Corinthian Compromise (Part 1)

No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,

Dr. Mike Abendroth. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the

Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.

I live a fairly sequestered life. I don't get out very often. When I was in corporate

America, I was always around unbelievers. And now I'm out occasionally, but for the most part,

I just live a quiet life and I'm around Christians. Last week, we took a walk to the farm stand with the children.

Kim and Luke were gone, but my three girls and a couple of neighborhood kids. And we walked up to the farm stand and outside of the farm stand, they had a hundred, maybe two hundred pumpkins.

And these pumpkins were just setting out kind of like the old leftover ones and it was right by the children's playground area.

And so we sat outside, beautiful fall day foliage, red, yellows.

And I said to the kids, oh, look at these pumpkins. And they ran over to play with them. And one of them said, let's spell something.

I can't remember what they said, you know, let's spell. I don't know what the word was.

And I said, no, let's spell something else. How about repent? Why don't you spell repent?

And they just looked over at me and they said, yeah, that's a great idea. And so they started making the pumpkins spell the words repent.

And they got to about the end of repent. And I walked inside to get something to eat and come back outside.

And a lady came over to the kids and said, now you stop playing with those pumpkins.

You don't play with those unless you buy them. And I walked back out and the kids told me and I said, well, did you stop?

Because if you stop, finish the, you know, you just can't have repent out there. Does she work for the farm stand?

No. Okay, dad's here. Finish the job. And they said, we already finished the tea. Repent. So I took a good picture of it.

And the lady was over there talking to her friend, you know, these crazy evangelicals.

I just said to the girls, you know, it's just because she needs to repent and she doesn't want to be reminded. And I was reminded myself of the world's influence upon Christians.

How the world tries to conform us to do what it wants, how it wants, when it wants.

It's like it's trying to take Christianity and push it over to the side and here's where you can go and no further kind of jello mold they try to put us in.

And if we're not careful, the world will influence us negatively. So we don't stand up for the truth.

We don't stand for Christ Jesus so that we compromise. And that's exactly what happened to the church of Corinth.

God causes the church of Corinth to exist. And then before you know it, the world is influencing

Corinth to not be as sharp for the gospel, to not have as many sharp corners of the gospel.

If you'll turn your Bibles to Acts chapter 18, I want to give you a little bit background on first Corinthians before we dive into the passage,

Corinth is in Greece. There were about 600 ,000 people there at the time.

It was an important city, a city of commerce, and it was a wicked city, not

New England wicked good city, but it was wicked, terribly wicked.

It was awful. It was like Las Vegas and it was a port city and there were lots of sailors there and it had a reputation of unspeakable wickedness, sinfulness.

It was strategically located in the crossroads, several sea routes were right there. And it had an area where you could go from one sea to another by two different routes.

One route was sail 250 miles around the Cape. And they would tell you, by the way, if you were a sailor before you made that trip, make sure your will is up to date.

Or you could put your boats on rollers and roll them across the land four miles to get to the other side.

And by the way, I'm super excited in one month from today, I'll be at Corinth teaching the book of first Corinthians.

And I get to see that Isthmus and that canal with my own very eyes.

There would be games like the Isthmian Games, the Olympic kind of games there for that region.

And along with this situation, we've got false idols everywhere.

Gods and goddesses galore, Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love.

And just think, regularly 1 ,000 priestesses would descend upon the city for ministry.

How do you commune with the god of Aphrodite? Well, by sleeping with one of the 1 ,000 prostitutes.

Wicked things going on there, whirliness everywhere. There was a god Melchertes there, the deity of navigation.

The temple of Apollo was there. They worshipped Poseidon, Athena, Hera, Hermes, and the list goes on and on.

And look what happens in Acts chapter 18. Acts chapter 18, Paul is sent there by God.

18 .1, after this, Paul left Athens and went to Corinth. Wasn't too far, by the way, and he found a

Jew named Aquila, a native of Pontus, recently come from Italy with his wife

Priscilla, because Claudius had commanded all the Jews to leave Rome. And he went to see them, and because he was of the same trade, he stayed with them and worked, for they were tent makers by trade.

And he reasoned in the synagogue every Sabbath and tried to persuade Jews and Greeks. When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with the word, testifying to the

Jews that the Christ was Jesus. And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them,

Your blood be on your own heads. I am innocent. From now on, I will go to the Gentiles.

And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius, justice, a worshipper of God.

His house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord together with his entire household, and many of the

Corinthians, hearing Paul, believed and were baptized. And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision,

Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent. It was dangerous for Paul there.

Verse 10, For I am with you and no one will attack you to harm you. For I have many in this city who are my people.

Let me read that last part again in verse 10. For I have many in this city who are my people.

Now, remember Corinth, wicked city, corrupt city, polluted city, sin city.

It's the Las Vegas of Greece. And can you may imagine in the eternal councils of God, God says,

I'm going to have a church at Corinth. How are they going to come to faith, come up with faith by themselves, figured out on their own, see the stars and kind of construct through astronomy?

Oh, there must be a Jesus. No, the way God does it is he sends messengers and he sent messengers like Paul to go to Corinth because are you ready for the theology?

There were unregenerate elect people there. There were people who were not born again, but God had chosen.

Didn't you see it in verse 10? For I have many people there. My job is to send you to give them the good news of Christ crucified and raised from the dead, and then they will believe.

How do you start a church someplace? Well, God sends his people.

Problem is without the Lord, they're not going to be willing like you to flip over to John chapter six.

He said, where are we going this morning? We'll get there. John six. Oh, you know what? Let's do

John chapter five. John chapter five, verse 39.

It'll all make sense in a moment. John chapter five, verse 39.

We hear our savior Jesus say, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life and it is they that bear witness about me.

So Jesus is talking to the leaders and you can either take this as an imperative, search the scriptures, or most likely he says to them, which they would obviously be doing.

You search the scriptures. That's your job. You're good at it. You know the old Testament. You do search the scriptures, except we've got a problem.

Verse 40, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

Literally, you will not to will. You desire not to desire.

Show me every unbeliever who's been affected by Adam's fall, which is every person, and I'll show you someone left on their own.

They will refuse to come to Christ Jesus. They will not to will. They refuse.

They desire not to desire. So how can anyone become a

Christian if their desire is for them not to desire? If their will is, I don't want that.

John chapter three, Jesus had just said, people love darkness. They love wickedness.

And they love it with a sport -like attitude, with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength.

One of the texts in the Old Testament says that people love wickedness like a sport. So how do you take people at Corinth who love wickedness, who love darkness, who have satanic influences there, and Paul goes to plant a church.

They refuse to come. They won't come. They refuse to come. They will not.

Well, the great news is, look at chapter six. There's somebody who plants a church there, and it's not really

Paul. Jesus is going to do his work there as his name is proclaimed through Paul, the messenger.

Listen to what Jesus says in John chapter six. This is the hope we have for God planting churches in pagan places, or any place.

For I have come down from heaven, John 6, 38, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.

For this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks on the son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

So the Jews grumbled about him because he said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. They said, is not this

Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, I have come down from heaven?

Jesus answered them, do not grumble among yourselves, for no one can come to me unless the father who sent me draws him.

Draw is a word that if you've got a well, and there's water at the bottom of the well, and here's your bucket, you put the bucket down, scoop up the bucket full of water, and then what do you do?

You drag up the water. You draw water from the well. There's an active force, there's a passive force, and the active force is acting on the passive force, dragging up, drawing up the water.

Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up on the last day. How do you start a church in Corinth?

Just hope it happens? Well, in the eternal arrangement of God, God had chosen Corinth to be a beautiful outpost for the truth, and now we go to 1

Corinthians chapter 1 verse 2, and it seems to make much more sense now when I realize that the church of Corinth was called by God.

The church of Corinth was called by God. What explains the church at Corinth? The absolute, sovereign, distinguishing, free grace of God.

And that's very, very important, because I don't want to just jump into chapter 4 without saying this, that when

God grants his sovereign, free, distinguishing grace, our response should be obedience, joy, thankfulness.

We just sang this song. It's a song I used to sing to my kids every night when I'd tuck them in. They were two months old, one day old, five months old, two years old,

I'd rub their back and I'd say, Jesus paid it all, all to him I what? Owe.

So see, this is important for us because the Christian life is, what do I do today? The Christian life is, who am

I in Christ today, then let's figure out what I do in light of that. You say, well,

I really want to be a better husband today, what should I do to be a better husband today? I'll pick up my socks,

I'll do this, I'll do the honey -do list, I'll do all these other things, I'll do those. I'm not saying just lay back and let

God, I'm saying that you remember who you are in Christ and what he's done for you and then you get your to -do list going.

First Corinthians chapter 1 verse 2, to the church of God that is in Corinth, that wicked, wicked pagan place.

To those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called by God to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our

Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. God, by his free mercy, saved these

Corinthians and they're letting the world seep in and now Paul says, let's make sure we address this biblically so we don't fall prey to what the world does, specifically chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4, disunity.

So let's go up to our passage today, 1 Corinthians chapter 4 verses 14 through 21. I probably should slow down a little bit because going seven to eight verses per week,

I'm fairly dizzy. I feel like I've been on a tilt -a -whirl or some kind of ride down at Six Flags because we usually do the half verse at a time, half a word, you know, we really progress, we got a half a word in today.

Paul addresses disunity in chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 and today, Lord willing, we'll finish that topic before we get to the next issue in chapter 5 next

Sunday. I'm going to read verses 14 through 21 in the English Standard Version, chapter 4, and I want you to see if you can find the four key words that define this paragraph, this pericope we would use in theology.

Fourteen through 21, there are four words that dominate that tell us what the key is for this passage.

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.

For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

I urge you then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you

Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach them everywhere in every church.

Some are arrogant as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon if the

Lord wills. And I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power.

For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness?

What are the four key English words there that define all of this? What four words shout out, that's the sermon title, that's the key.

This is what the Corinthians are supposed to do and what lesson can we learn from the Corinthians so that we might ask the question, should we follow this instruction?

What are the four key words? It's pretty quiet out there. Let me tell you the four key words found in verse 16, be imitators of me.

That's going to summarize our entire sermon. Imitate Paul and his lowliness in the world.

Don't imitate what the world does. Remember, Paul was not running after the world's approval.

Paul was not saying, you know, I want to fit in and I want to be liked by the world no matter what. He realized that there was a cost to following Christ Jesus.

So what we'll do this morning is we'll look at these verses and then I'll give you several ramifications of this text so that you too can follow

Paul like the church of Corinth. Basically, the outline breaks down into encouragement and then warning.

He encourages the church of Corinth, then he warns them. Let's go to the encouragement first found in verse 14. Then at the end of the passage,

I'll give you some practical application. I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.

Remember the last set of verses? Remember the biting, striking, ironic sarcasm?

He was really after them in the prior verses. And now it's a gentler touch. It's a softer approach.

It's kinder. He's going to shame them later, but right now he said,

I don't want to shame you. I'm not, I'm going to write the, I do not write these things referring back to the prior few verses to shame you.

I want to admonish you. Now, the word admonish just means to put it into your mind, to get you to think right, to have you process this mentally.

I just want to put these things in your mind. My beloved children, I want to warn you. And then it's very tender.

This is language of a father. You see it in verse 15, softness and warmness.

For though you have countless guides in Christ and all kinds of teachers, all kinds of tutors, all kinds of people that have taught you certain things, you do not have many fathers.

For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Paul says with hyperbole, you've had 10 ,000 teachers of the

Bible, but who's the one that first brought you the gospel? And Paul is very careful not to say,

I saved you, but you got saved what, how? Through the gospel. He didn't say,

I made you alive. I made you born again, but I brought the gospel to you. I've even said to people at this church, somebody was being, it's probably five years ago, being very factious.

And I said to the person, you know, I love you. Why do you, are you making this the point of contention in the local church?

Don't you want to help the ministry here? Didn't God use me to preach the gospel to you and then you got saved.

And then now you're trying to undermine the work that I'm trying to do. Don't, don't do that. Doesn't make sense.

And Paul says, I was, I was there for 18 months and now I move away. You've had other teachers, but you've only got one father who really loves you.

And now dad is going to tell you in love, you've got to think properly about the world influencing you.

Maybe I could put it this way, ever with your kids or maybe you do it as well. You go back through and you say, this was my kindergarten teacher.

This is my first grade teacher. I always remember my fifth grade teacher. He was Mr. Sanfilippo and I would love to meet

Mr. Sanfilippo today. He was my all time favorite teacher. He just kind of go through your life and you say,

I remember that Sunday school teacher and this Sunday school teacher. And I remember all of these different people that have taught me things in my life.

But you know, there's only one father and Mr. Sanfilippo could tell me one thing and I might just even listen to him today.

But if my father were alive and he said, son, your life is going off the edge of a cliff and I want to just sit down and talk with you to try to tell you as a father who loves his son.

Listen. And that's the tenor. That's the tone here that Paul is using. What's it say?

You have many fathers. You do not have many fathers for in Christ Jesus. I became your father through the gospel doesn't even describe the gospel because they know what the gospel is.

He's taught them. You might have a tutor that berates you, but I'm a father who loves you.

And you owe me your ear. And then what does he say? I urge you.

I come alongside of you right where we get the word for the Holy Spirit. I parakaleo you then be imitators of me.

All right. Let's ask this question. How many people here do the exact job that their father did are?

Yeah. Let's just use men because lots of mothers maybe are housewives. So let's use men. And if you're a man here today and you do exactly the job that your father did, raise your hand.

Hardly anybody in this culture. You did what your father did.

If I asked the question 2000 years ago, maybe two people wouldn't raise their hand.

I asked a question here. Two people only raise their hand. My father worked for the phone company and I worked for the phone company for a couple years until I realized, you know, they know my dad's the boss's boss's boss and I have to do all kinds of extra things.

So when I climb a telephone pole, it was, you think you've got to, you know, your dad's a big shot in the phone company.

Climb that telephone pole instead of go up and ring the bell. You climb all the way up over the bell and then kiss the top of the pole,

Avondroth. I said, why father follow my father's footsteps? Sons were expected to carry on the heritage of the job, resources involved, tools involved, knowledge involved.

So Paul says, I'm your father. The gospel is preached through me. I'm your father. And so act like my son.

Act like my son. And if you act like my son, you're not going to be running around saying, we follow Paul. We follow a policy.

We follow Cephas. Oh, we follow Jesus. You're not going to be running around saying what the world says in a leader is right.

Strength, power, Marlboro man, decisiveness. This has nothing to do with it because Paul says, you're called people.

You're rescued by the gospel. So live in light of who you are. Like father, like son.

I'm your father. I don't go hankering after the world's approval. I'm not drooling after the world's approval.

So you're my son in the faith, Corinth. Why would you? It's wise. He spanks them in verses eight through 13.

And now he brings them in. It's almost like when a dad has to spank a son or a daughter and there's the time of firm discipline.

And then afterwards that there's that time of tender application and talking. Paul says,

I'm a fool for Christ. And people think I'm weak and people think I'm dishonored. And you should act the same way,

Corinth, yet you don't want to be a fool for Christ. You want to use Christianity as a springboard to be wealthy, healthy, and wise.

Have the world love you. Paul says, of course, I want you to be Christ -like.

He goes on to say that in chapter 11, verse one. Let me just read that. He's not saying do everything

Paul does, including sin. But in the context of this father -son thing, 11 .1

says, be therefore imitators of me as I am of Christ. He's after Christ -likeness, yes.

But Paul can't say everything in a letter. So he's going to send someone who acts like a son to Paul.

Like father, like son. I can't go, Paul says, but I can send you one that will act like my son in the faith and not run around after the world's applause.

Who is that son? There it is in verse 17. That is why I sent you Timothy. No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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