Expositon of 1 Corinthians 1 (cont.) 02-08-10

No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,

Dr. Mike Ebendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the

Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse, with no compromise.

Well, 11 short days, the country will celebrate Thanksgiving. I wonder what will happen when you wake up on Thursday morning next week for Thanksgiving.

I wonder what you'll be thankful for. Maybe you'll look back and say, God has been good to me.

I thank my God that he has done this and has given me that. But if you don't know who

Jesus Christ is, I wonder who you thank. I always thought that was strange,

Thanksgiving. I guess you're just thankful for things, thankful for my mom and my dad and my kids and my friends and my health or whatever you might thank

God for, you might be thankful for. But did you know to have proper Thanksgiving, you can't just have specific things to be thankful about, you have to be thankful to someone.

Proper Thanksgiving is not just I'm thankful, but I thank the right person.

In this particular case, three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. I'm thankful to God.

Did you know it is God's will for you to be thankful? And so I love it that in the providence of God, we're going through 1

Corinthians and just before Thanksgiving, we have a message on thankfulness. Can you imagine people waking up next

Thursday saying, I'm so thankful that I still have my job and I have my house. Now let's see,

I have to be thankful to someone, who might I be thankful to? This great evolutionary process person,

God, goo, thousands and thousands of years, chemical reaction.

I just really bow my knee and thank God for this evolutionary process. I mean, it just is very strange.

Gratitude must be directed toward God. The psalmist knew that Psalm 50, offer to God a sacrifice of, you think a lamb, burn offering food, offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

The psalmist also said, let them also offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and tell of his works with joyful singing.

Did you know it is good to give thanksgiving? Of course you do, because most people here are Christians. It's good to be thankful.

The word good tove in Hebrew means it's beautiful. It's good. It's right.

Could I put it in the vernacular? It's handsome. It's a handsome thing to do.

It's a good thing. It's pleasant. It's agreeable. I will give thanks to thy name, O Lord, for it is good.

Sing praises to thy name, O most high. It is good to give thanks to the Lord. But what happens?

We live in a culture that is thankless. I think you'd have to agree with me. For the most part, people are thankless.

Second Timothy 3, it says, but realize this in the last days, difficult times will come for men will be lovers of self, lots of self -esteem, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, revilers, disobedient to parents.

And what's the other thing that Paul says? You want to know if you're living in the last days, I'll tell you, look at the culture and they will be un -what?

Thankful, ungrateful. Now, if we're supposed to be thankful people, thankful to God, thankful for all things and everything, give thanks for this is

God's will for you. We learned last week that one of the things we need to be thankful for is the local church.

You say, yeah, but you don't know the local church like I know the local church.

If you say that, I'm not trying to be one up over you, but if anyone knows a local church, this church,

I know it just as well as you know it, don't I? How can we be thankful for these people?

Which I'm included. How can I be thankful for us? I mean, again, as I said last week, as I look at this motley crew of people by face,

I just think, thankfulness. The answer is Paul was thankful for Corinth.

And if Paul is thankful for Sin City, Las Vegas, Corinth, it wasn't that they were just in the town of Corinth, but the

Corinthian culture seeped into every fabric of the being of the local church and they were far from mature, far from Thessalonians godly.

They were immature and not godly and Paul said, but I still can thank God for the people at Corinth.

Let's turn our Bibles to 1 Corinthians 1 as we continue the series in 1

Corinthians specifically, how do we give thanks to God for an imperfect church?

By the way, this will apply towards maybe how can I give thanks to God for an imperfect wife, children, parents, spouse, you name it.

Very, very interesting. Paul lots of times starts off letters with typical greetings, but there's no greeting like this one.

And I don't want you to go too fast in 1 Corinthians and all of a sudden start with chapter 10. I start with chapter 1 verse 10, we'll get there next week and it's very interesting because it's very earthy.

It's very dirty as it were with your hands. You're working with the dirt and because there's divisions and strife in the church, but before he addresses the problems of the church, there's a report from Chloe's household.

There are problems in the church. Paul says, before I get to the problems, I'm going to thank God for you.

And people go, well, he's just kind of showing that apostolic sarcasm, true or false.

Paul uses sarcasm in 1 Corinthians, true. I'll show you one, turn to chapter 4 verse 8.

Chapter 4 verse 8, there is sarcasm in 1

Corinthians. 1 Corinthians 4, 8. If you don't read your Bible all the way through, you'd never get this.

You think Paul, the apostle being sarcastic, Paul says in chapter 4 verse 8, you already are filled.

You have already become rich. You have become Kings without us. And indeed,

I wish that you had become Kings so that we also might reign with you.

Dripping with sarcasm. Who writes like that? But back to chapter 1, the sarcasm that is found in chapter 4 is non -existent in chapter 1.

Paul isn't being sarcastic. He's not saying, I really thank God for you, or I'm really thankful for you.

That's not what he's doing. He really sincerely is thankful to God for these people that are less than perfect.

What a good lesson for us. Who knows what the Lord will do? Maybe today's the day we all die, or today's the day the

Lord comes back. But between now and glory, we ought to get used to dwelling with saints who are not quite glorified.

What's the option? To run off to some monastery someplace, to run off to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, I don't know, and then hang out with other sinful people?

And by the way, you can't run from you. When you get all the way to Mars and you think, I'm finally away from these sheep who act like goats, then you look at the mirror and you go,

I wanted to go, but I wasn't going to do it. I wasn't going to do it. You can almost feel with the laugh that we have, there's something, there's pressure, there's tension in this body where we say, in the sermon where we say, there are people that just aren't that lovable and I have to love them.

How can I thank God for them? Well today we'll see from Paul a great illustration. As Ephesians says, watch

Paul praise God, you praise God that way. Here in 1 Corinthians, watch Paul pray to God for less than perfect people and we'll be able to use the same principles that Paul uses for Bethlehem Bible Church.

I've said it every sermon, I'll say it one more time. I don't think we're Corinth. I think we're far from the fleshly

Corinth. Well, there are people here that act maybe like the Corinthians do, but as a church body from leadership down to nursery,

I don't think we're Corinth. But if Paul can pray to God and thank Him for Corinth, can't we pray to God and thank

Him for more mature people than the Corinthians? I think the answer is yes.

Let me give you five reasons every Christian here can be thankful for this local church in West Boylston.

We saw two last time, I'll expand on them and try to give you the other three. This will be helpful. These five reasons are going to help you because if you're not careful, you're going to fall into the,

I don't like the carpet color. I don't like the pastor's tie color. I've had people say to me,

I don't really like that tie. And I go, well, I wear it for Kim, ha, ha, ha. No, I don't say that. You know, can you imagine?

I'm the pastor and I go, let's see, what tie do I pick out today? Here's the directory, and I just look at my ties and just keep looking through the directory until I find, they'll all like that tie.

But you know what? We don't have arguments here at the church about doctrine. That's been established in our heart.

We don't have arguments about church polity. It's been established in our hearts through the scriptures.

We talk about these other things. I don't like this and I don't like that. Why does it want to start at 630 and all, and the list goes on and on.

Some people are just like that. And so this is good for all of us. And it's good for you if you've kind of got that tendency to see the glass half full.

Five reasons you can be thankful to God for less than perfect saints at Bethlehem Bible Church.

Do you see the passage in verse four of chapter one? This is one big sentence. Verses four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.

It's one sentence. And that sentence has one main verb, which is the key to the sermon, I thank my

God. It's all about thanksgiving. Paul is thankful for God concerning you.

And he's always thankful. And he might not be thankful about their divisions, their immorality, their lawsuits, their wrong use of the gifts, but he is thankful for what

God has done in their lives. What things? When Paul kneels down and says, God, I thank you, and he remembers his prayer list, and the church of Corinth comes up and he says, every time

I pray and every time I pray for Corinth, I'm what? You know what, if I was Paul, what I would be?

I'd be discouraged. God uses me to plant a church over here and they just take off and they're growing like weeds, but they're very righteous.

But now Corinth. You'd think there'd be a thorn in Paul's side, but he says, whenever I pray,

I thank God concerning you. For what? Let me show you five reasons. Number one, the first reason you could be thankful for people at Bethlehem Bible Church is because God gave the people here his saving grace.

In other words, God saved people here. You can be thankful for their salvation.

Do you notice the text? Verse 4, I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God, saving grace, unmerited favor of God given to sinners of all people, which was given you in Christ Jesus.

At Corinth, what could account for the church cropping up at Corinth? Management, business.

Oh, I know. If we got the right marketing, let's have product, place, price, and promotion, and we'll just come with some kind of scheme.

We'll take business schemes from the Corinthian days. We'll do that at Corinth, and up will pop a church. What can explain local

Christians at Corinth where they're worshiping Aphrodite, they're worshiping Apollos, they're worshiping the navy god

Melchizedek? What can describe a group of people who say, no longer do I worship this god, that god, or that god.

I don't even worship all of them together. There's one God that I'll bend my knee toward, and that is

Jesus Christ. What explains that kind of thing at Corinth? The grace of God.

I have another question. I drive around New England all the time. What explains a church here in West Boston? Would you pick this place to plant a church?

Maybe some of you that were here 25 years ago did pick this place, and you knew what you were doing, but I wouldn't pick it.

I'd pick other things about this. I'd say, you know, I need to be down on the 495, and I need to be by a

Metroplex, and I need to plant the church where all the rich people are. That's how some people plant churches. Hmm, where are the rich people?

Yeah, that'd be good. Rich people need to be saved too. What explains the church here?

As I've heard this place being called the Pizza Hut Church, because for some, unless there's some steeple of a church built in 1600s, for some, the church isn't the people, it's the building.

What explains this church? And I'll tell you, the only thing that explains this church here is the sovereign grace of God.

That is an overstatement because all grace is sovereign. But to reiterate it and put the focus there, the sovereign grace of God.

Nobody pulling God's strings. Nobody saying, God, if you do this, then I'll do that. And if I do this, you'll do that.

It's the sovereign grace of God where God says, I'm going to redeem a people after my own likeness, the likeness of my son, and I'm going to regenerate them.

And you should say, God, thank you. We're not running around worshiping false gods anymore.

You know, after service, I see all kinds of things happening, but I've never seen in the 13 years that I've been here, I've seen lots of things.

But I've never seen anybody immediately leave this church and go outside to the woods and bend down before one of those oak trees and begin bowing and kissing the bark.

And you know, there are worship services in the world that after they leave getting together, that's exactly what they do.

What can explain people who used to be proverbial bark kissers to now,

I will kiss the sun so we don't perish? Psalm chapter 2. What can explain it? Who can explain it?

The only thing that can be explained here at Bethlehem Bible Church is we are the recipients of the grace of God.

Our pagan behavior and nature has been replaced by a divine nature and by divine works.

This is all about God. Paul doesn't say, I thank God for you because you did this and you did that, this whole passage.

Paul says, I thank God because he has given verse 4, he's enriched verse 5, he's confirmed in verse 6, he's called in verse 9, and he will confirm in verse 8.

It's all God is the active one, we are the passive ones. What a pastoral heart he has.

And by the way, as a pastor, if I had to somehow take care of you with all my kind of machinations and the elder board getting together, how could we even minister to you short of the grace of God?

If my resources for reforming a group of people in West Boston would be anything less than the sovereign grace of God, how would we do it?

There's only so many Barna chapters you can read before you realize. I think I better go back with the

Bible. And Paul says, for that then, I can be thankful. So my question for you is here, if you're attending and you're a regular attender or you're a member,

I hope you're thankful to God for this body. Remember, the church isn't the building, it's the body of Christ.

How do you stop bad behavior? You stop bad behavior by starting good behavior. How do you stop complaining about people in the church?

You start thanking God for what he's done at this local church.

God has graced people here with salvation. Number two, how can we be thankful for a less than perfect church?

Paul was thankful for Corinth. We should be able to be thankful for our church. Number one, be thankful to God because he has saved people here.

Number two, you can be thankful for the people at Bethlehem Bible Church because God has graciously taught the people here biblical truth and has given them the gift of understanding that truth.

They both had preaching and they've had the illumination of the spirit of God. Corinth had preaching, they had the word, and they had understanding.

They had the utterances, God sent preachers, and then they also had an understanding. That's found in verse 5, that in everything, you were enriched in him, in all speech, that's the word logos, and all knowledge.

You were made rich. God, thank you for Corinth, Paul says, because those people were living lifestyles of the rich and famous.

Well, maybe they weren't practically doing that, but positionally, they had been given everything. And so BBC has been given everything.

Once you're given the son, do you see the passage in verse 5, enriched in him? Once God gives you the son, he's given all that he has.

He's given the most. And in the son, there's also the word proclaimed, the word understood.

You have to be thankful that people here have been taught the Bible. I don't mean just the pulpit, but I do mean the pulpit including, but I do include the pulpit.

You know the word of God. If I say to you what Bible verse says, God helps those who help themselves, you say, it's not in the

Bible, that was Gandhi and his works righteousness. Yes, you know, you've been taught. That's a grace gift.

When I moved to Los Angeles and then got saved, I bought a house in the middle of the L .A.

basin and I thought, well, I don't know where really to go to church because I didn't care about going to church.

I was an unbeliever. And then I realized by luck, by chance, by serendipitous, fortuitous nature, five minutes down the street from my house was

Grace Community Church in John MacArthur. Happy day, how lucky. It was an amazing thing.

And as I sat there, I could think to myself, God has given me faithful biblical preaching. Thank you.

And God has given me now that I'm a Christian an understanding. I can understand the Bible. Say, God, thank you for BBC that we've been saved.

And then God has given us biblical teaching and we can understand it. That's an amazing thing.

The Corinthians didn't understand the truths of God because they had a good education and they went to Athens to get that kind of philosophy.

This was a gift from God, the gift of preaching and the gift of understanding. Matter of fact, turn to chapter 2, verse 14.

Look at what happens to those who aren't Christians. They can't understand things. They might read an

English Bible, but they read it. And remember when you weren't a Christian, you read the Bible and you're like, huh? I know what the is.

It's a definite article. I know what a verb is, but I don't get this book. I have no code. I can't decipher it.

I need some kind of holographics or something to understand it. Well, we know the decodering, if I could say it righteously, he is the

Spirit of God, verse 14 of chapter 2. But a natural man, somebody who's not a

Christian, does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him. And he what?

Cannot understand them. Why? Because they're spiritually appraised.

Verse 15, but he who is spiritual appraises all things, yet he himself is appraised by no one, for who has known the mind of the

Lord that he will instruct him? But we have the mind of Christ, received, not earned, but we can understand things.

We look at the text and we go, I get it. There are some difficult things, yes. But for the most part, when we read a passage, we go, aha,

I get it. Do we have that aha moment because we're smart, because we're handsome?

No, it's because it's a gift from God. And Paul says, God, thank you. You've given them salvation.

You've given them preaching. And what would preaching be if you couldn't understand what I was saying? If I got up and started speaking in,

I don't know, Swahili. Who knows here Swahili? You might have one. I saw a hand go up and I go, wow.

One time I was preaching about, in Eskimo, this means such and such. And after the service, somebody came up to me and said,

I'm an Eskimo. I go, wow, wow, it's a sign from God. The Church of Corinth was not left to fend for herself.

We're not left to fend for ourselves. When's the last time you prayed? God, I thank you. When I think of BBC, thank you, we've received saving faith, we've had the word preached, we can understand the word.

Number three, the third reason why you can be very thankful to God for this less than perfect church.

By the way, this should get rid of all the complaining, all the mumbling, all the groaning, all the things that left to our old self, we just like to do.

We have fun doing, we absorb what the culture does and we do it too. By the way, culture says, through advertising, be discontent.

How do you sell things? I'll tell you how you sell things. By fear, get the vaccine or you're going to die.

Well, somebody's going to think that's a political statement. It's not a political statement. Agreed, give me your money and God will make you rich.

Give your money to the guy at Cumberland Farms and buy $50 worth of scratchers and you're going to become really rich.

Or how can you motivate people? What's another motivation for people? To do things, create discontentment through advertising.

Somebody watched his TV all day long and I'll tell you, someone who has to fight their hardest to say, I should be content because everything has to be bigger, better, oh, they've got to be prettier, they've got to be smarter, they've got to be more fantastic.

Why doesn't my pastor... I remember there's an article online. What if your pastor doesn't preach like John Piper? Should you still be thankful?

What if your preacher is not John MacArthur? So people sell things by creating a lack of contentment.

What happened to the ordinary? What happened to the regular? So we don't want to buy into that.

This is good preventative maintenance for us. The third reason why you can be thankful to God is found in verses 6 and 7.

You can be thankful for the people here at BBC because God confirmed the testimony of Christ to us.

Now, this has some discontinuity between the Corinth and us, but I'll explain it. I think it's easy to get. Let's do

Corinth first, verse 6. Even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, Corinth, so that you,

Corinth, are not lacking in any gift, awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Corinth, when you didn't know what the Bible was because there was no Bible written outside of the

Old Testament, how did you know this word that came to you preached? 1 Corinthians 2, verse 2.

Jesus Christ, even him crucified. How did you know that was true? Well, what did God use to confirm that truth to the church of Corinth?

What did God use to churches back in those days when you didn't have a Bible, you couldn't go, oh, it's chapter and verse.

He's a true prophet. Yes, it's true. What if some guy just got up and said, thus saith the Lord? And another guy got up here and says, thus didn't say the

Lord, thus saith the Lord. How would you determine the difference? Answer, God would confirm like a stamp of some kind of official pin at the court records, official stamp, confirmed true.

USDA approved, UL approved. And how did he approve it? By signs and wonders and spectacular things.

If I would stand up 2 ,000 years ago and say, God told me to have you give all your money to Jesus, this is my address.

By the way, that's what people do on TV. And another person said, God told you that you should be a sacrificial giver, you should give with cheerful liberality.

And if you're not compelled to give, then just don't give. And then we say, huh, well, they're different.

Which one do we follow? And then all of a sudden, I walked down and I touched everyone on the forehead and everyone here who was sick was completely healed, not just of bad backs, not just of leg lengthening, not just of making fillings turn into gold, but new arms grew out.

People could stand up out of their wheelchairs. People would say, you know what, the doctor has given me five months to live and I'm completely whole.

Who would you believe? No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.