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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.
First Corinthians, and you are going to be convicted this morning and encouraged. This is one of those passages in 1 Corinthians chapter 4 that has something in it that if you read it too quickly, you'll miss it.
And today you're going to be glad you sat underneath the teaching of the Word of God because there is a surprise in this passage that is going to make you, if you're a Christian, be delighted. First Corinthians.
This morning we're going to look at spiritual leadership. Spiritual leadership. What makes a good leader? And if you ask yourself the question, well, am I a leader? Maybe you say I'll never be a leader.
Remember in 1 Corinthians, Paul is saying don't divide over leaders. This is how leaders should act. He's saying church, congregation, you need to look at leaders the right way so you act like they do.
So this isn't a sermon just for people who are leaders. Actually, 1 Corinthians 4 is for the congregation as they look at leadership. What makes a good leader? Well, I found in my research this week, according to the world, this is what a good leader does or is.
A good leader must have vision. A good leader, according to the world, must have passion. A good leader must learn to be a great decision maker. A good leader must be a good team builder. These are probably all fine and dandy, but I wonder how many of those we'll see in 1 Corinthians.
Civil Air Patrol has some leadership traits that they look for. Selflessness, decisiveness, energy, commitment, loyalty, and integrity. I wonder if we'll see some of those today in our passage. The Small Business Association says if you'd like to be a good leader, you need to have emotional stability, enthusiasm, tough-mindedness, self-assurance, compulsiveness, and dominance.
That's interesting. I wonder if we'll find those in 1 Corinthians chapter 4. Charles Schwab said, I consider my ability to arouse enthusiasm among the men the greatest asset I possess. Other people say great leaders take calculated risks and are innovative and confident in their decision.
I wonder what God will say about spiritual leadership. How many of these will apply? Well, let's turn our Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 4 and find out. This morning, Paul is correcting the church at Corinth and their faulty view of leadership.
They value the wrong things in leadership. And all of us, if we look at the world too often and for too long, we might value the wrong things as well. So this will take the ship and make it right side up.
What does God want in a leader? And if God wants this in a leader, He certainly wants it in you. These are not just for the elders and deacons of the church. This is not just for the husbands. This is not just for the bosses out there and people who say, I want to lead.
Paul says, look at the leadership. And as you look at them, verse 6 of chapter 4 and verse 16 of chapter 4, imitate them. That's what we're after. 1 Timothy, we saw last week, presents leadership qualities in elders, but they are something we all should aspire to be.
And so Paul is going to set this evaluation that the Corinthians have this myopic view of things, and he's going to try to make this right. There's a leadership crisis. What do we do? Say why would I even want to do this?
Go back to chapter 1. Do you know we are a called people? The church of Corinth are called. Can you imagine if you're a Christian, God knew every one of the sins that you would ever commit, and He still chose you.
And in light of God choosing you and then sending His Son to die for you, shouldn't you want to respond with, I want to make sure I view leaders properly and I'd like to live a holy life? Isn't that the Christian life?
Christian life is not, be a good leader, try harder, work faster, sweat more. Here's the Christian life. Remember what God has done for you and to you, and in light of who you are, in light of your position in Christ and all the riches you have, respond in a manner commensurate to who you are.
If this is what God has done, wouldn't you want to please Him? You can think about it temporally as well. If you have been rescued, if you're in the ocean and you're about to sink and the Coast Guard comes and rescues you, I think you would give more than the proverbial yawn to your rescuers.
I think you'd try to look them up, find them by name, commend them to their officers and say, thank you. So how do you show your thanks to God for His great grace that covers your guilt? Well you show it by being grateful, grateful enough to live a life that says, I want to honor you, right?
That's exactly right. And so Paul says, I'm writing to call people. So look at chapter 1, verse 2, called to be saints. This is not, hey you, you need to be a saint. Call the kids in for supper. Five minutes or your brother eats your food.
This is the effectual call. This is before time began. The Father, Son, and the Spirit with a triune love made a promise to one another that says, we didn't have to save anybody. Everybody's going to be damned.
They were damned in Adam and by their own sins. But we're going to rescue some sinners to show just how merciful we are, how gracious we are, how kind we are, how powerful we are. We're going to rescue sinners and we're going to call them and call in the New Testament epistles means to carve out, to call out, to say, I'm going to call you by name and I'm going to choose you.
I'm going to choose you. I'm going to choose you and I didn't have to. And you're called people. And he says it again in verse 9. God is faithful. Chapter 1, verse 9, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son.
Salvation is what God did to you. He did it all. Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. That's exactly what's happening here. Go further in chapter 1, verse 24. But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, God calls these people the effectual call and he says, you're going to be mine.
You might resist gospel preaching for a while, but one day your day is up and the spirit of God will quicken you and make you alive. He says it again in verse 26. This is the Christian life. It's not navel gazing.
It's not introspection. It's looking back in time to see what God has done. For consider, look at verse 26, consider your calling brothers. Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful.
Not many were of noble birth, but God chose. Verse 28, God chose. And if you realize that you've been chosen by God, it will change everything about you. You say, well, I don't like that choosing. I don't like it that God chooses.
Well, I don't know what to tell you. Today's not on election, although I wish it would be. God is the only being in all the universe that is free to do whatever he wants. He has no external compulsion, no power greater, no one smarter than he is.
Nobody influences him. He doesn't report to anyone. He doesn't have to do what they say. He gives account to no one. And God said, it's my nature to choose people. I choose Israel and no other country.
I choose some angels and not all angels. And aren't you glad that he chose some saints to be his bride because he didn't have to choose anyone? And if you really realize that you've been chosen by God and called by God, when you were an enemy, God demonstrated his own love towards us that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
And if he died for you, the response is, oh yeah, I know that whole salvation thing. We just kind of need to move forward. That's a tragic thing in evangelicalism today. Oh yeah, I'm all set with God.
I'm good to go. And we've got that salvation gig done. And now we're off to these other things. Show me the money. No, for the Christian life, it's a continually, a continual reminder that says, don't forget that God chose you.
Could have picked anybody. He should have picked no one. And in light of that, you say, well, then I want to act properly in the church. It's not my church. I didn't buy the church. And so I don't want there to be any kind of factiousness or divisiveness in light of what God has done for me.
I want to do my part for church unity. And that's what chapters one, two, three, and four is about. Christianity is always about what God has done for you. The indicative statement of fact, Jesus died for you, was raised from the dead.
And in light of that, here's your imperative or here's your command. That's the way the Christian life is. If you're struggling with sin, you probably should go back to the indicative. Who is Jesus? What has he done?
And who am I in Christ? Jesus. And so we look at chapter four. Let's go to chapter four, verses one through seven. This morning to look at eight descriptions of Christ-like leadership in light of what God has done for you, the called people, adopted people.
Number one, Christ-like leaders must be servants. We just touched this last week. Look at verse one of chapter four. What we do at this church is the passage preaches itself. First Corinthians 4 .1. This is how we should regard, one should regard us as servants of Christ.
Based on chapter three, so then, based on the analogies that were going on, there are some people that build well, gold, silver, precious stones, they help build the church well, they'll receive their reward.
Some, they just use worthless materials and it's wood, hay, and stubble. They're not going to get their reward. It goes on to say, but there are some that don't just build well or in a shoddy fashion, they try to destroy and God says that I'm going to destroy those people.
And in light of that, how should leaders act? They should act like servants. Paul an apostle calls himself here an under rower. Show me a ship full of slaves that row through the oceans in the Mediterranean and you go down to the final bottom level and that's the under rower, the galley slave, the menial person and Paul says, that's me.
Who exalts galley slaves? We shouldn't. And if Paul's one of those, I wonder what I must be. We don't worship them, we don't exalt them. If Paul knew cities were named after him, he'd go apoplectic. St. Paul, St. Paul the menial galley slave person, I'm just a servant doing my job.
I'm under subjection. He's retained me, he's bought me, I'm subordinate to him, I'm bound to obey him. I have to say this, that if you're a leader in a local church or this church, we serve the body, we don't fleece them.
I have to say this because so many people out there say, send Jesus your money, here's my address. Playing to people's greed to get money. Dear Sister Dorothy, God spoke to me. God leads me to tell you how to follow his holy instructions to break the devil's spirit that has been assigned to Buffet and confuse you.
The devil is mad, boy is he ever mad. He cannot stand it because you've decided to follow God's ways. Here's how you break demonic spells. Go into a quiet room and say this prayer. In the name of Jesus, Lord, this is Sister Dorothy.
I don't know how many people prayed, dear Lord, this is Mike Ebendroth again, remember me, but let's stay back on point. I realize that the source of all my problems has been the spirit realm. Then open the holy water by tearing off the end.
Take the spirit, take the spirit soaked prayer cloth out of the packet and anoint your fingers. Then anoint every piece of money you have with this water. Yes, that's right, every bill, every piece of change, and even the checks and credit cards that you have.
Anoint them with this holy water of the holy lands. Next take this holy water and anoint the picture or photograph of the person that you care about deeply, the one who the devil's spirit has been afflicting.
If you do not have a picture or photograph, then anoint something that you have touched instead, perhaps a letter or piece of clothing. God will show you. Then, since God moves because of a seed, re-anoint your two largest bills and send them to this ministry in the enclosed envelope.
First thing tomorrow morning, along with the water of the soaked towelette, that's spirit soaked, this way the holy spirit water will have made a complete circle from me here in Dallas to you there in Canada and back to me.
God may lead you to send a check for exactly $59 .19 instead of your two largest bills. What if your two largest bills were $100 bills, but that's another point. This will represent Isaiah 59 .19, which I am praying for you.
When the enemy comes in like a flood, the spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against it. Beware of people who are fleecers of the flock of God and not servants. Number two, Christ-like leaders must be servants of Jesus before they're servants of the church.
You see that in verse one. Christ-like leaders must be servants first of Jesus before they're servants of the church. This is how one should regard us as servants of Bethlehem Bible Church, servants of the church of Corinth.
Is it good to serve the local body if you're a leader? But you've got to be very, very careful as a leader to not say, well, I'm going to try to please them because you can please people at the expense of pleasing the holy God, can't you?
Let's see. Let's just take a poll of the people. What does Tom want? What does Nick want? Let's just do a little, you know, and what they want, I'll give them. And here, these people, you need to remember that before I serve you and before I say to myself along with the other elders, we want to please the people.
I want to please the Lord. And frankly, I'm glad you're happy when I do that. But if you're not happy when I do that, I hope one day you will be. But that can't be the main concern. It's going to sound self-serving, but it's from the text.
Church, you are not the master of your leaders. So many churches, not this one, praise the Lord, but these churches hire pastors and they fire pastors, don't they? Show me a church that fires a pastor and within two and a half years, they'll fire their next one, according to 80 of the rules.
We hire and fire you. So you work for us. We tell you what to do. We drive by the church. You're not there at the church parking lot. You need to give us your timesheets. You need to write down the sermon outlines and present them to the board of trustees before you can preach that sermon.
Doesn't that sound weird? Hallelujah, that that's so far gone. And if they're servants of Christ, spiritual leaders are servants of Christ, why would we rank them? Well, here's where I put the pastor.
Here's where I put the chairman of the elders. Here's where I put this other guy. And that's what they were doing with Paul and Apollos. He says, we're menial servants of Christ. Now if you thought of a time back in those days with servants in the home and slaves and you would go over to somebody else's house and you'd go to a free person, Roman citizen gym and you'd sit around and you'd watch gym servants.
I don't think you'd say to yourself, you know, that's really a good servant and they should be doing continually a good job. And there's another servant over there. He's not doing a good job. And according to my ranking, gym servants go one, two, three, and a close four.
Well, that would be dumb because they're not our servants. Why would we rank someone else's servants? People rank today pastors by personality and degrees and numbers, especially when I go to pastors conferences, I see it all the time.
You probably go to conferences and they ask you this question too, where do you go to church? A Bethlehem Bible Church and the very next words out of people's mouths, what are you doing? Oh, I'm pastoring a church in Massachusetts.
I can tell you the exact thing that they're going to say next. Here's the next question. How many people are at your church? And I told you, I started lying just to save face. So years ago, I just said, forget it.
Not going to say it anymore. I'm just going to look at people in the eye and get a straight face and say about 3 ,000, give or take. And then you know what they do? Wow. 3 ,000 in New England is like 30 ,000 in Texas.
Wow. And you're somebody, 30 ,000 people. But if we answer as leaders to the Lord and the Lord has built his church through God ordained ways and if he's brought 30 of us here, our 3 ,000, that's his doing.
We're servants of the Lord first. That's valid Christian leadership. You can ask yourself the question too, do I work in nursery? Do I work in the sound room? You don't work ultimately for the pastors, for the church.
Your ministry's to the Lord. And by the way, you'll do a much better job, a more thorough job, a job that's thinking more about the kingdom than if you say, you know, this is the job Abendroth gave me and I'm just going to do it.
Number three, the third description of Christ-like leaders that Paul said he should be, Apollos should be, all leaders should be, yes, but at the end of the day, he writes these things. You can see it right there in verse one.
This is how one should regard us. This is a sermon to the congregation about leadership. Number three, Christ-like leaders must be good stewards of the mysteries of God. Good stewards. Well, this is excellent here.
What's a steward? A steward is someone who's been entrusted with the belongings or possessions of someone else. And so if I'm a house ruler, that's what the word means, house law, house ruler. And someone says, I would like you to watch over my house while I'm gone.
I go out of town during the summertime and Bernard is my house steward. Watch over these things. And I hope Bernard thinks to himself, I'm going to take better care of this than I would with my own stuff.
I'm answering back to someone who's over me. Stewards entrusted with responsibility for the master's entire household. And back in those days, it was for food, servants, clothing, buildings, field, money, and sometimes they were even entrusted with the master's children.
Stewards weren't freelance operators, independent contractors. Well, I just do what I want, when I want, how I please. No, this was a major responsibility. One man said they were not the owners of the treasures of truth and grace that are entrusted to them.
As they administer these treasures, they must remain aware of their dependency and of the accounting that they will give. News bulletin. I did not come up with sovereign grace. I did not come up with redemption.
I did not come up with election, calling, propitiation, reconciliation. I didn't come up with it and I can't effectuate them either. So what do I do if I want to be a good steward of these mysteries? This isn't mysterious stuff.
Mysteries in the New Testament, remember, were things that were not known to man, but now are through the revelation of God. We didn't know about the triune salvation. God told us. Now we know. And it's my job not to do new things, novel things, interesting things, fun things.
My job is, tell me the old, old story about Jesus and his love. And we like new stuff. You think, oh yeah, I'm going to grade the sermon today, and was it a good sermon that Mike preached? Well, I learned something new today, therefore it was good.
Well, new already in the text, but new to you, that might not be so bad. But after 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, you shouldn't be learning new things from the pulpit. The pastor shouldn't say, well, I've got the, this is the new way to do church, steward.
This is the new way to preach, steward. This is the new way to kind of operate. No, stewards don't do that. They've been entrusted with Christ Jesus and his people. Stewards ought not to be tempted by new things.
Number four, marching through here. What about stewards? What should they be? Christlike leaders, number four, when we look at servant leaders in the church that should be emulated, Christlike leaders must be trustworthy.
Here we go, above all, and by the way, let me say it right now so you get it, and I'll say it again in a minute. This is within the reach of everybody. If it's IQ, popularity, eloquence, power, persuasion, giftedness, oh, you know, I just can't do that.
But if you've been given a job and your job is faithfulness, is that within reach by the grace of God? Absolutely. God has only called me to be faithful. That's all I need to do. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found, what, trustworthy.
Corinth, you grade leaders on how well they speak. Rhetoricians, they're eloquent, they're powerful, they have philosophy of the world. You're grading people the wrong way. Should be grading them on are they faithful.
Above all things, stewards who take care of other people's property, possessions, and people should be faithful. I ask you the question if you've got a ministry here at this church. Is that the one thing that could define you?
My desire is that I would be faithful. That's my goal. My goal is not I want the elders to see. My goal is not I want other people to see. My goal is not I want this to take off and I want people to write books about my ministry because I know how to duplicate things and reduplicate things.
God make me faithful. Timothy 1 Corinthians 4, beloved and faithful. Epaphras, Colossians 1, a faithful servant of Christ. Tychicus, Colossians 4, any guesses, a what kind of servant? Faithful servant.
Not initiative, not success, not drive, not good decision making, faithfulness to preach the word. We don't make stuff up. We don't originate new doctrines. We want to be faithful.
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.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.