Belonging to Jesus (or the World)

We'll turn your Bibles, please, to 1 Corinthians, chapter 3. Once again,

I'll read the entire chapter, all 23 verses. Our message will be the last six verses, verses 18 to 23.

Please stand for the reading of God's Word, 1 Corinthians 3, read the entire chapter.

But I, brothers, could not address you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not ready, for you are still of the flesh.

For while there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh, behaving only in a human way? For when one says,

I follow Paul, and another, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human? What then is

Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted,

Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only

God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor.

For we are God's fellow workers, you are God's field, God's building. According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder,

I laid a foundation, and someone else is building upon it. Let each one take care of how he builds upon it.

For no one can lay a foundation other than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's work will become manifest, for the day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done.

If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

Do you not know that you are God's temple, and that God's spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys

God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Now we begin verse 18, the text for this morning. Let no one deceive himself.

If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.

For the wisdom of this world is folly with God, for it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the

Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile. So let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours, and you are

Christ's, and Christ is God's. God bless the reading of this word. Please be seated. Let us pray,

God, to open our eyes and illumine our hearts to this message of Heavenly Father. Once again, we pray that you would do that, which only you can do, which is to open our eyes and our hearts to give us insight into the truths of your word, that we may be lifted up and edified by it and brought closer to the image of Jesus Christ, which is our goal this morning.

Father, so we pray that you would accomplish this, even as we look to your word, even now in the preaching and the hearing, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. So to understand this passage here, these six verses,

I mean, with all things, context is king, so we need to understand the flow of the Apostle's thought, which is why we began at verse one.

And of course, the Apostle is speaking to or writing to the Corinthians and telling them the real danger and the real source of the divisiveness that they were engaging in.

This business of I follow and I follow and what it really meant. Perhaps they thought it was simply lining up behind an eloquent teacher, someone who could bring them closer to Christ because they spoke so well, because they're so impressive.

And wouldn't that be good to line up behind a man who could bring you closer to Christ? Would that not make sense?

Would that not be, can we say, wise? The Apostle Paul says, no, because you are lining up behind men.

You're acting like babies. You're acting like infants in Christ because you are saying, I follow and I follow.

And the list would only be able to multiply as a church grow. That I follow this one.

I follow that one. Everyone would have their special leader. The Apostle Paul says, no, it's not wise.

It's worldly wisdom that you're following. Not following the wisdom of God, not following the ways of God, not following Christ.

So as we look at this, these last six verses that end this chapter, we need to keep this in mind that this is what the

Apostle Paul has been driving at throughout this letter up to this point, this chapter in particular, and this book if you care to read it for homework.

The rest of the book, the chapters after this, 4 through 16, you'll find that this is one of the emphases that he has is unity, getting away from these divisive behaviors, following the ways of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is to line up behind Christ.

That best men are to be imitated as they imitate Christ Jesus. Our passage this morning, it's interesting that it actually has in the

Heidelberg Catechism, question number one in the Heidelberg Catechism, pride of place as a support for the question and answer in that catechism.

Of course, we're going through the Baptist Catechism in the morning as Pastor Owens brings that to you, but here's another catechism, the

Heidelberg, which came some few centuries before that. The question, what is your only comfort in life and in death?

The answer, supported by this passage that I just read in verses 18 to 23, the answer is that I am not my own, but belong body and soul in life and in death to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ.

He has fully paid for all my sins with His precious blood and has set me free from the tyranny of the devil.

He also watches over me in such a way that not a hair can fall from my head without the will of my

Father in heaven. In fact, all things must work together for my salvation. Because I belong to Him, Christ, by His Holy Spirit, assures me of eternal life and makes me wholeheartedly willing and ready from now on to live for Him.

And here is the point that the Apostle Paul brings forth. You are not your own if you are in Christ Jesus.

You are bought at a price, as he's going to say later in the book of Corinthians. We won't get there. That could be your homework. You are not your own.

You are bought at a price. You belong not to this world. You belong not to this world, which would lead you into this sectarianism, which they obviously didn't see as sectarianism.

They didn't see it as divisive. They saw it as positive. But Paul is saying, you're following worldly ways.

You're following worldly wisdom. And by that, you're doing damage to the church.

You're doing damage to yourselves. You're remaining as infants. That's in the first four verses. You're acting as merely human.

That's verse four. You are denigrating the work of Christ and building up the temple, which if it's to be anything, is to be a unified people as they line up behind him.

As we look at these verses, as I bring them to you, we do need to question ourselves and ask ourselves, who are we actually following?

Are we following the ways of this world with a veneer of Christianity to it?

I follow this man and I follow that man. Here's my favorite commentator and here's the radio preacher

I like best. And so forth. Or are we truly behaving as if we belong to Christ?

Where do we line up? How does it play out in truth when we look to a heart?

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.

You know, worldly wisdom is what's in play here.

As the Apostle Paul is showing them, this is what you are actually delving into. We often don't know what we've stepped into.

We often don't know that line that we've crossed and we need the illumination of Scripture. We need the

Holy Spirit within us to show us these things. And here the Apostle Paul is saying, you're saying

I follow and I follow and I follow and you think you're following men who are leading you to Christ, but the way you're following them, you're not just being edified by them.

You're not simply hearing Apollos teach you a better way, so to speak, but you're actually following the man and you're deceiving yourself.

Worldly wisdom is that way. It is in itself a deception. If anyone amongst you thinks he is wise in this age, he is wise according to the spirit of this world, which of course we know is controlled by our enemy, by our adversary, by Satan.

Let him become a fool that he may become wise. How many of you would ever volunteer to enter into the university of foolishness?

We go to school so we get degrees, so we can have competence in a certain area. Here the

Apostle Paul is saying, here's what you need. You need a master's degree in foolishness, or at least what the world would call foolishness.

He's warning. He's telling them where they're really going, what is really implied by their behavior.

And he's saying, let no one deceive himself. They are deceiving themselves. There's a word here he uses, zexapotao.

You don't have to remember that, but it's not used very often in scripture. And the same word is actually used way back in redemptive history, almost the beginning of it,

Genesis chapter 3, when Eve pleads her case to the Lord and says, that serpent, that one that you created,

God, the serpent deceived me. It's the same word the Apostle Paul uses here in 1

Corinthians 3, 18, let no one deceive himself. It's actually a strengthened form of that word that was used there in Genesis chapter 3.

You see, deceiving oneself is not just the result of worldly wisdom.

It's the sum and the total of it. When we go to it, we look at it and we try to have what it promises us, but it's deceptive.

In one way, worldly wisdom, this deception, keeping in mind

Genesis 3, keeping in mind the serpent deceived me. In one way, you do get what you want.

You do get what it was promised, don't you? And the serpent told her, you know,

God doesn't want you to eat that because he knows when you eat of that fruit, your eyes will be open.

You will be like God, knowing good and evil. And she saw the fruit.

She saw that it was a delight to the eyes, that it was good for food, and it was good to make one wise. Did she not, did

Adam not with her get all of those promises? Yes. We know from Scripture, their eyes were opened and immediately they knew they were naked.

And so immediately they had this sense, like God, of good and evil. Now they didn't become God or with a little

G or a big G or anything like that. But in that one limited aspect, they got the promise.

It paid off. They ate the fruit and they had their eyes open and they knew something about good and evil and they had, in that sense, wisdom.

So where's the deception? Where's the deception? Have you ever been really deceived by something where you got the promise that was offered?

That what was promised was actually given to you? You won the prize or whatever, but it turned out not to be what it actually was perceived to be, what it was promoted to be?

Many years ago, my wife and I went to the Delta, way up on the

San Joaquin River, I believe it is, but up by the Pittsburgh Antioch area. We had found an ad which said, you know, if you will go and hear the sales pitch to rent one of these places along the river and spend the day with the guy showing you all the advantages and prices and all these things, you will get a 35 millimeter single lens reflex camera, a 35 millimeter

SLR camera. Now there used to be cameras with film in them and stuff like that and they called them

SLRs. You can look that up later on Google. But it was a camera, 35, boy, that was going to be cool.

So we said, okay, we're going to go to the Delta, out past Pittsburgh and Antioch and all that. We drove all the way out there and we spent the day with this guy and he was showing us the houseboats and all the things we could rent and all the sturgeon we can catch and all the striped bass that were in the river, everything like that.

In the end, he finally about, what was it, six hours, about six hours, he finally realized we weren't going to buy anything.

We were just there for that promised camera. That camera we saw on the ad that if we go in and we put up with this thing for a number of hours, we will get it.

So he finally said, well, you just go to the front office, the one where you checked in, as you go out, just tell him you get the camera and he signed a little thing, a little receipt so we could get the camera and redeem that thing he gave us.

Do you remember Cracker Jacks? Raise your hand. Do you remember Cracker Jacks? Okay. Yeah, this is a real demographic, a real young guy over there.

You get these little plastic prizes in the Cracker Jack box, right? This camera was bigger than a

Cracker Jack prize, but it wasn't of any better quality. We got what was promised.

They promised us a 35 millimeter SLR camera and we got one, but it was a piece of junk.

Here's the deception of worldly wisdom. It actually does pay off in a sense.

It will give you the promise. It's just it doesn't tell you what that promise really is. The quality of it and the consequence of it, the ramification of it.

Here they thought they were lining up behind men and that was a good thing because they're hearing the word of God in different forms and better eloquence from Apollos as he's given to us and characterized in scripture.

Ultimately, what's happening is you're deceived. You're only getting a plastic

Cracker Jack kind of a camera. Not what was really promised. The Apostle Paul gives right here in verse 18, the cure for this.

Become a fool, they may become wise. Now what's foolishness? You know, if you read Proverbs, we're not supposed to be foolish about anything.

The fool is everywhere in Proverbs denigrated and keep away from this. And here's how you don't be a fool.

So let's not take this to be a silly statement by the Apostle Paul. What kind of foolishness is he speaking of here?

He says, you become a fool, you may become wise. Or become a fool in the eyes of the world.

He says, if anyone thinks he is wise in this age, according to the precepts of this age, which is still we're in that age

I think that he was in, in every moral sense, every sense we can think of, still really in that age.

Become a fool according to the precepts of this world, that you may become wise in terms of God, in terms of the gospel of the

Lord Jesus Christ. What is foolishness and wisdom in this letter? If we go back to verse 20, where is the one who is wise?

Chapter 1 verse 20, excuse me. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God, the world did not know

God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.

You see this distinction between godly wisdom, worldly wisdom, what

God calls folly, what the world calls folly, what's at the center of all this? The same thing that's at the center of all human history.

The same thing that's at the center of our worship here this morning, and every Sunday the Lord allows us to come together, the cross of Jesus Christ.

The cross of Jesus Christ is folly to the world, yet it is the wisdom of God. When your eyes are open, when the

Spirit changes your heart, you look upon the cross and you see the power of God through the resurrection of the

Lord Jesus Christ. You see the wisdom of God in accomplishing His justice against your sins put upon the

Lord Jesus Christ. Folly to the world. We don't have to go into a long diatribe,

I don't have to pull out 20 quotes of people who go against what the scriptures say about the

Lord Jesus Christ that we worship here this morning. We can go to politicians, we can go to commentators, we can go to pundits, talking heads.

I could pile up the quotes for the rest of this morning, we're not going to do that. We know what is said about the cross of the

Lord Jesus Christ. How foolish that an innocent man should pay for your sin.

How foolish to believe that a man who's dead and buried in three days will be raised up and is alive in heaven sitting at the right hand of God in a body like ours.

I can't figure all that out. Neither can you, truth be told. And that's why it's called foolishness.

Foolishness to the world. And yet what is it? It's the wisdom of God who created the world.

The Apostle Paul is saying this self -deceptive, this way of the world that delivers on the promises and gives you just enough to tantalize you.

Just enough to make you keep reaching out to the next step and the next step and the next step in their mode of thinking.

Apostle Paul says you've been deceived. You'll get what you were promised, but it's not really what they described.

It's not really what you hoped for. For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.

This verse 19 and the first part of it is folly to God. How can it be folly to God?

Well, because it's not the cross that's the main thing. It's not the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ that brings forth the wisdom that they have.

Their wisdom is in themselves. Their wisdom is in a constantly changing moral ethic.

As we've known at times in the last few years here, right here in this country, how much has changed since a half a generation ago?

Again, we don't need to go into a diatribe. I don't need to list it all out for you. You know how fast things have changed and are changing again.

The wisdom of this world is folly with God. God looks upon it and says, what are you even thinking?

What does the world want? What does the world offer you? Self -autonomy?

Independence? Well, independence is a myth in God's sight because God, no matter how small, has decreed all things whatsoever shall come to pass.

Self -rule is folly with God. Why is that? Because you're self -rule when you give in to your own inclinations, when you follow your own natural heart, not the heart that God gives upon conversion, your own natural heart.

You're ruling yourself. You're back in the second psalm. Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot a vain thing?

And it goes on to speak of the rebellion against God and the hatred against God and shaking their fists against God because they can't stand the constraints or the so -called constraints that God puts upon them.

And what does God say? What does the psalm say about God when he looks upon that? He laughs.

He mocks. He says, what are you doing? Who are you resisting? That's why the wisdom of this world is folly with God, because the wisdom of this world go back to Babylon, Genesis chapter 11, where man thought to make himself independent of God, to build his own tower to heaven, and God looks and says, what are these ants doing against me?

What are these insects doing, trying to make themselves like God and lift themselves up to me?

It's always offering you this independence to make you able to do in yourself what only

God can do, give you self -rule, autonomy, self -actualization, as we called it about a generation ago.

The fool ultimately says in his heart, there is no God. Now, it sounds very wise in this world, but the psalmist in Psalm 14 calls him the fool.

The fool says in his heart, there is no God. That's why the wisdom of this world is folly with God.

It begins by denying his very existence, much less his moral character and his moral and ethical demands upon people.

Worldly wisdom sets perception above evidence, which is my own personal perception of myself, and I thought this way and I felt this way, and therefore, that takes precedence over facts, as John Adams called them, stubborn things.

The wisdom of this world is folly with God because the wisdom of this world denies God. The wisdom of this world says there is no

God. The wisdom of this world mocks the cross and the resurrection of our

Lord Jesus Christ. But why is all this?

Verse 19, the second part of it, actually gives us a prophetic character from the scripture, prophesying forward to what the

Apostle Paul is speaking of here. He uses Psalm 64 and he uses Job chapter 5 verse 17 to show us how this worldly wisdom actually captures you, how it works for it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness, and again, the

Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile. He catches the crafty, he catches the wise in their craftiness, so who are the wise?

It's the self -proclaimed wise, it's the worldly wise, it's like in Pilgrim's Progress, what was that man's name?

Mr. Worldly Wise Man, the one who thought he knew everything, the self -proclaimed wise man.

Now it's really interesting there, and again, for your homework, you can read more of this, but in Job chapter 5, you're in the midst of Eliphaz's first speech to Job, showing him where he's gone wrong and why

God is punishing him as he's being punished, or so he thought. And Eliphaz says rightly that he, that's

God, he catches the wise, that's the self -proclaimed wise, the boastful wise, in their own craftiness.

Well, he was right about that. He was wrong in the way he applied it to Job, and he gets rebuked later, and it's really interesting if you read the irony there, that Eliphaz, who says that God catches the crafty, or the wise in their craftiness, he's going to get caught in his own craftiness at the end of the book of Job.

Again, that's your homework for later, to read through that. But here's what the Apostle Paul is saying, he's saying when you give into this system of thought, when you delve into worldly wisdom, you're being crafty, and you're going to get caught in it.

You're laying your own trap, is really what he's saying. Craftiness is used in Ephesians and in Corinthians to describe the devil's wiles, that he's crafty, he lays his little traps, he, with this deception, as we spoke of a moment ago, draws you in.

My grandpa, my grandfather on my dad's side, was a chess master, and when you played chess with him, which

I did several times, and I won once, but that was when he was really old and I had actually, accidentally, honestly it was accidentally,

I put the king and the queen on the opposite squares they were supposed to be, and he didn't pick up on it, he was confused him so badly, and he couldn't figure out, he knew something had happened, because I started to win, so he knew something went wrong, and he was able to back them all up.

But he had this way of drawing you out, and you get this plan going, and you thought you're being really crafty, if I can use the word, and the next thing you knew, all your pieces were at risk, and getting slaughtered, because you laid your own trap.

And he just drew you into your own trap, because he saw it coming. Now God is not a chess player.

How does he catch the crafty, or the wise, in their craftiness? Not because he traps you.

Not because he schemes against you, that's the devil's way. Not because like a good chess player, as my grandfather was, he draws you out and forces you to make your strategy known, and then he traps you in your own trap that you're going to trap him with, and on and on it can go, that's not

God. What happens with your worldly wisdom?

This craftiness of giving into that. God tells you up front.

God declares himself to you. He doesn't set a trap for you, he's not being scheming, he's not being clever with you.

He tells you up front in the scripture. For example, he commands all men everywhere to repent.

He commands you this day, if you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ, to repent of your sin.

To stop being wise in your own eyes. To step away from this folly that the world calls wisdom, but God calls foolishness, and to come to Christ.

To put your faith in him, and not this world. How crafty is that? He's not trying to trick you,

I'm not trying to manipulate you, I'm just telling you what the scripture says. Tells you plainly.

Will you be trapped in your own craftiness someday? Yes. If you stay in this crafty, in this worldly way of thinking, that calls to the cross of Jesus Christ, that's what really is in play here.

Start in 1 Corinthians 1 and read through, it's the cross that is the foolishness. And the more we give into the world's ways, the more we line up behind that way of thinking, the more foolish that is going to be to you.

Does God catch you in that craftiness? Because he's a clever chess player? Of course not.

He tells you. He tells you now. He tells you this day, that your wisdom is crafty, is deceptive.

And one day, if you do not repent and put your faith and hope and trust for eternal life in Christ and him alone, it will come back upon you.

He catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they're futile.

Now that part is from Psalm 94. Psalm 94 11 says, the

Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are but a breath. You can see where the Apostle Paul uses that thoughts of the wise, what he replaces for man.

The Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are but a breath. He knows the way we think, that it's a mist.

It's an image. It's like a mirage. Let's go up a few verses in the

Psalm, because I think the Apostle Paul would have more in mind than just that one that he that he cites there. He says, understand,

O dullest of the peoples. Fools, when will you be wise? He who planted the ear, does he not hear?

He who formed the eye, does he not see? Now stop a second. In verse seven, they, these fools, these dullest of people say, the

Lord does not see. The God of Jacob does not perceive. Is that not worldly wisdom? Is that not exactly what the

Apostle Paul is railing against? He who planted the ear, does he not hear?

He who formed the eye, does he not see? He who disciplines the nations, does he not rebuke? He who teaches man knowledge, the

Lord knows the thoughts of man, that they are but a breath. They're futile.

They're a breath. They're a mist. They're just going to evaporate and go away. And again, as I said a few moments ago, how fast have they changed?

Now, again, I don't want to divide the church into demographics, but some of us who were alive when

Leave it to Beaver first came on, and that whole generation, and the ethic, and the moral parameters in which we lived, and the things that we counted upon, how ancient is that today?

It's just been a few years. My lifetime, and many of yours, and some of you who are younger than me can watch these things on the old

TV channels. You know what I'm talking about. But the whole ethic, everything is different. It's all been thrown away.

How fast things go. The thoughts of the wise, the self -proclaimed wise are futile.

They're a breath. They're a mist, and they just go away. Not so the

Lord Jesus Christ, who was the same yesterday, today, and forever, a rock upon which we can rely.

In verse 21, he says, So let no one boast in men. And here he comes to his first point.

He's been driving them to understand that this lining up behind men, these sects that they're putting together within the church, they wouldn't have known this on their own, would they?

And so often we need the scripture to tell us what we're really doing. What is reality? Let no one boast in men.

I wasn't boasting in men. I just like the way Apollos preaches. I'm not boasting in Paul.

No, Paul wouldn't have that. I just want to be with an apostle who had that image of Jesus Christ on the

Damascus Road. I just want to be with that one. Yes, you are boasting in men.

Why so? Because you're not boasting in the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is the point.

He says, therefore, don't boast in men. And this is what you were doing. Did they know that that's what they're doing?

No. Did you know that you were falling headlong into hell before the

Lord Jesus Christ by his spirit came upon you? No. But you were boasting in the worldly wisdom that was leading you that way, whether you knew it or not.

And now you know it. And here's our clever God strategizing upon you.

No. Here's our honest God, our open God, who declares himself so that no one boasts in men.

And this is what you're doing. If your reliance is on anything other than the Lord Jesus Christ, his perfect life attributed to you by faith, his atoning death where he paid for your sins on the cross, reliance on anything other than that gospel truth is boasting in men.

And who's the man you're most likely to be boasting in? And I mean man in the most open sense of that word, man, woman, child.

Who are you boasting in? Self. You're boasting in you.

If you're not relying upon Christ. Your wisdom is from yourself, if it's not the wisdom of the cross of the

Lord Jesus Christ, so that no one boasts in men. Now, you don't know what sin is until the scripture reveals it to you and the

Holy Spirit opens your heart to make you realize the truth, the reality behind the scripture that could reveal that.

You don't know these things until God gives you the reality of them. And to be reliant on anything other than Jesus Christ is to boast in whatever that reliance is.

If it's not Jesus, you're boasting in it. And the only boast you can have that is wise, the only boast you can have that has any eternal good is to boast in the

Lord Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul says, I will boast in nothing but the cross of Jesus Christ.

What does he mean by the cross? The whole picture, the whole gospel of his perfect life, his death, his burial, his resurrection, his ascension, and God willing, soon his return.

There's an implication to all this. The self -deception that is worldly ways, the self -deception that has us lining up behind anyone other than Lord Jesus Christ.

We don't take away the benefits that we have in the world. We don't tell you not to listen to your pastors or preachers.

But again, Paul is careful when he says to follow him. No, he doesn't say follow.

He says imitate. He says, imitate me as I imitate the

Lord Jesus Christ. Looking down at verse 21, he says, for all things are yours.

So why would you follow these men who can provide you with basically nothing?

Why do you listen to me? Because I can point you to the Lord Jesus Christ from the scripture, but I can give you nothing.

I can only tell you what God by his spirit gives us in scripture and pray that God by his spirit will bring it to bear upon your heart.

That's the most that any man can do as a faithful to the word of God. What does Paul say here?

For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas. What are they?

Paul said earlier, what are we but servants appointed by God and they're your servants. They're here to serve you, not to have you lining up behind them.

They're servants of Christ sent for a purpose. Everything is yours, everything you need by the means of grace that God has ordained in the church to understand this gospel that has brought you to this church.

God willing, it's already yours. Why would you follow a man? Why would you get behind something so paltry as a mere human?

We're not acting merely human if we have the spirit of God within us. But how did that happen?

Because I gave it to you? Because you gave it to me? No, all things are yours by faith in the

Lord Jesus Christ and the Lord Jesus Christ. Read Ephesians 4. He gave good gifts to men.

He gave gifts to the church in order to edify the church and build us up together. So Paul, Apollos, Cephas, Brian, Josh, Conley, what are we?

Servants of the Lord Jesus Christ here to serve you, not to be followed. God willing, we have something worth imitating, but not to be followed.

All things are yours, Paul, Apollos, Cephas, all these servants, or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours.

This is something the Apostle Paul works out in a bit more detail in the book of Romans.

The same idea. Starting at verse 31 in chapter 8, he says,

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

Everything you need to grow in the Lord Jesus Christ, he has given you. He's given you a new heart to believe.

He's given you his spirit within. He's given you the scripture. He's given you the fellowship of the saints.

He's given you a church. He's given you all creation. Let's read on here.

Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died.

More than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.

You have Jesus's prayers. All things are yours. The Lord Jesus Christ himself sitting at the right hand of God, interceding this moment for you.

Bringing you to God with every breath. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?

Shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written, for your sake, we are being killed all the day long.

We're regarded as sheep to be slaughtered. Knowing all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

For I'm sure that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor things present or things to come nor powers nor height nor depth or anything in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God and Jesus Christ our

Lord. What's the apostle Paul saying here? What's he saying to the Corinthians? Was he saying to us that all creation is yours?

And how is it yours? It is yours in the sense that all creation is by God's decree working to bring you into the image of Jesus Christ.

It's all working together to bring us closer to God. It's all yours.

How could we then turn to man? How could we then turn to any manner of worldly wisdom?

How could we not be willing to be seen as fools to a world that says the cross is pure foolishness in the light of these things that God has given?

All creation groaning with us to be redeemed. All creation working together with us. Everything God has made and given is to bring you closer to him.

When we walk by the way and you see in nature the beauty that he has put together.

You might want to stop and see a flower. Perhaps it's trees that excite you more.

We all have something different. We look at those. How do they work to bring you closer to the image of Jesus Christ?

Can you stop and think who made these things? Why is that tree there? Why is that flower there?

That beautiful brook? Whatever the case is. It's to put your thoughts on Christ.

By whom and through whom and for whom all things were made. They're all yours already.

Don't turn to the paltry. Don't turn to the worldly. Don't even in the church as we work together to be edified, to be built up in the

Lord Jesus Christ. Turn merely to man. Be sure you're always following the

Lord Jesus Christ because it's all yours already. It's all yours now. Now, what is the

Apostle Paul's argument here? One way to put this, if we start back at verse 18 again, is to be what

God has made you to be. To behave according to the kingdom that he has brought you into.

This is first Peter chapter 2. He's called you out of darkness and into his marvelous light.

He's made you a citizen not of this world but of heaven. So Paul says to the Philippians, the call in the gospel is always to be what

God has made you. To give into the dictates of the scripture by the spirit of God.

Be like that to which you belong. Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? You belong to him.

Have you been converted to this gospel that I've been declaring to you? And behave in that manner.

Follow the wisdom of God and be willing to be a fool to the world. You are not your own.

You were bought at a price, says the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6. We're not going to get that far obviously. Where do you belong?

Do you act like that to which you belong? The military has the idea of conduct unbecoming of an officer.

Someone who is given rank and insignia, who's representing that military force. I think that saying actually comes from the

Navy. And so you to conduct yourself in a certain way according to that to which you belong.

That works well in Christianity. Do you act? Do you behave? Is your worldview? Is your way of thinking according to that to which you actually belong?

He finishes here in verse 23. He says, all are yours. And then he says, and you are

Christ's. And Christ is God's. What's he saying here? In many ways that's a very difficult phrase.

It's so short. It's so succinct. It's a little enigmatic. What does he mean that Christ is God's? That God owns the

Christ? No. No, that's not what he means at all. He's speaking about belonging here.

He's speaking about behaving according to that to which you actually in fact belong. You belong to something that's folly to the world.

You belong to the wisdom of God. He says, you are Christ's and Christ is

God's. There's a direct line here. As you are in the Lord Jesus Christ, you're also with God.

It is Christ who brings us to God. As I read from Romans 8 a moment ago, he is even now interceding for us.

With every breath, with every thought, with every prayer, there's something that doesn't meet up to God's perfect and just and holy standards.

And how is it that it comes to him? How is he pleased to hear our prayers? How is he pleased to know your thoughts, to hear your hymns?

Because of the Lord Jesus Christ. This moment bringing us to him, bringing us to the

Father. He says, you're Christ and Christ is God. There's a direct line from being in Christ and being in the presence of God.

And because you're in Christ, you are Christ's and Christ is God. Christ is in God's presence.

Christ is God's servant. Read the servant chapters of Isaiah chapter 40 through 66, really.

That he is the servant of God who came and served man by dying for our sins. And by that bringing us to God, you are

Christ's and by Christ being brought to God. You belong to him.

Think in his ways. Think according to the scripture. You belong to Christ, not this world.

This world has wisdom. This world has many benefits. We have a brother who just went through some very serious surgery.

Amazing what we're able to do in the times, read Acts chapter 17, that God has us in.

There is much benefit to us. It was the

Apostle Paul's thing saying about worldly wisdom here. The wisdom the world has that takes you away from God.

And they're very open about it. The foolishness of the cross, what is called foolishness is the wisdom of God.

You're Christ's and Christ is God. And we need to think in terms of the scripture that God has given us.

We need to think and have our worldview be that. So that we would then act and think and grow according to that to which we truly belong.

Do you belong to the Lord Jesus Christ? Have you repented of your sin and come to him in faith?

Then you belong to him. Because that means that you're bought at the price of the cross.

He owns you lock, stock and barrel. And he brings you to God as you're in Christ.

You come with him to God. Well, this finishes this short series, this five sermon series we've done in 1

Corinthians 3. And God willing, as we've gone through this, and we've seen the need to divest ourselves of these worldly ways of thinking.

You've seen the apostles emphasis on looking always to Christ.

Men can be of great benefit to you. There's much in the world that's beneficial to us.

Medical advances that we are, many of us are benefiting from personally. There's much out there.

And God gave it all for our good. But we need to be careful. We need to be discerning.

We need to be those who are not infants in Christ. But those who are eating the solid food.

We need to be those who are growing in our knowledge of Christ by looking to the scripture.

And being able to make wise and discerning judgments of how we benefit from the world.

And then when we say, no, there's our line too far. And what's that line? It's all about the cross of the

Lord Jesus Christ. And we see that cross held in low regard. When you see his resurrection mocked.

Then it's pretty clear that we have something we need to withdraw from.

And not allow ourselves to be influenced by. So God willing, as we've gone through just this one chapter in 1

Corinthians. We've learned how important it is to God that we as a body, unified together.

Not breaking up over minor things. But growing together and edifying one another in the

Lord Jesus Christ. As a body, it would bring him the most honor. Amen. Well, let's close in prayer.

And then we will go to another hymn. And take the

Lord's table in a few moments. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you again for this day. For your scripture. For the word that you've given us.

And I pray, Father, that we would, as a body. Be growing evermore into a body that would give you the most honor.

And our praises would be heard by you. And Father, that the Lord Jesus Christ, we thank you for his intercession for us.

We thank you, Father, that he has bought us. I pray, Father, that we as a unified body would bring you much honor.