Episode Transcript
[00:00:19] Well, let's open our bibles together to the book of first Corinthians, chapter four.
[00:00:30] As you're turning to one corinthians, chapter four. I was thinking this week about the fact that ancient greek philosophers who walked the streets of Corinth before Paul's day and during Paul's day, had developed a method of learning that has impacted our world in powerful ways, for good and for evil. And this method was at the center of the division in the corinthian church. Almost 2000 years later. Today, it is still at the center of the division between godly wisdom and worldly wisdom. It is center stage in the realms of academia, technology, medicine, biology, the military, psychology, space exploration, and every other field of study in our world goes back to this ancient method of learning. And I'm referring to the scientific method.
[00:01:31] Aristotle introduced the concepts that developed into the scientific method 350 years before Christ walked on this earth. Aristotle lived in Athens, which is only 50 miles away from Corinth. Paul was well aware of the teachings of the philosophers, as he showed many times in his writings and his debates with unbelievers. His audience was more familiar with greek philosophy than they were with scripture, and his audience was the church at Corinth. So what I believe Paul is doing in this passage of scripture, in these verses, is incredibly brilliant. And I believe it was wise for multiple reasons. First of all, the Holy Spirit inspired it, so we know that it's wise for that reason alone. But Paul was also well equipped to argue this point, and his audience was able to understand this because this was the world that they lived in. So before we jump into chapter four, I want to remind you of the context of what we've been studying over the past few weeks. Because of human wisdom, the church in Corinth was a church divided through their doctrines of philosophy. They exalted certain men over other men and divided into factions. And that's something that our church is still doing today. These factions were fighting against one another, and ultimately, Paul said, against the truth of the gospel. So Paul exposed their sin, and he repeatedly exalts the gospel of Jesus Christ as being the perfect, sinless son of God. The prophesied Messiah, who lived a perfect, sinless life, died a sacrificial, substitutionary death, and rose from the grave for our salvation, ascended into heaven and commissioned the church to go make disciples, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. Teaching and proclaiming the gospel throughout the world. He continually exalts the gospel of Jesus as the only solution for their problem and our problem.
[00:03:48] And I am going to give you a warning about this passage. This section displays the reason why some people have difficulty understanding the apostle Paul.
[00:03:59] And if you think that sounds a little bit sacrilegious, I want to read you the words of the apostle Peter. Writing about the apostle Paul. He wrote, and count the patience of our lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, as he does in all his letters, when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other scriptures. This passage in two, Peter, 315 and 16 is an amazing verse. Two verses, three things stand out in it to me. At least three things. Number one, Paul is hard to understand at times. He doesn't say all the time, but at times Paul is difficult to understand. That makes me feel a little bit better, because when I read this passage of scripture this week, after the first three or four times, I was like, Lord, how in the world am I going to teach this? I don't even know if I understand it. So Paul is hard to understand at times. Paul's writings are scripture. He tells us that Paul, or the apostle Peter tells us that Paul's words are scripture.
[00:05:10] We also see that some people in that day and this day twist Paul's writings, scripture out of their context, to their own destruction. So it's a my job tonight to make sure that I understand these verses and to present them as God's word, as scripture, and not to twist it. Because even though this may be difficult to understand, it's incredibly, incredibly important for the church as you're going to see. If I had to give my sermon a title tonight, I would call it the subtle power of pride. And I was struggling with that in another title. So I'm just going to give you both of them. The second title, I think, is my favorite, and it's not on the screen, but what I really want to call this is a scientific approach to a serious problem. And Paul is going to give us a scientific approach to a very serious problem. Let me read from our text. First Corinthians, chapter four, starting in verse eight. This is the word of God for his people. Tonight, the apostle Paul writes, already you have all you want. Already you have become rich without us. You have become kings. And would that you did reign so that we might share the rule with you. For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to Mendez. We are fools, for Christ's sake, but you are wise. In Christ, we are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute to the present hour, we hunger and thirst. We are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. When slandered, we entreat. We have become and are still like the scum of the world.
[00:07:12] The refuse of all things.
[00:07:15] Verse 14. I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you, Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in the church. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills. And I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod? Or with love and a spirit of gentleness?
[00:08:09] And all God's people said, ouch.
[00:08:14] Yeah. Let's dig into what the apostle Paul is talking about here. And before we do, let me lead us to the Lord in prayer one more time. Father, we love you. And God, we thank you for your word tonight. Please open our minds, our hearts, to hear, understand, believe, and obey your truth. God, we believe that this is your word. If I didn't, I wouldn't be standing here tonight. And I believe this is profitable for us tonight, for this church, for those who will be listening. God, I pray that you would pierce our heart with the truth of your words. Convict us, challenge us, change us into the image of Christ. And Lord, I thank you for the fact that we know that you are faithful to allow the seed to accomplish the very purpose you send it out for. And it's in that hope we pray all these things in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:09:01] I'm not sure how many times I read this this week. It was a lot. It's my habit to read the passage over and over and over until I start to understand it.
[00:09:13] So I don't know how many times I read this this week before I began to understand it. But it began to become more and more clear to me. And I went to the commentaries way earlier in my process this week than I ever do, because I love to reserve the commentaries for the end of my study so that it doesn't affect how I'm reading this passage and what the holy. The work that the Holy Spirit does in revealing it to my heart through prayer and hard work. But this week, I went to the commentaries early, multiple commentaries, because this is such a difficult passage to understand. Does anyone else feel this after just reading that, or after I just read through that one time? Yeah. It's not difficult to understand because the apostle Paul is a bad teacher, but because what he is doing is so brilliant, and because the Holy Spirit is guiding his steps. I believe the apostle Paul is taking a page out of the philosopher's book in order to prove them wrong.
[00:10:19] I think Paul is taking the idolatrous view that the church has of the philosophers and using the arguments that the philosophers developed to prove that their arguments are wrong. Paul is taking their logic, providing a counter argument from their perspective. It's brilliant. I can't even explain how brilliant, what Paul is doing here, but I want to show you a chart of what I told you that Aristotle developed. This is a chart of the scientific method. Many of you will remember this from your time in science classes in middle school. And if you have fond memories, like I do, of science experiments then, or not so fond memories as some of mine were. I remember multiple nights sitting up all night the night before, and my mom had to help me with the science experiment. One year, I did my experiment and another science experiment for my friend because I knew he didn't have one. And his actually ended up getting a higher grade than mine, which served me right. But the first time he saw it was when he opened it up and set it on the table that day. But anyway, I have fond memories of science experiments, but this is what it was based on, the scientific method. The first step is observation. You have to observe something in this world. You ask questions about it. Then you develop a hypothesis about why you think what is happening is happening. Then you do an experiment. This is the fun stage where you get to test it. Then you do some analysis of the experiment, and then you reach your conclusion. And sometimes the conclusion is, I was wrong in my hypothesis. Sometimes the conclusion is I was right in my hypothesis.
[00:12:03] I believe that the apostle Paul is employing the scientific method, and he is going to conduct an experiment. And I'm gonna walk you through that in the passage of scripture. But I wanted to share this story of one of the coolest scientific experiments I've ever heard of. A man named Saad Sarwana was the president of one of his math clubs or science clubs in his school. And he found himself hanging out his senior year of high school with a bunch of his friends. And he said the people that were in this house were made up of the president and vice president of the high school math club, the vice president of the physics society, and the winners of various science awards in school. So basically, this house is jam packed with a bunch of nerds.
[00:12:50] And they begin discussing how every year the cool kids would play a senior prank on the final days before they graduated high school. And someone in this group of nerds said, why don't we play a senior prank this year? And if you're like me in the background, you can hear the music begin to build in this kind of scary, creepy, mysterious tone. Because when a group of nerds gets together and they want to conduct a science experiment, you better watch out. Well, as the foreshadowing goes, that's exactly what happened. He said he remembered his chemistry teacher telling them about some sort of experiment he had done with mixing iodine and ammonia. And basically, when you mix it in a small amount, you would get these little crystals. And when you stepped on the crystals, they would pop and make these noises very harmless. A lot of people had done this. It was perfectly safe. But the noise was really loud and it was very distracting for students. So they came up with this elaborate scheme. Now, he said, you've got to understand, this was pre Internet days, so they couldn't get on there and discover, like, the exact amount that they were going to have to use. So they just had to guess in this stage of the senior prank. So they found through this amazing technology that I don't think exists anymore. Some of you will remember it. It's called the yellow pages. They started calling supply houses for chemicals, and they got in touch with one called industrial chemical wholesale.
[00:14:34] And they called and asked if they carried iodine and ammonia, and they said, yes, we do. So he hung up the phone. He said there was no caller id in that day. He just went down there, walked in with some letterhead from a local pharmacy with some forged handwriting on it. And this guy goes in and tells him that his dad wants him to pick up what's on the slip and hands it to him. And it basically said one bottle of ammonia and one bottle of iodine in their forged handwriting.
[00:15:04] So the wholesale store didn't blink. They just gave it to this teenage boy. And he said, since it was a wholesale store, they handed him a gallon sized bottle of iodine and an even larger bottle of the aqueous ammonia. And so they went to work on mixing these chemicals. They mixed them in small plastic containers. They got to school early, and they poured them on the asphalt, and immediately they could see the crystals forming. So they poured it out. They began to stomp on it to see if, when people stepped on it, it would make a noise. And it just had this very small little popping sound that they were really disappointed about. So they came up with this plan to mix the entire batch.
[00:15:51] And in the path between two of the school buildings, a sidewalk where every single student in the school had to walk, they poured this liquid on the entire sidewalk, the entire batch of this mixture. And he said that when the school bell rang, everybody goes into first period.
[00:16:15] And he said, this is the point when the sun came out and the crystals began to dry.
[00:16:21] He said the only way he knows how to explain what happened next. Imagine the loudest thunder that you have ever heard, then double it, and you still won't come close to what it sounded like. When the sun began to dry this compound, he said it was complete pandemonium. People were running everywhere. Well, he said it was at about that time that all through the school building, they began hearing explosions, because what had happened? They discovered that when the form is wet, it's very stable when it dries, like it did when the sun came out, or like it did when it stuck to everybody's shoes.
[00:17:02] As they get to where they're going in the hallways and as they come running out of the classrooms, because it sounded like a bomb went off, explosions start happening throughout the school. He said they thought they were under attack. It was absolute chaos. And I wish there was a video of this. I would love to see this. He said he almost got kicked out of school. And these. These guys are like, these are the smartest people in the school. They're going to, like, ivy League colleges, and they almost got kicked out. But he said he ended up getting off very easy. It was just written up on his permanent record, which he said at that point, they were all accepted into college, so it really didn't make any difference. And he said they could guilt trip their parents into the fact that they were going away to college so they couldn't get into too much trouble for this. But he said that after this, he said they became the cool kids because, he said the cool kids never did a prank that year because theirs was so epic and amazing. And he said that he had won a ton of awards from science and other competitions, but he said he had never had any other students walk up to him and tell him how awesome those awards were. Well, he had many people walking up to him, including girls that he said he had crushes on, telling him how awesome and epic this thing was. So I share all of that to tell you that came from a science experiment.
[00:18:22] And I believe that science is incredibly cool because God created nature, and science is just the observation and testing of nature. But it's amazing how people take science and use it to try to disprove God.
[00:18:38] Science is just observation, testing, trying to figure out what God did, but it's an incredible way to discover truth. And another reason I shared that story was because Paul's science experiment that I'm getting ready to tell you about had an equally explosive outcome. Paul's experiment is going to prove beyond a doubt to this church that they have an incredibly serious problem. So let's look at how Paul approaches this argument with the church. The first step is observation, and we're just going to walk through the scientific method, looking at this passage to see how Paul is using it to prove his point. So Paul had listed his observations throughout the book of first Corinthians over the last three chapters, and he continues into chapter four. He basically says that this church, remember, he opens with an incredibly kind, generous opening, being very nice to the church at Corinth, even though they were really messed up. He opens up by saying he believes they are truly saved. They are saints. They are called. They are recipients of God's grace, and that they're sustained by the Holy Spirit. So this is part of Paul's observation. But he tells them that they are divided or sectarian, which that word sectarian means concerning or arising from memberships of a particular religious or political group, from the divisions between such groups. So the church was divided. They were sectarian. He also observes in the first four chapters that they were deceived by worldly wisdom, that they were forsaking the gospel. They were foolish, they were shameful, they were proud, boastful, immature. I'm just reading the things Paul says inspired by demonic teachings, infants destroying God's temple, and judgmental.
[00:20:45] So all of these things are things that Paul says are observations he has about this church.
[00:20:55] So, taking step one, this is his observation. Step two is where Paul starts asking questions. And if you've been with us through this whole study, or you've read the book of first Corinthians, I just want to go back and remind you of some of the questions that Paul asks. He's taking a very methodical approach to challenging them. First Corinthians 113. He says, is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul?
[00:21:22] Chapter two, verse eleven. He says, for who knows a person's thoughts except the spirit of that person which is in him? Verse 16. For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him? Chapter three. Verse three. For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not in the flesh and only behaving in a human way? Chapter three, verse five. What is apollos? What is Paul?
[00:21:47] Verse 16. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you?
[00:21:53] Verse seven of chapter four. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If you then received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? So Paul's asking all these questions. He's made these observations. He asks these questions. And here's where we get to the point where Paul is going to make a his hypothesis about the church. Number three. His hypothesis. Look at verse eight with me in chapter four. He says, already you have all you want. Already you have become rich without us, you have become kings. And would that you did reign so that we might share your rule with you. Verse ten. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise. In Christ we are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. What is Paul saying in these verses?
[00:22:48] Did anybody else read that and think, that doesn't make any sense? I don't understand this. Here's what Paul's doing. Paul is using sarcasm and irony.
[00:23:01] I recently heard a sermon where the preacher claimed that sarcasm is always wrong. Craig, you were there too. And christians should never use sarcasm. Well, Paul is in trouble because Paul is using sarcasm in this passage.
[00:23:19] God also uses it regularly throughout the Old Testament and Jesus used it in his ministry. So I kindly disagree with my good preacher friend, who was an amazing preacher, preached an amazing sermon. I just disagree with that point because the apostle Paul uses sarcasm. Now, I will agree with him that we use it too much and we use it in the wrong way a lot of times, but we can't say it's wrong because he's literally doing it under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. So his sarcastic hypothesis towards the church, and remember, this is his science experiment. His hypothesis is this the corinthian church has it all figured out. They are kings ruling beside Christ over his kingdom. They are right and everybody else is wrong. They are super christians. They are wise and honored so highly that even the apostles are fools and dishonorable compared to them.
[00:24:17] That's Paul's hypothesis. He says, okay, I've observed you. I've asked questions. Now here's my hypothesis, what I'm seeing, and this is apparently what you believe.
[00:24:28] You have it all figured out, your kings ruling beside Christ. You're right. Everybody else is wrong. You're just a bunch of super christians, and compared to you, myself and the other apostles are a bunch of idiots. That's his hypothesis. So he moves to step four. He says, now let's experiment with your hypothesis. I love this. This is where it gets fun. Paul is going to test the legitimacy of their hypothesis, of their claim.
[00:24:57] Look at verse nine, he says, for I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels, and to men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise. In Christ, we are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute to the present hour, we hunger and thirst. We are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor working with our own hands. When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. When slandered, we entreat. We have become and are still like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.
[00:25:38] This is Paul's experiment.
[00:25:43] Paul employs metaphor, irony, simile, juxtaposition, paradox and sarcasm, which are all literary devices. He pulls out his toolbox of argument tools, literary devices, to prove them wrong. And what he does, these literary devices are all used to compare and contrast. Now, we had an entire sermon about comparing and contrasting, because the apostle Paul does this a lot, and it's an amazing method of teaching. It helps us learn, as we're going to see tonight. This is going to help us learn what Paul is trying to teach us, and it drives it home in a powerful way. So these literary devices of sarcasm, irony, satire, metaphor, all these different things, paradox.
[00:26:35] He's using this to test their hypothesis. So by their logic, they were the wise ones, and the apostles were fools. By their logic, they were strong and the apostles were weak. They were honored and the apostles were dishonored. He goes on to basically explain that they are living like kings. They're being blessed, and the apostles are being reproached and persecuted and having to endure.
[00:27:10] So he compares his life and the other apostles life with the lives of the corinthian church, and he basically tells them, you're living like kings. You're honored by the world, you're praised by pagans, you're accepted by the culture, which tells me that something is wrong in the church. Houston, we have a problem.
[00:27:37] And what Paul just did was the scientific equivalent of test tubes exploding, burning down the laboratory, killing all of the scientists, proving that this experiment is an utter failure. This is ultimately a mic drop moment by the apostle Paul.
[00:27:57] MacArthur puts it this way. He says, to unmask and to unmask their conceit. He heaps on feigned praise. He tells the corinthian believers that they are great and wonderful. They're satiated with every good thing. They're wealthy, they're royal. They had it all. They had arrived. And he said, except for the context of the book, they probably would have taken Paul's words in verse eight at face value, because that's exactly what they thought of themselves.
[00:28:30] The reason they were so divided and sectarian is they thought they had it all figured out and everybody else was getting it wrong. Their own pride had blinded them to their true spiritual condition.
[00:28:45] Revelation, chapter three, verse 14, gives us the record of Jesus addressing the laodicean church.
[00:28:55] And in chapter three, verse 14 through 17, it says, and to the angel of the church in Laodicea, right, the words of the amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of God's creation. I know your works. You are neither hot nor cold. Would that you were either hot or cold. So because you are lukewarm and neither hot or cold, I will spit you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich and I have prospered and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked. The apostle Paul is telling the church in Corinth the exact same thing. You think you have it all together, but you couldn't be more wrong.
[00:29:41] Their conceit led them to a fierce, independent spirit, basically making them freelance christians. That word independent has been used with the church, and I think it's the worst word in the history of the english language to describe the true church.
[00:30:02] The true church is to be dependent upon Christ, dependent upon one another, dependent upon the scripture. But when you think you have everything figured out, you separate from everyone else. You dividend and you create this small environment where you look like the only one that's right.
[00:30:24] So their pride, their conceit, their arrogance and their vanity over being superior christians, the ones that had it all figured out, was nauseating to God, and it was ruining their testimony.
[00:30:37] They were literally being accepted by the culture, which kept them from confronting the culture with the gospel, which was the only way the culture could be saved, the only way people in the culture, the unsaved, the lost, could be saved.
[00:30:52] Paul goes on to say he wishes that they were really kings, because that would be really nice if they were reigning in God's future kingdom with Christ. Like, wouldn't that be amazing? We wouldn't have to suffer right now. But Paul knew that wasn't the truth because he was a suffering for Christ. And God told him when he got saved, he was going to have to suffer.
[00:31:16] So Paul's experiment basically explodes in their faces, proving how ridiculous it was. And he moves on to step five, which is the analysis after the experiment takes place, then you go to the books and you start writing down and analyzing what happened. And I'm gonna be honest. Paul's experiment didn't really need analysis, because it was obvious to everybody that it had failed. It was so stupid that the best way the apostle Paul could expose it was through sarcasm and irony.
[00:31:55] So I wanna look at how paul explained his analysis. Look at verse 14.
[00:32:05] This is his analysis explained. He says, I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children, for though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you then to be imitators of me. That is why I sent eutemothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in the church.
[00:32:38] So he says, I didn't write these to make you ashamed, even though he used sarcasm and irony and satire.
[00:32:46] He's not trying to shame them. He's trying to admonish them. What does this word admonish meand? It's a strong warning, a reprimand, or the best way to describe it, is a rebuke. Have you ever been rebuked?
[00:33:00] Have you ever had to rebuke someone else? It's not a fun process, but it's an important part of the leadership process of the church. Jesus rebuked people.
[00:33:12] The apostle Paul rebuked people. Jesus told his disciples that they needed to rebuke other people.
[00:33:20] Paul uses rebuke multiple times in his ministry and in the scriptures, and he commands the elders that he trains to rebuke other people. He says the reason the Bible was written was to rebuke us, to confront us in our sin, to instruct us.
[00:33:39] So Paul is rebuking the church not to shame them, but to correct them. He does something that's very difficult for a leader to do because we want to get along with people. Believe it or not, pastors want to have unity in the church, but sometimes we have to confront things.
[00:33:58] And Paul, not Apollos or Peter, was their true spiritual father. He's the one that started the church. Paul was the one who led them to the lord, discipled them. He's writing to rebuke them and instruct them.
[00:34:14] And he doesn't do this to belittle Apollos or Peter. They're both important teachers. It's just a fact that Paul was their spiritual father.
[00:34:24] Which brings up the point that being a spiritual father is a legitimate thing. I've never heard anybody preach on or teach on this, and I thought about going deep into this. I just didn't have time in the sermon. But I wonder how many of us can look at someone else and say, I'm their spiritual father. I led them to the Lord. I discipled them.
[00:34:41] That's something. Or spiritual mother. That's something that is obviously a legitimate thing in scripture that I think should be talked about and written about.
[00:34:54] And in our day, we can see that this is a problem. People in our churches are arguing over their favorite preachers, their favorite evangelists. And I know people that will follow evangelists all over the country, listen to their tapes, listen to their podcasts, listen to their cds, whatever.
[00:35:10] I just showed my age a little bit.
[00:35:13] And they'll follow evangelists all over the country, put them on a pedestal because of their style, because of their gifting, but they will ignore pastoral authority. They'll allow someone they see twice a year to speak in their life to rebuke them. But they'll sit in a church and they won't allow a pastor to confront them or rebuke them or speak to them about their lives. It's like, hey, buddy, you stay in your lane. You get up once a week and speak. And it better be good. It needs to be somewhere. Measuring up to my favorite evangelist. But that's your job. No, a pastor's job is to shepherd. That's what that word means. And that means confronting, rebuking. That's not the only thing we do.
[00:35:54] But people today are arguing over their favorite division of Christianity and ignoring the local church, ignoring local elders and local leadership.
[00:36:05] We love something that comes with this bang, a tent meeting, a tent revival. And I love excitement, too. I love emotion. I'm not saying that's wrong, but we can despise the mundane, common, ordinary things, like coming to a church on a Sunday night and hearing a message and being confronted with the truths of the gospel in a very ordinary, methodical way, working through a book of the Bible, discipleship is not always an exciting process, but that's why the local church exists. It exists to disciple people in their walk with the Lord and to build community.
[00:36:49] It's interesting that the apostle Paul, we learned this elsewhere, further into the book of First Corinthians, that Paul had actually sent apollos to the church at Corinth. Paul sent him there either to be an elder for a while or just to go teach and preach.
[00:37:04] And when he gets there, he's such an amazing preacher that he appeals to the wisdom and philosophy of the Greeks, and they accept him and they don't want him to leave, and they love him and start despising and looking down on Paul, who sent Apollo there in the first place. Now Paul is sending Timothy. Listen to this. Timothy is not gifted like apollos. We don't read the things about Timothy that we read about apollos. Do you know what we read about Timothy? People despised him for his youth.
[00:37:38] They weren't bragging on him because he's such an amazing speaker and preacher. They're looking down on him. What's this young guy? What's he saying? And we also know that he had a chronic illness that obviously hindered him and held him back in ministry. But the apostle Paul continues to disciple him, and he sends him to the church at Corinth. He says to remind the church at Corinth of his ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church. What is he talking about? The message of the gospel? He's sending Timothy to remind the church that the gospel is what unites us, and these other things should not be dividing us. The message of the gospel contains the power of salvation and sanctification, not men or human wisdom. That is ultimately what Paul is getting to. So as he analyzes what happened in the explosion in the experiment and why it failed so badly, he explains to them that he's rebuking them, but in order to correct them, and he wants them to come back to the message of the gospel. So we finally reached number six, the final step in the scientific method. What is the conclusion?
[00:38:54] Paul's conclusion is that they are very immature christians, and that's proven by their division and their pride.
[00:39:04] Paul is not going to play games as we're going to see with these people.
[00:39:10] He addresses the leaders of these factions. Listen to what Paul says. I don't think in our language. I heard some oohs and ahs when I read through this the first time, but in our language, it's not even nearly as strong as it is in the original Greek. He tells them in verse 18, some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. Okay, Paul just drew a line in the sand. He just threw down the gauntlet. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon if the Lord wills. And I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power.
[00:39:45] For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. So what do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love? In a spirit of gentleness, Paul is challenging these foolish, immature leaders in this church that are dividing the church. He's challenging them because they're challenging the gospel.
[00:40:09] Paul is ready to fight. This is a nehemiah moment where Paul is literally ready to rip people's beards out, punch people in the face, and kick them out of the church. That's what Nehemiah did. It's awesome. I just read about it not too long ago. He, like, attacks this dude that's living in the temple, not supposed to be in there, kicks him out, and he's ready to throw some fists. That's what the apostle Paul is doing. He's so angry because they are challenging the gospel. Paul is literally taking the posture of his lord and savior, Jesus Christ. You remember when Jesus grabbed a whip and drove people out of the temple? Why? Because they were destroying the temple of God. And he tells them he's going to take a whip, drive them out if they will not listen to his admonition.
[00:41:01] So think about this for a moment, this scientific approach to a serious problem in the church. The serious problem is pride and arrogance and conceit and being boastful. The first conflict in the universe was between God and Satan. And at the root of Satan's pride and conceit were his thoughts about himself, which ultimately made him look down upon God. So the heart of the first conflict in all the universe, the first division in all the universe, was Satan's pride and conceit. The conflict between Cain and Abel is the first recorded conflict on this planet and the first murder. And it was caused by pride and conceit. The conflict between David and King Saul started when.
[00:41:57] When King Saul heard women singing Saul has slain his thousands, but David is ten thousands. Saul's heart became jealous because he was proud and conceited, and it ultimately destroyed Saul and his entire family.
[00:42:20] Pride always leads to a superior attitude and to great jealousy. When someone outshines us, the result is always conflict and division.
[00:42:35] God does not take pride lightly, and neither does the apostle Paul.
[00:42:42] So let's look at our application tonight from these verses. Number one, pride exists in the church.
[00:42:50] I wish it didn't. It shouldn't.
[00:42:55] But pride exists to such an extent in the church that we can leave another group, another faction of christians who's defined by pride. We can escape it, we can leave it and we can become proud that we're no longer like them.
[00:43:11] That's how sinister and subtle pride is. It creeps in and we never see it in ourselves. Which is why we have to be willing to listen to other people, because other people always see it in us.
[00:43:27] We exalt leaders.
[00:43:29] We still do that today.
[00:43:31] And we treat biblical eldership with disdain.
[00:43:37] Pride exists in the church.
[00:43:40] Number two, pride always divides.
[00:43:42] Why is the church so divided? I promise you, you can trace every single division in every single church back to pride. It might be pride in the pastor, might be pride in the deacons. Might be pride in the elders. Might be pride in the committees, might be pride in the members. I don't know. But you can trace it back to pride somewhere. Let me tell you a secret about proud people.
[00:44:05] They hate proud people.
[00:44:09] Proud people hate proud people. Nobody likes a boaster. Nobody likes someone that brags. Nobody likes someone that one ups everybody else. Especially the people. That one up everybody else. They hate them worse than anybody. Factions still exist in Christianity, and those people in the factions hate the other people in their own faction worse than people outside of their factions. That's just how pride and division works.
[00:44:39] So pride exists in the church. Pride always divides. Number three, the gospel rebukes our pride.
[00:44:48] Pride is the original sin.
[00:44:52] And pride is something that is displayed and rebuked throughout scripture.
[00:45:00] And I want to remind you tonight that God gives so much time to putting pride on display. When we see it in King Saul, it's ugly.
[00:45:11] When we see it in Cain, it is ugly. When we see it in other people throughout scripture. The corinthian church, it's ugly.
[00:45:21] And the reason God displays it so much and rebukes it so much in scripture is because he wants us to beware of it. And he wants to remind us that you cannot handle pride.
[00:45:34] You let it sneak in. You let it start stroking your ego. And before long you will become a monster that divides the church of God.
[00:45:48] And pride doesn't exist alone. Pride leads to every other sin.
[00:45:55] It's been said that pride is the mother of all sins.
[00:46:00] But the gospel rebukes our pride plainly, boldly. If we're going to be effective christians, if we're going to be true disciples of Jesus Christ, we are going to have to be open to allowing people to confront our hidden pride. Cause I promise you, everybody else sees it. You see mine and I see yours. And we need to be open in community to allow the gospel to rebuke our pride.
[00:46:28] Number four, humility is the cure.
[00:46:32] Humility is not really. It doesn't really exist in and of itself. Humility is simply seeing and acknowledging the truth. Humility is the result of accurately assessing the situation.
[00:46:46] No one who understands the gospel can be proud. No one who understands the gospel of the grace of Jesus Christ, that we are all wretched, undeserving sinners who are saved by grace, who deserve to be in hell but have been rescued and delivered by God. Those people can't be proud.
[00:47:08] Paul said it in last week's passage of scripture. We have nothing to brag about in verse seven.
[00:47:14] Everything we have we received. And we can't boast about it as if we didn't receive it. It came from God, our salvation, our sanctification. We have no right to be proud.
[00:47:29] The gospel is true and it's a gospel of grace. Salvation is a gift, and we're saved by grace and we're sanctified by God's grace.
[00:47:42] He changes us into the image of Christ through no work of our own, where we earn God's favor.
[00:47:54] He often says, through the apostle Paul, that God loves to take the weak things and the despised things in the world and use people who have nothing to offer, people who are not of noble birth, people who are not very attractive, people who are not very effective and not very gifted and uses them to do incredible things for God's glory.
[00:48:20] And I wonder, as we think about this passage of scripture, I wonder if the apostle Paul showed up in Asheville and did a little science experiment on our church, observed our church for a while and then started asking us questions and then came up with a hypothesis.
[00:48:46] It did an experiment on us.
[00:48:51] I wonder what his rebuke would be. We're divided from the apostle Paul by almost 2000 years, the way we live as christians. Many times I think we're blind to ourselves. We're blind about how against scripture our western Christianity truly is.
[00:49:15] And I believe that many times we think we're super christians. We got it all figured out. We're preaching expository through a book of the Bible. After all, we're a Bible preaching, teaching church. We're hope church. We have covenant partners, we have elders, man. We've got it all figured out. I'm afraid if the apostle Paul or the Holy Spirit showed up here tonight and did a science experiment on us, on the leadership, on the covenant partners, on the ministry teams, I'm afraid that his conclusion, his analysis and his conclusion may be rebuke of us as christians.
[00:49:52] So my prayer tonight is that we would examine ourselves and measure ourselves, not against other people, not against other churches, not against other pastors, but against scripture, and ask God if we're living for him. Ask God if we are truly submitting to biblical leadership, if we're leaning into community, if we're truly loving one another. Is love what defines this group of people and if we're united on mission for God?
[00:50:29] I think a lot of things could define the church in America.
[00:50:35] I don't know if humility and unity would be two of those things.
[00:50:39] My prayer is that hope church, Asheville, is different, that we do stand out, that we are humble, that we love God, but not that we become proud about it.
[00:50:49] Because if we are unified here, and if we love one another, and if we are on mission and we are living in community together, it's not because we did it. It's because we've submitted to the wisdom of the Holy Spirit, the wisdom of God.
[00:51:06] So I just want to ask you to join me in prayer tonight. As we close, the band has another song. And as they come forward, I want to lead us in prayer.
[00:51:18] And then we'll eat some pizza together. How's that sound? Let's pray. Father, we love you. God, I thank you for your word. That is powerful. That cuts deep.
[00:51:30] Holy Spirit, I ask that you would expose our sin, expose our pride.
[00:51:36] Lord, I pray that we would lean more into community than we ever have, that we would truly love one another, forgive one another. God, I pray that you would give us a heart for this community, help us to get over ourselves, and to lean into your truth in a way that we've never done before.
[00:52:04] Father, I believe each one of us needs to respond in individual, incorporate ways to what you're saying to us. God, I pray that when you show us what we need to do, our answer would always be yes, God, help us to just lean into the love of Christ tonight to allow that to change our hearts to humble us so that we love one another in the same way we ask all these things in Jesus name. Amen.
