WWUTT 1407 Thankful Always for You (1 Corinthians 1:4-5)

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If you've come to salvation, my friends, it is by the grace of God that you're saved.

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Ephesians 2 .8, right? If somebody has to correct you because of your sin, that's also by the grace of God when we understand the text.

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Many of the 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. All right, y 'all.

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We are past the greeting of this letter to the Corinthians. Let's get into the

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Thanksgiving portion here in this introduction to the letter. I'm going to begin by reading 1 Corinthians 1, verses 4 through 9.

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The Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth, I give thanks to my 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

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Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. This is the word of the

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Lord. So yesterday we had considered, or I had pointed out to you that in those first three verses of the greeting,

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Christ Jesus is mentioned four times. Four times in those first three verses, coming back to it again,

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Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus, there's one, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, there's two, those who call upon the name of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours, there's three, grace to you and peace from God our

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Father in the Lord Jesus Christ, there's four. Now if you're listening to this sitting down at the table and you've got a pen in hand and maybe you're taking notes and you're underlining,

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I'm going to go through the next few verses here and we're still going to underline some Christ Jesus portions here, all right?

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But if you're driving, you'll just have to listen to me do it, okay? Maybe you can write it down in your

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Bible later. So let's keep going, underlining the Christ Jesuses, those mentions of Christ the

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Messiah. Verse four, 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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There's five. Go down to verse six, even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, and it doesn't say

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Christ Jesus there, but we can still underline that one there, it's six. Christ is still mentioned. Verse seven, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our

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

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Lord Jesus Christ. There's eight. God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son,

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Jesus Christ our Lord. There's nine. We've got nine verses, nine occasions when

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Christ is mentioned, eight of those where it's Jesus Christ. We're going to get the full title in there.

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And then verse 10, I appeal to you brothers by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. There's 10, 10 verses, 10 mentions of Jesus Christ our

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Lord. Do you think Paul is kind of trying to draw their attention to something here? Yes, he is trying to direct their attention to Christ that they may set their eyes on him that he would be their goal.

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He would be their aim. He would be their praise. Greeks can be pretty full of themselves.

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I think I've talked about that a little bit here. They puff themselves up with knowledge. That's even one of the things Paul is going to confront when he gets to spiritual gifts or it talks about gifting and he talks about love.

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When we get to first Corinthians 12 and 13, he's going to say knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.

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And where do we find love? The truest sense of love anywhere, but in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, God is love as John said in first John. And so once again,

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Paul directing them to Christ and says, I give thanks to my God always for you. He begins this with thanksgiving and this whole section we're looking at here versus four through nine, which we're looking at today and tomorrow, this is thanksgiving.

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It's an expression of thanks for these Corinthians. He's going to hit them pretty hard.

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This is the, uh, the, the harshest rebuke that we've seen thus far in the new

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Testament. Well, talking about a church anyway, the harshest rebuke is probably going to be the seven woes that Jesus gives to the

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Pharisees in Matthew 23. That was a pretty stern rebuke, but we've not seen like a body of, of sharp rebuke.

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Like we've seen here in this letter in first Corinthians. So given that Paul has to rebuke them and call them to repentance on various things and correct their teaching and, and, uh, whack them upside the head because of their stubbornness and all of the other manner of things that he's going to have to address here.

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He begins by expressing thanksgiving for them. I give thanks to my God always for you.

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Now there's times as a parent when I have to discipline my children and sometimes it's just discipline.

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They do something wrong. Discipline is what they receive. Maybe there's a followup conversation about that.

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Maybe there's not, it's just, Hey, you did wrong. And so you deserve the spanking today, you know, something like that. But then there's other times when, you know, maybe my kids have been continually belligerent.

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It's just one of those days where they just don't want to do anything mom or dad says.

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And instead of continually punishing over and over again, it gets to a point where I do sit down with my son or my daughter and I say to them,

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I, I'm thankful for you. There was one time I remember having this conversation with my son and I guess it struck me as to how long it had been since I had last sat down with him and expressed to him how thankful I was for him, that I, I loved him and I liked him.

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I enjoyed spending time with him and that I said to him, I thank God for you.

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When I pray for you, I thank God for you. And it struck me at the end of that conversation, how long it had been since we'd had a talk like that, because after we were done,

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I noticed he was wiping tears from his eyes. This was a couple of years ago. He was seven at the time. But when

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I noticed that he was wiping tears from his eyes, what I was thinking about later was that, man, has it been that long since maybe

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I've expressed to my son how thankful I am for him. And maybe that's what it is that my child needs to hear that day.

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Now, again, sometimes the spanking is warranted, but there are other times when maybe what maybe the disruption or the disobedience, the misbehavior, maybe it's calling to my attention that more tenderness is needed here.

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As I've instructed on spanking before, and there's a what video on this, so you can go and look it up.

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But as, as I've always talked about this, the good thing to do, and this is for you, mom and dad, this is to make sure that you don't let your temper or your anger get the better of you.

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The good thing to do for you to discipline yourself when it comes to disciplining your child is to explain to them why they're getting spanked.

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So if, if the misbehavior has gotten to the point where it's just calls for a spanking, don't do it out of anger, because then what the child receives from that is just mom and dad's just reacting in anger.

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I did something to make mom and dad mad. And so then what goes on in their mind after that is, is maybe I just need to do things that are not going to make my parents mad.

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Or maybe if I do it in secret and they don't find out about it, then my parents don't get mad and I don't get the spanking.

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But if you, if you give a proper explanation for it, if you sit down with your child and you talk with them about it and you say, you're in trouble and you're going to get punished like this.

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And here's the reason why, or even to put it on them and say, do you know why you're getting in trouble? And it's not because their sibling tattled on them.

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It's not because I'm upset and I need to vent my anger out on you. It's because you did something wrong and I love you and I don't want you to keep doing that wrong.

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So I am going to punish you that you may know that this is wrong and you won't do it again.

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And you recognize that there are consequences for actions like this. I've said to my, my son or my daughter,

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I have three girls, one boy, and we have another boy on the way. But whether I'm talking to my son or my daughter,

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I will say to them, I want you to grow up to be a young man of God, a young woman of God.

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I want you to know what is right and what is wrong. And that's why I'm punishing you so that you will know that for wrong behavior, there's consequences for that.

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I'm giving you a little bit of that now so that you won't have to face greater consequences in the future for going astray.

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As you get older and you get into deeper sins, I don't say this to my kids, but as you get older and you go into, into deeper, more grave sins, the consequences are greater.

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But if you train them up when they are young, as it says in Proverbs, then when they are old, they will not depart from it.

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So I teach them that young. I want you to grow up to be a good young man of God, a strong young woman of God, that you know the difference between right and wrong.

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You know what is pleasing to the Lord and what is displeasing to the Lord, and that you may walk in the way of Christ unto everlasting.

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I teach them that young, even with discipline. They hear the gospel in our discipline conversations.

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So they understand God says this is wrong. I'm teaching you this that you may know the right way, and then we'll pray together about it, asking

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God's forgiveness so that they know that God is a gracious God. He loves us as sons or daughters that he would punish us in Hebrews chapter 12.

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If God did not punish you, if he did not discipline you for your sin, then you would be illegitimate children and not truly the sons and daughters of God.

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That's from Proverbs, and then it's repeated there in Hebrews chapter 12 as well. So Paul is approaching the

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Corinthians the same way. And even later on in 1 Corinthians 4 .15, he says, though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

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And so he's treating them as if they were his children and disciplining them that they may know the right way they are to go in Christ.

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And as a loving parent, spiritual parent in the spiritual sense, of course, but as a as a loving parent,

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Paul says to them, I am thankful for you. I thank

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God for you when I pray for you. This is Paul saying, I like you, right?

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I want to spend time with you. He says that in the letter, especially in his letter to the second letter to the

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Corinthians, where he says that he's going to come to them soon. This is a church that he was with for at least a year and a half.

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When we go back to what we read about his mission there in Corinth, in Acts chapter 18. So at least that long, he knows what was preached to them.

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He knows who their elders are. He knows the doctrine that is there and what is being taught.

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He knows this is not a false church. This is not a heretical church. This is not a church from whom

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God has removed their lampstand. That's what Jesus mentions to the churches in well, to five of the seven churches.

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He threatens them with that in Revelation chapters two and three. This is a church that still has the gospel lot of problem areas that need to be worked out most definitely and probably some areas that are worse in their church than some of the things that you have going on in your church.

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But nevertheless, Paul is thankful for them. He spent a lot of time with them. These are good friends that he is writing to here, not like his letter to the

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Romans. Now, he was confident that the Romans had the truth as well, was not very rebuking at all in that particular letter, the one that we just finished up, the letter that he wrote to the church in Rome.

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That was a church that he had never been in before. And yet he knew and was confident in the salvation that they had because of the testimony that had been spoken about them throughout the world.

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Well, he's got a testimony about the Corinthians, too. It's come to him from Chloe's people. And there's some problems going on that Paul is having to confront here.

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But it's it's not out of frustration. It's not out of a spirit of like, oh, man, these

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Corinthians, here we go with these guys again. Would you guys quit messing up so I can get on to some other business?

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No, Paul is writing very affectionately here. He cares for this church and he makes sure they know that.

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You're my friends. You're my brethren. I give thanks to God for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus.

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They heard the gospel and believed it because of the grace of God. So that's how

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Paul knows that these are genuine Christians following in the word of Christ, because he was there.

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He preached the gospel to them and he saw them repent, repent of some serious paganism and lusts of the flesh, which, again, we've already mentioned even a few of those in First Corinthians six, nine and ten.

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These were seriously awful sins that they were in and such a a sexualized culture that Corinth was.

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They've repented of that, repented of their idol worship, and they've become followers of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. Paul witnessed that. So he knows this is a church that the grace of God has been shown to.

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He did not leave them in that sin to continue wandering in those ways to their destruction.

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But the gospel came to them and they believed in it with hope. Now, of course, when

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Paul first went to the synagogue there in Corinth, the Jews that were there did not believe what he had to say.

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So he shook his garments of them and says, your blood be on your own heads. I am innocent of you because he had preached the full counsel of God to them.

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But then he goes to the Gentiles. They hear the message and believe. And there were some from the synagogue that did as well.

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But Paul witnesses and sees the transformation that's happened in the lives of these people because of the gospel that they have heard.

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And that's the evidence to Paul. That's the evidence that he sees and knows that Christ is indeed with them.

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And that's why he's addressing them as brothers in the Lord, not as a church that is apostate. And there may be some in the midst that are like that, as Paul will say later on in first Corinthians, he'll say there must be factions among you so that those who are genuine will be revealed.

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So there are going to be those who are factious people. But it's so you may know, these people are truly Christians and these are not.

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As John said in first John to 19, they went out from us that it might be plainly seen.

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They were not really of us in the first place. Those who are genuine are going to continue in the faith, are going to listen to rebuke and be corrected by it, mourn over their sin, repent, come back to righteousness.

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Those who are who have the Spirit of God will respond to rebuke according to the scriptures in that way.

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But those who do not have the Spirit of God will not respond that way. And it goes back to what we were reading in Proverbs this past Thursday.

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You can correct a wise man and he'll love you for it. You correct a foolish man and he'll hate you for your rebuke.

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So that's going to reveal here as Paul is rebuking this church, that's going to reveal who's genuine and who's not, who's going to be convicted over the things that he has to confront them in and who's going to throw up their hands and go, who is this guy?

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What does he know? And when we get to the second letter, when we get to second Corinthians, you can see from that letter, there were some people in that church who were genuinely convicted and repented of their sin.

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And there were others who weren't. They were following false teachers even who

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Paul sarcastically refers to as super apostles because they claim to be better than Paul. So there were some people in this church that basically threw their hands up and says, what does

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Paul know? I'm going after these guys. They're so much smarter than Paul is. So as he approaches this church, he begins with thanksgiving.

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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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Are you a follower of Christ, my friends? It's by the grace of God that he didn't let you continue in that sinful, wicked way that you were in before you came to Christ.

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And maybe you're a follower of Jesus and have been your entire life. Maybe from childhood, you've always heard about Christ.

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Friends, that's by the grace of God as well. That by his providence, he would put you in a loving home that would teach you the precepts of God, his laws, his gospel, his commandments, the fruit of the spirit, that these things would be what would be taught to you as you grew up in that home or grew up in that church that you've been a part of your entire life.

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That's by the grace of God. No matter how you came to faith or no matter what your testimony, no matter what your backstory is, we all came to this faith by the grace of God.

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If it were not by the grace of God, we would not be saved. Going back to Ephesians 2, 8, which is often the verse that gets quoted regarding this, but it's by grace you have been saved through faith.

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You have salvation by the grace of God. And Paul says this with the Corinthians as well.

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It's because the grace of God that was given you in Christ, that you've come to salvation and I'm thankful for that.

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Verse 5, that in every way, in every way you were enriched in him, in all speech and in all knowledge.

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In every way you were enriched in Christ, in all speech and all knowledge.

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You know, one of the things that this might communicate to some of these Corinthians is that you thought you were good orators.

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You thought you were great at rhetoric and philosophy because there were Greeks that prided themselves in that.

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You know, in the American school system, we teach things like science and math and biology and history.

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You know, there's those basic subjects that we're used to being taught to all students, reading and writing, arithmetic, so on and so forth.

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Well, in the Greek school system, they learned speech and philosophy and rhetoric. Like those things were just as important to learn in Greek schools as what we think of science and math and reading and writing in the public school system today.

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So there were Greeks that prided themselves on their speaking ability, how well they could talk when

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Paul says to them that in Christ, in every way you were enriched in all speech and all knowledge.

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What he's saying to them was it didn't really matter how good a speaker you were or how great at philosophy and rhetoric you were before you came to Christ.

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You've been enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge. Now that you've come to Christ Jesus, as I talked about with you recently from Colossians chapter two, that in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

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Everything that we could ever want to know about God, we find in Christ Jesus in whom the fullness of God dwells bodily.

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And Paul wants the Corinthians to understand that to remember once again, how many times does the name

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Christ Jesus come up in the first 10 verses, 10 times in 10 verses that Christ Jesus is mentioned so that they would give him glory, him all honor and praise for it is by Christ in his death on the cross, his resurrection from the grave, that we have come to fellowship with God when we put our faith in the

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Lord Jesus Christ, not because you're great, but because he's great. And it was by the grace of God that the gospel came to you, that you would believe it and be saved.

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It's by the grace of God, my friends, that in case you go wayward, if you go a certain direction and you need discipline for that, you need to be rebuked, you need to be called back to righteousness.

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It's by the grace of God that you don't wander off the path to your own destruction, but that he would give someone to you to admonish you, that you would grow in sanctification in the knowledge of God, according to his word.

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And such a person comes to you with that message because they care about you.

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And Paul is doing that for the Corinthians here. He's thankful for them. He cares about them.

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He doesn't want them to be wayward. He wants them to be Christ -like and does all of this to the glory of Christ and his name.

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Let's finish with prayer. Heavenly Father, I pray that we have good people around us who care for us genuinely as followers of Jesus Christ.

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This isn't a matter of pitting my knowledge against your knowledge. We're not competing with one another here.

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We're thankful for one another and we share the grace of God with each other.

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Even when we see somebody going a direction that they shouldn't be going and we know we need to call them to correction, lest something worse happens to them.

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I pray that when we have to confront some of these things that will go on within our own churches, among our brothers and sisters in the

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Lord, even when it comes to sharing the gospel with unbelievers, we do all of this in the spirit of grace that we have been given, for it is the grace of God that we've been shown that brought us to the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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We've been enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge. So let what we say, what we know, what we share with one another, let all of these things be honoring and glorifying of Christ.

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May the grace of God be even in our words today as we go throughout our day to the glory of God above.

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It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to When We Understand the

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Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. If you'd like to support this ministry, visit our website www .wutt

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.com and click on the Give tab in the top right corner of the page. Join us again tomorrow as we continue our