WWUTT 1402 Called by the Will of God (1 Corinthians 1:1)

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We have a very simple greeting here at the start of Paul's letter to the Corinthians, but there is a lot of depth, a lot of power in just a few words.

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A man's mind could be changed when we understand the text. Many of the

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Bible stories and verses we think we know, we don't. When we understand the text as an online ministry committed to teaching sound doctrine and exposing the faulty, visit our website at www .utt

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.com. Now here's our host, Pastor Gabe Hughes. Thank you, Becky. Hey, sorry for that week -long intermission there.

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We did our expository workshop at First Baptist Church in Lindale, Texas last week, and I just did not think about how busy

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I was going to be over the course of that week. If I had known that, I would have either recorded the devotionals more in advance, or I'd just would have said, you know what,

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I'm not recording this week. We're starting a brand new book. It's First Corinthians. I'll wait to start it next week.

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Well, we already began. We had our introduction to First Corinthians Monday of last week, so I figured since Tuesday's lesson was what we were waiting for,

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I would wait until the next Tuesday. Eventually, I got so far behind, there was no way to catch up.

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It was just better to wait until Tuesday rolled around. So we're staying on the right numeric order here.

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A Tuesday devotional lesson always ends in a two or a seven. So here we are with 14 .02,

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and back to the greeting to First Corinthians. Again, we did the introduction.

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Here's Paul's greeting. I'm going to start by reading First Corinthians chapter one. I'll go through verse nine.

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This is verses one through nine. Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother

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Sosthenes. To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours. Grace to you and peace from God our

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Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I give thanks to my

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God always for you, because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our

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Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful. By whom you were called into the fellowship of his son,

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Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, that is a wonderful, it is a friendly greeting that Paul gives to this church there in Corinth, but he's going to get real sharp, real fast going into the next section when he immediately confronts some of the divisions that he's heard about going on in the church.

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Nevertheless, he begins this letter with expression of thanks for these

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Christians there at Corinth, talking about how they are in fellowship together with God, calling upon both their

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Lord and ours, as he said in verse two. So though he has some things to confront in this particular church, some wrong teaching, wrong thinking, some sins that even exist among the members there, though he has to confront these things, he's not writing them off.

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He doesn't consider this church anathema or like Jesus talks about in Revelation two and three, having removed their lampstand.

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It's not anything like that. It's not like the Holy Spirit isn't with them anymore, but they still have some things that desperately need correction, or it could happen that the

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Lord would remove his presence from this church. So he writes very pastorally, very loving, with great care, still expressing thanks to them.

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I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus.

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The truth about Christ is there, but there are just some ways that the church has not been faithful to the word of Christ.

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And unless they repent, the work of God that would be done among them would be in a different way.

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It would be in judgment rather than in blessing. So let this be a lesson to us. And I talked about this in the introduction to first Corinthians last week.

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When we see a church in sin, we're not just automatically writing this off as like, oh, well, that's not really a church, close their doors, shut that place down.

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How can they possibly allow such a thing to happen? Well, because we're sinners, we're sinners being sanctified.

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And part of that sanctification is going to mean being rebuked, being admonished where we go wrong, that we may come back to the path of righteousness.

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If the Holy Spirit is truly with a person, is truly with a church, then they'll be convicted when confronted with sin, according to the word of God, and they will repent and desire to go the right way.

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So I said that this, this greeting here, there's just these opening three verses of first Corinthians are very deep.

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They're very rich. It's a short greeting compared to the last one that we looked at Romans chapter one, which was one through seven.

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This greeting is just three verses here, but there's still a lot of richness to this fewer words, but a lot of depth.

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Consider the first statement that we have here in verse one, first Corinthians one, one Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.

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And our brother Sosthenes, who is writing a, if you'll remember back to the conclusion of Romans, you had a

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Tertius in Romans 1622, who said, I Tertius wrote this letter, greet who wrote this letter, greet you in the

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Lord. So that was Paul's scribe. We don't get to know who that is till you get to the end of the letter.

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Paul dictated the letter, Tertius wrote it down in first Corinthians. Paul is dictated and Sosthenes is the one writing this down.

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So you have Paul and Sosthenes mentioned together right at the start of the letter, but look at the way that Paul identifies himself or, or introduces himself.

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Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. Why is Paul an apostle?

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Because it was God's will that he would be an apostle. God made him an apostle, transformed his heart from being that man that hated

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God, hated Christ. And so therefore hated God. He hated Jesus Christ. He thought he was zealous for God, but he wasn't.

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He was doing the work of Satan, persecuting the people of God in Christ Jesus. He thought he was upholding the word of God, but he was going against it because he did not realize that Jesus Christ was the fulfillment of all the law and the prophets.

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So Paul at that time called Saul, which was his Hebrew name. Paul was his Greek name,

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Saul is his Hebrew name. It's not that he went through a name change, but when he became an apostle to the Gentiles, he went by his

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Greek name instead of his Hebrew name. So Saul, as he's mentioned in Acts at that time, persecuting

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Christians, he was persecuting the followers of Jesus Christ, was even on his way to Damascus to round them up and that they might be thrown in prison and possibly even put to death the way that Stephen was when we read about the martyrdom of Stephen in Acts chapter seven.

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So with Saul doing all of this, he's on his way to Damascus in Acts nine, Jesus appears to him on the road to Damascus and says,

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Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? Jesus who is seated in heaven at the right hand of God and yet says to Saul, why are you persecuting me?

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That which you're doing to the least of these brothers of mine, you do also unto me, as Jesus said in Matthew 25.

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So as Saul was persecuting the, the church of Jesus Christ, Jesus identifies himself as in such fellowship with his own followers that that which you do to my followers, you do also unto me.

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But this question caused Saul to respond, who are you Lord? And Jesus replies,

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I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. And so Saul from that point on stricken with blindness, told to go into Damascus, stay at a particular house, a man named

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Ananias was going to come to him and would anoint him, baptize him, and the scales would fall off his eyes and he would be able to see again.

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A man who thought he saw, yet he was blind, then stricken with physical blindness that after fasting for three days and then being baptized, his eyes were open that he might see the majesty and the glory of Christ.

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More than this, that he would be appointed an apostle to the Gentiles, an actual messenger of Christ, carrying the word of Jesus, the son of God to the world, that those who hear the gospel that Paul would proclaim would turn from their sin and be saved, would put faith in Jesus Christ and have salvation.

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Consider what the Lord said to Ananias about Saul slash Paul. He said in Acts 9 15, go for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the

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Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel, for I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.

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And this is what God had appointed Paul for.

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In fact, the way that Paul shares his testimony to the Galatians at the beginning of Galatians chapter one, verse 15, it says, when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me in order that I might preach him among the

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Gentiles. So Paul was set up, was set apart for this work before he was even born.

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That's something that the Lord said to Jeremiah, in fact, and you see some parallels between Paul and Jeremiah.

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Paul will sometimes use words that were said of Jeremiah or by Jeremiah. So in Jeremiah one five, it says, well, starting in verse four, now the word of the

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Lord came to me saying, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you and before you were born,

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I consecrated you, I appointed you a prophet to the nations to be consecrated means to be set apart.

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So you compare that with the statement that Paul makes in Galatians one 15, when he who had set me apart before I was born and who called me by his grace was pleased to reveal his son to me.

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So before Paul was even born, God had predestined him to be an apostle.

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This was going to be part of the plan that Paul would be made an apostle of Jesus Christ to carry the gospel to the world.

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And this was by the will of God. So first Corinthians one one, again, consider that as Paul introduces himself and says called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.

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It's not Paul's will that he is an apostle. It was by the will of God that he would be appointed to this particular work.

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A number of years ago, this was about 2015, I think it was, we had a skirmish going on in the church that I was pastoring at that time.

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There was there was some disagreement regarding Calvinism. Now I myself, some of you may be surprised to hear this, but I have never called myself a

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Calvinist. I love the doctrines of grace and I value to uphold them and preach them as they are proclaimed in the word of God.

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I believe that the doctrines of grace are the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a summary of the presentation of the gospel that we have in scripture.

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You just read something like Ephesians chapter one or Romans chapter three and you see the doctrines of grace right there in the pages of scripture.

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But I don't find any personal value in calling myself a

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Calvinist. I've never called myself that, but I have been called that as an insult.

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And so there were there was a conflict that was going on in my church at that particular time with between some

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Calvinists and some Armenians. And even admittedly, the Calvinist side of the argument did not handle themselves very well either.

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This turned into a quarrel that it should not have been. But in the midst of all of this, there was a young man who was kind of watching the debate and he was he was trying to pick a side.

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He wasn't being wooed in any direction. There weren't people that were reaching out to him and say, hey, come to my side.

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He was he was trying to be a conscientious objector. And so he's watching from the outside and seeing friends on both sides that are arguing about this.

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So one day after church, he decided to approach me and and asked if we could talk about some of these things.

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He said, I'll take you out to lunch and I'll buy you lunch. And I said, OK, that'd be great. And he said,

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I've got some questions about Calvinism. I can't think of these things right now. I have to write them down.

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So is it all right if I, you know, just kind of write some things down in a notebook and I ask you questions? You won't think that I'm like cornering you or trying to bait you with anything?

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I said, no, ask whatever you want. So we got together at the restaurant, which was a

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Mexican place I enjoyed eating at. And we enjoyed our burritos. And then he gets his notebook out and he goes,

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OK, I've got some questions. I said, all right. And so he basically went through Tulip, you know, the five points of Calvinism.

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You got total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints.

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And he went through all of those. And he he basically wasn't asking a lot of questions. He was more making arguments against each one.

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And I let him do that for about 15 minutes. I either said, OK, or I responded or gave correction, like maybe he misunderstood the doctrine or something like that.

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And that was kind of the way our exchange went for about the first 15 or 20 minutes. When we got to the end of that,

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I really did not want to be a Calvinist apologist. I didn't want to go through all of Tulip and defend that.

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And I said, do you mind if I just respond to you with scripture? Do you mind if we just open up the Bible and just read what the

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Bible says? And he said, sure, I think that would be great. I asked him to bring his Bible with him. So we had it there.

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I had mine. We opened it up. And and I had talked with a friend about this beforehand, and I can't remember why

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I had it in my head to approach it this way. But I just decided to open up First Corinthians and go through the first chapter.

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Oh, I think I remember why I thought this way, because one of the guys that was on the Arminian side of the argument, he kept talking about,

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I don't follow this teacher or that teacher. I follow Christ. OK, well, no, that's a very similar argument to something that Paul confronts here in First Corinthians chapter one.

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We'll get to that later. For the sake of time, let me just stay focused on on this story. So that was why

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I thought, let me let's go through First Corinthians, because I think that will be the closest in context to the way the debate has been framed in our particular congregation.

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So I opened up for First Corinthians chapter one. I said, let's just start reading. Let's just read through it and then we'll we'll talk some things through.

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So First Corinthians chapter one, starting in verse one, and I just read it out loud. I said, Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus.

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That's as far as I got. And this young man that I was talking with, he just put his hands down on the table and he goes, well, that's it.

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And I said, what's it? What do you mean? He goes, that's it. I can't even argue with that. And I said, you're going to have to help me out here.

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What did you hear there? And he said, well, it says Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. It wasn't by his will.

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It was by God's will. And it just blew up every argument that I had against God's sovereign election.

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And I'm sitting there, I'm sitting there a little baffled myself because I'm going, was it really that easy?

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I've never seen anyone's mind change that fast. But it was just reading the greeting of First Corinthians chapter one.

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Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. It wasn't by Paul's will. It was by God's will.

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God is the one who by his will made Paul an apostle. It was by God's will that Paul's heart would be changed from a person who was against God and persecuting the people of God to instead becoming a slave unto the

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Lord and a servant even unto his people. This was all by the transforming power of God in Paul's life.

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Who could have possibly given up the rock star status that Paul had as a

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Pharisee? Who would have done that to go then be persecuted for the very people that he was persecuting?

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Who would change their mind like that? Who, by their own will, would do such a thing? This could have only been by the power of God.

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And it was also by the power of God and the Holy Spirit that changed this young man's mind that I was talking with at a

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Mexican restaurant, understanding the sovereign will of the Lord.

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And it only took 14 words, 14 words in the word of God at the very beginning of first Corinthians.

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And through those 14 words, the Holy Spirit changed this young man's mind from somebody that was that was previously arguing for the autonomous will of man and then came to an understanding.

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Our will is nothing. What is our will against the will of God? There is nothing that happens outside the will of God.

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We are what we are because it's God's will that we would be this way.

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Called by the will of God to be a follower of Jesus Christ, that's you and that's me.

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We have been born again by faith in Jesus Christ because it was

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God's will to intervene in the course that we were on. We were once following the passions of our flesh, following the course of this world, heading towards destruction.

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That would have been our fate. That would have been where we would have ended up if we had continued on that particular course.

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But God, in his mercy, intervened and someone came to us with the word of God and shared the gospel of Christ with us that we would be convicted of heart of our sin and turn around.

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We would change course by the will of God turning us from that direction we were in.

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Sin and destruction was our way, and he turned us instead toward Christ, previously an enemy of God.

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And now we are friends of God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He gave us a new will.

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Previously, our will was to go our own way, and now we have a will by the will of God. He's changed our will to go

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God's way. And that way is Christ. John 14, six, I am the way, the truth and the life,

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Jesus said, no one comes to the father but by me. That's what we have here at the very beginning of first Corinthians, a statement of God's will over the stubborn will of man called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus and our brother

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Sostenes. So, yeah, Paul's secretary there being the one who is writing a former leader of the

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Corinthian synagogue for he's mentioned in Acts chapter 18, 12 through 17.

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You know, I realized after I did that greeting in first Corinthians a week ago and then went through my week doing the expository workshop and stuff like that,

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I realized that I did not go to the story in Acts where Paul first preached in Corinth that led him from leaving the synagogue there because they would not receive the gospel that he was proclaiming.

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And he said, from now on, I'm going to the Gentiles. He shook his garments free of them and said, and now

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I'm now I'm taking this message to the Gentiles. So I should have read that before. It would have been good to do in the introduction of first Corinthians.

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We will come back into that later. In fact, I think I'll make it the start of the devotional tomorrow.

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We'll read from Acts chapter 18, where Paul first visits Corinth and preaches the gospel there.

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Sostenes was beaten. He's mentioned in in Acts 18, 17 as being the ruler of the synagogue.

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And he was beaten in front of the tribunal that Paul was brought before because Sostenes had let

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Paul into the synagogue to preach and he was persecuted for that. So we see here two men who are persecuted for the gospel,

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Paul and Sostenes. And though he was beaten in front of the tribunal, it did not put off Sostenes from being a witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ as he continues with Paul in that particular work, even being the man who by his penmanship would write this letter to the church in Corinth and for the conviction or for the the rebuke that is given to the church in Corinth.

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May we be convicted in these words as well, desiring the holiness of God that is testified to us by his word.

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Let us pray. Heavenly Father, I thank you for forgiveness. I thank you for for showing us your mercy for all of us were as dead men and women.

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We were going to to judgment. We were going to perish under the righteous judgment of God if it were not for your mercy that turned us from our wicked ways and to the ways of Jesus Christ.

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And I ask that we would walk in them, that we would desire the holiness of God. We would understand what that means.

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According to your word, the Bible tells us what the holiness of God is and how we are to be holy as God is holy.

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As Jesus says also in Matthew five, you must therefore be perfect as your heavenly father is perfect.

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So sanctify us, O Lord, and grow us in your truth that we may be holy and blameless before you as you would predestined us to be before the foundation of the world.

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Grow us in the knowledge of you and your truth. In Jesus name we pray. Amen. This is

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When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web and we thank you for selecting ours.

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But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family. Find a good gospel teaching

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Christ -centered church to worship with this weekend and join us again tomorrow as we continue our Bible study