Merry Christmas. We're going to be in First
Corinthians chapter 16, starting in verse 5.
So if you're going to turn there, that's fine.
I'm going to open this morning reading from Luke chapter 1,
which is not necessarily connected to the sermon, but
it's Christmas time, so I'm going to read the story of Mary
and Elizabeth and their encounter at Elizabeth's house
in those days. Mary set out and hurried to a
town in the Hill Country of of Judah, where she entered
Zechariah's house and greeted Elizabeth.
And when Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leapt inside
her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Then she exclaimed with a loud cry.
Blessed are you among women, and your child will be blessed.
Listen to this, she says, this question, she says, How could
this happen to me, that the mother of my Lord would come and
visit me? It's the first time anybody in
the Gospels ever called Jesus Lord.
For you see, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears,
the baby leaped for joy inside me.
Blessed is she who has, who has believed that the Lord would
fulfill what he has spoken to her.
And then Mary burst out in song. She says this.
My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my
Savior, because He has looked for on look with favor on the
humble condition of His servant. Surely from now on, all
generations will call me blessed, because the Mighty One
has done great things for me, and His name is holy.
His mercy is from generation to generation on those who fear
Him. He has done a mighty deed with
His arm. He has scattered the proud
because of the thoughts of their hearts.
He has toppled the mighty from their Thrones and exalted the
lowly. He has satisfied the hungry with
good things and sent the rich away empty.
He has helped His servant Israel, remembering His mercy to
Abraham and his descendants forever, just as He spoke to our
ancestors. And Mary stayed with her about 3
months, then she returned to her home.
May we be just as quick to believe as Mary did.
What a joy it is this morning to remember those promises.
So as I said before, today's sermon comes from First
Corinthians. I'm going to pray and then we'll
jump in. Good morning, Father, we can
call this day good. We recognize that that the only
reason that we can say good morning or good day is because
of you. And it's it's not just because
you created it. It's because you sent your son
Jesus and you gave us the good news.
This message of the gospel that we preach, that we proclaim with
how we live our lives, that is the good news sort.
I pray that we would be faithful.
Help us this morning to incline our hearts to the testimony of
Your Son. Lord, help us to not be selfish.
Help us to not be prideful. Help us to give Your name and
Your name alone. Glory and help us to become
worshippers, true worshippers. We ask that You would open our
eyes to behold the wonderful things in Your Word.
Help us to hold our plans loosely as we consider doing the
work, Your work in the world. And we recognize that our own
responsibility to make plans is there according to Scripture.
But Lord, we pray that you will help us to be sensitive to your
will. We also ask, Lord, with all
passion, that you would unite our hearts.
Unite our hearts to fear your name.
Unite our hearts to fear you and not men.
And Lord, we pray that you would satisfy this.
Satisfy us this morning with your steadfast love.
We pray all these things together in the name of Jesus,
Amen. OK, First Corinthians 16, a lot
of reading this morning. Sorry guys, it's OK.
It's the Bible, right? It's good to read the Bible.
So starting in verse 5, I will come to you after I pass through
Macedonia. Paul speaking here, for I will
be traveling through Macedonia, and perhaps I will remain with
you, or even spend the winter, so that you may send me on my
way wherever I go. I don't want to see you now just
in passing, since I hope to spend some time with you if the
Lord allows. But I will stay in Ephesus until
Pentecost, because a wide door of effective ministry has opened
for me, yet many oppose me. If Timothy comes, see that he
has nothing to fear with you, because he is doing the Lord's
work, just as I am. So let no one look down on him.
Send him on his way in peace so that he can come to me, because
I'm expecting him with the brothers.
Now about our our brother Apollos.
I strongly urged him to come to you with all the brothers, but
he was not at all willing to come.
Now, however, he will come when he has the opportunity.
Be alert, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong,
do everything in love. Brothers and sisters, you know
the household of Stephanus. They are the first fruits of a
of a Kaia and have devoted themselves to serving the
Saints. I urge you also to submit to
such people and to everyone who works and laborers with them.
I am delighted to have Stephanus, Fortunatus and A and
A Caius present because these men have made-up for your
absence, for they have refreshed my spirit and yours.
Therefore, recognize such people.
The churches of Asia greet you. They send you greetings.
Aquila and Priscilla send you greetings warmly in the Lord,
along with the church that meets in their home.
All the brothers and sisters send you greetings.
Greet each other with a holy kiss.
This greeting is in my own hand. Paul.
If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him.
Our Lord, come the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you, my love
be with you, with all of you in Christ Jesus.
OK, there it is. That's the end of First
Corinthians. We finally got there after
months and months being in this letter.
It's been really sweet to be in this letter, though I can't
describe how much this this text, not necessarily the one
we're preaching today specifically, but the whole
letter has impacted my life over the last year and I hope, I hope
it's been an encouragement to you as well.
The natural conclusion to the letter happened like 3 weeks ago
in our sermons. Joe preached the the final, the
final verse, First Corinthians 1558, the final verse of chapter
15 seems like it would be the natural conclusion of Paul's
arguments. Paul's commands and Paul's
instruction to the Corinthian church.
It says this, it says therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, be
steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the Lord's work
because you know that your labor and the Lord is not in vain
would have been a great place to end the the letter.
He's argued over the course of the letter for the truthfulness
of the resurrection. Specifically in chapter 15, he's
arguing for the truthfulness. So he says, therefore live a
certain way, right? So specifically, be steadfast,
be immovable, and always excel in the Lord's work.
So here in the in the last chapter, we get to see a more
personal side of Paul, right? He's speaking directly to
people. He's talking about people.
He's answered all of their questions, his own, and he adds
all his comments. But now we get what seems to be
like a bit of an administration, some things that are that we
might be tempted to skip over, Like if you read through this
quickly, you might want to say, oh, it just doesn't matter.
It's just an ending in the 1st 4 voices for four verses, as
Pastor Jake preached last week. We get like, what's what?
Like just it's administrative. Like really it is like, OK,
here's what you're going to do to, to like collect the money
that we're going to send to Jerusalem.
And here's how we're going to take it and deliver it to
Jerusalem. Now we did, we did pull a lot of
principles out of those 4 verses, but it seems
administrative. But this morning, I want us to,
I want to recommend we take the slow approach.
If you've been in a Wednesday night study with me,
specifically the last one, or if you're in young adults, bear
with me, you've heard this before.
But we want to take the slow approach.
We don't want to go over like the river, you know, in a
motorboat, right? We want, we want because you go,
you're going to see some stuff. If you fly down a river in a
motorboat, you're not going to see everything.
There's in fact, there's a river back home near where we live and
it's called at Wakulla Springs. It's the Wakulla River.
Specifically this, this will take, they take boat tours over
what they call a wild river, which basically they've, they've
closed it off for several miles downstream.
And it's a it's, it's as wild as you can get in Florida.
There's no boats that that have like combustible engines for
motors, no gas powered boats, nothing like that.
They're all electric. And when I was a kid, they had
glass bottom boat tours. So you can get in the boat and
you can see just like you had goggles on down to the bottom of
this, this spring. It's the largest spring in North
America. It's one of the largest in the
world. And so you could see all the way
down to the bottom. They actually pulled skeletons
out of the bottom of that thing, a Mastodon skeleton.
So like the big ancient elephants that were that were
roaming the earth. So, but my point is you would
never see that unless you slow down, unless you are intentional
to get and just like to be curious.
So that's what we're going to do this morning.
I'm not saying that you're going to find hidden things in the
text. After all, this is what it is.
This is administration. These are things that have to be
said in order for Paul to wrap up the letter.
But if we slow down, I think we're going to we're going to
gain some insight into the character of Paul.
Paul lived his life convictionally.
He lived with conviction to the truth.
And so hopefully we'll see some of these things that we can
emulate in our own lives. So my first point today is that
we need to plan purposefully. He had purposeful plans.
Let's look right there in five to seven.
He says, I will come to you after I pass through Macedonia,
for I'll be traveling through Macedonia and perhaps I'll
remain with you or even spend the winter so that you may send
me on my way wherever I go. I don't want to see you now just
in passing, since I hope to spend some time with you if the
Lord allows. So he's writing this letter from
Ephesus. He has plans to come and see
them. Paul has a pastoral heart.
He doesn't just want to give them all of this rebuke and in
this letter form, he doesn't want to just like drop a letter
in their lap, send that e-mail and just forget it.
He wants to come and spend time with him.
He wants to spend quality time with him.
Travel during this time would have been incredibly difficult.
We see that in the book of Acts. It would have been a huge
undertaking. And so he didn't want to like,
he didn't want to waste his time.
He wanted to spend time with him there.
He did. He wanted to make the most of
the trip, but he did see a need to see, to say, hey, I'm going
to pass through Macedonia. He says it twice, which is kind
of confusing. He wants to tour those churches
there, those churches that have been planting there.
He wants to go and give them encouragement and edification.
He mentions it twice, probably because the Corinthian church
were expecting him to come straight to them.
So he's saying, hey guys, listen up.
I got to go through Macedonia first because I want to go
through Macedonia. It's like I'm just letting you
know where I'm going through Macedonia.
Be patient. In verse 7, we read of his
desire to see them, to demonstrate his love for them in
person, though, like all this stuff, the content of the
letter, it's been really hard, right?
It's been really, really hard. Hey, tell the guy who's sleeping
with his mom to stop and kick him out of the church.
That's really hard. Stop doing sexually immoral
things. This is a hard letter.
Love people. These are like hard things that
he's telling them. He wants to be with them because
context can come out so much better.
Your love can be expressed so much better in person than it
can be over a written letter. And so that's what he wants to
do. His pastoral heart is here.
He's making plans purposefully. We get some more of the
intentionality and his planning in verse 8:00 and 9:00.
I'll camp out here for a minute because it's, it's a very
interesting verse to me. It's one that I've I've studied,
I've meditated on for a long time, like not just this week.
This is a verse that's been coming up in my heart, in my
mind for for the last probably five years, says this says, but
I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost because a wide door
for effective ministry has opened for me.
Yet many oppose me. Seems like a contradiction.
He says the reason that he's going to stay in Ephesus is
because there is a wide door for effective ministry there.
OK, maybe we could expect, OK, maybe things are going really
well. Like he's having lots of
converts. Things are happening and it's
really easy for him. Like, things are easy.
There's no opposition. So that might be one reason to
stay. Oh, things are good.
People are coming to church. We got 750 people coming.
There's no opposition. Things are easy.
It doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, he says that many
oppose him. So let's look at Acts 19.
We can see the events there that he's talking about.
Luke records what happens when Paul's in Ephesus.
So he had entered Ephesus. He found some disciples who had
been following the teachings of John, John the Baptist, the baby
who kicked in his mom's belly, and Luke chapter 1.
They're sort of connected. They, they've been like
listening to John's teaching. They had, they had been baptized
into John's teaching, but they had not heard of the Holy
Spirit. They hadn't, in fact, like they
didn't even know there was a Holy Spirit.
So Paul gives them the gospel. They believed Paul's teaching.
They were baptized, and then they immediately received the
Spirit. So Paul, he spent three years
ministering in Ephesus. So I want to read some of
chapter 19. I'm going to read 9 through 20.
I don't have it on the screen, so if you want to turn there,
it's just a few pages back. If not, just listen.
Acts 19, nine to 20 says this. But when some became hardened
and would not believe slandering the way in front of the crowd,
he withdrew from them, taking the disciples and conducted
discussions every day in the lecture hall of Tyrannis.
This went on for two years so that all the residents of Asia,
both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord.
So he pulled back out of like the public and he said I'm just
going to meet in this one place. And then he says God was
performing extraordinary miracles by Paul's hands.
This is the effect of ministry he's talking about.
So that even face cloth, face cloth.
So a handkerchief or an apron that had touched his skin were
brought to the sick and diseases left them and evil spirits came
out of them. Now some of the itinerant Jewish
exorcist also attempted to pronounce in the name of the
Lord Jesus over those who had evil spirits, saying they said
this, I command you by the Jesus that Paul preaches seven sons of
Sceva, a Jewish high priest, we're doing this.
The evil spirit answered them, I know Jesus and I recognize Paul,
but who are you? And the man who had the evil
spirit jumped on them, overpowered them and prevailed
against them so that they ran out of that house naked and
wounded. When this became known to
everyone who lived in Ephesus, both Jews and Greeks, they
became afraid. In the name of the Lord.
Jesus was held in high esteem, and many who had become
believers came confessing and disclosing their practices.
While many of those who have practiced magic collected their
books, they burned them in front of everyone.
So they calculated their value and found it to be 50,000 pieces
of silver. In this way the Lord spread and
prevailed. That's a pretty wide door of
effective ministry, right? That's really, really good
ministry, but it caused an uproar in the city.
Silversmiths who made their living by making all those
trinkets for the magic. They lost income.
They they cause a riot. He's being threatened with
death, yet he's willing to stay because of what God was doing in
the place at a specific time. It's a pretty incredible example
of someone living out their convictions.
And my question for you and for me is this, are you willing to
remain in difficult circumstances when God is doing
great and wonderful things? Can you keep your attention on
what God is doing in spite of everything else that's going on
around you? If you're like me, being honest
and transparent here, if you're like me, you want to run.
I'm distracted by the negative things.
If I'm honest, it seems that all the time I'm looking out for my
own interests. I'm looking out to protect
myself. If I were faced with Paul's
circumstances, and I thought I know that many of you, if you
were faced with it as well, you would probably run, you would
probably leap at an opportunity to leave.
But not Paul. His conviction was to do the
work of the Lord. He saw that in spite of the many
who wanted to kill him, to slam the door on his ministry, he was
more concerned with the one who had the door open.
He knew that no matter who opposed him, so long as he was
doing the work of the Lord, he didn't have anything to fear.
After all, what's the worst they're going to do?
They're going to kill him. And then what happens?
He gets to go be with the Lord. He's convictional.
Friends, Stay true to the mission.
Stay true to the mission given to us by God here in this place,
and we will have no reason to fear.
We must remember that sometimes there is a wide door of
effective ministry, and the reason we know it's going to be
it's effective is because many oppose us.
I'm going to jump ahead a little bit.
We're going to move on to point #2 which is live principled
lives. I'm going to skip the section on
Timothy. I'm going to come back to it in
a few minutes. Here in verse 13 and 14, we get
some rapid fire statements from Paul.
They're more than statements. They're not suggestions, they're
commands. They're non negotiable traits
for the Christian. OK, for a believer in a secular
world, these are non negotiables for you.
This is really a summary for the whole, for the whole letter.
It's really fast. Be alert.
Stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong, do
everything in love. So our first command is be
alert. Literally, it means live your
lives awake. Understand that the enemy, he's
not sitting around waiting for you to sort of like get in some
comfortable place. No, he's actively seeking ways
to destroy your testimony. So be alert, stay awake, be
watchful. Become aware of the ways in
which you are most prone to fail.
You know what they are. Come aware.
Become aware of those triggers in your life that cause you to
sin. And pray and ask God to use the
Holy Spirit in your life to help you in those areas.
Ask God to let the Holy Spirit kill the sin in your life.
Stand firm in the faith. Paul is reminding the church to
remain faithful to Jesus. He's reminding us to remember
that they're on a journey that will see them face to face with
Jesus. Right.
We're on a journey, we're being saved and at the end of that
journey we're going to be face to face with our Lord.
So stand firm in the gospel, keep the gospel.
The main thing, the gospel, the good news that that says that
Jesus died according to the Scriptures and he was raised on
the third day. What?
According to the Scriptures, when you look at how Paul
exhorts the church, his overwhelming encouragement is to
stand. When he outlines the armor of
God in Ephesians 6, the command to stand is in there at least
two times, maybe 3. Trying to think, Yeah, at least
two. Arm yourself with God's truth
and stand firm in the faith. He's not asking you really to
fight. He's saying just stand and let
him fight for you. Be courageous, be strong.
I'm I'm reading this the Christian standard Bible be
courageous. It may be translated in your
version act like men. It most likely is this word is
used only one time in the New Testament.
So we have to think about why Paul chose this specific word.
It's used in the in the Greek translation of the Old Testament
multiple times and it's commonly given as a command to those who
are about to conquer the promised land.
Examples come from Deuteronomy 31, six, where it says be strong
and courageous. Don't be terrified or afraid of
them for the Lord your God is the one who will go with you.
He will not leave you or abandon you or in Joshua 6:00 and 7:00,
this is that was Moses talking in Deuteronomy.
This is the Angel of the Lord talking to to Joshua.
He says this, he says be strong and courageous, for you will
distribute the land that I swore to their ancestors to give them
as an inheritance. Above all, be strong and very
courageous to observe carefully the whole instruction of my
servant Moses commanded you. Do not turn from it to the right
or to the left, so that you will have success wherever you go.
He says it again in verse 9, verse 18, again in 1025.
Whether the translation be courageous or act like men, the
sentiment is the same. Paul chose the word because he
wants to convey the same message to the Corinthian believers and
to us. Joshua was about to take the
people into the promised land. That was going to be hard.
Not hard because they were going to have a hard time defeating
it. No, because God was going to do
all the work, right. It was going to be hard because
they had to trust that God was going to do the work.
It required courage and strength of resolve to trust that God was
with him. And brothers and sisters, the
Christian life is hard. I don't know about you, but I
find it difficult at times. We're faced with many challenges
from outside the church, from within the church, and it takes
courage to stand up for truth. It also takes immense courage to
recognize when you're the sinful 1 and to seek forgiveness with a
repentant heart. It takes courage to give the
gospel to a friend or family member over a Christmas dinner.
That takes immense courage, more than it takes to talk to a
perfect stranger. I would, I would argue, but
that's exactly what we're called to do.
We're called to to carry out the command that Jesus make for of
Jesus to make disciples. Paul says be courageous, be
strong in the same way that Moses, nearing the end of his
life, tells Joshua the implications are clear for us
today. Stay awake, stand firm, be
courageous, be strong like men headed into battle, but do
everything in love. When we reflect on this letter
that we've studied over the last several months, there's been
this theme that runs throughout the thread that you can pull.
You can pull on this red thread that goes through the whole
thing. Throughout all of the rebuke,
all the hard things that Paul had to say, he reminded the
Corinthians that everything must be done with a love for God and
the love for others. This is the framework for
everything that they were supposed to do.
It reminds me when I'm thinking about this, he says do
everything in love. It reminds me of chapter 8 where
he says knowledge puffs up but love builds up.
If anyone thinks he knows anything, he does not yet know
as he ought to know it. But if anyone loves God, he is
known by him. Doctor Shriner, one of my
professors back at the seminary, he writes this about these
verses in chapter 16, says calls to strength and to courage could
be misinterpreted as diminishing the importance of love.
The exhortation to toughness must never be interpreted as
squelching tenderness and affection.
Nor should love be interpreted as mere sentimentality or
softness, since it exclude includes excommunicating someone
in blatant sin. So we need to be sure that all
we do and all we say is an whether it's an encouragement to
someone or a rebuke. Our words and actions must be
rooted in our love for God and our love for each other.
OK, my last point, serve others. So now we get into this like
Paul talks about a lot of different people in this letter,
especially in this last chapter. And it's it's evident as he's
talking about all these people that he really, really, really
cares for specifically these people.
Paul loves all people, but he loves these people.
I skipped over the section with about Timothy, but I'm going to
go to it now. In 1011.
He says this. Oh, he talks about him in 10-11,
but he says this in verse 12. If Timothy comes, see that he
has nothing to fear while with you because he is doing the
Lord's work just as I am. Excuse me, that's verse 10.
So Paul has poured into Timothy perhaps more than any other
person in his entire ministry. There is true love expressed
right here in this sentence for for the Corinthian church to
take care of Timothy. He wants them to accept him as
they would have accepted Paul. He's doing the Lord's work in
the same way Paul is. He wants them to make sure that
Timothy has nothing to fear. Perhaps because of the news
about Apollo's in chapter, in verse 12, right?
So we remember from the chapter 1 where we hear about all the
factions in the church, right? All the different factions, some
follow Paul, some follow Apollo, some say I follow Jesus.
Well, there's a group of people there who really, really love
Apollo's. And in verse 12, we find out
that Apollo, Apollo's is not coming right now.
Right says now about our brother Apollos.
I strongly urged him to come with come to you with the
brothers. But he is not at all willing to
come now. However, he will come when he
has the opportunity. He wasn't ready to come to the
Corinthians yet. It didn't mean he wasn't coming,
but he wasn't ready yet. And so Timothy, it seems very
likely that Timothy's visit is Timothy's visit is imminent.
It's coming. He's coming right now.
He's coming soon. So here we see Paul looking out
for Timothy as a father might look out for his own son.
It's like he's saying, hey, I know you want to see Apollos,
but make sure you don't hold the absence of Apollos against
Timothy. He's doing the Lord's work too.
Paul had no issue putting forth Timothy as someone the
Corinthian church could listen to and rely on to teach the
truth. He's telling the church that
Timothy was a trustworthy leader, not just a trustworthy
church member. He's saying Timothy is a
trustworthy leader. He's doing the same work that
I'm doing. So we also see in the final
verses where he can, his commendation of Stephanus and
his household, along with Fortunatus and Acacius.
And Paul reminds us, it reminds the Corinthians that they
should, they should be like that household of Stephanus and
devote themselves to serving the Saints.
These are the type of people who are worth following.
Paul speaks a good deal about the types of Christians
submitting themselves to one another, which he probably finds
necessary, right? He talks, he commands us and
exhorts us to to submit ourselves to one another,
probably because it's not our default setting.
Like submission to other people is not the default.
It's definitely not for me. I have to.
I struggle with that all the time.
And he's exhorting them. He says, submit yourself to
serving others like this household does, and in fact,
submit yourself to this household because they're
serving others. These three men that he mentions
were likely the group that delivered the letter from
Corinth and spent some time there.
And just as Paul said, hey, they've done, they've been a
blessing to me. I know they've been a blessing
to you. They've been like you in in your
absence. So he felt like the the
Corinthians were with him. These guys also were bringing
the letter back. And Paul wants to be sure that
the church, when they hear this news, that they recognize them
for their service. They recognize good in people.
If someone's an encouragement, brothers and sisters, if you
find someone in our church who's an encouragement to you,
recognize them. Let them know it's, it's good,
it's right, and it's godly to commend them.
We should do that. Throughout this letter, Paul
repeatedly tells the church and to us as well.
Encourage one another, build each other up.
Greet each other in a way that conveys respect and Christian
love. Right in verse 20, we get all
the brothers and sisters send you greetings.
Greet one another with a holy kiss.
Today I might say greet one another with a holy hug or a
holy handshake. Whatever you do, though, be
gracious to one another, knowing that God may be using that
specific interaction, that handshake, that hug as a way
that just builds them up. It helps them, it encourages
them, it gives them a reason to go on.
So in the final four verses, we're moving straight through.
Paul stops dictating the letter. So when Paul wrote letters to
people, he normally would would dictate it to someone to ascribe
who could write better than him. And it was a long letter and so
he wanted to make sure it got that the words were written well
so that it could be copied over and over and over again and sent
out to all the different places. But this at the end of some of
his letters, he takes up the pen in his own hand.
He says this greeting is in my own hand.
And then he signs his name. Paul.
If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him.
Our Lord come the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you may love
be with you with all of you in Christ Jesus.
What stood out to me in that that last section is if anyone
does not love the Lord a curse beyond him and I believe I I
believe that Paul is speaking to people in the church, those who
were in the church who had no love for Christ at all.
We know from from the rest of the letter that love is a non
negotiable for Christians Loving each other is something we must
strive for. But here Paul specifically
addresses those who have no love at all for Christ.
Leon Morris says this. He says the strong expression
immediately following Paul taking up the pen himself shows
the depth of the apostles feelings on the importance of a
right attitude to the Lord. If anyone's heart is not aflame
with love for the Lord, the root of the matter is not in him.
He is a traitor to the cause of right.
Paul cannot contemplate such a person calmly.
So this shocking statement, I don't know about you, but I, I
was shocked when I read it over and over again this week because
it's jarring. It's a, it's a, it's completely
different tone from the rest of this ending.
It's a jarring statement, but it did 'cause me to consider my own
love for the Lord. I hope it does for you too.
I'd ask you to consider whether or not you actually love the
Lord. Do you actually love the Lord?
Or do you love all the things that surround Him, the things
that are adjacent to Him? Do you, Do you love church, real
church family? Do you love like the community
that's here? Do you love the traditions that
you're used to? Do you love the new things that
are happening? Is that what you love or do you
truly love the Lord? So contemplate that in your own
heart. As we're thinking about
Christmas, as it's coming, as we're thinking about the story
of Jesus birth is actually a love story of God sending his
Son because He wants us to be reconciled to him, right?
So am I feeding my love for the Lord so that I can truly say
that I love the Lord? Could you pray the prayer that
Paul prays in his next breath with any sense of assurance?
He says, our Lord come back. In 2017, Valerie and I, we went
to Brazil for the first time on a mission trip.
We left that. We had two kids at the time.
We left our oldest 2 with their grandparents for a total of 10
days. I think Adeline was two, maybe
not quite 2. So you might can relate to this.
If you've gone on a long trip without your kids and you call
home, you might expect them to be happy to see you.
But what what ensued for us was like just sobbing, like, oh, it
was the worst phone call you could ever make.
Like just complete sobbing. Oh, when are you coming home?
Come home, Please come home. They loved us so much.
They're begging us to come home. Do you have that kind of love
for the Lord? Is your love that strong?
This the love that a child has when he misses his parents so
much that he just can't think of anything else to say but come
home? Do you love the Lord that much?
Paul does. He cannot fathom that anybody
would ever want to be in the church and not love the Lord.
And so he, he says a curse beyond the man who does not love
the Lord. That's what this prayer is like,
this prayer come, Lord Jesus, it's the Maranatha prayer, our
Lord come. If you don't have love to the
Lord, you can't pray that prayer with any honesty because what's
coming for you when he comes is the opposite of love.
It's wrath. So brothers and sisters,
friends, if you, if you've been coming to church your entire
life and you've been coming because it's tradition or you
actually, you actually really enjoy the community and you're
just happy to come and be with family and be with friends and
it's a nice comfortable place to come, but you have no love for
the Lord. I beg you to believe, I beg you
to put your faith and trust in Christ.
And if you can't mentally figure it all out, how it all works,
who cares? That's faith.
Have faith that the God who sent his Son Jesus, who by the way
was at creation, who was actually the instrument of
creation. We learned that in Colossians.
He's the conduit through which all has been made.
He came to reconcile you to the Father so that you could have a
right relationship, so that you could say, come, Lord Jesus, all
this sin isn't worth it. All this stuff that I think is
good, it's not worth it. I want you.
Just as quickly as Paul curses, though, he pours out his love
for them. And he closes the letter,
praying that the grace of the Lord Jesus would be over them.
And he expresses his love for them.
So he realizes he went a little harsh and he come back to love.
So I have some final thoughts here about what it means to live
convictionally as a Christian from how Paul closes out this
letter #1 plan. But hold your plans loosely.
Paul had very purposeful plans, right?
He had specific plans to visit Corinth, spend a good chunk of
time with them, but he was also sensitive to what the Spirit was
doing, and he would change his plans according to the will of
the Lord. We have a plan.
We have to plan. We have to, it's not prudent for
us to just to sit around. It's not, it's not good for you
to just sit waiting for things to happen and react to
everything. Have a plan.
You can't just wait around telling for God to tell you what
he what to do. Because primarily he's told us
what to do. May not have told us all the
means and all the modes, but he's told us what he wants us to
do. He wants us to to make
disciples, teaching them, baptizing them all that He's
commanded because he's going to be with us, right?
We need to remember that success won't be easy.
Remember that wide door of effective ministry?
Well, it was met with lots of opposition.
But remember, sometimes the opposition is proof that God's
at work. The next thing is that
conviction of living is rooted in steadfast belief.
You can't be convictional without convictions.
You got to know what you believe.
For Christians, this means fueling your love for the Lord.
Remember Pastor Joe's sermon from several months ago?
Feed your love for the Lord. You got to fuel it with with the
truths of scripture. Every day.
You have to actually believe that Jesus is the One.
He says He is believing that Christmas and Easter are true.
Have faith and then express that to the world with love.
Be alert, stay awake, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be
strong, do everything in love, and finally, devote yourselves
to serving others. The people mentioned here on the
edges of Paul's letters, if you look at look at most of his
letters, he's got a list of people somewhere in there.
They're almost always mentioned because of the way they live
their lives as servants to others.
And here in our passage, the people mentioned were
encouragers. There are people willing to do
acts of lowly service, and Paul instructs the instructs, the
Corinthians, to submit to such people.
It is right and good to serve each other.
And when we do that well, with the intent to honor God and to
glorify Him, we communicate to the world that glorifying God
with our lives is what brings us deepest satisfaction.
When you and I serve each other well, when we love each other
well, we are telling the world that giving God glory and
honoring him with the way that we live is what gives us our
satisfaction. And so I would, I would exhort
you, I would encourage you do that well, love each other well,
and then we'll be able to pray as Paul prays.
Come, Lord Jesus, let's pray. Father, thank you for the
opportunity to to read through this amazing section of Paul's
letter together, to to learn some things to figure out how
this may apply to our lives. Lord, I pray that you would help
us to to believe. Help those of us who have, who
have been Christians for a long time, to have a renewed sense of
awe and wonder of you and what you did.
As we gather together with our families over the next few days
for Christmas, help us to communicate that that we love
you more than we love presents that we love you more than we
love gatherings. Help us to communicate to the
world that our satisfaction comes through glorifying you.
I pray these things in Jesus name, Amen.