1st Corinthians 16 If you're using one of our Bibles there in
front of you, it's found on page 962. 1st Corinthians 16, page
962. We live in a culture that's
often assumes a man is worthless, that he's emotionally
unintelligent, right? Over the years, many television
shows have depicted men as the idiots in their storyline.
Barney Fife was just the beginning, back in the 60s.
Since then, there have been many others.
Archie Bunker, Homer Simpson, Joey from Friends, Al Bundy and
Ray Romano, and Everybody Loves Raymond just to name a few.
There's a lot more than that. These are just some of the
classic examples of male buffoons in television, men
inserted into the story for comedic relief, basically.
Now, fortunately, men, we don't have to follow the examples set
before us in our entertainment. God has given us some good
advice through the apostle Paul. And so this morning we're going
to look at that. Now we have a very short text
this morning, but it is a decently long message.
If I'd kept everything I had, if I kept everything I had, it was
probably going to be an hour, but I think I've probably cut
out a good 15 minutes. So hopefully this isn't too much
coming at you this morning. But if you're able, would you
stand as we read God's Word this morning?
1st Corinthians 16 will be at verse 13.
Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
Let all that you do be done in love.
You may be seated. Now we're obviously in Paul's
first letter to the Church of Corinth.
And by the way, I should probably say, if you love to
take notes I have and you didn't grab one of the bulletins or
note sheets, you might want to grab it because there's a lot of
verses listed on the note sheets to help you as we navigate
things this morning. So we're obviously in Paul's
first letter to the Church of Corinth.
And this church is notorious for all their perversions.
They they're perversions of the Lord's Supper.
They're perversions of marriage. They're perversions of the
ordered way. When they would get together for
worship, they had many problems. So Paul had to spend much of
this letter to the church at Corinth correcting them.
So Paul's first exhortation to them is to be watchful.
He says be watchful. Watchfulness means that we are
to be awake or or vigilant. Are we good, baby?
Hopefully, yes. OK, I was a little in a rush
when I did this yesterday. We're to be awake, we're to be
vigilant. We're we're going to have a
heightened level of awareness to the things around us.
The picture in my mind is that of someone watching over a
business or location a night watchman.
The night watchman's job is to look out for anything bad or
suspicious that is happening and and order to prevent theft or
some other unwanted behavior or or trespassing where people
shouldn't be. That's the night watchman's job.
He's on high alerts for anything that is Askew.
Even the slightest thing that seems to be out of place will
hopefully catch the night watchman's attention.
Now there are 6 things that we can be watchful for.
Six things. The first one we can watch out
for is Satan. Watch out for Satan first.
Peter 5/8 says. Be sober minded.
Be watchful. Your adversary, the devil,
prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may
devour. Satan hates you.
Satan wants to destroy you. He is hungry and you're on the
menu. So watch out for him.
Now how do we do that? Like I say that and you're
probably like, OK, what does that look like in real life?
How does one actually watch out for Satan?
Is it is it like, oh, you're walking down the street and you
see Satan walking the other way by you?
Or is it that casual meeting somebody for the first time and,
and realizing that they're evil? Well, no, those aren't.
Well, actually, I can't say those aren't the things because
it's possible you might meet someone who's evil, like
actually, right, Because we are broken people.
So you might meet someone who is evil, But one of the best ways
to watch out for Satan is to watch out for the next point.
That is temptation. Watch out for temptation.
He has three particularly insidious tools that he uses to
distract us from God's working. Those tools are the lust of the
flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life.
Satan knows the things that we desire are the keys to our
hearts. If he wants to get our hearts,
then he needs to go through our desires.
Now James, the brother of Jesus, he wrote, he wrote down, each
person is tempted. He is lured and enticed by his
own desires. The the literal picture that
James has in mind here is it's a fishing illustration actually is
what he's using. It's that of a fish.
The fish sees the bait and the fish just has this innate
desire. It doesn't stop and ponder this
thing, this bait that's in front of it.
The fish just immediately goes for it.
It bites, right? James is saying that we have
these things inside of us, these things that when not kept in
check, can get us into trouble. Temptation comes from inside.
It's not a strictly external force.
Sometimes we think, oh, this situation tempted me, or this
situation tempted me. What?
Whatever the case may be, the that is a factor.
But James in James 114 tells us it actually starts inside of us
with our own desires. That's where it starts.
And that temptation can lead to sin.
So Satan will exploit those desires in any way that he can.
So be watchful for Satan. Be watchful for temptation.
Next, be watchful for apathy and indifference.
Apathy and an indifference. Satan's ultimate goal is to
prevent the growth of God's Kingdom.
Apathy and indifference are a favorite of the enemies because
he doesn't have to do anything to accomplish his goal, right?
The person who's apathetic and indifferent to the things of God
isn't doing anything to expand God's Kingdom.
In Revelation 3, John wrote to the Sardis Church.
He wrote, I know your works. You have the reputation of being
alive, but you are dead. Wake up and strengthen what
remains and is about to die. For I have not found your works
complete in the sight of my God. The church at Sardis, there was
a lot going on there. Apparently they had a reputation
for being alive. But Jesus says through John, you
are dead. It's all just surface level.
It's there's not anything deep beyond what's going on.
They weren't actually doing anything for God.
They appeared to be, but they weren't.
They'd become spiritually indifferent.
By the way, it's reasonable to assume that when you're doing
something for God that you will receive the attention of the
enemy, right? He doesn't want you to be
successful in the Christian life.
So if you're being successful, he's going to work against you.
And if by chance you're not receiving attention from him,
then it's possible. But a little bit of apathy has
started to creep in. So it's time that you tick Satan
off and just start living for God, going after him with all
that you are so that you tick Satan off.
He will still stay on you. But for sure, you want him
ticked off. You don't want him happy with
you. Oh, that person is fine.
I don't have to worry about them because they're not doing
anything. We don't want to be that.
We don't want to be apathetic. Next, false teachers.
Watch out for false teachers. Jesus warned that his followers
that false Christ's false messiahs and false prophets
would come and attempt to deceive them.
So how do we know what a false teacher looks like?
Well, we can spot a false teacher considering a few
things. What do they say about Jesus?
If they teach anything that's contrary to what Scripture says
about Jesus, then that might be a false teacher.
Do they preach the gospel? We are saved by grace through
faith in Christ's redeeming work on the cross.
Anything more or less is a false teacher.
Does the teacher exhibit the character qualities that glorify
the Lord? We're encouraged in Scripture to
look at the fruits, the fruit of the person, or if qualities,
their fruits if you will, are greed and pride and rebellion.
You might have a false teacher, somebody that you don't want to
follow. Now, I have it on good authority
that in the FBI, those who devote themselves to working
with counterfeit currency, they focus on one thing.
Some of you may already know this.
They look at the original. That's their focus.
They don't devote themselves to looking at all the other forms
of counterfeit currency that are out there because there's a lot.
They focus on knowing all the details and intricacies of what
does authentic currency look like, what does it look like?
What does it feel like? They know this so well.
So then when they come across a counterfeit, they know it
instinctively. They just know that it's a
counterfeit. We need to know what Scripture
says. When we know what scripture
says, then when we come across a counterfeit, we come across
false teaching. There should be a red flag in
our mind. Something should happen and we
say hold on. That doesn't jive with what I
know scripture to reveal. So I would say that even goes
for anything I say. If what I say doesn't jive with
Scripture, please let me know. Obviously, my goal is always to
represent Scripture accurately, but you can't just trust
everything that you hear from somebody.
We always must be like the Berean church and going to the
Scriptures to see what's the Scriptures say.
So these first four things that we're watching out for, they're
negative, but there's two positives that we can watch out
for. Let's be watchful in prayer.
Devote yourself to prayer. Now, prayer is what I, what I
like to call my declaration of dependence upon God.
It's my declaration of dependence upon God.
That is what prayer is. It's it's a way for me to pursue
my relationship with God, to be recharging him, and it's
intended to be the heartbeat of the Christian life.
It strengthens my relationship with him and it strengthens my
defenses against Satan. The last thing we're to be
watchful for is the Lord's return, the Lord's return.
There are two fantastic motives for faithfully living for
Christ. The 1st is what He did on the
cross, but the second is the fact that this isn't the end.
Jesus is coming back. He's going to return and set up
an earthly Kingdom. So knowing that there's more
than simply life here on this mortal coil compels us to live
for Him. We're to be looking for and
anticipating the day of Christ's return.
So secondly, stand firm in the faith.
Stand firm in the faith was the next phrase that Paul used.
Saving faith and faith in God's working aren't what Paul is
referring to here. When scripture uses the definite
article that is the word the in combination with the word faith,
it has something in particular in mind.
The words the faith refer to the core fundamental doctrines that
we consider truth. These are doctrines that are
considered non negotiable and which form the basis of historic
Christianity. Examples of this include the
inspiration of scripture, the deed of Jesus, his incarnation,
death and resurrection, and salvation by grace alone through
faith in Christ alone. These things are core doctrines.
This is what we refer to as the faith.
In his commentary on this passage, the commentator Jane
Charles Hodge cautioned followers of Christ to not
consider every point of doctrine open for discussion.
There are some people who who love to look at every point of
doctrine and debates every single point.
No, it's good. It's good to have healthy good
debate about about doctrine because that that helps you know
what you believe and why you believe it and making sure that
scripture itself affirms what you believe.
Now, throughout history, the church has had numerous debates
or councils to codify what essential Christian doctrine is.
This was important, especially in the early churches growth and
development, because people wanted to debate these different
points and they there were different beliefs about who
Jesus was and, and whether there was a Trinity and different
things like that. And so the early church had
these councils to discuss these things and clarify what
Scripture has revealed to us. But the things I just mentioned,
they're not up for debate. Someone from outside of the
church may may say I don't believe in Jesus, I don't
believe he actually existed. I don't believe in the cross or
I don't believe in the resurrection.
That is actually apologetics. That's a, that's a different,
different category. So then, so then we are helping
someone to understand these issues.
But these are things that the church has been practicing for a
couple, couple thousand years now almost.
So this is what it means to stand firm in the faith.
We stand in these beliefs. As I mentioned earlier, it's
important to know what the truth is or else you can run into
issues. Paul's reasoning is found in
Ephesians 4, verse 14. It says there so that we may no
longer be children tossed to and fro by the waves and carried
about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness
and deceitful schemes. Now I love to hear about new
ideas and and concepts. It's it's just part of my
personality. If I hear something new,
something novel, something unusual, I might spend a little
bit of time researching that thing to learn about it and and
at least gain a surface level knowledge of it.
So I know generally what discussions about that thing
revolve around. Now I can't help but wonder if
it's kind of like the Athenians and and their encounter with
Paul. You see, the people of Athens,
they were known to be highly curious about different ways of
thinking. So in Acts 17, Paul has this
famous moments, his moments at the Areopagus because the people
there said, hey, Paul, come, come speak to us.
We want to hear about this unusual thing that you're
talking about. What is this, this novelty, this
novel idea that you're Speaking of?
It was foreign to to their Greek way of thinking.
But new ideas and thoughts can be fun to consider and talk
about. But new ideas and thoughts can
be the place where Satan loves to work, to start to erode
truth, to chip away at it. And oh, this sounds really good.
Maybe this is actually truth when people start to just take
something at face value, when they don't really dive in deep
to understand it. So if Satan, if Satan can erode
the objects of our faith, if he can get us to have little things
that aren't quite accurate in our faith, then he's on the way
to keeping us unproductive. So it's important for us to have
sound doctrine from God's word. The Corinthians had a lot of
screwed up thinking and this letter, like I said is is
addressed to fix some of their thinking.
This letter is so dense because there was so much that Paul had
to address with them. Human philosophy and wisdom had
eaten away at their view of God and in his ways.
First Corinthians chapter 3 verse 18 reads Let no one
deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that
he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may
become. Wise.
Let him become a fool, that he may become wise.
It sounds like nonsense, right? But this is the world's
perspective. The world looks at God's ways as
foolish. Why would you live that way when
you can do all these other things and you can just live
life on your own terms however you want?
But the reality is, is that the wisdom of this world is actually
futile and and it doesn't stand up to the wisdom of God's truth.
We need to stand firm in the faith and fight for what has
been handed down to us over the years.
Third, act like men. Be mature in courage.
I wanted to qualify that statement.
Act like men so that we understand what that means when
when Paul is writing and he says act like men.
Unfortunately, in our culture today, exhorting the male
species to act like men is likely to earn you all sorts of
insults and side eyed glances. The use of such words invokes
accusations of misogyny and toxic masculinity.
Mainstream culture would argue that you're just encouraging
behaviors viewed as masculine. Normative things like playing
sports, lifting weights, shooting guns, fighting, perhaps
even walking around and grunting like Tim Allen.
You know, he was so funny, young people, I don't know.
If you know who he is, go check him out.
What was the show? Home.
Home improvement, Right? Yes.
OK, So what Paul has in mind when he says acts like men is
mature courage. The mature man exhibits such
qualities as self-control and confidence and courage.
The immature person, however, doesn't exhibit these qualities,
but rather acts out of a lack of self-control.
They're hesitant and controlled by fear.
The root word that could literally be translated as as be
manizing, be be acting like a man is andritsumay, which is
derived from the Greek word andras, which is the word for
man in Greek. The Septuagint, the Greek
translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, uses this word in to
refer in particular to to soldiers to encourage them to
have courage and and strengthen obedience to the Lord.
Sometimes being obedient is hard, right?
Sometimes when God calls you to something, it requires a step of
faith. It requires courage to step into
something sometimes like to step into being a lead pastor.
It has required a lot of courage and faith to step into this
place to be a lead pastor. Sometimes it's hard to be
obedient. So, so Paul is saying be
courageous. God is going to empower you as
you step into this space and and you step forward in obedience.
Over and over in the Old Testament we read the words be
strong and courageous. I love just re reading
throughout, especially Moses writings as he's getting ready
to to hand off the baton over and over he says to Joshua, be
strong and courageous. Then Joshua takes that same
statement, be strong and courageous.
They keep reiterating that over and over.
And what reason do we have to be strong and courageous?
It's the Lord's presence, the Lord working on behalf of his
followers. You're not in this alone.
Be strong and courageous because God is with you.
He is working in you and around you.
Second Timothy 316 and 17. Many of you will no doubt
recognize this passage. All Scripture is breathed out by
God and is profitable for teaching, for reproof, for
correction, and for training in righteousness that the man of
God may be complete, equipped for every good work.
Paul told Timothy Scripture was inspired by God and and
scripture is useful. The ultimate purpose of it is to
to make you mature, to make you complete so that as you grow up,
as you mature in the faith, then you're ready for whatever God
has in front of you. You are ready to step into that
new thing, to step forward in obedience.
Next, be strong. Be strong.
You know there may be some rumours going around of your
pastor recently lifting relatively heavy weights and
squatting numbers he hasn't done in decades.
If you're not on Facebook and haven't seen that then I
apologise. I'm not usually one to talk
about numbers, but I just had a had a great moment a couple
weeks ago. I can validate that those rumors
are true. Likely, unless somebody's
throwing around really huge numbers, then I can't
necessarily affirm those. But as fun as it is to be
physically strong, that's great. It's fun.
That's not what Paul has in mind.
Paul is not talking about being physically strong.
Paul wants the the Corinthians to have inner spiritual
strength. That's what Paul has in mind.
The person who has matured in the faith is spiritually strong.
They're able to withstand whatever comes against them,
whatever trials come against them.
They've been through life. They've bent, they've been
around the block a few times. They are strong in the faith.
They know God is in control. God's not letting go of them.
They're spiritually strong. They know that He will be
faithful. So this strength comes from the
Holy Spirit's working in us. We submit ourselves to the
spirits working and in turn He will strengthen us.
In Ephesians 6, as Paul was about to introduce the armor of
God, he began the section by saying, finally, be strong in
the Lord and in the strength of his might.
God's about to give you all these tools.
In Ephesians 6, he's about to give you all these tools for
living the Christian life in the midst of this spiritual battle.
But this isn't your working, he says.
It's God's working. It's God's strength in you.
That's what it is. In his second letter to Timothy,
Paul wrote to his young protege and told him how to live out his
faith. Second Timothy 2 verses one and
two. You then my child, be
strengthened by the grace that is in Christ Jesus and what you
have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and
trust to faithful men who would be able to teach others also.
Again, Paul says your strength, it's not in you, it's found in
the grace of Christ working in you.
But I love that Paul doesn't stop there.
He then says, well, Timothy, you, you've heard this from me.
I've invested this into you and into other other men.
Now be sure to pass this on to other faithful men so that they
can then pass it on as well. Don't let this thing that I gave
you die with you. Keep passing it on.
This is discipleship, Paul investing himself into multiple
men who then turn around and do the same.
In 2nd Corinthians 12, Paul brought a bit of clarity to what
it means to be strong in the Lord.
There, Paul outlines all these experiences that he'd had.
He'd had visions, he'd had revelations.
He he was taken up into heaven. Well, really, he's not even
actually sure if he was physically taken into heaven or
if it's just just a vision or out of body experience or, or
what it is. He's experienced all these
amazing things and, and he says he can't tell us about it.
He says, I could tell you the truth of these situations, but
I'm not going to do that because in fact, the things I've
experienced and have only led to just this sense of awe and
being, being able to see all these things that God is able to
do. And so because of what I've
experienced, God sent me this thorn in the side, the thorn in
the flesh, this thing to humble me and keep me down so that I
didn't become proud and boastful.
And this, this thorn in the flesh was so horrible.
I, I pleaded with God several times.
I asked God, can you please remove this?
But God, God says my grace in, in 2nd Corinthians 12, my grace
is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in
weakness. And Paul says, therefore I will
boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of
Christ may rest upon me. Do you catch this?
Paul was glad to be weak in himself.
He didn't want personal fleshly strength, which I can't help but
wonder if he had a bit of because because he was fairly
athletic. I think probably scriptures.
He he loves athletic illustrations.
So, you know, I, I think he may have had some strength as well,
but Paul knew. But Paul knew that at the end of
his rope, that was where God's awesome power was demonstrated.
God's grace would come shining through and it would show itself
to be sufficient for every moment in his life.
At that point, Paul could say that he was proud of his
weakness because Christ was demonstrated in his weaknesses.
When we find strength in ourselves, we're venturing into
dangerous territory. Strengthen myself is the entry
way to pride, which will tear you up when you give yourself
over to it. You know, you know the verses.
Pride goes before the fall. God opposes the proud but gives
grace to the humble. Pride isn't where we want to
find ourselves. When we end up in pride, then we
make ourselves an enemy of God. Pride can sneak in when you
least expect it. In Galatians 61, Paul told the
church at Galatia what to do when someone's caught in sin.
He says, brothers, if anyone is is caught in any transgression,
you who are spiritual should restore him in the spirit of
gentleness. Keep watch on yourself, lest you
too be tempted. The warning here is for even the
spiritually mature, those who have been around in the faith
for many years, they, they have grown up.
They are no longer on just the milk of the word, but they're,
they're consuming solid food from the word.
Even those people watch out. Be careful when you are
confronting someone's sin. Be careful.
Check yourself first. Make sure that you don't have
any sin in your heart that that you need to attend to.
And this is important so that we're not tempted to become
arrogant or puffed up by finding strengthen in ourselves or in
the while in the process of confronting someone else's sin.
Oh look how good I am, look how mature I am, and look how much
sin you have in your life. No, that is not what Paul wants
us to be doing. So keep watch on yourself lest
you also be tempted. Our strength must be in God and
not ourselves. Lastly #5 act in love.
Act in love. What might the outcome be if
Paul stopped with verse 13 and he didn't include the words of
verse 14? He says be watchful, look out
for the enemy, stand firm in the faith.
That is, don't let anything move you or dissuade you.
Be courageous and act like men. Be strong.
What if Paul had stopped there? If we only had Paul's first four
exhortations, then, then we could end up being militant,
hardened, unforgiving. A Christian who has all these
things but not love is incomplete.
Love brings a softer side to our character.
It's the perfect complement to each of these principles.
With love, our firmness doesn't become rigidity.
With love, our strength doesn't become domineering.
With love, the courage we display in our lives is properly
guided and considerate. And when cold in love, the right
doctrine in our lives doesn't turn into dogmatic legalism.
As we pour love over these 4 commands, we escape the trap of
self righteousness. We walk in grace, devoid of any
arrogance that may desire to creep into our hearts.
In Ephesians 4, Paul addressed those who are tossed around by
different doctrines and in verse 14 he told the Ephesian church
and us how to address these situations.
When someone follows after some sort of untruth, something that
is doesn't jive with what scripture says.
He says his advice was was to speak the truth in love.
Speaking of the truth is great, but it needs to be accompanied
by love. We have to hold these two things
in balance. If we speak only truth, then we
can come off as proud, judgmental and legalistic, and
this can lead to an environment that is unforgiving.
On the other hand, all grace, all love, it can lead to moral
indifference and potentially enables harmful behaviors.
Someone whose outlook is all grace is devoid of any real
foundation. They can just float back and
forth from this belief to that one.
Whatever their heart desires, they have no real anchor for
their soul. Live however you want, I love
you, you can do whatever you want.
That is not what love is but biblical grace and truth however
is life transforming. It's biblical truth but it's
covered in love and grace and says this is the truth.
Now go walk in that. The other night we had an elders
meeting and and talking about someone Mike Findley said a
certain author and I think I would say theologian that he
follows online is like AI love this picture a velvet covered
brick. This this this gentleman can can
communicate truth. That's the brick part, of
course, but they do it in such a manner that you don't even
realize that you've just been clobbered by a brick.
They do it gently. They do it with grace and in
love. Men, rather than follow the
horrible examples that we have set before us in our
entertainment, let's follow the model set before us here in
Scripture. Be watchful, stand firm in the
faith, be courageous as you act like a man, be strengthened by
the Holy Spirit's and let all that you do be done in love.
Let's bow our heads and close our eyes.
God, we thank you for the opportunity to look into your
word. We thank you that we can look
into your word and God and we can see how you want us as as
men, as fathers to live. God, I pray that each man in
this place this morning would not be discouraged because of
what he's heard, but that each man would see, OK, hey, here are
the things that I need to do. Here's how, Here's how I can
live. Here's what it means to be a
godly man, to be a godly father. And we ponder these things.
God, I pray that each man in this place would just pick one
thing. What is 1 area where I can grow?
So God, we pray for the Holy Spirit's working.
We pray that you would empower us to live, to live this
Christian life in the way that you have called us to live.
God that we would, we would be able to step forward, encourage
to be obedient to you no matter what you are calling us to.
So we offer these things to you. It's in Jesus name we pray,
Amen.