Final Imperatives for a Faithful Life

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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All right. Well, what a privilege we get to open up God's Word together. Let's go to him in prayer.

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Father in heaven, Lord, we thank you again.

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Lord, I thank you for this congregation. Thank you for these blood -bought saints.

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Lord, that Christ himself has redeemed. And Lord, together with them, we thank you for your

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Word. We thank you for this perfect, authoritative, sufficient, clear, necessary, inerrant

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Word of God that you have preserved for us. And Lord, you've said it in your

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Word, blessed is the man whom you teach out of your law to give him rest from days of trouble.

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Lord, as we finish our study in this book, we ask, Lord, that you would both give us rest and renewal in your scriptures.

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There's nothing that we as your people need more in this hour than to hear our

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God speak. And so, Lord, we humbly ask as that hymn goes,

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Speak, O Lord, feed the sheep of your pasture. Perhaps, Lord, prepare us for every good work in your service.

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And Lord, make us more like your dear Son. Father, we pray this all in Christ's name.

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Amen. Well, this day has finally come.

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This is our last study in the book of 1 Corinthians. And yesterday,

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I was just looking back at a little bit of the timeline for this sermon series. And it occurred to me that we started this sermon series almost a full year ago.

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It was June 6th, 2021, that we began 1 Corinthians chapter 1 and verse 1.

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And I think it's neat that when we did that, many of you in this room were not here. So I praise

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God that we have more people to study the Lord's Word with. But we've been in this text now, with some exception here and there, for almost 46 weeks.

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And I've said it before, I'll say it again, that I sincerely praise God. I really do. I praise God for bringing us this far.

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And it's my prayer, even, that this would be the first amongst many full -scale studies of the books of Scripture in this church.

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And I'm also thankful that the Lord has brought people into this church who have an appetite for this kind of systematic, verse -by -verse, expositional preaching and teaching of the

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Bible. And as I was reflecting on it this week, we've had smaller groups the last couple of weeks with people traveling.

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And still, I would rather preach the Word of God to a faithful few, who want to hear

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God speak through His Word, than 10 ,000 people who don't. And so, I really do.

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I praise God. I thank Him that He's helped us get to this point. I thank Him that He has sent all of you.

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And so, now that we're at the tail end of this chapter, 1 Corinthians 16, and verse 13, what we're going to find is that the

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Apostle Paul is going to issue his final instructions to this young church.

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As we know, this is a church that he helped to plant. He essentially was the primary church planter when he arrived in Corinth.

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And now that he's gone, we know from chapter 16, verse 8, that he's in Ephesus now.

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He's written this letter, and he's going to leave the church with these final last words. And it's likely, if we look at just the first little bit of 1

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Corinthians 16, that what's going to happen is, it's likely that Paul is not going to see this church, or be able to speak to, or write to, for the next six months or so.

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We saw earlier in the chapter that he was going to stay in Ephesus, in the province of Asia, until Pentecost.

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And so that would put him sometime into spring. He was going to travel around, through Macedonia, and visit the churches there, throughout that province, that Roman province.

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And then he was eventually going to make it to Corinth, in time for winter, where he was going to hopefully spend the season there.

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And so, if we were to look at a map of that part of ancient

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Rome, what we would see is that, based on Paul's route of travel, he was going to have to travel roughly 3 ,000 kilometers between there, in Ephesus, to Corinth.

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So some 3 ,000 kilometers separated him from this church. And all of that would have to be traveled by either boat, or on foot.

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So the words that the Apostle Paul has now, for these last few verses, are essentially the last words that they're going to hear from him for a very long time.

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He's going to finish this letter, he's going to entrust this church to God, a sovereign

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God, and then he's going to continue his ministry in Ephesus. And it got me thinking, if I were to write, if I were in the position that I were to write, just a few words to this church, to all of you in this room, before I go on a journey that would last six months or longer, what would

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I write to encourage all of you? Or what would I write to ensure your welfare, to ensure your continued growth until I returned?

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Or even more pressing, if I were in the position of the Apostle Paul, and it would be a very real threat that I might be stoned outside a synagogue somewhere, or lynched by an angry mob in Ephesus, never to see any of you again in this world, what would be my parting words?

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If you were in Paul's situation, what would you write to this struggling Corinthian church?

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If you had just maybe 13 verses to give to these guys. Certainly the circumstances in this letter now call for some very careful, some final words that are what

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I would think would be cogent, compelling, and would help to sustain the spiritual life and health of this assembly.

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So in a situation like this, we'd expect that some of the most important words in Paul's letter might be reserved for this very last page.

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What's Paul going to say as he bids farewell to this church? And today, that's pretty much exactly what we find in verses 13 and 14.

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Yes, we're going to find some interesting administrative details. Paul's going to deal with just some practical farewell types of instructions.

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We're going to see a partial summary of the whole book here in this last passage. But most importantly, this is what we're going to see.

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This is what Paul is going to give us in this final text. And this is, again, if you're going to write it down, the big idea.

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Here Paul gives us some final imperatives. Some final imperatives for a faithful life lived in service for Christ.

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I only have a few words left. This is what I'm going to give you. I'm going to lay it out, and I'm going to entrust you to God.

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And so these are some final words that I think that if we were to read this, while not exhausted, these are words that we could live by.

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And so if you want to run the race well, if you want to be useful in your service to God, if you want to fight the good fight, if you want to keep the faith, if we bring ourselves right back to the beginning of this letter, if you want to avoid being

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Corinthianized by a foolish and perverse culture around you, if you want to live as true saints that you have been called to be by God, then

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Paul says here are some final words, some final imperatives to follow. And so as we close out our letter, we're going to look at just this, final imperatives for a faithful life.

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So let's turn in our Bibles to 1 Corinthians 16 and verse 13, if you haven't already.

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And here what we're going to do is, it's going to be very simple. We're going to consider five points that come right out of the text.

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I'm going to pull them right outside. So if you miss one, all you have to do is go right back to verse 13.

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And I admit right at the onset, it's not particularly creative, but it is faithful to the passage.

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And what we're going to do is we're going to look at Paul's five final imperatives in verses 13 and 14.

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And so if you have the notes, you'll see them listed out in the sermon notes section. Otherwise, I'm going to read them right now in verse 13.

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So Paul writes this. He says, Be watchful. Be watchful. Stand firm in the faith.

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Act like men. Be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.

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So here Paul begins this final section with these five present tense imperatives.

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If people like application -rich sections of Scripture, texts of Scripture, this is the perfect one.

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In these two verses, it's all imperative. And what Paul is doing here is he's urging the

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Corinthians with these quick and memorable applications that essentially sum up a lot of the applications that he's already provided in the whole of the book of 1

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Corinthians. And where am

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I going here? There we are. So the first imperative that we're going to look at is this. Be watchful.

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Paul writes, Be watchful. And this command that Paul gives is essentially encapsulated in a single

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Greek word that's often used in the New Testament to ready believers for the second coming of Christ.

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So for instance, we see it in Matthew 25 and verse 13, where our Lord says, They are watch, or be watchful, the same word.

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Watch therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour. And in the context of his teaching on the resurrection in chapter 15,

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Paul might very well have had this in view, that the Christian should be always ready for the imminent return of Christ.

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We should be found alert and faithfully serving our Lord when he comes. So be watchful, be ready for Christ's return.

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But because if we look at this text and we see the flavor of the imperatives that Paul gives, what we see is that so many of these imperatives actually have to do with standing firm in the gospel.

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And so it's far more plausible that when Paul says, Be watchful, he actually has this in mind.

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He wants the Corinthian believers, and every believer by extension, to be watchful, this is the key, in order to protect the gospel.

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To protect and preserve the gospel, and to protect in this gospel.

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And so the same Greek word that Paul uses here is used elsewhere to denote staying awake or to be alert.

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And what Paul is saying is that every Christian, every Christian in this room, if you want to live a faithful life in Christ to the end, you must be watchful, you must stand at attention, you must be on guard, you must keep a careful lookout for anyone who would seek to undermine your faith in the person and the work of Jesus Christ.

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That's what Paul means by be watchful. And what I'm going to do as we study this, is

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I'm going to take us back to bits and pieces in the book of 1 Corinthians to see how he applies this.

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So if we remember back, even to earlier in this book, in the opening chapters, we remember that the

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Corinthians were really, they were happy to receive godless philosophers in their city.

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They were happy to hear false teachers. They were happy to hear so -called wise men.

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And that was if they possessed the requisite oratorical skill. We remember the

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Corinthians, they loved smooth words. They loved compelling speech. And so if someone had good oratorical skills, if it sounded good, and it looked wise, and the person had a growing following, the

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Corinthians might have been very tempted to align themselves with these teachers. Even if they contradicted

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Paul's teaching, or even if these teachers denied or altered certain aspects of the gospel.

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And so we would be right to say, if we look at the Corinthians, if you were to say that this church would be willing to entertain someone who would come in on a

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Sunday and just preach heresy, but the church would love it because it sounded nice, we would rightly say that that is crazy.

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That this is an insane inclination on the part of the

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Corinthians. And yet, even while we would think that this is crazy, we might be tempted even to look down our noses on such behavior, isn't it true that we see almost the exact same thing in modern

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Christian culture? That churches, many churches and many Christians, are prepared to hear teachers that would skew the

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Bible, that would fail to teach the Bible, that would teach something that's in complete contradiction to the

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Bible, because it sounds good, because it looks good, and because it draws a crowd. And I was thinking about this even as I've experienced the churches in the city of Edmonton.

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I don't know about you guys, but maybe it's one of my hobbies. I try to keep my finger on the pulse of different churches in the city, at least to the best of my ability.

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And so I always like to recommend if someone lived in North Edmonton or West Edmonton or something like that,

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I'd always like to recommend a good church if someone is looking for a good church in that part of the city. But I also like to be able to steer people away from bad churches.

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When people say, hey, I have been going to this church for the last three weeks, what do you think?

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I can say without Googling, oh, steer clear, my friend. Steer clear of that particular church.

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And so maybe this is one of my hobbies, but I like to look at churches around the city. I like to see their websites.

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I like to see their social media. I'll listen. I'll watch their sermons. And this is what

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I've seen in the past few years. And I know Nicole has watched me at times in our kitchen listening to some sermon and asking me, why do you even listen to that stuff?

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But this is what I've seen in the last couple of years in our city. With a few exceptions, with only a few exceptions, the churches in our city that are exploding with growth, they're not churches that simply have a different view of divine sovereignty.

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They're not simply churches that have a different view of baptism. They're churches that are exploding in our city, by and large, that are multiplying the fastest and planting new churches, are the ones that are either preaching a health -wealth gospel or a self -help gospel, which we know is really no gospel at all.

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And what I find so amazing and maybe disturbing about these churches is that almost all of them are well -funded.

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They have fully paid staff. They have charismatic speakers. They have great music, at least in terms of the instrumentation.

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They have nice facilities. They have fully funded media departments. They're on YouTube, they're on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, whatever else there is out there.

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And they're finding people who are unstable in their understanding of Scripture, who have not had their powers of discernment trained, and they're leading them by their purses into the abyss.

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I know there's brothers and sisters here that have seen this and can agree with this. And can't we see that, like the

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Corinthians, in many ways our modern culture, even our modern Christian culture, is just inclined to follow after things that sound good, that are pleasing to the eyes, that are easy to consume, and that we naturally tend to agree with.

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And that people that hear these things are liable, just as liable as the Corinthians, to be led astray.

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But I also think that even as we watch other churches, other

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Christians perhaps, that are holding on to bad philosophy, bad teaching, false words that would lead people astray,

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I'm reminded that even for us in this room, even while we think that we might never go the way of the health -wealth gospel, we might be far more inclined to go towards false teaching, or wrong teaching, or out -of -order teaching, because it aligned maybe with our political views, maybe our views of social issues, or economics.

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And I'm reminded of what one pastor said, I heard once, he said, there is not one sin that I am capable of committing five minutes after stepping out of this pulpit.

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And I wholeheartedly affirm, I wholeheartedly affirm that we cannot keep ourselves, that we depend on God's preserving grace, but we must recognize that God uses means.

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God uses means, and what that means is that we need to keep ourselves, as Paul would say, maybe not keep ourselves, but be watchful, sorry, of ourselves.

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And brothers and sisters, I want to ask you, even if we consider ourselves in this room, how are you susceptible, if you examine yourself, how are you susceptible to false teaching?

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How are you susceptible to being led astray by something that sounds good, that's something that appeals to the flesh, that's something that maybe you're inclined to agree with?

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One of the things that I've been thinking about just recently, and I never thought that I would see the day when

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Christians would consume more podcasts, more oratory, more verbiage from the host of Fear Factor, from Joe Rogan, never thought we'd see the day when

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Christians would be more zealous to hear Joe Rogan than they would be zealous to hear faithful expository preaching from the

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Bible. Even in all of his vulgarity, in all of his unbelief, because Christians agree with him on a couple of points, they buy everything that he says wholesale.

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Or perhaps maybe for some of you, I mean, I fear that many Christians today are moved more deeply by listening to Ben Shapiro annihilate a liberal somewhere out there at a rally than they are to when they read the gospel accounts and they read the crucifixion of Christ, the betrayal of Christ.

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Is that you? Are you more moved by pop culture, by unbelievers and by Jewish men and by people who deny

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Christ than you are even the truth of God from the word of God? And so, yes, we cannot keep ourselves.

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We're dependent on God's preserving grace, but we must recognize that God uses means, and it's means like this warning, brethren, be watchful.

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So we see Paul express this warning in Acts 20 and verse 29 to the

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Ephesian elders in Miletus. He said there, I know that after my departure, fierce wolves will come in among you.

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So they're coming from the outside in, not sparing the flock. And then he says, And from among your own selves, from inside the church, will arise men speaking twisted things to draw away the disciples after them.

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Therefore, be alert. That's that same word, be watchful. Remember that for three years,

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I did not cease night or day to admonish everyone with tears. And we see

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Peter use the same word in 1 Peter 5, 8. He says, be sober minded, be watchful.

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Why? What are the Christians to be watchful for? He says, your adversary, the devil is like a roaring lion ready to devour, seeking someone to devour.

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So sometimes that wolf, or sometimes that lion, comes in the form of a pastor or an elder.

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Other times it comes as a friend or a neighbor. Sometimes it comes as a politician. Sometimes it comes as a comedian.

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But brothers and sisters, know this for certain, that when they come, they aim to devour you.

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They aim to fleece you, even if it's a joke to them. I remember a story that a 19th century

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Presbyterian minister, Thomas DeWitt Talmadge, once told about a train collision, this tragic train collision that happened on the

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Hudson River Railroad. We've all heard of the miracle on the Hudson where Captain Sully landed his plane on the

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Hudson River. Well, this is the exact opposite of that. This became known as the slaughter on the

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Hudson River. And what had happened was, on board this train, as this train was barreling down the track, there was an intoxicated man on the train.

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And for a joke, he pulled the string on the air brakes and stopped the train right there on the tracks.

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And he had a laugh, and maybe other people had a laugh. It was fun and games. What the passengers didn't know was that he had stopped the train on the most dangerous possible location on the track.

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And as the train sat there on the track, another train called the Lightning Express, sounds like a fast train, caught up to it and violently plowed into the cars and its passengers.

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And DeWitt Talmadge, this Presbyterian minister, he writes this, speaking about those that would lead

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Christians astray. He says, It came down crushing its mangled victims and sent immortal souls instantly to God and to judgment.

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It was only a joke. He thought it would be so much fun to stop the train. And then commenting on this, he says,

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And so it is with these infidels, these false teachers, these godly men.

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They are chiefly anxious to stop the long train of the Bible and the long train of the churches and the long train of Christian influence, while coming down upon us are death and judgment and eternity.

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Coming a thousand miles a minute, coming with more force than all the avalanches that ever slipped from the

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Alps, coming with more strength than all the Lightning Express trains that ever whistled or shrieked or thundered across the continent.

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There are false teachers out there and you might think that you are perfectly secure because you are smarter than them and you are wiser than them.

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Yes, the Lord will sustain you, but still Paul's words to you are, Brothers and sisters, be watchful.

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There are men and women that would count it a joke to destroy your souls. The next thing that Paul writes in verse 13 is this, he says,

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Stand firm in the faith. Stand firm in the faith.

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If a Christian is to remain steadfast and faithful to Christ, we must not only engage in the negative aspects of putting off false ideas and false teachers, but we must put on and keep on the truth of the gospel.

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So to believe in Jesus Christ for salvation, as we know, is not a one -time event. It's not something that's once and done.

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We must, as Paul wrote to Titus, hold firm to the trustworthy word as taught.

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As Christ taught in John 15 .4, we must abide in Him. It's not a past act, but it's a present command.

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It's a present imperative. And this word that Paul uses for stand firm, if you're taking notes, comes from the

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Greek word stako, which likely informed our English word for steak.

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I'm not talking about a slab of meat, but I'm talking about a piece of wood that you would drive into the ground.

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You would drive it deep into the ground so that it would hold up a sign or mark a boundary of some kind.

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And here Paul means to exhort the Corinthians with this word stako, stand firm.

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What he means to exhort the Corinthians to is to remain in a continued state, to be immovable in the gospel.

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And just like we saw in our final section, as we'll see moving forward, Paul is essentially reinforcing something that he's already taught in this letter.

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It's almost a direct repetition of 1 Corinthians 15, verse 58. There he writes, therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain. Be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord. Now, it was only a few weeks ago that I preached on this text, so I'm not going to repeat myself, but what

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I will say is this, that here Paul reminds us that regardless of the forces that come against our faith, regardless of any hindering persuasion or any worldly wisdom that comes our way, we must never shift from looking to Christ as the solitary object of our hope.

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Children, there might come a day, and it might be at this moment now that you guys say, yes,

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I believe in Jesus. I believe that God made me, that He made me for His glory, that I've sinned against Him, that He sent

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His Son, Jesus, to die on the cross for my sins. You might be at that place today, but there might be a time in two years or five years or ten years when someone comes and they say, but what about this, or what about that, or you fool, or no one will be your friends, or whatever the case might be.

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There might come a day when people will come at you and try to hinder you with worldly wisdom, and we must never shift from Christ.

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We must never shift from Him. He is the steadfast anchor of our souls. Our faith in Jesus Christ, kids, listen to this.

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Noah, listen to this, my boy. Our faith in Jesus Christ is not based on speculation.

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It's not based on old wives' tales. It's not folklore. It's not like Greek mythology.

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Our faith is not like what the Mormons believe. The Mormons believe and teach that there was a whole society of people called

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Nephites that got in a boat, they left Israel, they got in a boat, they traveled to North America, they established a whole society there, and then there they welcomed the resurrected

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Christ. The only problem with that is that there is no archaeological evidence.

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It's not grounded at all in any reality, in any human history. But children, you guys might not know this, but the

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Bible, everything that we read about in the Word of God, Jesus Christ, to believe in Him, it's not only reasonable, but it's firmly founded in truth.

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We can go back, and we can look at the archaeology. We can go back into history.

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We can look at the kings. Kids, I don't know if you knew this, but we can go back into history, and we can read

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Tacitus, and Pliny the Lesser, and Josephus, and we can read about Jesus outside of the

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Bible even. We have a historically accurate, truthful, and verifiable faith.

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We have an empty tomb. We have evidence for the resurrection. Think about this.

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This Bible, this book that we have, is the best preserved, most historically reliable book in the history of the world.

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If you don't believe me, look it up. See how many copies of Homer's Iliad we have, and then see how many copies of the

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New Testament Scriptures that we have. Over 5 ,000 manuscripts of the

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New Testament alone. And then within the

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Bible, we have all of the eyewitness accounts. The eyewitness accounts of Christ's life and ministry.

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The eyewitness accounts of Christ's death. The eyewitness accounts of Christ's resurrection. We have people that we can read.

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Words that we can read. Words that we can believe. And then what's more, we have the very Spirit of God who has ministered the

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Gospel of God to our hearts with power. So we can read in passages like 1

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John 1 and verse 1, where he says, that which was from the beginning. Who? Who is he talking about?

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He's talking about Jesus. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched in our hands concerning the word of life.

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What he's trying to say is, Jesus is real. Christ is real. Everything that we've said in these Gospel accounts that you've heard is real.

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We saw Him. We heard Him. We looked at Him. We touched Him. He says, the life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to you and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the

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Father and was made manifest to us. In 2 Peter, he writes,

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For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. We were eyewitnesses of His majesty. Brothers, I want you to know this.

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Sisters, I want you to know this, that if you have repented of your sin and if you have placed your faith in Christ, you trust

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Him with all your might, if you truly believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and that He died on the cross for your sins and that He rose again and that He will one day come for all of us, for all of us who have loved

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His appearing. Brothers and sisters, we need to rejoice. Rejoice, my beloved friends.

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You are saved. If that is true in your life, you are saved fully, freely, and forever.

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Saved from the wrath of God. Saved to enjoy the fellowship of God. Saved to worship

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God. Just as I prayed earlier, what a privilege that God would make us to worship

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Him and that even when He didn't, He redeemed us that we might worship

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Him. If you are in Christ, you have peace with God.

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Your condemnation is gone forever. You have been redeemed of the most expensive ransom that has ever been paid.

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Christ paid that great debt and has given you the most costly gift that could ever be bought.

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Justification before a holy God. Sanctification, growth in holiness, and eternal life and glory with Christ.

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And to go back to what Paul says, brothers and sisters, we must stand firm in this gospel.

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Kids, imagine for a moment that you were in some kind of peril. Maybe you're on a train track and there's a train raging towards you.

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And there's a wall on your right and there's a wall on your left and the ceiling is so far above you, you can't escape.

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And as this train comes barreling towards you, some man out of the darkness in the tunnel above comes out, he grabs your hand and pulls you up onto a platform so that you are safe from the peril of this rushing train.

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Who amongst you, kids, would jump off that platform back onto the tracks in front of the train?

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You'd be foolish to do that. And that's what Paul is saying here. If Christ has saved you, if he has revealed the gospel to your heart in glory, then stand firm on that gospel.

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Don't be saved from the poison that you were drinking with an antidote and then go back to the poison. But stand firm in Christ.

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And one of the best ways that we can stand firm in Christ is to continue to preach the gospel to ourselves and to be students of the gospel.

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To be students of the gospel every day. I talked about this last week, but I'll just say it again briefly. We need to rehearse the gospel.

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We need to know it. And when we know the gospel and when we've rehearsed it, we're prepared to deal with the counterfeits when they come.

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There was a time when I, it was a pretty neat job when I reflect back on it, when I would get,

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I worked for the economic crime section. It was when I was a student just before getting into my work.

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And my task was to examine counterfeit money. And so they would bring from the banks and from investigations just envelopes and envelopes and envelopes and envelopes full of cash.

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Usually $20 bills. And myself and my colleagues would just sit at the table and we would determine this is counterfeit.

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This is real. This is counterfeit. This is real. And the way that you get to become an expert at detecting counterfeit money is not by knowing every way that a person could counterfeit money.

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It's not by knowing this trick and that trick and what John in North Edmonton does and what

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Tony does and LeDuc does. But the best way to become an expert in detecting counterfeit to standing firm and to knowing what is true is to study the original.

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It's to study that which is true. And then when you know every single detail about a denomination of currency that is true that must be present, it takes,

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I remember working with a very experienced police officer and he said, this is counterfeit money. And I said, no it's not.

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I can tell you it's not. And he wouldn't take my word for it. Well, I think it was maybe a month later,

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I was sitting at the desk and that same $20 bill came across the desk. I knew exactly where it was because I was there when it was seized.

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And I looked at it for one second. It's real. How do you get to the point where you can stand firm in the gospel, when you can deal with counterfeits, when you can deal with false teaching, you need to know the original.

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You need to study the original. You need to abide in the original. And so we need to stand firm in the gospel.

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And people are going to call you, like I said, children and adults, people are going to call you foolish. Your friends might mock you.

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They might disown you. The world might come against you. Satan will buffet you. But Paul reminds us of this at the opening in 1

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Corinthians 1, in verse 18. He says, For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing.

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We should never be surprised when the perishing find the gospel foolish. The word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved.

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To us who are safe in right relationship with God, who are secure in Christ, to us who are being saved, it is the power of God.

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It's the power of God for salvation. It is the power of God for salvation for all of Christ's elect.

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And so stand firm in God's unchanging, His immutable grace in Christ.

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Stand firm. So we have be watchful. We have stand firm. The next thing that Paul says is this.

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Paul writes these words. He says, Act like men. Act like men.

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I don't know about you, but this, just at first glance, seems like it's a bit out of place in this whole mix, doesn't it?

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Be watchful. Stand firm. Act like men. Does this apply to men only?

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Does this apply to men and women together? What we understand as we look at the word is it actually makes perfect sense.

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This is not a misplaced word on Paul's part. And we see this.

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If you're going to live in a Christian way that is both watchful and immovable, watchful and immovable, especially in the face of endless doctrinal and behavioral aberrations around you, you're going to need courage.

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To persevere as a Christian, you must be both poor in spirit, always poor in spirit, always looking to God, and you must also be resolved in heart, dead set on the destination.

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So if you lived in Corinth, if we were to travel back, kids, come with me in my time machine, and we were to travel back to first century

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Corinth, this is what we would see. The Christians would be there amongst all of the other

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Corinthians, and every evening as the sun would go down, the Corinthians would watch as thousands, or at least a thousand, priestesses, really temple prostitutes, would come down from the

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Temple of Aphrodite on the Acropolis, the city above Corinth, the high city, they would call it, and offer their illicit services to the citizens and sailors in the city below.

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And like the world that we live in, Corinth was morally and spiritually bankrupt. There was opposition all around.

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Not only would they experience continuous corrupting influences, continuous temptations from outside and from within, but it was very possible that if you were a

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Christian, and you held to a Christian sexual ethic, if you held to the book that Paul just wrote to you, to your church, you just read it on Sunday, and then you're talking to your unbelieving, your

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Corinthian neighbors on Monday, it's very possible that you would look either like a Puritan or a fool.

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You'd be rejected wholesale. And so Paul recognizes this, that if the

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Corinthians are going to read this letter, if us as Christians were going to read this letter, and then we're going to apply it, we're going to need to be told this, act like men, as if to say, be courageous.

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You need to be prepared to live at odds with the people around you. You need to be resilient.

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You need to be resolved. You need to have courage. A Christian has courage.

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And if you don't believe me, look at Revelation, in the book of Revelation at the very end, and tell me where the cowards go.

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The Christian needs to have courage. But it's also the case that Paul has something else in mind.

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Yes, the Christian needs to have courage in the face of opposition. But I find it interesting,

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Paul could have used, I believe if you read the NIV, it translates it that way, courage instead of act like men.

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Maybe that's the gender neutral translation. Paul could have used a different word for courage, like the

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Greek word thoreo that he uses in 2 Corinthians 5 -6, or in Philippians, he uses the

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Greek word pericia. But here what Paul does is he uses a Greek word that he uses only once in the whole

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Bible. And it's this word andridzomai. And it literally means behave like a man.

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Or if we were to say it in maybe good old Bible language, play the man.

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Be a man. And based on what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 11 -14, remember we talked about some of those uncomfortable passages about women remaining silent and about husbands leading their wives.

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If we remember 1 Corinthians 11 -3, it says, but I want you to understand that the head of every man is

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Christ. The head of every man is Christ. We can agree with that. The head of a wife is her husband.

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A little bit more controversial, but we must believe that. And the head of Christ is God. So here

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Paul calls for the men of the church. Men, I'm talking to you. This is for you. Paul calls the men of the church to be men.

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Boys, in the back corner. Paul calls you. God commands you.

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Act like men. Be men. Play the man.

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Lead the church. Love your wives. Love your families. Lead your families.

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Single men. Don't act like boys. Act like men.

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This is what the Corinthian church needed. And this is what the modern church desperately needs.

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The modern church doesn't just need for men to exist. We don't just need for men to fill pews on Sundays.

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We need men who belong to the church and who act like men. Who play the man.

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And notice that Paul doesn't say, for instance, just be yourself. Because we know that the sinful inclination of every man is to either be a little boy or to be a domineering man.

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But what God means here, inspired, the inspired author, Apostle Paul, what he means here is to be like the men that you are called to be in scripture.

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Lead and love in a principled, in a loving, in a courageous way. And we see what happens, don't we?

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We see the fallout when this doesn't happen. We see it in the Bible and we see it in the world. Man, we were talking about this yesterday in our men's group.

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The life of Solomon. If we were to turn to 1 Kings chapter 1, sorry, chapter 11 and verse 1, this is what it says.

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This is what it looks like when men don't lead. Now King Solomon loved many foreign women along with the daughters of Pharaoh, Moabite, Ammonite, Edomite, Sidonian, and Hittite women from the nations concerning which the

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Lord had said to the people of Israel, you shall not enter into marriage with them. Already we see a failure.

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Neither shall they with you for surely they will turn your heart after their gods.

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Solomon clung to these in love. The exact opposite. He had 700 wives who were princesses and 300 concubines and his wives turned away his heart.

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For when Solomon was old and his wives turned away his heart after other gods and his heart was not wholly true to the

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Lord, his God, as was the heart of David, his father. For Solomon went after and in this list of gods,

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Ashtoreth, Milcom, he went after Molech, this whole host of other evil gods.

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Why? Because he was a man and he did not act like a man. He did not play a man. But we also see this in the world, don't we?

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If you read studies, it doesn't matter who has produced the study, but read any study on a home where the man is absent.

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The boys are more likely to become criminals. The girls are more likely to get pregnant in their teens.

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They experience more drug addiction, more poverty, more homelessness. We need men.

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We need men in the world and we need men in the church.

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And we need men in the church to act like men, to play the man. That's one of the means, again, that God has used for providing and for protecting in the home and in the church.

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And young men in the back, I prepared something especially for you two boys.

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The world is waging war against manhood. The world would have you to be anything but a biblical man.

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But do not concern yourself with what the world has to say to you about being a man.

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Where do we learn how to be a man? We learn how to be a man in the Bible. We learn how to be a man from the pages of Scripture.

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Because boys, when there's a lack of men and when there's boys that aren't acting like men or men that aren't acting like men, disorder will follow.

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Disorder will follow. And so one of the remedies, I'm going to speed this up a little bit, one of the remedies for all of this is for men to act like men.

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And even, you know what, one of the remedies of false teaching, I don't know if you know this, but one of the remedies of false teaching is for men to play the man.

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And we see this actually in verse 15. This is how I'm going to cover that section. Paul writes,

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Now I urge you, brothers, you know that the household of Stephanas, the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints.

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It's very likely that Stephanas was an elder in this church. One of the first converts in the church and now an elder in the church.

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He says, Be subject to such as these and to every fellow worker and laborer.

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I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaicus. They probably were the ones that delivered the letters back and forth between Paul and Corinth.

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He says, Because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirits as well as yours.

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Give recognition to such people. This is how the church protects itself against false teaching, is you have men with shepherd's hearts who love the church and who lead the church, who teach the church, who feed the church, who, like in Jeremiah 3, feed the people of God with knowledge and understanding.

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Shepherds after God's own heart. Paul says next, Be strong.

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This is very closely related to the last passage, so I'm not going to spend a long time, but what we see here is you have,

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Be courageous, be strong. If we turn that around, can we think of any other text in scripture where the people of God have been told,

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Be strong and courageous. Joshua. As the people of Israel enter into the promised land, they're on their way to the promised land.

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They're on their way to claiming the territory. What does God say? Be strong and courageous.

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And why? It's because they were in a war. They were going to encounter opposition. And increasingly, for us as Christians in the church, there is going to be opposition.

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There's going to be difficulty. But be strong, and especially be strong in the

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Lord. Not in the strength of your own might, but in the power of God. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal.

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Prayer, the preaching of the gospel, the reading of God's word, holiness of life.

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Increasingly, we need to be strong and strong in the Lord. And you see a little, just a little glimpse of why that is.

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We don't have a lot of content in Acts 18. Paul says, the churches of Asia send you greetings.

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Aquila and Prisca, it's a husband and wife who helped to establish the church in Corinth. We can read about that in Acts 18 and also in Romans.

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Together with the church in their house, the church in their house, send you hearty greetings in the

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Lord. Why did the church have to meet in its house? Because the church was afforded no legal protection.

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There were no privileges for the church. That's why we give thanks that we can meet in this building on a Sunday. It's because churches, for the first 200 plus years of Christianity, could not meet in their own building.

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They could not meet in a public space. They had to meet in a home. And so what we see actually is if we look at the archaeology of the early church, there were many churches that were actually modified, made bigger, to fit all of the believers in.

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So you can look at that. Again, children, more archaeology that attests to scripture. And what this shows us is that we shouldn't always expect that the world is going to be for us.

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We've enjoyed so many privileges over the last hundred plus years with the recognition and the acceptance of the wider culture.

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But that's not always going to be the case, especially when you conform yourself to the word of God. So be strong.

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And then lastly, I'll make this quick. Paul says, do everything in love.

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Verse 13, do everything in love. And again, we see him reinforcing 1

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Corinthians 13, this chapter on love. We won't look at that in detail, but love defined in 1

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Corinthians 13. And what we see is this. You have these first four imperatives that stand alone, or stand together, sorry, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

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And then this fifth imperative, he says this, let all that you do be done in love.

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So love is to permeate all of these things. In Christ, love is our chief ambition.

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It's our chief aim. It's our highest commandment. It's to pursue unity, to pursue harmony in love, as Paul dealt with already in the letter.

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It's to love people with patience and with kindness and all of the good things that we see in chapter 13.

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And we see a little bit of that love in the last part of this letter. Paul says that the church that met in their house, they send you hearty greetings in the

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Lord. They loved you. Hearty greetings. All the brothers send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss.

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And then in verse 23, Paul says, the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus.

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We see two kinds of love here. We see love for man. The love within the church.

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And then in verse 22, if anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.

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God calls us. He commands his church in all of these things. As we obey all of these commands, as we read every book in the scripture, as we study the doctrine of God, we're to do it in love.

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I'll finish up with this little story. Charles Spurgeon once told a story about going into, and I don't mean to offend our

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Germans here, but going into a room that was heated by a German stove. And he says, if I go to heaven, that is all

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I care for. And then he asked his congregation, he said, why are you like a German stove that I found in the room of a hotel the other day?

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A kind of stove that required all the wood they could bring up merely to warm itself.

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And then all the heat went up the chimney. We sat around the German stove.

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We made it warm, but scarce a particle of heat came forth from it to us.

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Too many need all the religion they can get to cheer their own hearts. Their poor families and neighbors sit shivering in the cold of ungodliness.

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Be like those, Christian, be like those well -constructed stoves of your own house which send out all the heat into the room.

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Radiate the pure love of Christ. Send out the heat of piety into your house and let all the neighbors participate in its blessing.

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I love to read. I love to study. And I know there's lots in this room who like to do the same.

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But if you listen to every sermon that you listen to and you read every book and you study every text and you exegete every passage and you do it just to heat yourself and not to radiate the pure and the lovely love of Christ, then you're getting it wrong.

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You've forgotten your purpose. You've forgotten why the Lord has made you and what he's commanded you to do.

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Thomas Watson says, Let us be like Christ in mildness and sweetness.

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Let's pray for our enemies and conquer them by love. David's kindness melted

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Saul's heart. A frozen heart will be thawed with the fire of love. Speaking to love of man, love of neighbor, and then of love of God, Thomas Watson said,

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Christ suffered more for his spouse than ever. And he has been made man for a wife.

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He suffered poverty and ignominy. He who crowned the heavens with stars was himself crowned with thorns.

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He was called companion of sinners so that we might be made companions of angels.

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He was regardless of his life. He leaped, picture this, he leaped into the city, sorry, the sea of his father's wrath to save his spouse from drowning.

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And what is our response to that kind of love? But it's to love him in return.

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Paul says, if anyone does not have love for Christ, let him be accursed. It is characteristic of the

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Christian to love neighbor, yes, and to love the Lord Jesus Christ.

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So, brothers and sisters, as I look at this letter, the title of this series was called to be saints.

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We've been called to be holy. So as we take this text, we're going to move on, but let's not forget the lessons we've learned here.

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And as we remember those lessons, let's remember these words from Paul, be watchful, stand firm, act like men, be strong, let love rule.