Being a Good Example

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I invite you to remain standing as we open the Word together.
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I invite you to remain standing and turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 4 and verses 14 to 21.
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The title of today's message is simply, Being a Good Example.
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This could also be called a Primer on Discipleship.
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And here is our passage, beginning at verse 14.
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I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.
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For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers.
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For I became your Father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
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I urge you then, be imitators of me.
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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.
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Some are arrogant as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon if the Lord wills.
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And I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power.
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For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power.
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What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness? Father, I thank you for your word.
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I pray now that as you give us this time to study together, I want to ask first and foremost that you would keep me from error.
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As Lord, I am a fallible man incapable of preaching error, and I don't want to do that.
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I pray, Lord, that you would protect me from that and protect your people for the sake of their hearts and their ears and for the sake of my conscience and for the sake of your great name.
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Father, I pray that as we study together today, that your Holy Spirit would take over and that he would instruct hearts and that ultimately, Lord, we will learn what you would have us to know here from your word.
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In Jesus' name, amen.
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Oftentimes, I like to begin a sermon with a question.
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Sort of sets the readers or the hearers, rather, mind on what we're going to be talking about.
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And today, I'd like to ask you a question, and I don't want you to answer verbally or with a raising of hands or even with the nodding of the head.
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But I want you to answer this question in your heart.
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Do you have a person or people in your life who are Christian believers whom you personally look up to in your Christian walk? I'll ask it again.
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Do you have people in your life who are believers whom you personally look up to in your Christian walk? Well, during today's message, if the answer is yes, and I would hope that it would be yes, during today's message, I want you to think about that person or persons, and I want you to think about how they have influenced you, how they have personally discipled you, and how they continue to encourage you toward Christlikeness.
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Because throughout the message today, we're going to talk about how important these people are, and also how important it is for us to be that to others.
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Before we get into our exposition, I want to preface this by giving a little bit of a caution.
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I do believe that today's passage could be easily misunderstood, and I think it perhaps has been.
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In fact, there are people who take issue with the apostle Paul, and this is one of the passages that they use to attack him.
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I don't know if that's a surprise to you.
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Did you know that there are whole groups of people who take issue with Paul as an apostle? He wasn't one of Jesus' original 12 apostles.
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He wasn't even the one who was chosen by the disciples after Judas' betrayal and his death when they chose another man, Matthias.
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He wasn't that one.
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He defines himself, he identifies himself as the apostle born out of season, and we know what he means by that.
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He was the one who saw Jesus on the road to Damascus.
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He was the one who was risen up to be the apostle to the Gentiles.
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He's certainly unique among the apostles, and yet he still identifies himself as an apostle of Christ.
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We call him the apostle Paul, and there are people who take issue with him.
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In fact, I remember very candidly, years ago, I was preaching from the book of Romans, and a lady who didn't like necessarily what I was saying said, well, that's Paul, that's not Jesus.
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And I said, but this is the word of God.
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And she says, yes, but I don't like Paul.
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Paul didn't like women.
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So her objection was simply to take a character attack against the apostle Paul.
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Well, this particular passage, the passage that we're looking at today, has been fodder for those who take issue with Paul, because this is a passage that could be used to argue that he was an arrogant man.
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I think it might be easy to read this section and come away thinking that Paul had an unreasonably high view of himself.
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I mean, he says something that many of us would probably balk at today.
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He literally says, if you want to know what the Christian life should be, look at me and imitate me.
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Wow.
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I mean, some might accuse him of having an inflated ego to say such a thing.
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A few years ago, there was a contemporary Christian pop song that became very popular.
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And the lyrics of the song were, don't look at me.
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If you're looking for perfection, don't look at me.
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I will only let you down.
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I'll do my best to point you in the right direction.
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But don't look at me.
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No, no, no.
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Look at him.
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I don't know how many of you remember that particular song.
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It was very popular a few years ago.
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And I think it expresses the sentiment of much of the modern church.
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And in a sense, I think the song is correct to a point.
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I am not perfect.
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And if you're looking to me for perfection, you're looking in the wrong place.
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But Paul wasn't perfect either.
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The Apostle Paul identified himself as the chief of what? Sinners.
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Yet he clearly says, if you're looking for an example, look at me.
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I'm going to give you an example of what it means to be a Christian.
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And many people take issue with Paul for doing so.
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So I want to begin today by reminding us of the context.
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Because if we think Paul is being arrogant here in verses 14 and following, we haven't really understood what he said before.
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If you think Paul is now expressing some type of inflated sense of self or inflated ego, then you haven't understood everything he said up until this point.
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Because from chapter 1 to chapter 4, Paul has been attacking one thing primarily, which has found its home in the Corinthian church, and that is pride.
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So I don't think Paul attacked pride in chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, only to express his own pride and ego in chapter 4.
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So again, understanding context helps us to understand what he is saying.
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He has talked about the fact that the Corinthians had a problem with hero worship.
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Some of them say, I am of Paul.
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Some say, I am of Paulus.
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Some say, I am of Peter.
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Others say, I am of Christ, in the sense that they were super spiritual.
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They have a sense of spiritual superiority.
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They're trying to find some way of making themselves higher and more important than others.
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They have a problem with spiritual pride, and their ego is off the charts.
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And Paul comes in and he says, look at the apostles.
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Look at me.
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I am an under rower.
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Remember that word he used when he used the word servant? It was the meaning, the lowest of the low.
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I am the lowest man on the ship, rowing the ship.
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I am the last of all.
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I am the one who is in chains, who is being led, as it were, to the slaughter, to be killed by man or beast.
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And he identifies himself as low, not high.
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He identifies himself as a servant, not as a king.
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And then he says these words.
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So these words must be interpreted in light of all that he said before.
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These words must be interpreted in light of all that has led up to this.
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And that's our introduction.
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Let's now look at the text.
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Look at the verse that we began with today, verse 14.
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He says in verse 14, I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.
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Now that needs a little bit of explanation, because when he says I do not write these things to make you ashamed, what are these things? Well, I believe these things that he's talking about are what we talked about last week.
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And I don't know how many of you weren't here, but if you weren't, what we talked about last week is the fact that the verses preceding this, Paul is, in a sense, somewhat sarcastic.
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We called it sanctified sarcasm.
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Because he says you Corinthians think of yourselves as royal, wealthy, in need of nothing.
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When in reality, the apostles are seen by the world as lowly, scum, and garbage.
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And he was using that as a contrast.
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He's saying how you see yourselves, very high, lifted up, very prideful.
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How you see yourself is much different than how the world sees us.
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You see yourself as wealthy royalty in need of nothing.
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And the world sees us as scum of the earth, the garbage, and the dregs of society.
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And then we get to verse 14.
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And what does he say? I'm not writing these things to make you ashamed.
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And that's a good point to follow up last week.
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Because I don't want anybody to leave the message last week thinking that I gave you a license to go out and be a jerk.
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Because we talked about spiritual and sanctified sarcasm.
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But that doesn't give us a right to be a jerk.
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And Paul is not here being a jerk.
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Paul says I'm not writing these things to shame you.
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I'm writing these things to admonish you.
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Now that word admonish comes from the Greek word nutheto.
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It's actually in this term the Greek word is nutheto.
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And there is, that's interesting.
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Because some of you probably are familiar with something called nuthetic counseling.
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Some of you may be.
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Some of you may not be.
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But that term nuthetic counseling is a term which is synonymous or means biblical counseling.
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And it comes from this word nutheto.
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I want to quote from the Institute for Nuthetic Studies.
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Three ideas are found in the word nuthesia.
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And they are confrontation, concern, and change.
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To put it simply, nuthetic counseling consists of lovingly confronting people out of a deep concern in order to help them make the changes that God requires.
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So that's what nutheto is.
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It's going out of a concern to seek to help people make the changes that God has called them to make.
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And that's what Paul's been doing, by the way.
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In the first four chapters of 1 Corinthians, he's been addressing their errors.
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He's been confronting their problems.
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And he has been concerned for them as a father would be concerned for his children.
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Paul planted this church so he's concerned for the people.
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And now he's telling them the changes that need to be made.
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Isn't that an amazing thought? Who would have thought that a preacher might tell you you need to do something different? Nowadays, we can't do that.
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We can make suggestions, but we can't tell you you need to change.
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Because that's just too offensive.
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No, Paul is telling them there are things that need to change.
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And why is he doing this? He's doing this because he loves them.
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He's doing this because he has a sense of fatherly love for this church.
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In fact, that's the whole point.
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People say Paul is lording over them.
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No, Paul is loving over them.
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He is not lording, he is loving.
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Loving feels like lording when you don't want to do what you're supposed to do.
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It's just the truth.
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Paul is telling them what they need to hear, even though they don't like it.
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Paul is telling them what they need to hear, even though they don't want to do it.
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Paul is telling them what to hear, even though they might not agree with him.
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He's giving them their newthetic counseling.
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He's giving them their correction, their admonishment.
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And that's what leads into verse 15, because he says, I'm admonishing you as my beloved children, for though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers.
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For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.
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That's an interesting thought.
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Paul says you've got countless guides.
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That word is mireus pedagogus.
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And that simply means a myriad, like we think of a myriad or a lot, many.
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You know, you think you have a myriad of something.
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But pedagogus is where we get our modern word pedagogue or pedagogy.
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And you might say, I've never heard that modern word.
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Well, if you're a teacher, you have.
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Because in teaching, the word pedagogy is the word for the science or the technique or the method of teaching.
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And so you might talk to certain teachers and they say, well, we have this particular pedagogy, or this school is based on this particular pedagogy.
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It's a method or way of instruction.
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And it comes from the word pedagogue, which was an actual person in the ancient world who was used to be essentially the maid or the helper of the children in a home where there was a wealthy home.
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In a wealthy home, the master would take one of the slaves, usually a person that was educated, and they would take this educated slave and they would make him the pedagogue or the person who was in charge of tutoring or managing the life of the child.
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And he was essentially a guide.
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He'd walk behind the child on the street.
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He'd sit behind him or sit beside him while he ate.
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He'd even sit in him during his studies and make sure that he was doing what he was supposed to do.
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He was the guide for the child.
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And Paul says, you have many of those in Christ.
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You have many people who are pedagogues.
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You have many people who have guided you in one way or another.
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But you don't have many fathers.
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And the word father here is interesting.
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Because the word father here is actually the word which means to give birth to.
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It's not what we might normally think of father as patris, which means father.
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It's a word which indicates giving birth.
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And that's what Paul is talking about here.
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He's talking about the fact that he was the one who brought the gospel into Corinth in the first place.
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He was the one who planted the church in the first place.
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And as a result of him planting the church and bringing the gospel, people were saved.
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The church was started.
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And thus, he became, as it were, like a father in the church.
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Now, some people say, well, I think Paul's taking it a little too far.
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He's calling himself the father of this church.
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He's putting himself on par with God.
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No, he's not.
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Paul is in no way putting himself on par with God.
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What he is using this term is in the sense of discipleship.
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And I got to tell you, there was a time when people actually used this language.
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And still in some communities, language is like this.
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When somebody would get somebody else saved, they would identify him.
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That man's a father.
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My father in the faith.
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And a man might identify these are my sons in the faith.
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And it had nothing to do with pride.
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It had nothing to do with arrogance.
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It had everything to do with responsibility in that person's life.
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It was a discipleship responsibility.
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I brought this man to the Lord.
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I taught him about Jesus.
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He became a Christian.
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And now I have a responsibility not to just cut him off and send him loose, but I have a responsibility to love him like he were my child.
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I have a responsibility to walk with him, to guide him, to feed him, to teach him, to love him like he was my own kid.
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So before we start thinking Paul's on a big ego trip here, it's not about ego.
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It's about responsibility.
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Paul's saying you got a lot of people who've guided you.
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You got a lot of pedagogues, but you only got one man who gave birth to you.
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And that's me.
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And I have a big responsibility in your life.
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I love you like a father.
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And here's the thing.
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I want to make this point because in Reformed theology, we sometimes get real caught up in the fact that salvation is all of God and not of us.
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We get real caught up in the fact that God is the one who does the saving and we're not the ones who do the saving.
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And sometimes I think because of that, we can dismiss the role that God has for us in the process of someone coming to faith.
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In fact, I've heard Reformed guys, they won't use the word soul winner.
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Well, I know that God is the soul winner, not me.
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That's true as far as it goes.
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You cannot technically cause anybody to be born again.
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You can't get one person's soul saved.
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Only God can do that.
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But at the same time, the Bible says this, in the King James and the New American Standard Bible, it says he that wins souls is wise.
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So that's where the term soul winner comes from.
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It's actually a biblical idea.
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And so we have a role to play in the life of other people.
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We have the role of sharing the gospel.
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We have the role of seeing people come to the Lord.
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Now, we can't make them come, but we can give them the guide.
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We can direct them.
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We can tell them the truth.
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God gives them the change.
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And then what do we do? We just cut them loose and send them home.
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No, we say, now we're going to walk with you.
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Now we're going to continue.
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I heard a pastor one time, drove me crazy.
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He said, and I use the word pastor loosely.
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He said, he said, if you're at our church and you're a Christian, this church isn't for you anymore.
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All we're about is getting people saved.
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Once you get saved, we're not for you anymore.
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We are here to get people saved.
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First of all, that's inane.
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Is the church about getting people saved? Yeah, yeah.
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We want to get people saved.
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But the church is the gathering of believers to spur each other on to love and good works.
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According to Hebrews chapter 10, what we studied in Sunday school this morning, is we gather together for the purpose of stirring one another up toward love and good works.
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It's more than just about getting people saved.
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It's about conforming ourselves to the image of Christ, right? And that comes from the assembly together of the believers.
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In fact, I would say church worship is for believers and we go out to win souls.
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That doesn't mean that somebody can't get saved in church.
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People do get saved in church.
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But when we come together, this is a time where worshipers come together to worship God and then we go out to win souls, right? And we believe that we should.
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We should go out and we should seek to make what? Converts? Disciples.
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And guess what? Discipleship does not end when the person says, I believe in Jesus.
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Discipleship continues.
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In fact, I say evangelism and discipleship work together because we bring a person to Christ by teaching them about Jesus and then we continue to teach them about Jesus after they believe in Christ.
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So the discipleship is just a smooth transition from going from unbelief to belief, to being a Christian, to being a mature Christian.
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And here Paul is explaining his part in the process.
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He was a father.
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They are like his children.
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Nothing wrong with what he's saying because there's no arrogance or pride in it.
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He's not saying, bow down to me as your father in the faith.
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He's saying, no, I love you like you're my children.
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All that now gets to verse 16.
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Verse 16 is the most offensive to many people because verse 16 is where he says this.
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He says, I urge you be imitators of me.
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Now I gotta tell you, most people probably wish and you might sit there on your sanctified seat and not say it.
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But I think some people wish he said, I urge you be imitators of Jesus.
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I think people would rather it said, I urge you be imitators of Christ.
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But that's not what he said.
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In fact, the word imitators, here's a neat word.
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It's the word mimeomi.
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Mimeomi is where later in the English, we would get the word mimeograph.
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You know what a mimeograph is? How many of you remember before the copy machine was very popular? They had a mimeograph machine.
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And what it was, was essentially an old time copy machine.
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And it made a copy of a page.
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Well, that's just the word, mimeomi.
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It means to copy me.
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So that's what Paul's saying.
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I urge you copy me.
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Now, before we take issue with that, before we get again and we become a bunch of pious gasbags and we take issue with the apostle Paul, let's first ask a question.
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How do we learn anything? I'm gonna ask you, just don't have to answer out loud, but to yourself, how do we learn almost everything we learn as human beings? We learn by imitating other people.
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From the youngest age, we learn by other people.
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In fact, I've been doing this with my daughter.
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My littlest one is six months old and she has the sweetest smile.
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And when I pick her up and I hold her, she makes this big sort of half toothy grin and it's just the biggest, prettiest smile.
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But how did she learn to smile at me? Because every time somebody picks her up, they smile at her.
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And so she's learning by mimicking what she sees to do it back.
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And this is how children learn how to walk.
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It's how children learn how to talk.
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It's how children learn how to play.
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It's how children learn how to jump.
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They do it by copying others.
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And this is why it's so vital that we set good examples for our children because your children are gonna copy you in the good and in the bad.
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Human beings are mimic machines.
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In fact, everybody here probably knows what YouTube is.
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YouTube is an online database where people put videos and they post videos up.
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And it has become beyond doubt one of the most powerful tools for learning in the world.
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Because people will put tutorials for everything on YouTube.
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And so people who want to know where you used to have to buy, if you wanna know how to build a deck, you had to go down to Lowe's or Home Depot and buy a book on how to build a deck.
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And there was pictures in the book.
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And oftentimes those pictures didn't make a whole lot of sense.
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And when you were reading the words, it didn't make a lot of sense.
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But now you can go to YouTube, you can type how to build a deck and you'll get a video of somebody walking you through step-by-step and you can literally mimic.
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Y'all know I print T-shirts, right? I started a T-shirt business a few years ago and now we print T-shirts for all kinds of companies and places like that.
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You know how I started to learn how to print T-shirts? YouTube video.
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And now we have a business that's based on something I learned on a YouTube video.
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I've never ever taken a class in screen printing, not once.
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And you say, well, why are you telling this? Because this shows the power of the ability to mimic.
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Human beings have the ability to see something and do it.
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That's one of the gifts that we have as human beings.
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When we see it, we mimic it, we can do it.
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I say that because of this.
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The human ability to learn by observation and imitation is amazing and that ability is not overlooked in the Bible.
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It's not as if we learn some magical, spiritual infusion from above.
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That's not how we learn from God.
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We don't get some magical filling.
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Now we do get filled with the Holy Spirit, don't get me wrong.
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But what I'm saying is we learn by watching others in the Christian life.
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Often, in fact, we learn to be more mature Christians simply by being around other mature Christians.
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And somebody says this, I would never tell someone to look at me to know how the Christian life should be lived.
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Let me respond to that.
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Number one, just so you know, I know you're not the Apostle Paul.
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And I understand that he did have a certain kind of authority called apostolic authority.
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That doesn't necessarily translate to you and me.
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However, number two, if you are a Christian, you have to understand that part of your duty as a Christian is to be an example for other Christians.
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If you deny that, I don't know how you deny it.
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But you know why I think people deny it often? Because they know they're not trying.
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Oh, now you're going to hurt my feelings.
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I didn't come here to hurt your feelings, but I'll tell you the truth.
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Most people, I think, have an issue with this because they often know they aren't even trying to live an exemplary life and they use this as an excuse.
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Think about this.
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I thought about this.
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Y'all know we have our karate program here at the church, right? I tell every karate student, every time you get a higher belt, you're an example to the belt below you.
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Adam Marzoni leads Cub Scouts.
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He's not here today, but I'm almost certain he would respond with the truth.
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When he's doing Cub Scouts, he says, when you advance in the Cub Scouts, you're an example to the Cubs below you, right? When you go and you join the American Heritage Girls, that is part of our church, when you go higher in the troop, when you are doing something and you're getting higher and you're learning more, you become an example to the ones below you.
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Why is it okay for me to say it in karate or Boy Scouts or American Heritage Girls, but it would be wrong for me to say it to you as a Christian as you mature in your faith, you are to be an example to other less mature Christians.
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Why is that even a debate? Why is it even a question? I can easily say this.
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I'm going to say this without any sense of arrogance at all.
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I know for a fact, there are people that are Christians that I'm more mature than.
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I know for a fact there are people that are Christians that are way more mature than me.
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And I know that there are people who are Christians that we're right about the same place in our maturity.
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And so I have, as if it were, we're walking up a hill.
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I've got people that are further along and I say, man, I want to be where that guy is.
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And so I go.
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And I know that there are people behind me that are looking at me and saying the same thing.
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Now, am I saying there's different levels of spirituality? We're all the same at the foot of the cross.
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I'm not saying that.
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But what I am saying is in our maturity as Christians, we ought to be seeking to be examples to one another.
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And you shouldn't be ashamed to try to be an example to somebody else.
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You believe sanctification is progressive, right? That's one of the Reformed teachings, that you're justified by grace through faith, but sanctification is a life of growth in Christ.
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Well, that means that you should be growing, right? It's not a straight line.
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It's an upward turn.
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When I was in seminary, there were men.
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Man, I knew nothing from nothing.
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I did.
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When I first went to seminary, I heard some of the first things in my life about the Bible.
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I'd never heard, and I was amazed.
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And there were men there who were godly men.
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Vernon Johns, Gerald Powers, Stanford Cruz.
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You know Dr.
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Cruz.
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And you know, I might disagree with him on some things now, but these were godly men in my life who spoke into my life truth and gave me an example of what it meant to be a man of God.
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And I looked up to those men.
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And I'm glad I did.
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And I'm not ashamed to have looked up to those men because they were doing what I needed in my life.
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They were setting an example of Christ for me to follow.
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It is not wrong to look for those examples.
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I want to say this.
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If you've been a Christian for a relatively short time, or if you've been a Christian for a long time, you should be examining yourself and your growth.
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Because the reality is if you're a believer who's 20, 30 years in, you should have a different level of maturity than somebody who's three or four months in.
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It really is.
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But I want to say this too.
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Just because someone's older doesn't make them more spiritually mature.
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We get that confused.
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Because you can be an elderly person and just have come to Christ.
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Or you can be a young person and have been a Christian since you were even younger and more mature.
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And if you don't have the humility to learn from someone younger than you, well then half of you shouldn't be listening to me.
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Right? It ain't about physical age.
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It's about maturity in the faith.
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And sometimes there are people who come along who haven't been Christians longer, as long as I have, but they might have maturity in an area that I don't have and I can learn from them.
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And that takes humility too.
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It's easy to accuse Paul of pride here.
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It's easy to accuse him of having a big head.
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But what we have to understand is that he is speaking with the heart of a father to his children.
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He is not in any way comparing or equating himself to God.
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He's simply expressing the love that he has for the Corinthians as a father would have for his children.
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And when he says, look at me, he's simply expressing the fact that he is at this time more spiritually mature than the Corinthians.
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And if you don't think I can prove that, just read the first three chapters again.
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He is absolutely more spiritually mature than the Corinthians and he can say, be imitators of me.
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And now verse 17 follows this.
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And he says this, this is why I sent to you Timothy.
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And by the way, who's Timothy? Timothy is his son in the faith.
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Timothy is the one who's followed him around, learned everything from him, planted churches with him.
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Timothy is his disciple and he's learned from him.
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He's his learner, he's his son in the faith.
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And he says, this is why I sent to you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord to remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach them everywhere in the church.
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Let me tell you something, Paul's life, Paul the man, Paul wasn't Jesus, Paul wasn't divine, Paul was a man.
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Paul the man had a life that exemplified Christ so much so that when his student went out and taught about how to be a Christian, he taught about his mentor's ways in Christ.
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That's powerful.
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Let me ask you this and again, just to yourself, do you and does your life exemplify to others the ways of Christ? If someone followed you around for a week, like Paul followed Timothy for years, would that person learn the ways of Christ from you? You say, pastor, that's a burden.
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I'm not perfect.
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Well, just because you can't reach perfection in this life does not mean you can't be mature in your faith.
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And let me explain why.
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You are not, I repeat, not condemned to spiritual infancy.
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You are not condemned to spiritual adolescence.
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You are called to be mature in your faith.
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Why are we so afraid to be challenged? Why are we so afraid to have someone say these things to us? Have we become so spiritual lackadaisical that we cannot bear being confronted about being examples to others? And by the way, you know, that's what the world expects, right? Because I got to tell you, every time somebody who claims to be a Christian goes out and expresses themselves in some very terrible and awful way, what do they say? That person isn't being a Christian.
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And you know what? We might balk at that, but a lot of times they're right.
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Because as Christians, we are the ones who are supposed to be setting the example.
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And when we have our leaders going out and being spiritually unfaithful or maybe even physically unfaithful in their lives or with their wives or with anything else, what does that do to the church? It enforces the idea with the world that we're no different than them.
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And what did Jesus say? Love not the world, neither the things therein, for the love of the world is hatred with God.
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A person who calls himself a Christian should not be living in a way that brings offense to the name of Christ.
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I mean, is that simple enough? We don't hear this a lot anymore.
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We hear about how God wants you to be happy, wants you to be joyful.
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He wants you to have health and wealth and prosperity and healing.
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But might I add this? The most important thing from God to you is not your health, wealth or wholeness.
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It's your holiness.
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God has called you, be holy as I'm holy.
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Now, verses 18 to 21, I'm not even going to try to give you an exposition over because verses 18 and 21 actually lead into, I believe, chapter 5.
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Because Paul now talks about the fact that because he is a spiritual father, he's going to be coming.
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And do they want him to come with a rod or with a spirit of love? And the reason is because the church is engaging in sin and he's asking them, how do you want me to come? Do you want me to come with a rod or do you want me to come in a spirit of love? But that'll be for next week.
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For now, I want to end this message, draw to a close by simply saying this.
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In the beginning, I asked you a question.
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In the beginning, I asked you this.
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Who do you want to be more like? Who do you look up to in the faith? Who is your example in your Christian walk? Maybe it's a person who led you to Christ.
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Maybe it's someone who's personally discipling you right now.
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Maybe that person is in this room.
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Now, I'm going to ask you a second question.
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Who are you the example to? You might not know that somebody sees you as an example.
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That's why we always seek to exemplify Christ.
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But I want to ask you this.
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Who are you intentionally discipling? Maybe you're a mom.
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Maybe it's your children who you're intentionally discipling.
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Maybe it's a man or woman in this church that you as a man or a woman are intentionally discipling.
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Maybe it's someone at work that you have been sharing Christ with and that you're praying that God will open their heart so you can continue to walk with them in Christ.
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Who is it? Who is it in your life? Maybe it's more than one person.
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Maybe God has laid several people in your heart and you're intentionally calling them, praying with them, studying scripture with them.
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And you would never want to say to that person, look to me for perfection.
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But by God's grace, in the sweetest sense of imperfection and humility, you can say to that person, I'm following Christ.
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And if you will follow Christ, come and follow him with me.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the truth.
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I pray that we would all have someone in our life that is exemplifying Christ to us.
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And I pray that we would all, Lord, if we are believers, have someone that we are seeking to bring or to guide in Christ.
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Lord, we want to be in the business of making disciples.
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Not just people making decisions, but making disciples.
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Father, help us to love one another, to care for one another, to intentionally disciple one another in accordance to the call of the gospel that you've given to us.
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As ambassadors for Christ, we pray it in Jesus' name.
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Amen.