Have you heard the one about the mother who wakes this chap up at half past nine on a Sunday morning and says ‘come on Joe, it’s time to get up and go to church’? Joe says ‘give me two good reasons why I should; I’m tired, I’m depressed, I don’t like those people and they don’t like me.’ Mother says ‘reason one: you are 26 years of age. Reason two: you are the minister.’

Even ministers can have problems with getting motivated. In fact, we all do. There is for many people what we call the Monday morning feeling; ‘I don’t want to go to work.’ Even if we don’t suffer from that, most of us have little jobs of one sort or another that we ought to do, whether it is putting up a shelf or writing a letter that we owe to someone. We all have certain things that we never really manage to get done because the motivation just isn’t there.

There again, other things we have no problem at all about getting enthusiastic over. This week we’ve seen lots of enthusiasm over the European Cup. In fact that has motivated hundreds of thousands to travel to Portugal in support of their teams. When England is playing the roads are deserted, and even our churches are catering for the event.

One of mankind’s basic problems however, is that we get motivated by things that we shouldn’t. Another word for that is temptation. From the moment that Adam and Eve decided they wanted the forbidden fruit, people have had this tendency. As Paul put it, ‘what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do- this I keep on doing.’ (Romans 7 v19).

At the root of the problem is human selfishness, we want to go our own way, we want to do our own thing and that is a very powerful motivation. The temptation for the Christians at Corinth to do this was very powerful and was primarily in the form of the pagan religions with their associated immorality. Paul is still addressing this issue of how Christians should behave in a pagan environment. It’s still relevant to us today. The reality of the widespread use of the internet for pornography indicates how like our society is to ancient Corinth.

The temptations are just as real now as they were then. How then do we get people motivated to do the right thing? One answer to this question is that we use money as a motivator. That is by and large how the world seeks to motivate people. We offer financial incentives to get people to improve their performance. We fine people when they break the law; money motivates people. A majority of the world’s labour force only go to work because of the money they will get if they do.

Yet there is something wrong if money is our only motive. The gospel is not just about the material world and the things money can buy. Yes we all have to use money. It is in order for people who work in the church to get their living from the church; but the church is more than just a business enterprise. There is a higher motivation at work among God’s people, and Paul is determined to make that vital point.

Paul will not take any money from the Corinthians for his work as a preacher of the gospel because he does not want there to be the slightest shadow of a doubt that he is not in it for the money. The gospel is something that comes to men and women, not on the basis of payment, but on the basis of grace. The gospel is a free gift of God’s love, made available to us in Jesus.

Paul is a man with a different motivation in his life. Paul is motivated by the love of God. Paul is a man who has been set free from the thing that motivates most people. By nature, people are self-centred; their own interests motivate them. That’s what causes the vicious cycle of conflict and mistrust and cynicism in which our world often seems to operate. Paul’s agenda is not to further his own career, or to achieve wealth or happiness.

It is to do whatever is necessary in order to save folk from sin and death and to enable them to find salvation and hope through the gospel. He is willing to adapt, he is willing to be all things to all men, and he is willing to be the servant of all. Yet Paul is also concerned that the Corinthians themselves should also experience the same change in motivation for themselves.

There is a need for us all to undergo that change, from being self-centred to being Christ centred. Jesus called it bearing fruit. He spoke about the gospel as being like a man sowing wheat. The grain of wheat falls into the ground, which represent us hearing the gospel. A new plant begins to spring up; which represents us accepting the gospel and acknowledging it.

But there needs to be a further stage, a stage where that plant matures and grows until new seeds are formed within it that are like the original seed from which it sprouted. That is Christian maturity. Paul puts it another way when he writes to the Galatians and talks about his longing for Christ to be formed in them. The danger in our superficial society is that people regard Christianity as just another experience to collect and add to all the others. Been to church, done that, got the tee shirt.

But salvation is not like that. When we receive Christ, we enter into a covenant relationship, that relationship transforms everything for us. But it also takes discipline and perseverance. It is like being an athlete. It requires training and practice. Corinth hosted the Isthmian Games that took place every two years, so the Christians to whom Paul wrote would have understood that being an athlete was a serious business. In the same way they needed to be serious about their Christianity. They needed to get properly motivated.

To get his point across, in chapter ten Paul moves on to a story from the bible. He reminds them of God’s goodness to the people of Israel when they had been slaves in Egypt. God had rescued them from Pharaoh under Moses leadership. They had been protected from view by a cloud, and God had parted the sea so that they could go through. Paul goes on to liken the experience of the people in the book of Exodus to the experience of the Christian, he likens the experience of going through the Red Sea to Baptism. He likens the water they drank from the rock and the miraculous manna they ate to the living water and living bread that is offered to the believer in Christ.

But what a tragedy the story of the Exodus turned out to be for many of those children of Israel. In spite of all God had done for them they were decidedly ungrateful. You can read all about it in the book of Exodus and the book of Numbers in the Old Testament. They moaned almost continually. They refused to believe and trust in God. On more than one occasion they resorted to idol worship and the sexual immorality that went with it.

As a result, those people never got to the Promised Land; it was the next generation who God granted the promise to. The lesson in all of this, it says in chapter 10 v 6 is to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things. What we set our heart on is the thing that motivates us. We need to get our motivation right. The root problem for the children of Israel, as well as for us is the danger of looking at life in a self centred way. God’s call to us is to look at life from a higher perspective.

How do we get motivated, as God wants us to be? We can look at the teachings of Jesus. He knew that people often set their hearts on things that disappoint. He taught ‘store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.’

Notice that Jesus understands that humans need financial incentive. He is saying look beyond this life to eternity. He says don’t make the size of your pension fund your ultimate aim in life, pension funds can let you down. Think of the way you use your time and money with eternity in mind; lay up treasure in heaven.

When we are really motivated by an activity, we speak about ‘putting our heart into it’.  

What Jesus is saying here is that if we deliberately make a choice to put our money or energy into the work of his kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, then that in itself will give us a right motivation our heart will be in heaven. Christianity is about giving our selves and all we have to God. It is about making a transaction. If we make that transaction, then our motivation will be changed. We can also look to the example of Jesus, the one died for all, that those who live might live no longer for themselves but for him who died for them. He gave himself for us; our response is to give ourselves to him. Not to buy our salvation, but in gratitude and love; that should be our motivation, to live for him.

We also need the fellowship of God’s people. Have you notice how football fans congregate together? There is something a bit sad about sitting on your own watching the big match. It enhances life when we share an experience with others. As we come together as God’s people, we share with others the struggles with motivation, and we can receive and give both prayer and encouragement. Motivation can be infectious, we can catch it from each other.

But the reality is that we need divine help in all this. We need strength beyond our own. We need the help of the Holy Spirit. It is the Holy Spirit that pours God’s love into our hearts to enable us to be motivated by love. Neither is this a one-off experience. We need to go on being filled with the Spirit. We need to stir up the gift of the Spirit within us.

Finally, we need the relationship of fellowship with Christ. At the end of the day, the question is do we love him? We cannot compare our love for him with his love for us, but that is the question that that he asks you and me. Do we love him? Do we talk to him in prayer? Are our hearts filled with thanks and praise when we are alone with him? May we be able to say ‘Lord you know all things, you know that I love you.’ And may our love for him be the motive that guides all that we do.

Amen.

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