Sanctified Sarcasm

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles now, and we're going to turn to the 4th chapter of 1 Corinthians.
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We're going to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 4, verses 8 to 13.
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We're remaining standing for giving God's Word, its honor and reverence in our lives.
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Beginning at verse 8, it says this, Already you have all you want, already you have become rich.
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Without us you have become kings.
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And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you.
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For I think that God has exhibited us, apostles, as last of all, like men sentenced to death because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.
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We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ.
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We are weak, but you are strong.
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You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.
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To the present hour, we hunger and thirst.
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We are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless, and we labor, working with our own hands.
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When reviled, we blessed.
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When persecuted, we endure.
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When slandered, we entreat.
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We have become and are still like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your Word.
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I thank you for the truth of the Word, and I pray that now as I have the opportunity to preach it, that you would keep me from error.
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For God, I am a fallible man, I am capable of preaching error.
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And Lord, I want to know, Lord, that your Holy Spirit is here speaking.
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For if he were not speaking, Lord, nothing would change.
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Your Word is essential.
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Your Holy Spirit is essential for change to come.
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And I pray, Lord, for everyone under the sound of my voice.
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For those who are believers, Lord, I pray that they would be encouraged in you to abandon pride and to abandon self-sufficiency, to reject those things, and to become, Lord, closer to the Lord Jesus Christ and in Him.
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And Father, for those who know not Christ, I pray that today might be the day that you would change their hearts, open them up to see the great riches that are found at the foot of the cross.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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I was going to warn you all this morning and let you know my clock in the back is broken, so there's no telling what's going to happen in regard to the time of the message.
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But in a sense, that would sort of be going along with the title of today's message.
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The title of today's message is Sanctified Sarcasm.
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And so, that sort of fits together a little bit.
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Sarcasm is something which we are all probably very intimately familiar with.
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Maybe on the giving end, maybe on the receiving end, but we all are familiar with sarcasm.
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In fact, I would say probably some of us more than others.
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We've all had people be sarcastic with us, and we have likewise also probably at some point been sarcastic with someone else.
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I see some of you saying, are you talking about me? Well, maybe.
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And sarcasm is rarely a positive way to speak.
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In general, it's best to avoid.
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I can imagine probably most of us from a very young age have taught our children not to be sarcastic.
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I know my grandmother, when I was growing up, she would say, don't get wise.
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Which always was odd.
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I thought, you know, being wise was a good thing.
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But what she was saying was, don't get...
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She'd say, don't be wise or don't be smart.
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It was her way of saying, don't get sarcastic with me.
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However, there is obviously times, there are obviously times when sarcasm is appropriate to drive home a point.
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There are several times in the Bible where Jesus uses sarcasm.
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When he was speaking to the Pharisees and the scribes, he would often say, have you not read what God said when he said to you thus and so? And that was essentially saying, you're the top leading scholars of the Bible and you haven't read this? That's cutting.
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That's ironic.
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That's sarcastic.
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In Luke 13, 32, Jesus is talking about Herod, the king, and he called him a fox.
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That doesn't sound much...
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You know, today, if you called somebody a fox, it wouldn't really be much of an insult.
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But back then, that was very sarcastic language.
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It was calling him a deceitful person.
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And when the Jews were going to stone him in John 10, Jesus said, I have done many good works, for what good work are you going to stone me? That's a sarcastic, in a sense, term.
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I've done all these good things, which good thing are you going to stone me for? But Jesus was not alone in his use of sarcasm.
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If you go back to 1 Kings 18, you don't have to turn there, but in your mind, most of you probably remember the story.
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There was a prophet by the name of Elijah.
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And Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal.
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Baal was the false god.
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And he had prophets.
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And Elijah challenged the prophets of Baal to a contest.
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And he said, okay, we're going to bring together this place of fire, and we're going to call down fire from heaven, and we're going to see whose god is the real god.
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And all of the prophets of Baal began to shout out, Oh Baal, Baal! And they were calling down the fire from their god, and nothing was happening.
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And so how did Elijah respond? It says, And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, Cry aloud, for he is a god.
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Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.
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If that's not sarcasm, I don't know what is.
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They say, maybe your god's on the toilet, and that's why he's not answering.
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So it's obvious that we see times where Jesus uses sarcasm.
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It's obviously times when we see the prophets using sarcasm.
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So we can argue that sometimes it's not only appropriate, sometimes it's righteous.
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Now I want to say before I go further, do not leave today and say, Well, the pastor gave me all the approval I need to be a jerk.
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That is not the purpose of the message.
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What I'm giving you is the foundation for understanding 1 Corinthians 4, verses 8-13.
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Because if you don't understand that Paul is using ironic language, or what is known by our terms as sarcasm, then you will not understand what he's saying.
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In fact, I want to quote Gordon Fee, he's a commentarian on this particular passage, and he says this, as a contrast to the stance of gratitude and humility urged by the rhetorical questions of verse 7.
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And you remember verse 7 we talked about last week.
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He says, what do you have that you were not given? And how do you have anything that wasn't given to you? So he's saying, we need to be humble because nothing we have came from us.
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Everything that we have came from God.
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The breath in our lungs, the beating heart in our chest, the very life that we have is a gift from God, and because of that we should be humble.
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And Gordon Fee says, that verse 7 leads into verse 8, and Paul now begins a series of antithesis between them and himself, meaning the Corinthians and Paul himself, and how they saw themselves, and how Paul is actually in the world.
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And Fee is saying that the apparent use of ironic or sarcastic language is made evident by verse 7, and I think that is true.
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So again, we look at 1 Corinthians 4, verse 7.
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He asks the question for who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you did receive it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? He's pointing to the fact that they should be humble and not prideful over the things that they have.
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They should be humble and not prideful over their relationship with God and their spiritual gifts.
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And now we begin in verse 8.
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He says, already you have all you want, already you have become rich, without us you have become kings.
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Now, if you look at the New American Standard Bible, which I know some of you carry it, it says it this way.
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It says you are filled already, you have already become rich, and you have become kings without us.
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And in the King James Bible it says, now you are full, now you are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us.
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Paul is establishing here something about the Corinthians that we need to understand.
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He is establishing the fact that they see themselves in a very high view.
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They have a very high view of self.
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Rather than the humble view that they're supposed to have in verse 7, as ones who've received everything as a gift from the Lord, they instead see themselves as very important.
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They see themselves as living in abundance.
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They see themselves as spiritually prosperous.
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They see themselves as members of the noble class.
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And notice this.
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They see themselves that way without the apostles.
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This is to say that all of this personal aggrandizement they felt, did not translate to the apostles themselves.
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Paul will later note that they, the apostles, are seen as the scum of the earth.
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But the Corinthians are the royalty.
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We are the dregs, you are the kings.
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And this is reminiscent in my mind of something we had read to us earlier.
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You remember when brother Mike came earlier and he read from Revelation chapter 3.
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What did he say? There was a church in Laodicea.
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And what did the church in Laodicea known for? What do we know about the church in Laodicea? Almost everybody knows this.
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The church in Laodicea was lukewarm.
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What is lukewarm? They were neither hot nor cold.
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But Jesus said, because you are lukewarm, I will spit you out of my mouth.
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That's what we remember.
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But a part that's often forgotten about the Laodiceans is verse 17.
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For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.
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You see, the real problem with the Laodicean church is they felt like they had everything they needed.
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They felt very spiritually rich.
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They felt like they were kings.
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And the Corinthians saw themselves much like the Laodiceans.
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Wealthy royalty in need of nothing.
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Wealthy royalty in need of nothing.
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Isn't that the similar way that so many today in the church see themselves? We have these grand buildings.
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We have this wonderful architecture.
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We have this great money that's invested.
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And we have all of these things.
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We are wealthy royalty in need of nothing.
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And that's why a lot of people have dubbed this age of the church the Laodicean church age.
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Because never in history does it seem that there's ever been a time where the church was so rich and yet so ineffective.
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The church has everything but can't do anything.
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It's like the time when the Pope was bragging to one of his underlings back in the Middle Ages.
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And he was bragging about the great basilicas that had been built.
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These great wonderful palaces of worship that had been built.
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And the Pope said to one of his underlings, because he was quoting from Acts.
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You remember when Acts, where Peter went up to the man who was laying there and the man wanted money? And Peter said, silver and gold have I none, but this I have to you, rise and walk.
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And the man stood up and walked.
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Well, the Pope, many centuries later, is walking around and he looks at these great statues and these great buildings.
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And he says, we can no longer say silver and gold, have we none? And his underling said, yes, but we can also neither say rise and walk.
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So Paul is talking to a church that feels very wealthy.
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Not necessarily financially.
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I think sometimes we get mixed up because Paul's attack against the Corinthians, when I say attack, his admonition to the Corinthians is not so much about their financial situation as much as it is their feeling of spiritual pride and haughtiness.
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Their puffed upness.
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And Paul says with a sneer, he says, you are filled.
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You are rich.
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You have become kings without us.
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You don't even need us.
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And then he says this, and I think this is how you know that it's sarcasm.
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Because he says right after that, would that you were raining.
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Look again at verse 8.
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He says, and would that you did rain, so that we might share the rule with you.
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See, he says, you have what you want, you're already rich, you've become kings, and would that you did rain.
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That's his point.
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He's saying all these things you're saying about yourself, all these things you believe about yourself, would that it were true.
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It'd be great if it really were true.
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The problem is, it isn't.
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If you really were raining, we could rain with you, but you're not.
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All of the fullness, all of the richness, all of the nobleness which was being boasted about by the Corinthians was simply an expression of their pride.
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If they were truly honest, they would understand like the church of Laodicea should have understood that they were pitiable, wretched, poor, blind, and naked.
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That is the biggest problem in the church.
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It's when we go from forgetting who we are in Christ, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked, and we start feeling like we are some type of spiritual superior.
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We go from understanding who we are at the foot of the cross to feeling like that cross, we were worth every drop of that blood.
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And Paul begins to contrast the Corinthians' opinion of themselves with the way the apostle had been treated.
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This is where he goes into verse 9.
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He says, Get this, as great as the Corinthians thought they were, Paul wants to now show that the men God chose to lead His church and guide His church were actually considered the lowest of the low.
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You think you're kings? You think you're high and lofty? Us apostles have been last of all.
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And by the way, that phrase, last of all, I don't want you to miss this because this is huge.
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The phrase last of all there, we often think when you hear somebody say, I'm last of all, that simply means just the lowest or the last in line.
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That's not actually what I think Paul has in mind here.
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Because what he says when he says, we are last of all, this is actually reminiscent of something that would happen at this particular time in history.
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In this context, he's probably pointing to the fact that when a king would go into another land and conquer, he would bring back the spoils of war.
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And among the spoils of war would be those whom he has enslaved, those whom he has captured.
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And he would bring them back and he would parade them through the city to demonstrate his power, to demonstrate his might by bringing those people through the city.
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And the ones who were the last in line were the ones who were designated for the arena.
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And what was the arena? That was where they would take those men, chained and bound, and they would place them for sport in front of the people to either be eaten by beasts or beaten by gladiators.
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So when Paul says we are those who are last in line, he's not simply saying we're the lowest.
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He's saying we are men because, and it's in the context, he says we are men last of all like men sentenced to death because we have become a spectacle to the world.
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We are the ones who the world thinks ought to be executed.
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And look how you see yourselves.
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You see yourselves wealthy, royalty, in need of nothing.
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The apostles are nothing but men led to execution.
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And then in verse 10, I can't read verse 10 without reading it in this way.
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We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ.
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We are weak, but you are strong.
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You are held in honor, but we in disrepute.
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To the present hour we hunger and thirst.
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We are poorly dressed and buffeted, that means beaten and homeless.
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And we labor, working with our own hands.
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When reviled we bless, when persecuted we endure, when slandered we entreat.
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We become and are still like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.
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Paul is saying here, there is a contrast.
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And here is the contrast, and it is remarkable.
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You are the wise ones, we are the fools.
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You are the strong ones, we are the weak.
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You are the honorable ones, and we are the disreputable.
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I can hear the irony dripping from his pen.
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And I want to show you something, even though we are not going there this week.
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I want to show you something in verse 14 that I find very encouraging.
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Go to verse 14, just for a second.
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He says, I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children.
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Now, we are going to talk about this verse next week, because we do verse by verse.
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And next week we are going to start at verse 14.
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And we are going to see how he connects this to him being like a father to them spiritually.
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Because that is what verse 14 and following talk about.
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But I just want to point to the fact that even though Paul is using ironic language here.
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Even though Paul is using what I would call sarcasm here.
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I do not think Paul is doing it in a way that is intended to be ugly and hurtful.
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I think just like he says, I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but rather to admonish you.
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That means to point you in the right direction.
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To solve this issue, to guide you, to encourage you to what is right.
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But here is the thing, even though what Paul's words, he says I am not writing this to shame you.
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Even though he says that, the reality is they should be shamed.
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They should feel shamed.
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One of the most dangerous things in the church today, and it is not new.
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We can trace it back to the Old Testament.
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The most dangerous thing is people who do not know how to feel shame.
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That is another issue of pride, right? Our pride is so high, we do not think we do anything wrong.
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There is an Old Testament verse, and I cannot call it, but I will find it.
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And show it to you guys maybe in an email later this week or something.
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But it says, they were people who forgot how to blush.
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Meaning, they had become so prideful, they did not know how to feel like they had done anything wrong.
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They did not know how to experience shame.
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They had forgotten how to blush.
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You know why? Blush is what we do when we are embarrassed.
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Blush is what we do when we are ashamed.
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Blush is what we do when we know we have done wrong.
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And there are people who have forgotten how to do that, because they just do not see themselves as anything but the greatest.
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And everything I do is justifiable.
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Everything I do has to be right with God, because it is right with me, and I am God.
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So as I said, when Paul says here, I do not write these things to make you ashamed, I still think that there is reason for them to see it with shame.
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Even though Paul is going to admonish them like a loving father, he is right now pointing them to where they have erred.
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And beloved, it is not easy to hear when we have erred.
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I want to tell you, it is so not easy to hear when we have erred, it has gotten to the point that nobody wants to hear it.
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And when you tell somebody that they have erred, you are automatically condemned as judgmental, rather than somebody who is simply trying to encourage a brother to repent, or to come back to Christ, or whatever.
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And we have Paul, he is giving a harsh indictment here.
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He is giving a harsh criticism.
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And the most difficult thing that I see in all of this, I think, is between verses 11 and 13, where Paul compares, in a sense, what they think they have in this royal setting, this palatial position, to what he has experienced as an apostle.
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He says, as followers of Christ, the apostles have endured hunger and thirst, nakedness, beatings, homelessness, hard toil, labor, reviling, persecution, slander.
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I hear people today talk about persecution.
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Let me tell you this, and get mad if you want.
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The vast majority of us don't have any idea what real persecution is.
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I mean, you go to the Middle East, and you look at places where Christianity is illegal, where people's homes are spray-painted with marks, so that they know that they can mark them out for heavily taxation, or even worse, threat of death.
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Nothing that we, you know, we, oh, the person didn't say Merry Christmas to me, oh, boo-hoo.
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Seriously.
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That's not persecution.
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I had a lady, I wore yesterday, I wore a Jesus t-shirt.
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My family and I went out, and it just said, Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life, and I wore that t-shirt.
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I would say, almost everybody I saw read it, because you can't look at something without reading it, and I would say, out of maybe the hundred or so people that I passed by in the little area we were at, I probably had five people say, I love your shirt.
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That was nice.
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I had the vast majority of the people just not even care, and I had maybe three people give me a dirty look.
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Beloved, dirty looks is not persecution.
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I was not persecuted for wearing a Jesus t-shirt yesterday.
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That kind of junk is what's led the world to not take us seriously when we talk about persecution anymore.
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That kind of garbage talk is what's led the world to not take us seriously, because there are real instances of persecution, and yes, we do need to deal with those.
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We need to make those known, but we don't need to look behind every bush for somebody who hates us.
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They're out there.
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Don't you wonder if they're out there.
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But at the end of the day, Paul said this.
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He said, as an apostle, I've been hungry, I've been thirsty, I've been homeless, I've been beaten, and you know what I did? I complained to the ACLU.
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No, you know what I did? I called that Christian lawyer so he could get them.
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No, you know what I did? I endured.
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I endured persecution, and I had real persecution, and I endured it for the sake of Christ.
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He said, in fact, I've been treated like the scum of the earth.
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And that word scum, I had a little fun looking that up, because I was like, that's an interesting term.
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We've all heard the term scum of the earth.
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I wonder what that is in the Greek.
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I went and looked it up and did a little bit of study on it.
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And actually what the term means is off scourings, meaning when you clean something, and that stuff that comes off of it falls down into the bottom of the sink and goes down into the drain and creates like a gunk or a sludge, that's off scourings.
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And that's what he's talking about.
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He said, that's what I've been treated.
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This past week, my kids, their sink stopped.
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It started leaking, which this is why I say I don't do dishes because I do all the plumbing when it happens.
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I told the kids, I said, this is why I don't like to do dishes because I have to do all the icky stuff.
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So you guys can do dishes.
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But I got down under the sink and I took the whole thing in the trap apart and did all this stuff and had my fingers all in it.
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And I found hair barrettes and hair and all kinds of crazy stuff in that pipe.
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And I got to thinking, this is what Paul says the world thinks of him.
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This black sludge that's in this trap that I had to wash out with bleach just to get it clean enough to replace it and put it back.
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That stuff that was running down into the dirt as I was washing it out, that sludge is how Paul says the world sees him and the apostles.
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Like the scum of the earth, the refuse of all things.
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We can't even imagine what the apostles endured for the faith.
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Most of our experiences don't even come close.
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Have you been threatened for the gospel? I have.
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It's not the end of the world.
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And that's really nothing close to what they dealt with.
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Paul indicates that his ministry life was one of hatred.
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He was the constant victim of attacks, scorn, vitriol.
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And to him, or rather to the world, he was a man no better than garbage.
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And then you have the Corinthians.
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Claiming their own spiritual superiority.
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Boasting they have all that they need.
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All the while missing the point that their pride was their greatest weakness.
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So, beloved, how do we apply this? As we begin to draw to a close, how do we apply what we've learned? Well, as I said before, I want you to make no mistake, I'm not sending you out with a license for sarcasm.
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That wasn't what today was about.
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The title is not that at all.
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But I do want us to see the biting nature of Paul's words and consider them for ourselves and ask this question.
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Especially if you're a member here.
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What would Paul have to say to us if he came in among us today? How would Paul admonish, maybe with sarcasm, Sovereign Grace Family Church, if he were among us today? I think when we look at the church in general, we see a lot of the same problems as the church in Corinth.
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Even though sometimes they're even worse.
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What was the problem in the church at Corinth? We are wealthy, royalty, in need of nothing.
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Turn on Christian television.
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What do you see? You see those big-headed preachers telling us all about how we're wealthy, royalty, in need of nothing.
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Just send your seed money.
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In fact, I believe that there are people that would take Paul's words here and would use them as prescriptive rather than ironic.
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I'm certain that there's some preacher out there somewhere who said, You're kings, you're royalty, you should reign.
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And he uses that as a positive push.
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And there are some people that say, You should see yourselves as superior because you are in Christ.
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See yourself as a king.
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See yourself as a prince.
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See yourself as one who should reign.
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And they point to certain verses that talk about our position in Christ.
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But know this about that.
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Everything that talks about our reigning is reigning through Christ, not ourselves.
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Everything is about Him.
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And when it becomes about us, when it becomes about me, when it becomes about my own spiritual superiority, when it comes about my pride, and when I do it without Christ, especially when I do it in lieu of Christ, especially, it becomes not only bad, it becomes sin.
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And Paul's words are not intended to encourage such nonsense.
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He is, through the use of sanctified sarcasm, I believe, pointing to the Corinthians and pointing out their biggest problem.
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You think you need nothing.
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And, beloved, when you think you need nothing, you no longer understand how desperate you are for Christ.
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Hear that again.
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If you came today thinking you need nothing, you have lost sight of how desperate you are for Jesus Christ.
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If you came here today feeling self-assured, feeling that you need nothing, including Jesus, might I tell you, my friend, that you are in the most dangerous place any person can be.
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Because those who are right with God are never those who think that they have everything that they need outside of Him.
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They find everything they need in Him.
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And let me say this.
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There's one of two people here today.
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You are either in Christ or you're outside of Christ.
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There's no middle ground.
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There's no purgatory.
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There's no in-between.
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We are either in Christ or we're outside of Christ.
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And if we're in Christ, this passage is a check for our spiritual pride.
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It is a point to us to say, have we still in this time, no matter how long we have been a believer, do we still know how much we need Jesus? Do we still know who we are in Him? Do we understand that any blessing, any power, any strength, any superiority, anything that we have is in Him? And if we're outside of Christ, if you're outside of Christ today, do you understand that nothing that this world provides is comparable to what Christ has to give? This world may offer you a lot.
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This world may offer you money.
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This world may offer you prestige.
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It may offer you fame.
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It may offer you all kinds of things, even love and encouragement.
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But outside of Christ, all of these things fade.
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In fact, they will all burn away.
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Paul's words are an encouragement to us.
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If we are believers, know that we need Christ desperately.
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Know that without Him, we are nothing.
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And in Him, all of our blessings come through Him.
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And if we are outside of Him, the most important thing we need is Him.
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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 of it.
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I thank You for even words that can be cutting and harsh from the Apostle, but might lead us to a right understanding of who we are in Him, or who we are in You.
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And I pray, Father, that today we have been encouraged for the believers to set aside our pride and to move closer toward that call that You have for us, that call which is such a blessing, that call to be conformed to the image of Christ.
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And for those who are not, who have come today, Lord, that You might through this time show them the need of Jesus.
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For we are all sinners.
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We have all broken God's law and are thus guilty and deserving of God's wrath.
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And yet the Word tells us that Jesus Christ came and He took the wrath of all who believe on Him so that they never will have to experience that wrath themselves.
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Father, help us to set our eyes upon You as we worship together today in Jesus' name.
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Amen.