perfect internship, so that you can get a perfect job that does not exist. And you're not asking the question, how can I glorify God through my ambition? You're not asking the question, how should I go about fulfilling my ministry in college once I graduate? How can I live my life for Christ? And I want to challenge you to ask those hard questions today.

35:49And then for those who are adults, you might be single, you might be married, you might be married with kids. What about us? I think a few years ago, or for some of us many, many years ago, when we were younger, we dreamed about doing big things for God. But then life happened. And between projects and deadlines, between marriage and children, between taxes and bills, between the yard and the trash, our ambition just got smaller and smaller and smaller.

36:52And somehow, we went from hoping to reach our neighbors and the nations with the gospel to just hoping to reach the end of the day or the end of the week. And I just want to challenge us to dream again, to fan into flame the dying embers of that godly ambition that we used to have when we were younger, when we dreamed of doing big Things for God, when we prayed big prayers to God, when our words sounded like what Paul shares here in verse 21, those who have never been told of Him will see, and those who have never heard will understand.

37:49Friends, if we've lost our zeal for evangelism, it might be because we don't spend a whole lot of time with the lost and thinking about their plight. How in just a day or a week or a year, they may not be here anymore, and they will stand face to face before God for judgment. If we've lost our ambition, maybe we've stopped discipling younger Christians, and so the need is not as apparent and right before us all the time that this generation needs us.

38:26This generation needs you, whether you're 21 or 31 or 71 or 81, this generation needs you now. I think there are so many of us who are saying, I'm not qualified, someone else will do it. There's never going to come a day when you look in the mirror and you say, Now there's a person who can teach somebody. I can promise you, it's never happened to me. I teach you every single week, and there's never been a day that I wake up and feel qualified. So do not wait.

39:01For the right time to evangelize your neighbor, your coworker, your friend. Do not wait to go to a younger believer and say, Would you like to read the Bible together? The perfect time, the perfect opportunity is not later, it's now. And why don't we together decide to start praying again, dreaming again, of doing big things for God? Let's make it our ambition to preach the gospel, to preach Christ both where he has not been named and where he has already been named. Let's make the glory of God our one great ambition. Whether we do that as pastors and missionaries, or employers and employees, as parents or children, as students, let's make God's glory our great ambition because then we can take pride in our work for God.

40:08Friends, godly pride and ambition is grounded in God's work through us. Let's pray. God, we do want to be people who can be proud of the work that we have accomplished. For you. But we also understand that apart from you working through us, there's not going to be anything to be proud of. And so we ask this morning that you would fill us afresh with your Holy Spirit, that you would fill us with a holy ambition to preach Christ both where he has not been named and where he has been named. So that your glory would fill the earth as the waters cover the seas.

41:10God, forgive us for the ways that we have neglected our gifts and our calling. I pray that you would, through your word and spirit, blow the dust off of our ambition, that you would light our hearts on fire again, and that we would say that it's all worth it, that living for Christ is worth it. Thank you, God, for your word. Thank you for your spirit. Thank you for speaking to us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

41:51Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online. At newlife CS dot net