Sunday School: Servants of Christ for Your Good (1 Corinthians 4:1-21)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabriel Hughes. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday on this podcast we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is a study in the Old Testament and then we answer questions from the listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series. Here's Pastor Gabe. Now, this is a bulkier lesson today.

We're actually going to cover the whole chapter, but I'm not going to read the whole thing here as our opening reading.

So let me start by reading verses 1 through 13 and then we'll pray and get into our lesson today.

This is 1 Corinthians 4, beginning in verse 1. This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful. But with me, it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.

In fact, I do not even judge myself. For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.

It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time.

Before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart, then each one will receive his commendation from God.

I have applied all these to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you be puffed up in favor against one another.

For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive?

If then you received it, why do you boast, as if you did not receive it?

Already you have all you want. Already you have become rich.

Without us, you have become kings. And would that you did reign, so that we might share the rule with you.

For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.

We are fools for Christ's sake. Oh, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong.

You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour, we hunger and thirst.

We are poorly dressed and buffeted and homeless. And we labor, working with our own hands.

When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. When slandered, we entreat.

We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

Let us pray. Heavenly Father, as we come to our passage today, I pray you lead us and guide us in these things that we may understand, that we may come to an attitude of humility.

We would not boast in ourselves, but we would boast in the Lord, as Paul has instructed the

Corinthians to do since the beginning of the letter. That we would be humble in our thinking, not thinking too highly of ourselves, but even we put the interests of others, the needs of others, ahead of our own.

That we might consider one another and do all things to the glory of God our King. We are able to learn to do such things even from the lesson that we read today in 1

Corinthians 4. It's in the name of Jesus that we pray, amen. So remember where we came from last week.

Paul was talking about certain teachers, respective teachers, and the ministry that they commit themselves to.

And it's not necessarily a warning against false teachers, but that each teacher receives his commendation from God.

He's not dependent upon the congratulations of men. And in fact, his validation is not dependent upon how many people follow him.

As Paul kind of makes that point here even, I'm not even, I don't let myself be judged by you.

I don't even judge myself, but it is the Lord ultimately who judges us. So we need to be careful about how we connect with certain teachers, or certain teachers that we have in our lives that we love, that, you know,

I love to listen to R .C. Sproul or John MacArthur, Vody Bokum's still one of my favorite preachers today.

But they're not my pastor. My pastor is Pastor Tom. And by the way, if our roles were reversed and I was actually senior pastor and he was the associate pastor, he would still be my pastor.

And same would go for all of our elders that we help encourage and build up one another. All of us elders teach.

We all have different classes, Sunday school classes that we're a part of. None of us ever get together at our elders meetings and compare who's got bigger class than the other person.

As a matter of fact, right now I've got a bigger class than Tom, but he still has the pulpit ministry and the calling that God has given upon him for the pastorate that he's supposed to do.

And then I am going to help support him and build him up in that ministry that he's doing. Likewise, he helped support me and build me up in the overseeing of different Sunday school classes and things like that.

And all the different responsibilities all of us have, what David has to do, what Andrew has to do, Mark, Doug, and on it goes.

All of us are each other's pastors. We encourage one another. We build each other up.

And then also as part of my job, I'm trying to help build the other Sunday school teachers up. How can

I provide them with the tools that they need to lead their Sunday school classes and build up in the

Lord? None of us are set against the other one. We all desire the same thing to build up the body of Christ with the word of God.

And so as we consider those things last week in chapter three, starting in verse 10, what we're in this week is still kind of the same vein, still the same thought, at least in verses one through five,

Paul's going to shift gears. You could hear him even throw in some sarcasm there. I tried to read it with some sarcastic inflection when he talks about how the

Corinthians are puffed up against one another. But for these first five verses, we still continue with the idea or the understanding that each teacher has been given his role by the

Lord and he works ultimately in service to God before he works unto any man.

So, as we are looking at this section today, we're going to cover the whole chapter. Chapter four is 21 verses and it breaks up like this in verses one through five.

Like I said, as we carry on from what we considered last week, we're going to learn how to consider ministers of Christ.

In part two, verses six through 13, learning not to go beyond what is written.

In part three, verses 14 to 17, learn to imitate Paul's example.

And then in part four, verses 18 to 21 to the end of the chapter, learn to humble yourself before God.

So this is the, this is the lesson that Paul is giving to the Corinthians. It is therefore the lesson the

Holy Spirit would communicate to us now. Let me review those four points again. Learn how to consider ministers of Christ.

Learn not to go beyond what is written. Learn to imitate Paul's example and learn to humble yourself before God.

So let's come back to this first section in verses one through five, where we are learning how to consider ministers of God.

And Paul says it right off the bat at the very beginning here, this is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

Now Paul uses the collective us there. If we're understanding that in context, even going back to chapter one, the us would specifically refer to Paul and Cephas and Apollos.

But if we consider what he had mentioned in chapter three, if we group chapter three in with that, remember that he spoke collectively of any teacher there in chapter three, where he said, according to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled or a wise master builder,

I laid a foundation and someone else's building on it. And then in the next sentence, he says, let each one take care how he builds upon it.

That was in chapter three, verse 10. So let each one is in reference to any teacher, anybody at all that would be in service to the

Lord in building up the house of God with the word of God, to the people of God, right?

So any teacher can be included here also, as we, as we make that application with chapter four, verse one, this is how one should regard us.

This is how one should regard any teacher of God's word. Your Sunday school teacher, your pastors, elders, an evangelist.

How should one consider a minister of Christ as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God?

In fact, some of your translations, instead of saying servants of Christ, it may say minister of Christ because that's exactly what minister means.

It's a servant. So as a servant of Christ, one who serves Christ first and foremost, what is

Paul's objective in his ministry to serve Christ, right? First and foremost, is he a servant to the church?

Yeah, absolutely. So as, as he has said to the Corinthians, even if we look back to the last couple of verses of chapter three, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours.

So he kind of turned on its head, the whole concept that the Corinthians had about I'm of Apollos and I'm of Paul and I'm of Cephas and Paul's like, no, no, no.

You got that backwards. See, they are yours. They're servants for you, for your good to build you up.

And so he comes back to that kind of summarizing that point here at the start of chapter four. This is how one should regard us.

Servants of Christ, ministers of Christ, first of all, serving Christ, but then also servants of the church.

And he goes on to say, stewards of the mysteries of God, servants of Christ, stewards of the mysteries of God.

What is a steward? Can anybody tell me what's a steward? Yeah, that's perfect definition.

An overseer or a caretaker of something that does not belong to them. So one way that I've compared steward is like a butler.

You have a butler of the house, a butler like oversees everything in the household.

We're not British. I don't think that we necessarily have in our minds the general responsibilities of a butler.

Usually we just think of the butler as the guy that opens the door, right? Or brings the master his slippers in the morning.

The butler oversees absolutely everything in the house. And he makes sure all the staff are doing what they're supposed to be doing in the jobs and tasks that they've all been assigned to do.

He's the master's second guy. This is the guy, the master is appointed to make sure the house is in order and it's working and functioning as it should.

And so when Paul talks about himself being a steward or Timothy as a steward, in both 1st and 2nd

Timothy, he talks about how Timothy's responsibility is to steward the household of God.

When he uses this term steward, it means to take care of those things, to put in order those things that the master has entrusted to his care.

And it's almost as if every time we see this word used in the New Testament, it's almost like the steward is appointed to watch the house until the master comes back.

So as Paul's responsibility to steward the household of God, more specifically, what does he say here?

He stewards what? What is he a steward of? Well you're jumping too far.

What does it say right there in verse 1 that he's a steward of? The mysteries of God, which is what,

Sonia? The gospel, there you go. So what does it mean to be a steward of the gospel?

What would that mean? What's it to be a steward of the gospel? I'm sorry,

Lois? You guard it, yeah. That's what the ladies are going through right now in Women's Bible Fellowship, 2nd

Timothy, the theme of that book being guard the gospel. So you guard it, but you also, you also say what?

You share it. Yeah, there you go. You're going to feed all the members of the house with it.

You're going to make sure everybody's taken care of, they're fed, they're growing. And how do we grow?

Paul had mentioned that back in chapter 3, we grow according to the word of God. It is God who provides the growth, and he does that through his word.

So once again, how do we consider a minister of Christ? He's a servant, servant first of all of Christ, and he's a steward of those things that Christ has entrusted him with.

Very specifically, the gospel and building one another up in the word of God. Now that's important to keep in mind because as Paul goes on here, he's going to say, you must learn not to go beyond what is written.

That's coming up in the next section when we get to verse 6. So when we think about a teacher or a pastor, an elder, an apostle, being a steward of the mysteries of Christ, the steward of the gospel, then what is it that an apostle is going to tell you?

An apostle is going to tell you exactly what Christ has told him. A prophet would tell the people of God exactly what

God told the prophet to tell his people. And everything that the

Corinthians have as far as knowing what God has said and building one another up according to these things, it's all right there in the word.

Now when, well, hang on, I'll wait till I get to verse 6, I was going to say, what does it mean to go beyond what is written?

Let's wait till we get to verse 6 there. So verse 2, moreover, Paul says, it is required of stewards that they be found, what?

What's the word in your Bible there? Trustworthy, faithful, that they are doing what

God has appointed them to do. Now when I apply that to myself, when

I say that I do what God has appointed me to do, it's not with the same kind of appointment that Paul got.

Paul was on his way to Damascus to round up Christians and Christ appeared to him in a blinding light.

All of the other apostles had seen the risen Lord. They had actually seen him and they were personally appointed by him to be an apostle, to be one who is sent out with the gospel and preached to the nations.

That's not how I received my calling. No one today has ever received that kind of calling and never listened to anybody who says that they have.

Paul is going to get to this later on in 1 Corinthians 15. He's going to say there in verse 8 that he was the last one appointed as an apostle.

As one untimely born, he appeared also to me, is exactly the wording that he used there. So Christ has not appeared to anyone since Paul.

The next time we see Christ, according to Matthew 24, it is going to be like lightning.

Like the lightning is seen in the East as far as the West. So will be the coming of the Son of Man, Jesus says.

Jesus' next appearance will be seen by the whole world, not by somebody who says, well, he appeared to me in my bedroom and told me that I was going to go start the

Mormon religion. Okay. Or I guess he appeared to Joseph Smith in a grove of trees or whatever it was.

But anyway, there's differing accounts. That's part of the problem with Joseph Smith. There's different people who are going to pop up and say that they've seen

Christ or they've had a personal audience with Christ, that they've been specifically appointed by Christ to establish their authority as though to disagree with them is to disagree with Christ.

But my friends, I have no inherent authority standing up here. The authority is

God's Word. So my responsibility is very simply as a steward of the mysteries of God is to tell you what this says.

And I need to be responsible with that. And I need to handle that in a right way. But there's nothing about me specifically in my appointment that gives me some kind of inherent authority so that you have to listen to everything that I say.

You have the responsibility to test what I say according to what this says, as you should do with all your teachers.

The instruction not to go beyond what is written is not something given to teachers, although it does certainly apply to teachers.

It's something that Paul says to the whole church when we get there. But once again, I'm jumping ahead. So back to verse two, it's required of stewards that they be found faithful.

How do you know I'm faithful? Because I say that Christ personally appeared to me and appointed me to this job?

You know that I'm faithful because when you hear what I'm saying comes from God's Word and that you're able to test it with God's Word.

I did a debate earlier this year where at the end of the debate we took questions from the audience and the moderator of the debate would read the questions to me and the other guy that I was debating.

One of the questions that came up was, how can we even trust that what you're saying is true? And I said, you read your

Bible and you test me by it. And if what you're reading is what I'm saying, then you know that I'm speaking the truth.

But you have the responsibility of handling the Word the right way. You can't just interpret it the way you want to interpret it and then go, well, that doesn't line up with what

Gabe is saying. Examine all things. Test all things. Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5, how do you know your teachers are being faithful in the job of stewardship?

It's according to what God's Word says and you test them according to the Word. So going on to verse 3,

Paul says, but with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or any human court. In fact,

I do not even judge myself. Now this is not

Paul saying that we should not test ourselves. Like I should just speak what I'm going to speak and you know, whatever.

God will test me in the end and we'll find out whether or not what I said was actually legitimate. Now there's a constant self -examination that Paul is urging the

Corinthians toward. He's been doing that since chapter 1. Look at yourselves. Look at the way that you're behaving.

Is the way that you're behaving conducive with the gospel that was given to you? And at the end of chapter 1 saying, because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption, so that as it is written, then let the one who boasts, boast in the

Lord. He's challenging the Corinthians to test themselves. Who are you boasting in yourselves or are you boasting in Christ?

So there is absolutely a self -examination that should happen. When you put 1st and 2nd Corinthians together, it's at the end of these two letters side by side in chapter 13 that Paul says, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith, to see if you pass the test.

So there is certainly a self -examination that we're supposed to do. But when Paul says here, it's a small thing to me to be judged by you or any human court.

In fact, I don't even judge myself. What he's saying there is his legitimacy is not based on the fact that he searched himself and decided that he's legitimate.

It's the Lord that ultimately tests him. When you go on in the next verse, verse 4, this is so humble.

You know, Paul as an apostle could just easily lay the hammer down on these guys and say, listen,

I'm an apostle, listen to me, what's your problem? Except what I say is being the word of Christ, but listen to the humility that he uses here in verse 4.

For I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.

It is the Lord who judges me. In other words, Paul says, as I examine myself and as I examine my teaching,

I don't see that there's anything wrong with it. There's nothing that I am saying that there's a problem with.

When I examine it and I look at it, I see that the teaching is right and pure and it comes from the word of Christ.

However, he says, but I am not thereby acquitted. Meaning, because I've searched my own teaching, because I've examined my own ministry and I find it in the right, that does not mean

I'm innocent. It is the Lord who judges me.

So just because I do test myself and I find my teaching to be pure and my motives and my intentions, all of that is pure.

We had talked about that back in chapter 3, that even the motives and the intentions of a teacher would be right, but ultimately it is the

Lord who judges the heart. Paul says, though I've examined myself, just because I find my teaching to be sincere and pure and right doesn't mean that I'm therefore acquitted.

It is the Lord who judges me. Now I stand before you right now telling you that there is nothing in my teaching that is false.

As far as I know, there might be something in my doctrine

I could change my mind about in a year or two. And then I would look back and say, okay,

I was wrong on that point. I've changed something in my doctrine. Some of you wish I would change my eschatology.

As the Lord wills. It wasn't that long ago that I was a continuous.

When I was a pastor, I believed in continuationism. When I first became a pastor, meaning that I thought the apostolic spiritual gifts were still in effect and still at work even today.

That there were still people speaking in tongues, that there were still people doing miraculous healings. I didn't think it happened with the kind of regularity that you see it going on in the assemblies of God or any charismatic church or Pentecostal church.

I didn't think it was going on with that kind of regularity, but I certainly thought, hey, you know, those things happen. Somebody is probably going down to the hospital right now, healing a guy's broken leg.

Who am I to say that that sort of a thing isn't going on? But then I changed my thinking on that with somebody who took me through the word and helped me to see and understand what cessationism really is.

It's not to say that God won't do miracles, but it's those certain apostolic gifts were used to authenticate the gospel.

The miracles that were done authenticated that the gospel that the apostles proclaimed actually came from God.

It didn't come from themselves. And once somebody laid that all out for me according to the scriptures, I changed my thinking on that.

I came to an understanding of those gifts according to what the Bible says, not according to my experiences, which, you know,

I spent 10 years in the charismatic church. So I heard people talking about that all the time.

I didn't have any place to discredit it or say that those things weren't happening. So I've changed my thinking on that.

Maybe there's something else in my doctrine that needs to be corrected somewhere later down the road. John MacArthur, too, as a matter of fact,

I don't know if you're aware of this, but John MacArthur did not start out as a Calvinist.

In his 50 years of ministry, he actually hadn't been a Calvinist for all that long. It's only been a couple of decades. There's a neat story behind that.

If I had time, I would tell it. But I don't. It's quarter after 10. So but anyway, all that to say, you know, there are there are teachers that have maybe somewhere in their growth, in their progress, have changed their mind about a certain doctrine.

Not that what they believed previously was heretical. You know, it was probably something secondary. But for the time being, as I'm standing before you,

I can say with Paul that I as I'm looking at myself, I'm not aware of anything against myself.

But that doesn't make me acquitted because ultimately it is the Lord who judges me.

Therefore, do not pronounce judgment before the time. Before the

Lord comes who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart, then each one will receive his commendation from God.

Now, that's harder for me to follow than it may sound, because in the ministry that I do with when we understand the text,

I'm examining teachers all the time. I will make videos about this teacher is a true teacher.

This teacher is a false teacher. And so with that kind of examination, when I do that kind of critique of teachers that are out there warning you about false teachers and try to encourage you to follow those teachers that are more sound, it's easy for me to listen to somebody who's a little bit off and then say, wow, that guy's that guy's false.

Don't listen to him. But that may not necessarily be the judgment that I'm supposed to make.

There could be just because there's some sort of a disagreement there between he and I doesn't mean that I can know something about his heart or that his ministry is illegitimate.

So there are certain teachers I may not agree with fully on every single point. But it's it's one thing to identify heresy.

And I think that is important. We should recognize where a teacher is absolutely heretical and leading leading people to hell rather than to the

Savior. But it's one thing to recognize that and it's something else entirely just to recognize the differences, excuse me, the difference, the differences between your teaching and his and and just seeing, you know, maybe

I wouldn't teach it that way, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's a false teacher and I should dismiss that guy.

So as teachers, we need to have a little more grace, even with the way that we consider some of those things that we might recognize in other teachers.

So that's that first section where Paul says, learn how to consider ministers of Christ. That's verses one through five.

Anything else on any questions about that before we move on to the next section? So starting in verse six, as we hear about learning not to go beyond what is written, and that's what

Paul starts with here in verse six, he says, I've applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brothers.

In other words, he's used himself and Apollos as examples. But the things he's been talking about regarding teachers are not limited to him and Apollos.

So hence why you wonder, well, how can you take some of these things and apply them to any teacher? Well, Paul says it there.

I've applied these things to me and Apollo. So you have an example. So you understand you've got faces, you got names to go along with this stuff that I'm telling you that you may learn.

He goes on to say in verse six that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you be puffed up in favor of one against the other.

So let's consider those things in order. When Paul says, don't go beyond what is written, what is written, what is he referring to there by that which is written?

What is it? The books of the law, scripture, say, say what,

Dwayne? The word of God, specifically what part of the word of God?

I heard the law, that was close, Torah, Old Testament, Law and Prophets, okay, those things that are written that the

Corinthians have right there with them, that they can use and teach one another with, it's the whole

Old Testament. So in all these churches, they had the Old Testament, a lot of times, you know, they might go down to the synagogue and listen to what is read and then they come back to wherever it is that they're gathering in a house or wherever it is and then they teach, you know, there's an elder that stands up and teaches according to what they've heard is read and how they understand what was read in the synagogue points to Christ.

That's if this church didn't have, you know, Old Testament scrolls of their own. Yes, sir? At this particular time, maybe only about four or five.

Yeah, it wouldn't have been very much, but yeah, but that's the next part that I was going to mention. So yeah, that's all right.

So the other part that was written for them were the letters. It was the letters that Paul sent.

So you have the whole Old Testament and when they teach from the Old Testament, they teach how the Old Testament points to Christ, how

Christ is the fulfillment of all of these things that we had seen in the law and the prophets. But then what else do they go to that is written?

They go to the letters, the letters that had been written to them by apostles, even specifically

Paul. There may have even been things that Paul wrote down for them when he was with them. Because remember that he was there for a year and a half.

We know that he wrote letters while he was with them while he was there in Corinth. He wrote to the

Thessalonians from Corinth, both letters to the Thessalonians. So there's maybe copies of first and second

Thessalonians that the Corinthians have. They also have the Corinthians had something we don't have.

They had a previous letter. Remember where we read about that? And Paul's even going to mention that letter coming up in chapter five.

He's going to say very specifically, I told you in my previous letter, you know, blank. So there's another letter that by the providence of God just was not preserved for us.

We don't have it today. But whatever Paul had told the Corinthians about in that letter, that was also authoritative.

It was of Christ. It was for them. It was something that they were supposed to follow and obey.

And it was surely, you know, it mentioned Old Testament passages. It applied those things to their lives.

This is how we're supposed to live as Christians in this world. In light of the gospel that you have heard, in light of the example that we have in Christ, so on and so forth.

So there was, these were the things that were written for them that they were not supposed to go beyond.

Now what is the consequence of going beyond what is written? What happens when the

Corinthians are teaching or following in a teaching that was not written down for them, whether in the law and the prophets or by the letters that were written by the apostles, what's the result?

Rest of verse six, they get puffed up in favor of one against another.

In other words, there's division. When they're following teaching that is beyond what is written, and Paul's not even saying contrary to what is written.

He's not even saying it's heresy to what is written. He's just saying you go beyond what is written and you start teaching things that are outside of what the word of God is that has been written down for you and for your benefit.

You know what's going to happen? There won't be unity. You won't be unified in Christ because you're relying on a word that is not

Christ's. And you're going to be puffed up against one another. And that's exactly what the Corinthians were doing.

That was the kind of rotten fruit that Paul was seeing come from this particular congregation is that they were divided against one another because they were going beyond what is written.

Anybody familiar with the TV show, The Chosen? You heard of The Chosen? Yeah. Anybody watched

The Chosen? We've got a couple that have watched it. I think it's the third season.

They're coming into the third season of The Chosen now. The Chosen, in case you're not familiar with it, it's a

TV show on the life of Christ and his disciples. And really even particularly the disciples, hence being

The Chosen. They were the ones that were chosen by Christ to be his disciples and follow him. That's the title of the show.

Now I've watched some clips of it. I've never actually watched entire episodes. It is a mess.

There are certain things about it that I like. I would still never encourage anybody to watch it.

I mean just in the simple dial, the very first thing that I ever watched from The Chosen was an exchange between Jesus and the

Samaritan woman at the well. In John chapter 4. It was the very first clip I ever saw.

It was about seven minutes long or something like that. So I watched it. And there's at one point where after Jesus says to her, if you know the story in John 4,

Jesus reveals to her that he is aware that she's been married many times and the man that she's with now is not her husband.

Go tell your husband to come back with you. And she says, I have no husband. And he says, well, you're right. What you say that you have no husband.

In fact, you've been, you've had five husbands and the man that you're with right now is not your husband. What you've said is true.

That's actually in John 4. And Jesus had that dialogue in The Chosen.

But then once he says that, she kind of chuckles at him and goes, oh, I see what's going on here.

You're here to preach at me. And he says, no. Is that the exchange in John 4?

As a matter of fact, that's exactly what Jesus was there to do. He was exactly there to preach to her and the entire village that she was going to bring out there with her to hear this man out by this well who was telling me to get him a drink.

And he told me everything that I had ever done. So come in here. Is this the Christ? Is this the

Messiah that we've been waiting for? What was it Jesus was there to do? To preach. But when you try to create some sort of a drama and you add to dialogue things that aren't actually found in the

Bible, you go beyond what is written and you create something about the life and personality of Christ that isn't actually of Christ.

And the result is not going to be growing in Christ likeness. Is it? Since you're creating a likeness that's different than the likeness of Christ that we have in the

Bible. Now, I don't know how you feel about cinematic depictions about Jesus. You may be fine with them.

There may be certain versions of Jesus that you like. I'm not, I'm not necessarily here to discount that, except to say that we're never accurately going to be able to do that, right?

We will never, no matter how hard we try, even if the entire script is taken exactly from the

Bible, nobody's ever going to accurately portray Christ in a way that was exactly the way that he was 2 ,000 years ago in his earthly ministry.

But anyway, all of that to say, we need to be careful about going beyond what is written. Even when

I was a kid and I would watch cartoon shows, Superbook, Flying House, anybody familiar with those?

No. Anyway, they were, they were cartoon dramatizations of stories in the

Bible. And sometimes they would over -dramatize things. They would add to the script things that were not there in the

Bible. Then I'd end up in a Sunday school class. I remember one in particular where the Sunday school teacher was teaching about the man who was paralyzed, who was lowered down by his friends through a roof before Jesus, who healed him, told him to get up his mat and walk.

Okay, it was that story. The Sunday school teacher's telling that story. And she says, and we don't know how he was paralyzed.

And I raised my hand and I said, yeah, we do. He was kicked in the back of the head by the horse because that was in one of those cartoons

I watched. That was how I knew that. But that's not in the Bible. So she corrected me on that.

I got corrected. I figured that out a little bit later on. But anyway, the point being, going beyond what is written, we're talking about adding to the

Word of God, or we're talking about teaching something that God did not actually give us in His Word. And so the result is not going to be

Christlikeness. It's not going to be unified in Christ and unified to one another. It's going to be being puffed up in favor of one against another, because I've got something better than you've got.

I've got more insight than you have. I've got an extra part to this story than what you've heard.

And so that makes us puffed up against each other. Hence why Paul warns them, don't go beyond what is written.

You're going beyond what is written. And that's why there's this pride and division among the

Christians there in the church in Corinth. Verse 7, for who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive?

If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it? The key word there is receive.

It means they've been given something. They did not come into this on their own. God gave it to them.

So why are you acting as if you didn't receive it? Why are you acting as if God did not give you something?

That it came from the Lord. It didn't come from you. It wasn't from your flesh.

It wasn't from your wisdom or your searching. It came from God. And he's telling them this to humble them so that they would stop being puffed up against one another.

My spiritual maturity comes from God. Wherever you are in your spiritual maturity also comes from the

Lord. And I'm not just making that up. That's exactly Romans 12, 3, where it talks about how

God has appointed his varied grace to different people in different respects.

So, some of us are called to be teachers and we're called to those positions with a great responsibility in front of us.

As it says in James 3, 1, not many of you should aspire to become teachers because you know that teachers will be judged with greater strictness.

Others are not called to be teachers, but there's still a job that God has for you to do in the body of Christ. We'll talk about those things more when we get to chapters 12 and 13 and 14.

But every single one of us has been given a measure of grace, is what it says there in Romans 12, 3.

And all of this comes from the Lord. You've received it from God. It came not from you. It came from God.

And so, Paul goes on, the rest of this section, verses 8 through 13, and this is where we hear him kind of pour out the sarcasm, right?

Already you have all you want. Already you have become rich.

Without us, you would become kings. And would that you did reign so that we might share in the rule with you.

Corinth was a very wealthy city. We know there was a lot of class division that was going on in the church in Corinth.

Paul will confront that later on in chapter 11. Some were very, very wealthy and some were very, very poor.

And so there's class separation, even that was going on in the church. So some of them have a lot of wealth.

And with that wealth, Paul says, it's as if you've become kings. Already you've become rich without us.

It was before we even got there. You already had all this money. You've become kings. And would that you did reign, that he was not speaking in a figure of speech, but they actually were rulers so that we might share in the rule with you.

Because if you're going to say, I'm of Paul and I'm of Apollos and I'm of Cephas and you're ruling as kings, then shouldn't we also get some of that rule?

So Paul goes on to say, for I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men.

The concept of Paul saying here that we've become a spectacle to the world, likely he has in mind the way that Romans would punish criminals.

How would they punish criminals? It'd make them a spectacle to everybody else, right?

Jesus was hung on a cross. And by the way, crucifixion was not ever done in the city.

Crucifixion was always outside the city. It was outside the city walls, hence why when you read in the gospel accounts, they took him outside the city to a place called

Golgotha. And when you read the account specifically in Mark, it says that people walked by him,

Jesus hanging on the cross, they walked by him shaking their heads. So this was not some isolated hill as we sing in the old rugged cross, on a hill far away, you know, certainly for us that hill is far away.

But when Jesus was crucified, it wasn't like way out of Jerusalem. It was just right outside the city, but along the road.

And so as people were walking along the road, they would walk by the criminals who were being crucified, and they shake their heads at him because it's like, hey, he must have done something really wrong to have to be hung up there like that.

And they pitied him or they were ashamed of him.

Hang on, I'm going to sneeze. Excuse me. Thank you. Thank you for the blessings.

So, so anyway, the, where was I, what was I talking about? Spectacle. Thank you.

Thank you very much. So another way that the Romans would make a spectacle out of out of somebody being punished is the gladiatorial games.

Like you'd be put in an arena and you'd either be killed by the gladiators, you'd be eaten by lions.

Sometimes they would put the Christians in there on pyres and they would light them on fire for the amusement of everybody.

And you're just sitting there watching Christians burn. And so Paul is saying, as he's talking about himself being a spectacle,

I think that God has exhibited us apostles last of all, like men sentenced to death because we become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to men as a spectacle, one who's having to be displayed before the world for my punishment, for being sentenced to death on and on.

The Lord has made us a spectacle because we've been sentenced to death before the world, before angels and to men.

And yet you're going to, and he's saying to the Corinthians, and yet you're going to try to affix yourself to us as though like I'm of Paul and I'm of Cephas and I'm of Apollos.

That actually makes you better because we're least of all men being put to death for the things that we proclaim and the ministries that we have.

He's trying to show the Corinthians here that your thinking's inconsistent. Like you're trying to affix yourself to these certain teachers to make more of yourself.

But your teachers, whom you're supposed to be like, have been made less in the eyes of men.

So shouldn't you also be humble before men rather than being as proud as you have been?

Verse 10, we're fools for Christ's sake. Oh, but you are wise. So to say, why aren't we listening to you?

Why are you listening to us? We should be listening to you if you're so wise. We are weak, but you are strong.

You are held in honor, but we're held in disrepute. We thirst, we're poorly dressed, we're buffeted and homeless.

We labor, working with our own hands, whereas remember the Corinthians were rich.

When reviled, we bless. When persecuted, we endure. When slandered, we entreat.

We have become and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things.

This was not a display of strength to forgive the people who persecute you.

And yet this was the attitude of the apostles. When we are reviled, we bless.

When we are persecuted, we endure. And the Romans would see that as somebody who's actually weak, not somebody who's strong.

But remember that Paul had said to the Corinthians previously, God has made foolish the wisdom of the world in order to shame the wise and make great those that in the world's eyes would be seen as weak.

Verse 14, I do not write, we're in this next section now where Paul teaches them to imitate his example.

I do not write these things to make you ashamed. So we've had this, it's been a pretty harsh tone, right?

To speak sarcastically as you've heard some evangelical teachers out there say, hey, we need to be winsome and nuanced.

Paul's not very winsome or nuanced here. He's straight up sarcastic and making fools of them for their inconsistent thinking and for their behavior.

But why does he do that? He says in verse 14, he backs way off. He really does shift gears in verse 14, but to help them understand,

I don't write these things to you to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my dearly beloved children.

Now, admonish has just as strong a connotation as rebuke, but to admonish means to correct with goodwill.

Paul's intention to correct them is to make them better. It's not to just tear them down.

Oh, you idiots, what are you thinking? Now he wants to build them back up again, but building them up in Christ and not in themselves, which is what they've been doing, puffed up in themselves.

He says, I admonish you as my dearly beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, we go back to talking about teachers again, all the teachers that you've had, all the teachers that you will have, you have countless guides in Christ, but you do not have many fathers.

For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel.

How is that? How did Paul become their father through the gospel? Exactly.

Yeah. Spiritual father. We talked about this when we were going through 1 and 2 Thessalonians last year, because he speaks to the

Thessalonians the same way, like a father. I admonished you,

I grew you in your understanding of the Lord. So Paul was the one that preached the gospel to them.

When we hear the gospel and we believe it, we're born again, right? That's the term Jesus used with Nicodemus in John 3.

So being born again, those who teach the gospel to us, that we may come to salvation in Christ, they are our spiritual parents, spiritual fathers, spiritual mothers.

I became your father in Christ through the gospel. I urge you then be imitators of me.

Same thing I preached about last week. Pastor Tom comes back to that again today in the sermon, that we as children, we imitate our parents.

Physically, biologically, we imitate our parents. Spiritually, it's the same way. We should be imitators of those who have given the gospel to us.

Paul said as much in, well, Paul, Luke, whoever wrote Hebrews, Hebrews 13, verses 7 and 17, there in Hebrews 13, where he says, consider those who taught you the gospel and imitate their faith.

Consider their way of life and imitate their faith. He says, and so we have these teachers that have been given to us as examples, and we are to follow the pattern of behavior that they've set forth before us because as mature believers in Christ, they demonstrate to us

Christ. And so Paul says, I'm going to give you another example. I'm going to give you an example of what it looks like to be a faithful child in the

Lord. Verse 17, that is why I sent Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the

Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach them everywhere else in the church.

In Philippians chapter 3, Paul says of Timothy, he is my most trusted servant.

I have nobody else like him. And when he looks, he says this to the Philippians, when he looks after your needs, you know that he does so genuinely for your benefit and not for his own.

Plenty of other teachers out there that will work for their own benefit, but when I send Timothy to you, he works for your benefit.

So Timothy, a model of humility for even the Corinthians to follow. And he says in verse 18, some are arrogant as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon if the

Lord wills. And I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power.

So are there certain people in there that are saying that they know better than Paul or they're better than, you know, we know that there are some

Corinthians that feel that way because there are some that are going, I'm of Apollos or I'm of Cephas. So they're saying,

I, I know better than Paul because I learned this from these guys. The teachers were never opposed to one another, but some of the

Corinthians have become puffed up against one another in such a way. So they claim to have some greater authority and Paul's like, well, we're going to find out cause

I'm going to come to you and we'll find out just what kind of power they have. And we don't know what

Paul was insinuating here, but the indication would be that there might be some sort of a spiritual discipline that would happen, that Paul would display a power of the

Holy spirit here that these people who are causing division would not be able to, you know, they're, they're going to succumb to that.

They're going to be humbled by it. So verse 20 for the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power.

What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod or with a spirit of love and a spirit of gentleness?

So understanding the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. Remember what we are told in Romans 1 16 for I am not ashamed of the gospel for it is the what of God, the power, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes to the

Jew first and also to the Greek. So these aren't mere words that we're using here.

The gospel itself is power to save the lost. The gospel has power to transform a person from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light.

As we've been talking about the last couple of weeks in our series in Ephesians, the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power.

So what do you wish? Verse 21, shall I come to you with a rod or with the spirit of love and gentleness?

Paul right there is just summarize the last two paragraphs. So in verses eight through 13, what was his tone?

What was his, yeah, it was very sarcastic, very biting, really trying to humble them in their spirits, not to be puffed up among themselves.

But then verses 14 to 20, what was his tone? Much more gentle, right?

So Paul is saying, what do you wish? Shall I come with you like I did in the other paragraph or shall

I come to you with the spirit of love and gentleness that I've just displayed? Which would you rather have?

Yeah, you want the gentleness, right? That my kids want to laugh and have fun with dad.

They don't want discipline dad. And frankly, I don't either. I have more fun with my kids when we're playing than when

I have to discipline them. But I will discipline them in obedience to the Lord if I have to.

And so we, in obedience to Christ's word, consider these things that we may understand fellowship with the

Lord and fellowship with one another. When we learn how to consider ministers of Christ, we learn not to go beyond what is written.

We learn to imitate the examples that have been given to us and we learn to humble ourselves before God.

Let me pray and then we'll be dismissed. Heavenly Father, we thank you for what you've given us, the lessons that you've taught us through your word.

May we apply these things. May we be humble in our spirits, not puffed up against one another, but we know how to build each other up, admonishing where needed, but then also encouraging and fellowshipping with one another as we rejoice in Christ who gave his life for us, who died and rose again so that all who believe in him will not perish, but have everlasting life.

Thank you for your goodness and your grace. May we continue to show it to one another. It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Go with the

Lord. Amen.