Scripture: 1 Corinthians 4:1-8
For the past 5 weeks, we’ve been taking a look at Paul’s warnings to the church in Corinth, and today will be our last look at how outside influences can creep into the church and steal the faithful heart away. Corinth was a Greek city, with all of the diverse attitudes and false gods and more distractions than you could count. The church had started to take on many of those worldly attributes, and it was beginning to tarnish their righteousness and wear away at their faith. We’ve seen many of them; the thought that they had to be welcoming of whatever false teachings that others might bring with them, the struggle, and even embarrassment for some, over the Christian view of the cross and the blood that Christ shed for the world, the emphasis and glory that was being given to worldly wisdom and power, the animosity and pride that was rising up over who was the better teacher, who had more faith, who was the better Christian, the church’s leaning toward other faith structures, and away from the foundation of faith that Jesus Christ had laid. Today, we look at the issue that allows all of these lies to grow and thrive in the Church – it is a lack of trust and faithfulness in Jesus.
Read 1 Corinthians 4:1-4
The first thing that Paul tells us is that we have been given a responsibility, and that we must step up and claim it. The problem, though, is that he doesn’t actually spell out what that responsibility is. He calls it a “trust”, which in this context and according to Webster’s Dictionary, is “an interest held by one person for the benefit of another”. I believe that Paul is telling us that we have been charged with preserving the faith – not only for ourselves, but for those who have yet to come and claim Christ for themselves.
Those who teach must teach faithfully. Those who pastor must lead faithfully. Those who witness must offer their experience of Christ faithfully. And why is it so important that we are faithful? James 3:1 says “you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.” False teaching is worse than simply sinning, because it not only impacts our own faith, but it leads others away from Christ. And just in case you think that because you don’t lead a Bible Study or Sunday school class that you are off the hook on this one, you aren’t! Whether teaching, pastoring, preaching, witnessing, or even sharing the Gospel in normal conversation, you are teaching! So this call is on all of us.
This is our trust – given to us for the benefit of others, and Paul reminds us that we must always be faithful whenever we present Christ to others.
The second thing that Paul offers in this passage is that we can’t be concerned with what others may think of us. The judgment of humanity, the judgment of the world, the judgment of human courts can never mean anything to us when the judgment involves our Christian walk, and then, it is Christ who is going to be our final judge.
Now, that doesn’t mean that as brothers and sisters, we aren’t allowed to call into question the teachings of someone else. But outright condemnation is not the way to do it. If we are in disagreement with another, we are to offer our proof through scripture, and then discuss it with our friend. If a teaching is false, we have the obligation, the trust, to offer correction. But even at that, we don’t judge the person – we are to be discerning of only the teaching.
Read 1 Corinthians 4:5
“Judge nothing until the appointed time.” And when is that? When Christ returns to sit on His Judgment seat. Our judgment is flawed, but His is perfect. Our timing is based on our watch, but His is based in eternity. Our wisdom is limited, but His is infinite. Let the Lord judge, and may we be satisfied with our own discernment, as imperfect as it may be.
Read 1 Corinthians 4:6-8
Vs. 6 - “Do not go beyond what is written”. That sounds like pretty good advice! If we all stick to the one Word, how can we go wrong? Remember that one of the problems in Corinth was dissention. And what causes us to disagree with each other? Divergent ideas and thoughts! What causes disagreement in the 21st century church? The same thing. Corinth was seeing the worldly view of life creeping into the church and taking root. The world doesn’t like to see thought that violates its concept of truth – not in the 1st century and not today. “They”, whoever they may be, will interject their own brand of what is right and what is wrong, and we are expected to accept it. That is what “going beyond what is written” is all about.
Some of you may remember the TV show Dragnet. One of the lines from that show has survived until today, and it seems that it may even have its basis in our reading for today. One of Joe Friday’s most memorable lines is “Just the facts, ma’am, just the facts”! Who says that there is no redeeming value in television? And I think that Paul would be very pleased to know that his words are being emulated today, because that is basically what he is telling us – stick to the facts of scripture, and you’ll never go wrong.
Some of the facts:
John 3:17 – “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”
John 8:12 - “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
John 14:6 - “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Romans 8:31 – “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
Romans 8:38-39 – “For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
And the “written word” goes on and on, and all of it to give us a great hope for salvation in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ! Trust Him, and Him alone.
In some Arab countries, there is a saying that if you trust someone, you should give that person your breath. In other words, there is no space between people who trust; no light shines between those who share personal space.
We need to do our best to live as in the words of Charles Albert Tindley,
“Nothing between my soul and my Savior,
Naught of this world’s delusive dream;
I have renounced all sinful pleasure,
Jesus is mine; there’s nothing between.
[Refrain]
Nothing between my soul and my Savior,
So that His blessed face may be seen;
Nothing preventing the least of His favor,
Keep the way clear: Let nothing between.”
--Charles Albert Tindley, “Nothing Between”, The United Methodist Hymnal (Nashville: UM Publishing House, 1989), #373, & Living Hymns (Encore Publications, Inc. 1975), #292
Let’s reread this refrain, and this time together as one Body, and as we do, I want each of us to take these words to heart. The church in Corinth was moving away from this concept of allowing nothing to come between them and Jesus, and it was only the letters that Paul wrote to them that brought them back to the truth of Christ.
[Read the refrain]
Let nothing between! Not the world view, not the social gospel, not our friends and family, not our own wisdom and not our ignorance, not our sin, and not our righteousness. Let nothing come between our soul and the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Be the heart and soul of faithful trust to those who have yet to know the glory and grace of Christ.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Sunday, February 20, 2011
“True Faith, True Reward”
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:10-23
Last week, we briefly touched on the analogy of the church as a building that is continuously under construction. Always growing, always changing, never quite finished, taking on new attributes and new forms every day.
I remember, to some degree, when my parents’ house was being built. I was only 5-6 years old, but I got to take the first shovel full of dirt from the ground, and then was assigned to sit at my grandparent’s kitchen table to watch, which, by the way, kept me out of the way of the carpenters. The process began with a great big hole in the ground, and slowly grew to be a two story Dutch colonial.
But the process didn’t end when the physical construction was complete. The "house" was ready, but it still had to become a “home”, and that required the addition of our family. And even that grew a little more after we had moved in.
The church building, the structure that we worship within today, isn’t the Body of Christ anymore than the house that I watched being built could be called a home. But each of them – the Church of Jesus Christ and the home that I grew up in - needed a solid footing and proper construction techniques if it was to become the warm, welcoming, nurturing, enduring place where our family grew.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:10-13
We need to be careful how we build. Paul gives us 2 caveats – the first is the foundation itself, and the second is how we build on that foundation.
He tells us that the only foundation worthy of the Church is Jesus Himself. Now at first glance, that may seem like a pretty basic truth, but consider the full extent of that thought. It doesn’t mean that we build on the image of Christ! It means that the Church is to be based on the life and teachings and character and heart of Jesus, not on just some esoteric thought. It doesn’t mean that the Church simply proclaims Jesus as Lord and Savior, even though that is a vital component of the Church, but that we must go far beyond that level, that we must “think” Jesus, “live” Jesus, “love” Jesus, “share” Jesus, “see” Jesus in all that we do, and others must come to “know” the complete Jesus through us. That is the foundation that Paul is talking about.
And the apostle also writes that not only is the foundation important, but the structure that is built upon that basis is also vitally important. The items that he mentions range from those that are extremely costly, to those that are about as base as you will ever find. The common aspect, though, is that all of them are of the world, and not one of them has one iota of spirituality in them. Gold and Silver and precious gems are nice to look at, but they can never keep their luster. They will soon tarnish, and not one of them will ever save a single soul. Wood, hay and straw are inexpensive and hold no pretense, but they, too, have no lasting quality, and will soon fail to support the structure. These materials may pass limited tests as specified by the world, but they can never survive the test of Judgment and they can never combine to convert the “physical house” into a “spiritual home”.
Why was Paul offering these thoughts to the church? It would appear that they were starting to interject other thought into their faith – Greek philosophy, worldly and pagan worship, legalism, and countless other unchristian ideals. He knew that they had to let go of those ideas, and get back to the truth of Jesus Christ.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:14-17
The faith that was beginning to immerge in Corinth had no Spirit. It may have been growing in numbers, but it was not growing, in any way, shape or form, in the Spirit of God. The Lord has no use whatsoever for physical dwellings. He could care less if our church building is 10 years old or 150 years old; whether it is make of exotic woods and inlaid marble, or if it is a grass shack in the middle of the jungle; whether it is an ornate cathedral or a humble 1 room cabin.
And He is equally unimpressed if the congregation numbers in the hundreds and thousands but without His Spirit being at the center of their ministry. The one thing that pleases the Lord is the quality of the heart that lives and grows within each person.
For centuries, Israel had seen, first the Tabernacle and then the Temple, as the House of God. The Spirit was contained in the Ark of the Covenant because, after all, didn’t even God need a nice place to live? Even today, we refer to our church building in the same way – God’s House, and many seem content to keep God safely warehoused there for six days until we return to worship Him on the seventh. But in Ezekiel 10:18, we read “Then the glory of the Lord departed from over the threshold of the temple and stopped above the cherubim.” And in the very next chapter, we read of Ezekiel being lifted up by the Spirit and that the Spirit came upon him and spoke to him. Ezekiel was in Babylon, not Jerusalem! The Spirit of God had “left the building”, and had gone to live and work directly within humanity!
Verse 16 – “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” We are the temple of God, the house of God, the hands and voice and heart of the Spirit of God! The Glory left the temple in order to be with the people while they were in exile, or more properly, because they were in exile. They had to live in banishment for 70 years, but they would not have to endure it alone. The Lord would be with them and in them, His new temple, throughout their ordeal. And that very same Spirit lives within each of us, in good times and in bad, in our faithful moments and in our sinful days. The new temple lives, and the Sacred Glory of God lives with us.
The Glory of Christ is our foundation, and in that, our many lives become the Church.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:18-23
Remember a few weeks ago, when we were in chapter 1, with its many references to the “foolishness” that is assigned to the Church by those who are immersed in the world?
1:18 – “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing”
1:23 – “We preach Christ crucified; a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks”
1:25 – “The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”
Paul tells us that we shouldn’t reject this concept of foolishness, but instead, should claim it! We are to become a “fool” in the world so that we might then become wise in God. With that rationale, no wonder the world thinks we’re strange! It makes no sense, has no logic! But the truth of this is so simple. We are to let go of the wisdom that comes from the world – to become foolish and empty – so that the wisdom, the truth, the holiness of God might fill us. We must always remember that the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God cannot co-exist. We can use the abilities, the knowledge, that our human self has gained, but never as the means to personal greatness or perfection in this life. Homiletics comments on Matthew 5:17-20 with these words - “Being perfect is not moral perfection, but serving God wholeheartedly.”
We must use the gifts that are exhibited in our human existence to serve the Lord with all our heart and soul and strength. And this service, to be truly of His Church, must always be in the unity of Christ. Boasting is specifically called out by Paul as a divisive characteristic, that it will destroy the Church’s unity in the blink of an eye. And he continues to tell us that infighting makes no sense whatsoever, because we already have everything that we could ever want! Whether it is our favorite teachers or our favorite teaching, whether it is the things of today or those of the future, whether it is life now or life eternal – we already have everything of value! But unless we are working together in Christ, it becomes a moot point. The building that is our life can be glamorous and greatly admired by all, but without the true Foundation, it is destined for a fall and can have no lasting significance.
An observer asked [the great Presbyterian preacher] Lyman Beecher how it was that he had so many converts. Dr. Beecher answered, “I preach on Sunday and I have 400 members who preach every day, and that is the way, with the blessing of God, that we are doing so well.”
--William R. Key, The 'What Is' and 'How- To' of Evangelism, The Foundation for Evangelism Web Site, www.evangelize.org/articles/article22.htm, July 6, 1999.
Carrying the foundational message of Christ in a wholehearted manner, as the unified Body of Christ and the living temple for the Spirit of God. The promise is sure – that we are of Christ and Christ is of God. And without that assurance, without that direction, without that hope, there is no life, regardless of how wonderfully the church may appear to the world. Glory surrounds the faithful, and Christ is the Glory.
Can it possibly get any better than that?
Last week, we briefly touched on the analogy of the church as a building that is continuously under construction. Always growing, always changing, never quite finished, taking on new attributes and new forms every day.
I remember, to some degree, when my parents’ house was being built. I was only 5-6 years old, but I got to take the first shovel full of dirt from the ground, and then was assigned to sit at my grandparent’s kitchen table to watch, which, by the way, kept me out of the way of the carpenters. The process began with a great big hole in the ground, and slowly grew to be a two story Dutch colonial.
But the process didn’t end when the physical construction was complete. The "house" was ready, but it still had to become a “home”, and that required the addition of our family. And even that grew a little more after we had moved in.
The church building, the structure that we worship within today, isn’t the Body of Christ anymore than the house that I watched being built could be called a home. But each of them – the Church of Jesus Christ and the home that I grew up in - needed a solid footing and proper construction techniques if it was to become the warm, welcoming, nurturing, enduring place where our family grew.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:10-13
We need to be careful how we build. Paul gives us 2 caveats – the first is the foundation itself, and the second is how we build on that foundation.
He tells us that the only foundation worthy of the Church is Jesus Himself. Now at first glance, that may seem like a pretty basic truth, but consider the full extent of that thought. It doesn’t mean that we build on the image of Christ! It means that the Church is to be based on the life and teachings and character and heart of Jesus, not on just some esoteric thought. It doesn’t mean that the Church simply proclaims Jesus as Lord and Savior, even though that is a vital component of the Church, but that we must go far beyond that level, that we must “think” Jesus, “live” Jesus, “love” Jesus, “share” Jesus, “see” Jesus in all that we do, and others must come to “know” the complete Jesus through us. That is the foundation that Paul is talking about.
And the apostle also writes that not only is the foundation important, but the structure that is built upon that basis is also vitally important. The items that he mentions range from those that are extremely costly, to those that are about as base as you will ever find. The common aspect, though, is that all of them are of the world, and not one of them has one iota of spirituality in them. Gold and Silver and precious gems are nice to look at, but they can never keep their luster. They will soon tarnish, and not one of them will ever save a single soul. Wood, hay and straw are inexpensive and hold no pretense, but they, too, have no lasting quality, and will soon fail to support the structure. These materials may pass limited tests as specified by the world, but they can never survive the test of Judgment and they can never combine to convert the “physical house” into a “spiritual home”.
Why was Paul offering these thoughts to the church? It would appear that they were starting to interject other thought into their faith – Greek philosophy, worldly and pagan worship, legalism, and countless other unchristian ideals. He knew that they had to let go of those ideas, and get back to the truth of Jesus Christ.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:14-17
The faith that was beginning to immerge in Corinth had no Spirit. It may have been growing in numbers, but it was not growing, in any way, shape or form, in the Spirit of God. The Lord has no use whatsoever for physical dwellings. He could care less if our church building is 10 years old or 150 years old; whether it is make of exotic woods and inlaid marble, or if it is a grass shack in the middle of the jungle; whether it is an ornate cathedral or a humble 1 room cabin.
And He is equally unimpressed if the congregation numbers in the hundreds and thousands but without His Spirit being at the center of their ministry. The one thing that pleases the Lord is the quality of the heart that lives and grows within each person.
For centuries, Israel had seen, first the Tabernacle and then the Temple, as the House of God. The Spirit was contained in the Ark of the Covenant because, after all, didn’t even God need a nice place to live? Even today, we refer to our church building in the same way – God’s House, and many seem content to keep God safely warehoused there for six days until we return to worship Him on the seventh. But in Ezekiel 10:18, we read “Then the glory of the Lord departed from over the threshold of the temple and stopped above the cherubim.” And in the very next chapter, we read of Ezekiel being lifted up by the Spirit and that the Spirit came upon him and spoke to him. Ezekiel was in Babylon, not Jerusalem! The Spirit of God had “left the building”, and had gone to live and work directly within humanity!
Verse 16 – “Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?” We are the temple of God, the house of God, the hands and voice and heart of the Spirit of God! The Glory left the temple in order to be with the people while they were in exile, or more properly, because they were in exile. They had to live in banishment for 70 years, but they would not have to endure it alone. The Lord would be with them and in them, His new temple, throughout their ordeal. And that very same Spirit lives within each of us, in good times and in bad, in our faithful moments and in our sinful days. The new temple lives, and the Sacred Glory of God lives with us.
The Glory of Christ is our foundation, and in that, our many lives become the Church.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:18-23
Remember a few weeks ago, when we were in chapter 1, with its many references to the “foolishness” that is assigned to the Church by those who are immersed in the world?
1:18 – “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing”
1:23 – “We preach Christ crucified; a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks”
1:25 – “The foolishness of God is wiser than man’s wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than man’s strength.”
Paul tells us that we shouldn’t reject this concept of foolishness, but instead, should claim it! We are to become a “fool” in the world so that we might then become wise in God. With that rationale, no wonder the world thinks we’re strange! It makes no sense, has no logic! But the truth of this is so simple. We are to let go of the wisdom that comes from the world – to become foolish and empty – so that the wisdom, the truth, the holiness of God might fill us. We must always remember that the wisdom of the world and the wisdom of God cannot co-exist. We can use the abilities, the knowledge, that our human self has gained, but never as the means to personal greatness or perfection in this life. Homiletics comments on Matthew 5:17-20 with these words - “Being perfect is not moral perfection, but serving God wholeheartedly.”
We must use the gifts that are exhibited in our human existence to serve the Lord with all our heart and soul and strength. And this service, to be truly of His Church, must always be in the unity of Christ. Boasting is specifically called out by Paul as a divisive characteristic, that it will destroy the Church’s unity in the blink of an eye. And he continues to tell us that infighting makes no sense whatsoever, because we already have everything that we could ever want! Whether it is our favorite teachers or our favorite teaching, whether it is the things of today or those of the future, whether it is life now or life eternal – we already have everything of value! But unless we are working together in Christ, it becomes a moot point. The building that is our life can be glamorous and greatly admired by all, but without the true Foundation, it is destined for a fall and can have no lasting significance.
An observer asked [the great Presbyterian preacher] Lyman Beecher how it was that he had so many converts. Dr. Beecher answered, “I preach on Sunday and I have 400 members who preach every day, and that is the way, with the blessing of God, that we are doing so well.”
--William R. Key, The 'What Is' and 'How- To' of Evangelism, The Foundation for Evangelism Web Site, www.evangelize.org/articles/article22.htm, July 6, 1999.
Carrying the foundational message of Christ in a wholehearted manner, as the unified Body of Christ and the living temple for the Spirit of God. The promise is sure – that we are of Christ and Christ is of God. And without that assurance, without that direction, without that hope, there is no life, regardless of how wonderfully the church may appear to the world. Glory surrounds the faithful, and Christ is the Glory.
Can it possibly get any better than that?
Sunday, February 13, 2011
“No Spirit in Dissention”
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 3:1-9
For the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the issues that Paul was addressing in the Corinthian church. Today, we look at the condition of “jealousy”, and as you may remember, jealousy, or envy, is one of the 7 deadly sins. Bishop Will Willamon wrote a book in 2005 by the name “Sinning Like a Christian”. He takes each of the 7 and considers their impact, not on general society, but on the people who live and worship within the Church. The “Seven” – Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth (laziness), Greed, Gluttony, and Lust - aren’t so much the things we do as they are the things we feel and think. We are the ones who not only passionately condemn these practices, but we are the very ones who are the greatest perpetrators of them.
Jesus dealt with “jealousy” more than any other of the human conditions. Even His disciples were constantly bickering over who was the greatest, who would sit at Jesus’ right hand, who Jesus liked the best, and on and on.
And Jesus never accepted one word of their animosity.
Willimon writes:
“It is odd that we have made even Jesus into such a quivering mass of affirmation and oozing graciousness, considering how frequently, unguardedly, and gleefully Jesus told us that we were sinners. Anyone who thinks that Jesus was into inclusiveness, self-affirmation, and open-minded, heart-happy acceptance has then got to figure out why we responded to him by nailing him on a cross. He got there not for urging us to ‘consider the lilies’, but for calling us ’whitewashed tombs’ and even worse.”
- Willimon, William; Sinning Like a Christian; Abington Press, 2005
And jealousy was one of the whitewashings that received so much of His attention.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:1-4
Paul is just about as blunt as Jesus is. “Since there is so much jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?” And the implication here is that these are some of the things that define a worldly life and that they can never be the acts of a spiritual life.
Historian Henry Chadwick discusses the radical transformation that occurred in the fourth century when the masses, who previously had worshipped pagan gods, filled the churches. The bishops of the church tried to get the masses to give up their pagan cults with their promises of success in love and fertility, in commerce and in health.
But bishops quickly found their people determined to have such things and ready to say (as Augustine reports) that “the Church's God was good for salvation in the next world, but one had better keep in with the old gods for success in this one.”
Augustine often laments the half-heartedness of many who have been baptized but who have not been touched to the heart, and sees an image of the Church in St. Peter's ship so weighed down with the fish that it began to sink.
--Times Literary Supplement, 5 April 1985, 379-80
The church in Corinth was beginning to sink under the pressure and weight of influences from the outside world. Willimon writes “I love the fact that Envy, as a sort of refined, subtle form of hate, is numbered among the Seven. Envy is less obviously sinful than crude, publicly expressed hate, but it can be no less deadly.”
The jealousy that Paul was seeing in the church sparked his concern and fears of spiritual immaturity. It had no place there, but here it is and it was actively tearing the Body of Christ apart, limb from limb, and heart from soul. It was destroying itself from the inside. And the issue? It was simply this - “Who was a better teacher – Paul or Apollos?” And the question that must be asked back to the church is this – “Where is Christ in all of this?” And the warning, and issues, and questions are still pertinent today.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:5-7
And Paul puts it all into perspective. He very clearly tells the church that it isn’t the teacher who is important – that those who lead are merely servants of the One who makes everything work together. And isn’t this problem true in the church of today? The servants of the Most High God want to be seen as the indispensable ones in the mix. "Nothing would get done around here if it wasn’t for me!” “No one else can do it right!” “Who do they think they are – don’t they know that I’ve always done that?” Or even worse “I could never do that – he (or she) is the only one for that job!”
It’s as if we don’t trust God to do the empowering! That God can’t work without me! Willimon writes that Pride is very possibly the worse of the Seven, because it tends to be the basis for the other six! Pride leads to jealously, and it causes nearly every other affliction to spread to the entire Body.
Now, we have to recognize the fact that Paul is not condemning diversity, those differences in our abilities and understandings. To the contrary, he is proclaiming it. Some can plant, some can nurture, some will encourage, and all must work together in the name of Christ. That is what being “spirit-lead” is all about – one concerted and united effort, using our diverse gifts, to accomplish our God given goals. The problem comes when we begin to think that our contribution in the effort is more important, more inspired, better given than that which comes from others, that the goal will be unattainable without us.
Paul is telling the church, both the one in the 1st century and the one in the 21st, that if we don’t grow up, we will surely give out.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:8-9
Paul uses 3 conceptual images in this passage. First, he offers the image of family – the infant who can only tolerate milk, versus those older members who can handle solid food. Second, the idea that the church is like a field prepared for a crop. And third, he ties it all together and adds the notion that the church is like a building that is under construction. We are growing, gaining, learning, changing, rising ever higher, but as we become more and more, we must never lose sight of the fact that the plan that is guiding us is never changing. We are the workers who are preparing the field, who are constructing the building, who are raising the family, but we do not cause the growth, we did not design the structure, we did not create the life, and the vision of the final result is not of us!
We simply work to enable the Lord’s plan for the church. And in that, we are the workers, the servants, and never the planner. As Corinth began to deviate from God’s plan for them, it became more and more obvious that they were not living within His will. The Lord’s plan of unity was failing in the dissention that was growing in the church.
In one of Charles Wesley’s hymns we sing:
“Come, let us use the grace divine, and all with one accord,
in a perpetual covenant join ourselves to Christ the Lord;
Give up ourselves, thru Jesus’ power, his name to glorify;
And promise, in this sacred hour, for God, to live and die.”
- Wesley, Charles; Come, Let Us Use the Grace Divine; 1762, page 606, UMH, based
With one accord… give up ourselves... his name to glorify… to live and die for Him. The church can never be about individuals – it can only be about the workings of the Holy Spirit within and through the entire church. Remember the message in Luke 18 regarding the prayers that were being offered by two men – one being a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The attitudes of these two men were drastically different and there was no unity whatsoever in them. The Pharisee was elevating himself over the tax collector, and wanted to be seen as being the best example for all to follow. But Jesus turns the table on him, and proclaims that it’s the humble man who God will raise up, not the one who already thinks so highly of himself.
The Spirit of the Church is freed to work God’s wonders through the humility and surrender of the servants of God. Continuing with Charles Wesley’s hymn:
“The covenant we this moment make be ever kept in mind;
We will no more our God forsake, or cast these words behind.
We never will throw off the fear of God who hears our vow;
And if thou art well pleased to hear, come down and meet us now.”
The covenant that the Lord offers to His church is this – if we will “no more our God forsake” and no longer “cast [His] words behind”, His marvelous spirit will grow within us, and the Church victorious can become a reality in our time!
No more dissention.
No more jealous pride.
No more “me first”.
Just Christ, and Him crucified. No more and no less.
For the past few weeks, we’ve been looking at the issues that Paul was addressing in the Corinthian church. Today, we look at the condition of “jealousy”, and as you may remember, jealousy, or envy, is one of the 7 deadly sins. Bishop Will Willamon wrote a book in 2005 by the name “Sinning Like a Christian”. He takes each of the 7 and considers their impact, not on general society, but on the people who live and worship within the Church. The “Seven” – Pride, Envy, Anger, Sloth (laziness), Greed, Gluttony, and Lust - aren’t so much the things we do as they are the things we feel and think. We are the ones who not only passionately condemn these practices, but we are the very ones who are the greatest perpetrators of them.
Jesus dealt with “jealousy” more than any other of the human conditions. Even His disciples were constantly bickering over who was the greatest, who would sit at Jesus’ right hand, who Jesus liked the best, and on and on.
And Jesus never accepted one word of their animosity.
Willimon writes:
“It is odd that we have made even Jesus into such a quivering mass of affirmation and oozing graciousness, considering how frequently, unguardedly, and gleefully Jesus told us that we were sinners. Anyone who thinks that Jesus was into inclusiveness, self-affirmation, and open-minded, heart-happy acceptance has then got to figure out why we responded to him by nailing him on a cross. He got there not for urging us to ‘consider the lilies’, but for calling us ’whitewashed tombs’ and even worse.”
- Willimon, William; Sinning Like a Christian; Abington Press, 2005
And jealousy was one of the whitewashings that received so much of His attention.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:1-4
Paul is just about as blunt as Jesus is. “Since there is so much jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly?” And the implication here is that these are some of the things that define a worldly life and that they can never be the acts of a spiritual life.
Historian Henry Chadwick discusses the radical transformation that occurred in the fourth century when the masses, who previously had worshipped pagan gods, filled the churches. The bishops of the church tried to get the masses to give up their pagan cults with their promises of success in love and fertility, in commerce and in health.
But bishops quickly found their people determined to have such things and ready to say (as Augustine reports) that “the Church's God was good for salvation in the next world, but one had better keep in with the old gods for success in this one.”
Augustine often laments the half-heartedness of many who have been baptized but who have not been touched to the heart, and sees an image of the Church in St. Peter's ship so weighed down with the fish that it began to sink.
--Times Literary Supplement, 5 April 1985, 379-80
The church in Corinth was beginning to sink under the pressure and weight of influences from the outside world. Willimon writes “I love the fact that Envy, as a sort of refined, subtle form of hate, is numbered among the Seven. Envy is less obviously sinful than crude, publicly expressed hate, but it can be no less deadly.”
The jealousy that Paul was seeing in the church sparked his concern and fears of spiritual immaturity. It had no place there, but here it is and it was actively tearing the Body of Christ apart, limb from limb, and heart from soul. It was destroying itself from the inside. And the issue? It was simply this - “Who was a better teacher – Paul or Apollos?” And the question that must be asked back to the church is this – “Where is Christ in all of this?” And the warning, and issues, and questions are still pertinent today.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:5-7
And Paul puts it all into perspective. He very clearly tells the church that it isn’t the teacher who is important – that those who lead are merely servants of the One who makes everything work together. And isn’t this problem true in the church of today? The servants of the Most High God want to be seen as the indispensable ones in the mix. "Nothing would get done around here if it wasn’t for me!” “No one else can do it right!” “Who do they think they are – don’t they know that I’ve always done that?” Or even worse “I could never do that – he (or she) is the only one for that job!”
It’s as if we don’t trust God to do the empowering! That God can’t work without me! Willimon writes that Pride is very possibly the worse of the Seven, because it tends to be the basis for the other six! Pride leads to jealously, and it causes nearly every other affliction to spread to the entire Body.
Now, we have to recognize the fact that Paul is not condemning diversity, those differences in our abilities and understandings. To the contrary, he is proclaiming it. Some can plant, some can nurture, some will encourage, and all must work together in the name of Christ. That is what being “spirit-lead” is all about – one concerted and united effort, using our diverse gifts, to accomplish our God given goals. The problem comes when we begin to think that our contribution in the effort is more important, more inspired, better given than that which comes from others, that the goal will be unattainable without us.
Paul is telling the church, both the one in the 1st century and the one in the 21st, that if we don’t grow up, we will surely give out.
Read 1 Corinthians 3:8-9
Paul uses 3 conceptual images in this passage. First, he offers the image of family – the infant who can only tolerate milk, versus those older members who can handle solid food. Second, the idea that the church is like a field prepared for a crop. And third, he ties it all together and adds the notion that the church is like a building that is under construction. We are growing, gaining, learning, changing, rising ever higher, but as we become more and more, we must never lose sight of the fact that the plan that is guiding us is never changing. We are the workers who are preparing the field, who are constructing the building, who are raising the family, but we do not cause the growth, we did not design the structure, we did not create the life, and the vision of the final result is not of us!
We simply work to enable the Lord’s plan for the church. And in that, we are the workers, the servants, and never the planner. As Corinth began to deviate from God’s plan for them, it became more and more obvious that they were not living within His will. The Lord’s plan of unity was failing in the dissention that was growing in the church.
In one of Charles Wesley’s hymns we sing:
“Come, let us use the grace divine, and all with one accord,
in a perpetual covenant join ourselves to Christ the Lord;
Give up ourselves, thru Jesus’ power, his name to glorify;
And promise, in this sacred hour, for God, to live and die.”
- Wesley, Charles; Come, Let Us Use the Grace Divine; 1762, page 606, UMH, based
With one accord… give up ourselves... his name to glorify… to live and die for Him. The church can never be about individuals – it can only be about the workings of the Holy Spirit within and through the entire church. Remember the message in Luke 18 regarding the prayers that were being offered by two men – one being a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The attitudes of these two men were drastically different and there was no unity whatsoever in them. The Pharisee was elevating himself over the tax collector, and wanted to be seen as being the best example for all to follow. But Jesus turns the table on him, and proclaims that it’s the humble man who God will raise up, not the one who already thinks so highly of himself.
The Spirit of the Church is freed to work God’s wonders through the humility and surrender of the servants of God. Continuing with Charles Wesley’s hymn:
“The covenant we this moment make be ever kept in mind;
We will no more our God forsake, or cast these words behind.
We never will throw off the fear of God who hears our vow;
And if thou art well pleased to hear, come down and meet us now.”
The covenant that the Lord offers to His church is this – if we will “no more our God forsake” and no longer “cast [His] words behind”, His marvelous spirit will grow within us, and the Church victorious can become a reality in our time!
No more dissention.
No more jealous pride.
No more “me first”.
Just Christ, and Him crucified. No more and no less.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
“Wisdom in the Spirit”
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 2:1-16
What is wisdom? We read “Wisdom” literature in scripture. Society places a high regard on wisdom. Many people claim to have it, but few can actually describe it and personally, I don’t believe that any of us actually has it. Wisdom has been confused with knowledge – but knowledge is simply the accumulation of facts. Wisdom isn’t intelligence – that is the measurable potential for understanding. And it isn’t even understanding – that is the ability to comprehend what someone else is saying.
For me, Wisdom can only be a “ideal and perfect insight” – it’s the ability to put all that there is into order, into context, into a perspective that can bring all that exists into focus. We don’t have it and couldn’t handle if we did! God has it, though, and He blesses us through it.
Read 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
As the story goes:
An angel appears at a university faculty meeting and tells the dean that in return for his unselfish and exemplary behavior, the Lord will reward him with his choice of one of three things: infinite wealth, infinite wisdom or perfect beauty. Without hesitating, the dean selects infinite wisdom.”
Done!” says the angel, and disappears in a cloud of smoke and a clap of thunder. Now, all heads turn toward the dean, who now sits surrounded by a faint halo of light. At length, one of his colleagues whispers, “Say something.”
The dean looks around the silent room and replies, “I should have taken the money.”
- Homiletics Online
The ability for humanity to deal with wisdom, in its purest sense, is feeble, at best. I don’t recommend that anyone settle on money as their choice of God’s blessing, but we would probably have a better chance of success with infinite financial resources than the dean had with “infinite wisdom”!
Even Paul tells the church that he came without wisdom – that he was filled with weakness, fear, and trembling, and that he was neither wise nor gifted with persuasiveness. He relied totally on the power of God that flowed through the Spirit. Why should the people of today think that they are smarter than Paul? The truth is that we aren’t – we just think we are.
Read 1 Corinthians 2:6-10a
If we really think about verse 6, we see that it is very obviously a stinging rebuke of what the world looks to as “wisdom”. He says that the insight that the rulers of the world have is worth nothing. And his evidence is this - that their lack of insight into God’s ways is what required the Lord to give His all on Calvary. If we – not only the wise of earth, but everyone – had a good grasp on the goodness and glory of God,
if we all had a true sense of God’s plan for His creation, Jesus could have been spared His horror on the cross. But we don’t, and Paul’s quotation from Isaiah makes this failure on our part very clear – “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (Isaiah 64:1-5)
Our only hope to even come close to understanding the Lord’s plan is to lean on the teachings of Jesus Christ and the leading of His Holy Spirit. And what an incredible gift that is! God didn’t have to give us a view into His plan, but in His gracious nature, and in His desire for us to be active in His plan, His glory has been revealed to His created.
What an incredible and blessed God we serve!
Read 1 Corinthians 2:10b-13
No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God, and the Spirit has been given to each of us. And we have received that Spirit so that we might understand – that we might comprehend what God is saying to us! And the converse is also true – if a person does not have the Spirit of God, they will be unable to understand. The wisdom of God will remain a mystery to them.
Wisdom in the Spirit is much more than some incomprehensible concept – it is a gift and a promise of even more to come. Some might say that verse 13 – “expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words” - is about speaking in tongues, but I believe that it is more than that, that this refers to anyone who receives the truth of God through the Spirit, and then speaks, in one of many ways, those same truths to the people of this world. They may not be able to understand the wisdom of God in a direct manner, but they just may begin to understand through us. We can’t keep those truths to ourselves, we can’t hide our Light under the proverbial “bushel”, we can’t sit back and revel in these amazing gifts of God. We have received them so that we might share them with others, so that they may receive the Spirit of the Lord, so that they might come to understand God’s plan for their life, and to accept it as their own.
But if we surrender to the temptation to put ourselves and our human spirit into those words, our Christian witness is going to be strangled. The world’s wisdom will shut out the truth of God, and the spiritual truths contained in these spiritual words will be muffled. The spirit of the world has no place in our walk with Christ, and we have to constantly be aware of our words and our attitudes and our actions! Our pride, our arrogance, our pains, our failures must all be surrendered to the Holy Spirit so that He can work within us.
Read 1 Corinthians 2:14-16
This passage has been an ideal and perfect view of what the church should be about. Mature, sensible, focused on God, listening and learning from the Spirit, being reborn and remade in wonderful ways, and never allowing ourselves to be corrupted by the false wisdom of the world.
The church at Corinth was, apparently, failing in these very things, and Paul was challenging them to see beyond themselves. The church was falling into a very worldly mode, and Paul was teaching them in the Spirit. They were failing in their understanding of spiritual matters, and in a human way, Paul was pointing out first, where they should be, and second, why they must correct their ways. It was to be his challenge to the church to get back in the Spirit.
During his presidency, Abraham Lincoln regularly attended worship services at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. The pastor was Dr. Phineas Gurley. Barry P. Boulware [A writer]relates how on one particular evening, while walking home from church, an aide asked President Lincoln about Dr. Gurley's sermon.
The President replied in fragmented phrases: The content was excellent...he delivered it with eloquence...he had put work into the message... Then you thought it was a great sermon? asked the aide. No, replied the President. Dr. Gurley forgot the most important ingredient. He forgot to ask us to do something great!
- Homiletics Online
And so, with the words of the Apostle Paul and President Lincoln still fresh in our minds, I’m going to ask you to do something great in the coming week. For the next 7 days, I would like each of us, and that includes me, to consider everything that we do and say in light of our scripture lesson today. Are we walking in the Spirit of God, or in the wisdom of the world? Are we listening to the Holy Spirit, or are we depending more on our human spirit? Do our words come from the Lord’s truth, or are we giving the ways of the world legitimacy in our lives? Are we loving as Christ loved, or as the world demands that we love?
When we do these “great things”, when we can truthfully answer these questions to the glory of God, then even more great things will begin to happen. I won’t presume to know what those “great things” may be, but they will happen!
Give God the glory! Give Christ the glory! Give the Spirit a chance to work in your life! And set the world’s wisdom far, far behind.
What is wisdom? We read “Wisdom” literature in scripture. Society places a high regard on wisdom. Many people claim to have it, but few can actually describe it and personally, I don’t believe that any of us actually has it. Wisdom has been confused with knowledge – but knowledge is simply the accumulation of facts. Wisdom isn’t intelligence – that is the measurable potential for understanding. And it isn’t even understanding – that is the ability to comprehend what someone else is saying.
For me, Wisdom can only be a “ideal and perfect insight” – it’s the ability to put all that there is into order, into context, into a perspective that can bring all that exists into focus. We don’t have it and couldn’t handle if we did! God has it, though, and He blesses us through it.
Read 1 Corinthians 2:1-5
As the story goes:
An angel appears at a university faculty meeting and tells the dean that in return for his unselfish and exemplary behavior, the Lord will reward him with his choice of one of three things: infinite wealth, infinite wisdom or perfect beauty. Without hesitating, the dean selects infinite wisdom.”
Done!” says the angel, and disappears in a cloud of smoke and a clap of thunder. Now, all heads turn toward the dean, who now sits surrounded by a faint halo of light. At length, one of his colleagues whispers, “Say something.”
The dean looks around the silent room and replies, “I should have taken the money.”
- Homiletics Online
The ability for humanity to deal with wisdom, in its purest sense, is feeble, at best. I don’t recommend that anyone settle on money as their choice of God’s blessing, but we would probably have a better chance of success with infinite financial resources than the dean had with “infinite wisdom”!
Even Paul tells the church that he came without wisdom – that he was filled with weakness, fear, and trembling, and that he was neither wise nor gifted with persuasiveness. He relied totally on the power of God that flowed through the Spirit. Why should the people of today think that they are smarter than Paul? The truth is that we aren’t – we just think we are.
Read 1 Corinthians 2:6-10a
If we really think about verse 6, we see that it is very obviously a stinging rebuke of what the world looks to as “wisdom”. He says that the insight that the rulers of the world have is worth nothing. And his evidence is this - that their lack of insight into God’s ways is what required the Lord to give His all on Calvary. If we – not only the wise of earth, but everyone – had a good grasp on the goodness and glory of God,
if we all had a true sense of God’s plan for His creation, Jesus could have been spared His horror on the cross. But we don’t, and Paul’s quotation from Isaiah makes this failure on our part very clear – “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (Isaiah 64:1-5)
Our only hope to even come close to understanding the Lord’s plan is to lean on the teachings of Jesus Christ and the leading of His Holy Spirit. And what an incredible gift that is! God didn’t have to give us a view into His plan, but in His gracious nature, and in His desire for us to be active in His plan, His glory has been revealed to His created.
What an incredible and blessed God we serve!
Read 1 Corinthians 2:10b-13
No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God, and the Spirit has been given to each of us. And we have received that Spirit so that we might understand – that we might comprehend what God is saying to us! And the converse is also true – if a person does not have the Spirit of God, they will be unable to understand. The wisdom of God will remain a mystery to them.
Wisdom in the Spirit is much more than some incomprehensible concept – it is a gift and a promise of even more to come. Some might say that verse 13 – “expressing spiritual truths in spiritual words” - is about speaking in tongues, but I believe that it is more than that, that this refers to anyone who receives the truth of God through the Spirit, and then speaks, in one of many ways, those same truths to the people of this world. They may not be able to understand the wisdom of God in a direct manner, but they just may begin to understand through us. We can’t keep those truths to ourselves, we can’t hide our Light under the proverbial “bushel”, we can’t sit back and revel in these amazing gifts of God. We have received them so that we might share them with others, so that they may receive the Spirit of the Lord, so that they might come to understand God’s plan for their life, and to accept it as their own.
But if we surrender to the temptation to put ourselves and our human spirit into those words, our Christian witness is going to be strangled. The world’s wisdom will shut out the truth of God, and the spiritual truths contained in these spiritual words will be muffled. The spirit of the world has no place in our walk with Christ, and we have to constantly be aware of our words and our attitudes and our actions! Our pride, our arrogance, our pains, our failures must all be surrendered to the Holy Spirit so that He can work within us.
Read 1 Corinthians 2:14-16
This passage has been an ideal and perfect view of what the church should be about. Mature, sensible, focused on God, listening and learning from the Spirit, being reborn and remade in wonderful ways, and never allowing ourselves to be corrupted by the false wisdom of the world.
The church at Corinth was, apparently, failing in these very things, and Paul was challenging them to see beyond themselves. The church was falling into a very worldly mode, and Paul was teaching them in the Spirit. They were failing in their understanding of spiritual matters, and in a human way, Paul was pointing out first, where they should be, and second, why they must correct their ways. It was to be his challenge to the church to get back in the Spirit.
During his presidency, Abraham Lincoln regularly attended worship services at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church. The pastor was Dr. Phineas Gurley. Barry P. Boulware [A writer]relates how on one particular evening, while walking home from church, an aide asked President Lincoln about Dr. Gurley's sermon.
The President replied in fragmented phrases: The content was excellent...he delivered it with eloquence...he had put work into the message... Then you thought it was a great sermon? asked the aide. No, replied the President. Dr. Gurley forgot the most important ingredient. He forgot to ask us to do something great!
- Homiletics Online
And so, with the words of the Apostle Paul and President Lincoln still fresh in our minds, I’m going to ask you to do something great in the coming week. For the next 7 days, I would like each of us, and that includes me, to consider everything that we do and say in light of our scripture lesson today. Are we walking in the Spirit of God, or in the wisdom of the world? Are we listening to the Holy Spirit, or are we depending more on our human spirit? Do our words come from the Lord’s truth, or are we giving the ways of the world legitimacy in our lives? Are we loving as Christ loved, or as the world demands that we love?
When we do these “great things”, when we can truthfully answer these questions to the glory of God, then even more great things will begin to happen. I won’t presume to know what those “great things” may be, but they will happen!
Give God the glory! Give Christ the glory! Give the Spirit a chance to work in your life! And set the world’s wisdom far, far behind.
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