Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to 1st
Corinthians, First Corinthians chapter 1.
It's a sermon text for this morning, First Corinthians 11 to
9. And I want to express how
thankful I am to the Lord for the privilege of worshipping
with you all this morning and opening of God's Word.
So First Corinthians 1, 1:00 to 9:00 Hear the word of the Lord
Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus
and our brother. Sustain us to the Church of God
that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus
called to be St. together with all those who in every place
call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both dear Lord and
ours. Grace to you and peace from God
our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of
God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you are
enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the
testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you
are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end,
guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of
His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Let me pray one more time,
Father, I pray that You would grant us now as Your people, to
receive with meekness the implanted Word that is able to
save us. And to that end, I ask that You
would grant that the preaching of Your Word here and now and
anywhere else and preached would be done as a demonstration of
the Spirit and of power, so that our faith as your people might
rest not in man's wisdom, but in the power of God.
I pray God that you would give me clarity, give me boldness,
give U.S. Open minds and hearts, Grant for
the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts
together to be acceptable in your sight.
O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer, I ask in Jesus name,
Amen. In the book of Proverbs we read
some interesting things about good news from a distant
country. So Proverbs 2525 says this like
cold water to a thirsty soul. So it's good news from a far
country. Another proverb speaks like
this. Proverbs 1530.
The light of the eyes rejoices the heart, and good news
refreshes the bones. So good news from a distant land
is refreshing and energizing. The Bible says it revives a
person's psyche in much the same way as a drink of cold water
revives a thirsty person. It may even be life giving in
some way to your physical person.
The second proverb I just read, 15 verse 30 says it refreshes
the bones literally that that verse means it makes the bones
fat and healthy. You can almost think about
Jacob, the story that is told us in the book of Genesis after
Joseph had disclosed himself to his brothers in Egypt and they
came back home to Canaan and told their father Jacob that his
son that he presumed dead is very alive in Egypt and is a
mighty ruler there. The Bible tells us that after
the initial shock that came on Jacob from hearing that news had
warned off, he felt like someone who had drunk a very refreshing
drink because his decrypted body, in spite of his decrypted
body, he stood up and said it is enough.
Joseph, my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I
die. So good news from a distant
country can impact a person in a uniquely powerful way.
Well, none of that was true of the Apostle Paul related to the
church in Corinth. He did receive news from a far
country. I mean the Apostle Paul.
He was in the city of Ephesus, a famous 1st century city in what
is today the West Coast of modern day Turkey.
And we know. That for for a fact, because at
the end of the letter to the correct the first letter to the
Corinthians, he says I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost for a
wide door for effective work has opened to me and there are many
adversaries so we. Know even from Paul's words that
he's writing First Corinthians from the city of Ephesus.
And while he is there in Ephesus, people come over from
Corinth. He tells us in chapter 1, verse
11 that people of Chloe's house had come and given him some
updates as to how things were going at the church that he
planted in Corinth. In other words, people travelled
across the Aegean Sea from the southern part of Greece and came
over to what is the West Coast of modern day Turkey and gave
Paul updates about the church at Corinth.
But the news Paul received about the church was everything but
refreshing. He received news that the church
he planted was not doing well at all.
He was told that there are factions in the church.
He was told that there are members in the church filing
lawsuits against one another before unbelievers.
He heard that there were people at the church in Corinth going
to prostitutes. He even heard there was a man in
the church living in incest and the church had a carefree
attitude towards that egregious sin.
He heard there was controversy over eating food sacrificed to
idols and that they were desecrating the Lord's Table and
that they were misusing spiritual gifts and some of them
were even denying the future bodily resurrection of
believers. So this church had multifaceted
problems with the news Paul heard was not only not
refreshing, was deeply distressful, was alarming news
for somebody who cares for the glory of God in the church to
hear. I think if you and I lived in
Corinth in the 1st century and had options.
The church at Corinth when I was First Baptist Church or Second
Presbyterian. Would not make the least for us
to consider as a church to join because it had multifaceted
problems. Now, how would you pray for a
church like that? If you were Paul, if you were in
Paul's place and received this kind of devastating update about
the church that you labored over the course of 18 months to see
come into existence, how would you pray for that kind of
church? How would you speak about that
kind of church? How would you speak to that kind
of church or, or to bring it home to us here?
How are you to pray for your church?
How does God desire for you to pray for Trinity Baptist Church?
What's God's will for you in terms of how you speak to your
fellow brothers and sisters about this church?
And I would submit to you, it's very simple.
God calls you to be very thankful for this church.
God calls you to speak about this church to one another with
profound gratitude to God for this church.
And Paul shows that to us in this letter in the verses we
read in living colors. He shows that to us in gripping
and convicting ways. So first, I'm just arguing with
you this morning that God calls you as a member of this church
to be profoundly thankful for this church.
Notice verse four of our passage.
Look at verse 4. Paul says I give thanks to my
God always for you because of the grace of God that was given
to you in Christ Jesus. So giving thanks to God for the
believers at Corinth was a regular practice of the apostle.
He's telling them, and notice he says he does that always.
He's regularly giving thanks. He's not bankrupt when it comes
to giving thanks for this church.
Paul's attitude of thankfulness for believers for the church at
Corinth was not unique to that church.
It marked his life and ministry. Just listen to what he says to
the Romans. Romans 18.
First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you,
because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.
Hear what he says to the Philippians.
I thank my God in all my remembrance of.
You. Always in every prayer of mine
for you, for you all, making my prayer with joy.
He already says to the Colossians, We always thank God
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we pray for you,
since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love
that you have for all the Saints.
He actually counted it as a debt that he owed here, the way he
speaks to the Thessalonians, Second Thessalonians, 1/3, we
ought always. In other words, we owe it as a
debt always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is
right, because your faith is growing abundantly and the love
of everyone of you for one another is increasing.
How could it be more? Clear from Paul's letters that
God's will for. You and for me is that we be
thankful for the churches in which he has placed us and for
any other true church that we know.
Paul recognized that no matter what joys or problems, what
encouragement or discouragement may be present in any given
church at any given time, the very existence of a church at
all is a miracle of sovereign grace for which God should
receive. Ceaseless thanks helps Paul's
conviction. That's what he operate operated
with. And so he could not close his
eyes to pray for any given church, even a church wracked by
problems as Corinth, without being overwhelmed with gratitude
to God for that church. He was.
He couldn't get over the fact that there is actually a church
at Corinth and there's a church at Rome.
There's a church at Thessalonica, and there is a
church here called Trinity Baptist Church.
That's something for which to thank God.
Beloved, do you realize that this church called Trinity
Baptist Church is a miracle of sovereign grace?
Do you know that the most fitting attitude of heart that
you should have before God for this church in this season and
at any other season of this church's life is that you be
profoundly thankful that this church is here?
I read a book recently and the authors point out something
interesting. They say that one of the slogans
that the Marine Corps of the United States.
Say it's often if you've been if if you are an ex marine maybe
you have heard this. They often say that every marine
is a Rifleman. So according to that, it means
that from 1 angle, if you are a Marine, whether you are trained
to drive trucks or to collect and analyze intelligence or to
do cyber warfare or whatever specialty you have been given in
the Marine, you must XLS a rifle man, as a marksman who operates
a rifle with extraordinary competence and ability.
So you you could not really be a Marine and not be a rifle
competent individual. What is one thing you would say
God wants every Christian to excel at?
What's one thing every believer cannot but be good at?
I think Paul will say giving thanks to God for the church,
for the triumph of the gospel. That the gospel of the cross of
Christ is invading the heart of sin, darkened human beings, and
turning them from goat supernaturally into sheep that
hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and gather week in
after week in and week out to worship Jesus is something for
which we should ever be bereft of Thanksgiving to God.
So you and I should be excelling and giving thanks to God.
Let our prayers for our churches be saturated with Thanksgiving
to God again. The case of Corinth is
particularly striking. That Paul would give thanks to
God for a church being so conscious, so painfully aware of
how profoundly flawed the church was, and didn't even seem to be
doing something about it. They didn't even seem bothered
by the fact that they had these many problems in their midst.
And not only was Paul privately thanking God for the church in
Corinth, he starts writing to them.
And one of the first things he wants them to know is how
thankful he is for them. So so get.
Get get what's going on here. He's not only giving thanks to
God vertically, he's telling the Corinthians he is very thankful
for them. I mean, if if if you were
thinking about a church with all these kinds of problems and you
had to write a letter to them, put pen to paper that they will
get what's one of the first things you will want to tell
them? I don't think I'll be eager to
tell them. I'm so thankful for you.
I'm so thankful for you as a church.
That would not be the first thing that comes to mind for me.
Now don't misunderstand. Paul does not mean he was
lighthearted and carefree about the problems in this church.
You don't need to look any further than the rest of the
letter. He's going to use strong
language of correction for the church.
He's going to rebuke them with strong language for their
cliquishness, for their carefree attitude towards incest in their
MID, for their carefree attitude towards lawsuits in their midst,
for the fact that people are going to prostitute from their
midst, for the fact that they are misusing spiritual gifts and
desecrating the Lord's table and denying the future bodily
resurrection of believers. He's even going to use biting
sarcasm to shock them up out of the stupor into which they were
descending. He's going to say things to them
like I say this to your shame. Is it the case that there's no
one among you wise enough to settle trivial matters of life?
He's going to speak in strong language to them.
Nonetheless, he never cease to give thanks for them.
So having a constancy in Thanksgiving for your church,
it's not the same thing as sweeping, difficult
conversations under the rock, because that's not the example
Paul shows us. He shows us you can be
simultaneously very thankful for a church, very thankful for your
church, and yet have hard conversations about things that
need to be talked through. So those two are not
incompatible. Those two are not mutually
exclusive. Actually, an attitude of
Thanksgiving to God for your church prepares you to apply the
gospel in the most edifying ways to the lives of your brothers
and sisters. As you learn to thank God for
the triumph of grace in each of their lives, you will learn to
speak the gospel to one another in ways that build up and exalt
Christ and speed people along the path of the pilgrimage to to
heaven. You see how it worked out in the
lives of Paul. I mean, he is going to go on to
rebuke them about what they need to be rebuked about and commend
them about what they need to be commended for.
Just read Chapter 11. He would say to them, I commend
you for remembering all the traditions.
That I gave to you. So, so he's so attuned to how to
speak the gospel to these people because he's thanking God for
them and seeing them through the lenses of the triumph of God's
grace in their midst. So he's not painting anything
with a broad brush. He's seeing them through the
eyes of God. So cultivating a habit of
Thanksgiving protects you and me from cynicism, from becoming
embittered and totally disillusioned with the church.
It helps you keep a gospel perspective on church relational
realities, on how things are working out in church, and
prepares you so that your participation as a church member
actually strengthens and builds up and encourages and stirs up
your brothers and sisters onto great love and good works for
the glory of Christ. That's exactly how it played out
in the life of the Apostle Paul. A life of Thanksgiving to God
for your church makes you into a catalysts of encouragement and
strengthening in the midst of your church.
So I would argue Thanksgiving to God for your church is a
prerequisite by which problems and hard conversations are
handled and talked about in a Christ's honoring way.
So being serious minded as a Christian and being thankful to
God, a perfectly compatible realities.
Now every serious minded local church has a church covenant
that says a number of things, among which will be something
like this. Having been brought by God's
grace to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and
having been baptized upon our professional faith in the name
of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we now
solemnly and joyfully renew our covenant with each other that
God enabling. Us, we will walk together in
love as brothers and sisters, a family whom God has saved by
grace. And I would argue, you cannot
effectively love on your brothers and minister to them as
God would have you if your heart is bereft of Thanksgiving to God
for them. You and I are members of our
respective churches. But at the end of the day.
Those churches are God's churches and He deserves endless
Thanksgiving for those. Now, if you have been a
Christian for any length of time, you know that this kind of
Thanksgiving to God for your church cannot primarily draw its
strengths from your day-to-day and week to week experience of
church life. Because that experience.
Steps and flows. It shifts and changes.
If you're going to draw only on how church life is going, how
connected you are, how blessed you feel at your at your church,
how peaceful things are, you're going to quickly run out of fuel
for Thanksgiving to God. So Paul is not drawing the
strength for thanking God for the believers at Corinth
primarily from the experience of the people there or from what he
is hearing about them. He's thinking more about what
God has done in the midst of that church.
So how do you sustain a life of consistent Thanksgiving to God
for your church? I would argue, remember what God
has done. So be thankful, and how you are
thankful is remember what God has done.
Remember the work God has done in the midst of His people, in
every redeemed person in every true Church of Jesus Christ at
the church in Corinth, here at Trinity Baptist Church, there
are marks of God's grace that if you are fixated on, if you look
intently enough at those marks of grace, you will never run out
of reasons for Thanksgiving to God.
God has done and is doing things here which if you have eyes to
see, they will always feed your Thanksgiving to God.
They will become streams that run into the raging river of
Thanksgiving in your heart to God for what He has done and is
doing. And I want to point out three to
you here from Paul's opening verses in First Corinthians.
So here's the first, where do you draw the strength to give
thanks to God? The 1st is you recognize that
the church is set apart. It's not accidental, it's set
apart. God's gotten in here.
Look at verse two of our passage.
Paul describes the church like this.
The church is those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be
sent together with all those who in every place call upon the
Lord, of call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both
their Lord and ours. Again, remember, Paul has heard
alarming things about the state of things at the church in
Corinth, and yet strikingly enough, he describes these
believers as those sanctified in Christ Jesus, as those called to
be God's holy people, called to be Saints.
You read that and you want to think, Paul, did you just hear
there is incest of that church? Did you just hear there are
factions there? Did you just hear people are
going to prostitutes there and fighting on each other's and at
each other's throat and going to court before unbelievers?
Did you hear that? How could you possibly know that
and refer to them as those sanctified and called to be
sent, called to be God's holy people?
Paul knows that the experience of the life of a given church in
any given season is never the ultimate reality about that
church. The ultimate reality about the
life of any and every believer and the life of any and any and
any and every church, true church, is what God has done in
the church. So the experience in any given
season, the relational tensions that may be or joys that may be,
do not tell the whole story. There is something more
profound, more eternal, more enduring, more undiminished by
the experiences of this life. True about that church.
And it is that God has set them apart and call them to be his
people. You know when Paul says to those
sanctified in Christ Jesus, he uses a word whose tense conveys
the idea that God has done and completed a work in the past
whose results will continue forever.
God has inducted every believer into the realm of the holy in an
irrevocable way. It's never going to be reversed.
What God has done in calling each one of his blood, bought
people from darkness into light and introduced them into the
realm of the holy is irreversible.
And that's true regardless of what season of life the church
is going through. And so Paul is fixated on that
and therefore thanking God for that.
Paul is speaking about eternal things here.
He is speaking about what we call positional or definitive
sanctification. Every believer knows that, not
because of any inherent holiness of the earth, but because of the
grace of God that has descended upon them and set them apart for
God. And then he calls them those who
are called, those who have been summoned by God.
Paul is not suggesting that God sent an invitation to Corinth
for the Corinthians to RSVP and any one of them could turn it
down or accept to come. Now he's saying God summoned
them with a car that produced a response.
He summoned them to himself with a calling that sounded like
Jesus calling Lazarus out of the tomb so that Lazarus did not
need to think to come out. He just came out because the
invitation created the response. And that's how God worked at
Corinth to bring about that church.
And Paul is saying, regardless of what's happening there right
now, we cannot but thank God for what he has done there.
You know, Paul describes this calling of the Corinthian
believers in verse nine. Look at verse nine of our
passage. God is faithful by whom you were
called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ.
So he ties their calling to the sovereign, indomitable work of
God to bring them to himself. In chapter 1, verse 26, he
describes that calling in terms of election, God's sovereign
choice of who believes. Look at chapter one, verse 26,
Paul says, for consider your calling brothers.
Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.
Not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.
But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.
God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.
God chose what is low and despised in the world, even
things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that
no human being might boast in the presence of God.
And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us
wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification and redemption,
so that as it is written that no one who let one who boasts let
the one who boasts boasts in the.
Lord. Just look around here.
Just look around this room. Just turn your eyes and look
around this room. Do you know what you are looking
at? You are looking at a gathering
of God's holy people in Christ. What I'm preaching to this
morning, it's not a social gathering.
It's a gathering that has taken the sovereign operation of the
grace of the living God to bring into existence.
And I don't intellectually I know how I can know that to be
true and not be thankful to God. But maybe like you, I don't tend
to think of our church in these kinds of fundamental and
consequential categories. I tend to remember more that
heartbreak, that affliction, that trouble, that difficult
conversation that I have to have that trial, that brother or
sister who is straying into sin. I tend to think more in those
categories. Do you know what that does to my
Thanksgiving? It diminishes my Thanksgiving.
It drains the fuel for my Thanksgiving.
It makes the flame of my Thanksgiving not to burn as
brightly as it should. The truest things about any
given church lie beyond the perception of the five senses.
The truest things about this church lie beyond the perception
of the five senses, The the fact that God sanctified and called
and brought to himself are not things we see every day.
They're not things we gather and see all the time, but we know to
be true, indisputably true, by faith.
And so giving thanks to God includes very fundamentally
walking by faith, knowing that what God has done in your heart,
he has done in not brother's heart and not sister's heart and
not family. And therefore we are here by
God's work for which he deserves endless things.
Now, if you're here this morning and you've never called on the
name of the Lord, you've never repented of your sins, you've
never trusted in Jesus Christ, it's striking to me in relation
to your station in life spiritually, that Paul describes
this people also as those who call.
Upon the name of the Lord Jesus. Christ quite an interesting
description because he says they have been called and he
describes them as those who call on the name of the Lord.
So they are called to be St. and they call upon the name of the
Lord. That's, that's, that's a very
serious matter. That's, that's no trifle at all,
because only those who call on the name of the Lord will be
saved. Anyone who is not living their
life by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will
perish forever, will be cut off from the life giving presence of
the one true and living God for all eternity.
Nothing could be more serious. So Paul describes these people
as the people who call on the name of the Lord.
And that means you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.
And that means you believe in your heart that God raised him
up from the dead. And if that's true of you,
heaven's pledge to you is that you will be saved again.
If you have not never been born again, you've never turned from
your sin and trusted Christ. Let me just remind you of a
sobering truth. There is no name under heaven
given amongst men whereby we must be saved except the name of
Jesus Christ. If you have never repented, you
can call on him today. You can ask Him for forgiveness.
You can ask him that He walks in you this kind of union with
himself that made the Corinthians to become a people
sanctified, set apart and called to be God's holy people.
The Bible's promise is everyone who calls on the name of the
Lord will be saved. And that's because it is Jesus
and Jesus alone who suffered once for sins, the righteous for
the unrighteous, that he might bring anyone and everyone who
believes to God through himself. And so you have a wide you live
in the day of salvation. So I invite you think profoundly
about this. Think about this.
Just ask yourself questions about where do I stand in
relation to the God of the universe, the God who made me,
who had a distinct purpose for making me, namely that I should
be for His glory, and which purpose I have defied and kicked
against all my life? How could I ever possibly make
up for that kind of rebellion? The answer is He has made it up
for you in His Son, if you will but repent.
Those who are called are those who call on the name of the
Lord. So Paul draws strength to be a
consistent giver of thanks to God for the Corinthians.
First, from the fact that they are set apart, and that's true
of every believer here. But here's the second thing that
feeds and feels Paul's Thanksgiving.
It is that the church is equipped to be the church,
equipped to be the church. Look at verse 4 again.
I give thanks to my God always for you.
And here comes the reason. Because of the grace of God that
was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were
enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the
testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you
are not lacking in any gift. You know, God's grace, we often
say quickly, is his unmerited favor.
But it's also God's transforming power through the gospel and not
power that grace took hold among the Corinthians.
By grace, they were comprehensively enriched
spiritually. God lavished them with spiritual
gifts that they could not possibly imagine.
Paul says you have been enriched in every way and you are not
lacking in any gift. But you know, Paul's perspective
is very gospel centered. He's not just saying like you
are such impressive people, you have all the gifts there could
be. You know, he recognizes the
gifts came to them because of God's grace.
They couldn't have earned what God did.
See what he says. The gift came as the testimony
about Christ was confirmed among them.
So this equipment came entirely by grace.
This wasn't because they were distinctive and impressive.
A recognition that the Corinthians were absolutely
lavished with gifts by God's grace was one of the streams
that flowed into the river of Paul's Thanksgiving.
And just think about the hundreds of spiritual gifts that
are represented in this room right now.
How many believers are here? By the teaching of the New
Testament, everyone of you has a spiritual gift from God.
Some have a couple. Some have more than a couple.
That means that it is possible that the number of spiritual
gifts present in this room this morning, maybe even double S the
number of believers present here.
Why is that the case? Because the grace of God by the
Gospel has been confirmed in each of your lives as a
believer. And for Paul, that's something
for which to thank God ceaselessly.
That's something for which to give praise to God.
The Corinthians also knew that God gave them gifts, but they
tended to think of themselves as distinct and as better than
everyone else. And so they were arrogant and
prideful. And that's why, as you read
through First Corinthians, Paul uses the word do not be puffed
up at least six different times to instruct them and correct
them because they divorced their spiritual wealth from the grace
of God. They forgot the the wealth came
to them. The gift came to them from God's
grace. They tended to be marked by
pride because they thought they were just wonderful people.
So it's a wonderful thing to be enriched by God's grace.
It's just as important to recognize that grace is indeed
grace. You didn't work for it, you
didn't earn it. You don't teach God's Word
because you could. You are not as kind and
hospitable and able to serve others because you could.
God work that in you by the power of his gospel, and
therefore he gets the glory. As people who believe the
doctrines of grace, we usually say sola gracia must always lead
to solid deal Gloria. The fact that we are saved by
grace and grace alone, equipped to be God's people and be the
church and serve Christ and one another by grace and grace
alone, should make us eager to return all the glory to the
giver of the grace that has come to us.
When we do that, that's going to train our hearts and lead us
away from pride and self exaltation, both as individuals
and as a church. So Paul calls us to give thanks.
He models for us Thanksgiving and shows us the strength for
giving thanks always comes from the fact that, you know, the
church has been set apart by God.
It comes from the fact that the church has been equipped by God.
But finally, it also comes from the fact that, you know, the
church is kept by God. Believers are kept by Jesus
Christ. One of my favorite truths in the
New Testament and in all of the Bible is that Christian people
are a people who are kept. They are people who are
preserved by the mighty hand of God.
Look at look at verse six of our passage.
Paul says this even as the testimony concerning Christ was
confirmed in you. The testimony confirming
concerning Christ is the gospel, and Paul uses that passive verb
again to show it is God doing the work and therefore God gets
all the glory. And his point is that the gospel
was validated, was ratified, was proven to be the gospel power of
God unto salvation for all who believe.
It was proven to be that by the gift that had come to the
Corinthians. So that's past.
What about the future? Did God do that work in the
past? Confirm his work, establish them
and then leave them? Like OK, you could figure things
out from here. No, look at verse verse 8.
Who will also confirm you? That's the same word.
Who will also confirm you to the end, Blameless in the day of our
Lord Jesus Christ. That's, that's, that's amazing.
God did a confirmation in the past.
God's going to do a confirmation in the future.
He worked in the past to establish you.
He will work in the future to complete what he started.
That's amazing. I mean, notice that by Paul's
writing right here, you will have to be blameless on the day
of Christ to be saved. You will have to stand before
Christ's throne, blameless in order to be saved.
Do you realize that, that on the day of judgment, you can't stand
before the judgment seat of God with filth on you.
There has to be a guiltlessness, A blamelessness mocking you as
you stand before Christ. That means you have to persevere
to the end. If you turn away from Christ and
abandoned a pursuit of godliness, you will not be
saved. That's what Paul is talking
about. And if we are honest and know
our own sins and know the stumblings and know the
remaining corruption that still mark our lives, we can be scared
by this and start to ask, will I make it to the end?
Will I truly stand blameless before the throne of Christ is?
Isn't there a real, genuine possibility that I could make a
shipwreck of the faith before the end?
And the answer is yes, if it all depended on you.
If it all depended on you, you not only can but will make a
shipwreck of the faith. But it doesn't all depend on
you. See, it says who will confirm
you, so God will confirm you. In other words, God will
preserve this flawed and sin tented Corinthians all the way
to the end. He will keep them.
In other words, God's preservation is the guarantee
for their perseverance. They will not make it to the end
if you remove the foundation of God's keeping work.
This is like what Paul says to the Philippians.
He who began a good work in your lives will bring it to
completion of the day of Christ. So he did not only confirm the
gospel in the beginning and let you figure things out for
yourself and let you press on on your own, He will confirm it in
the end. You will stand blameless before.
For the throne, I hope this grips your heart as it's
gripping mind. This is this is written to a
church that is wracked by sin. Like I said, their problems are
multifaceted. If you put me as a pastor at
this church and say start trying to revitalize this church, I
wouldn't even know which problem to start with because there were
so many of them. And yet Paul is saying that God,
who confirmed the gospel in you while I was with you 18 months
ago, however long that was, will confirm you blameless until the
end. Is that a reason for
Thanksgiving or what? How can you know that and not be
abundantly, overflowingly thankful to God for that church?
It doesn't depend on them. It's not their strength or power
that will bring them all the way to the end.
So if you look at the brothers and sisters that God's given you
here at Trinity Baptist, there are unbreakable bonds that God
has established between you and them.
So strong and so indomitable in strength that the allurements of
sin will not break, that Satan himself will not break, that the
allurements of the world will not break.
For those who are truly the sheep of Christ, He will keep
them and keep you bonded to them until we together are all God at
home and stand blameless, and the race is complete.
And we say, not by not, not my strength, but by His grace
alone, we have made it safely to the shore of eternity.
He, He who called you into the fellowship of His Son, will
confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of Christ.
So there is a day marked on God's calendar on which you
would have committed your last sin ever, on which you will
never need to repent of sin again, on which you will never
wish you spoke differently or listen more intently, like all
of that will be forever a thing of the past.
And Paul refers to that day as the day of the Lord Jesus
Christ, which is quite remarkable because the prophets
of the Old Testament, when they spoke of the day of the Lord,
they were Speaking of the day of Yahweh, the covenant God of
Israel, the One about whom they say He has marked a day.
That day is coming. And on that day, He will forgive
the sins of their people, He will transform their hearts, He
will defeat their enemies, and He will establish His Kingdom
and reign over them forever in righteousness.
As the New Testament opens, John the Baptist announces that those
days have opened. Those days have dawned on us.
And then Jesus is born, and the days indeed are inaugurated.
We are living in the day of the Lord, so to speak, and because
Jesus came and begun those days by His incarnation, His payment
for sin on the cross, His victorious resurrection from the
dead, His exaltation to the right hand of the Father, we
have an unshakable hope that He will finish what he came and
started. That day of the Lord is indeed
coming when Jesus will complete what He started at His first
coming and establish us. Complete all the way so that we
are like him. On that day, your physical
appearance will match the fact that you have been sanctified.
Right now it doesn't quite look like that.
I don't know if somebody met you last year at the grocery store
and say you look very sanctified.
It doesn't happen very often in this life, but it's coming a day
when our outward appearance will match with the fact that God in
Christ has inducted us into the realm of the holy that will be
fulfilled so we can be confident.
It doesn't matter what you're experiencing now as a believer.
What's happening to your marriage, What's happening to
your health? What's happening to your work?
What's happening with you regarding parenting and finances
and your health and everything else?
What's happening right now in the life of this church, what's
going on in this, in the season that this church is in now,
Those do not have any bearing whatsoever on whether this day
is going to come or not. The day is going to come and you
will be established blameless before the Lord.
So could you know that and not be thankful for this church and
not be thankful for these brothers and sisters that God
will confirm with you? When Christ splits the heavens
with blinding glory and all who have rejected Him are calling
for rocks to fall on them, and you stand in a spotless
righteousness that you did not earn and could not earn, but
it's yours forever. How could you know that and not
be more thankful for this church that God's given you and called
you to do life with and to persevere until the end?
I saw a bumper speaker sticker lately that said something like
live long and prosper and I've never met a human being who has
a problem with that. Most of us want to live long and
prosper, but then we have to ask the question after that.
Just let's just assume that all of us actually live long and
prosper. We have to ask after that, then
what? You live long and prosper then
then what you know for you and for me.
Believe us in Jesus Christ after this life, regardless of how it
looked like after this life. We await A revelation, a people
who are being kept a people awaiting A revelation. 0 and
verse 7 says as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus
Christ, our blessed hope. That's what we look forward to.
So, so let me close by just reminding you, God's will for
you is that you be overflowing with Thanksgiving for this
church, for your brothers and sisters, for God's grace at work
here. For the fact that he set each
one of you believers aside and inducted you into the realm of
the holy. For the fact that he's equipped
you with grace to be the church, with gifts, to be the church.
And for the fact that he is keeping you.
He's confirmed the gospel in your life and will establish you
will confirm you blameless on the day of Christ.
God wants you giving thanks to him for that.
And my argument is the more thanks you give, the better a
church member you will be, the more effective you will be in
your ministry to one another. And if you focus on what God has
done and is doing and will do, you will never run out of
reasons for Thanksgiving for this church.
They are always there. So May God make us a thankful
people, a people who so see what God has done through the eyes of
faith that we are always saying. I can't wait to meet with
brother X or sister Y again to worship the God who has set us
together apart, sanctified us, and called us to be his people
in Christ. Let's pray.
Father, thank you for your mercy to us.
Thank you that these things are not made-up, that we who were
darkened by sin have indeed been inducted into the realm of the
Holy, been strengthened by grace to be called your people, and
given gifts that make our passing lives count for your
Kingdom. I praise you for that, and I
pray that you make us abundantly thankful for that work of yours
in our lives and in the lives of our brothers and sisters and in
this church and in every true church that preaches your gospel
in Jesus name, Amen.