More Than Merely Local

ReCAST Church of Mattawan

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filcik preaches from his sermon series titled, 1

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Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church.

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I'm Don Filcik, I'm the lead pastor here and just really praising God for the team, the effectiveness of the team going to Greece, but also their return to us safely, so grateful for that.

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And I'm really glad that we can be together this morning to grow in our faith. I hope that that's part of the substantial part of the reason that you're here is to increase your faith by taking in God's word, trusting it as true and then going out and basing your life on it.

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Not just to hear, come to a show, sing some songs together or something like that, but really to let the word of God get into you.

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I hope we're all stretching our understanding of who God is and how he rolls this morning. And I just wanna point out,

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I say this occasionally from time to time, but I'm gonna dive a little deeper into the acronym that is our core values, our name,

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Recast. It does make up our core values. It's kind of got a double meaning of recasting the nets.

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The fishermen, the disciples had fished all night, caught nothing. Jesus says, recast the net to the other side.

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They recast the net to the other side and in obedience to the Lord, they catch a haul. And so that's part of the meaning, but then it also stands for replication, community, authenticity, simplicity, and truth.

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You see that if you're not just merely paying attention to the donut holes, it's actually on the wall above that.

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Maybe you didn't notice that, but the donuts tend to get the attention on that. But in replication, what we mean by that is we're a gathered people who desire to see the work of God, what he's done in us, replicated in other people and in other communities.

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It's always been kind of like both of those. We would love, by this core value, we would love to plant other churches, but in the meantime, until we find that church planter, which we've been looking for for years, in the meantime, we seek to plant the gospel in the lives of those around us.

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And so that's what we mean by replication. In community, we desire to be a blessing to our immediate geographical setting.

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Now, for some of us, that's Matawan. For many of us, it's not. It's a different community, but we seek to be connected, not just in the church, not just to each other, but we value your involvement in your neighborhood, in your school communities, in your cities, in your village, in your townships, being an actual, literal blessing to those that are around you, doing what you can to serve those around you in your neighborhoods, your friends, and your coworkers and all of that.

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In authenticity, we seek to be a people who are honest and humble in what we project toward others, no masks, but being honest and forthright with how we're doing.

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We want to be a people receptive to each other's sorrow. That means mourning with those who mourn, but we also want to be those who celebrate well, celebrating and rejoicing with those who rejoice.

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We want you to be able to come in here and be honest. We don't want you to have to pretend to have it all together, because we know you don't.

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We know we don't, and we know you don't, and so we don't want you to have to pretend that you're here because you're awesome and you're all clean and shiny, but we know that you have brokenness and you have need.

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We like to think of this as more like a hospital than a museum, not a museum of wax models of saints, but a hospital for the hurting and broken.

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And so that's authenticity and simplicity. We have intentionally pared down our programming to three essential areas.

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What we believe are essential, we want to grow in faith, grow in community, grow in service. And so we have a

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Sunday morning program to hear from God and grow in our faith. We have community groups that meet during the week to grow in community, and then we encourage everybody to find a way, a pathway, a model, some avenue for you to serve in the way that God has put you together, and I believe that God having you here with your gift, there's some way that you can serve the body, and we've got some forms available on the app or online for you to fill out if you're interested in knowing how better to serve here.

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But the stated purpose for simplicity is not laziness. It could lead to laziness, but that's not why we do it, because I don't know if you've noticed, if you've been around here for a while, we don't have a ton of programming, and that's with intention.

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We don't have midweek programming for kids. We don't have that kind of stuff, and occasionally we get that question, but we wanna encourage families to have the bandwidth to engage the unsaved world around you.

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We discourage a spiritual busyness to add to your already busyness. Do you guys know what

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I'm talking about? And there's a way that a church can roll that actually heaps guilt on somebody for not being at all the programs, at all the things, and all the stuff, and so instead we want you to intentionally bring your faith into your neighborhoods, your youth, your kids' youth sporting events, and wherever else

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God takes you in a regular week to actually have the bandwidth to be able to do that. And then the last but not least, of course, is truth.

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As a core value, we simply mean that the Bible in all 66 books is the capital T Truth of God, where he has revealed himself in order to show us what he has done in history to rescue us, and so we believe that this is the foundation, and is to be the foundation of the church, and that's why we keep coming back to it.

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So in line with truth, we always spend a good chunk of our gatherings working our way through the Bible section by section, and we find ourselves this morning in chapter 16 of 1

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Corinthians. And this text amounts to, the next two sermons are gonna amount to closing details, and it may seem strange that I'm gonna go ahead and preach two sermons on the closing remarks of Paul to the church in Corinth.

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It's as if we're reading somebody else's mail, and I'm gonna preach a sermon on it. But there are all kinds of important things for us to grasp in this passage, and there is one unifying theme, actually, to this section of 1

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Corinthians as he closes. You see, Paul lifts the Corinthians' eyes up from a proud and arrogant local focus, and he identifies for them in a quite casual way that they are connected to the broader church community around the world.

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We just sent a team and heard a report from a team that had the opportunity to go across the world and see other believers doing work there, and had an opportunity to minister to them.

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You see, what our problem is, and we can identify this in our personal lives as much as in our church life, a church can risk falling over by denying the foundation upon which it was started.

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A church can become too full of itself, so can we, and a church can become arrogant in thinking that we are the best, we are the most wise, we are always doing things right, or even at the far extreme, we are

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God's favorite. The theme of chapter 16 is subtle, and the details are specific to their time and era and their circumstances, so it will look a little bit like reading their mail, but the reminders to us as a church and as God's people are contemporary and needed.

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There's something that we need to take on here now. Paul is driving the church in Corinth toward four things that we'll see in our text through the details of this section in this close to the letter.

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Here are the four things, and I'll mention these later after we sing some songs, and it'll come up again, so you don't need to jot these down, but a church is to exhibit a generous and unified heart.

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A church is to acknowledge the larger, broader work of God. A church is to respect authoritative teaching and teachers.

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A church is to be glad for gospel ministry wherever it is found. So let's open our

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Bibles or your scripture journals or your devices to 1 Corinthians chapter 16, one through 12, and yes, you heard that right, one through 12, not one through 11, but one through 12.

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I'm gonna take that one little paragraph there, that one verse paragraph off with this. I think it goes well with it.

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So again, recast God's holy word. This is what he desires for us to take in, to hear, to meditate on, and to consider really together this week, and particularly this morning.

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Starting in 1 Corinthians 16, verse one. Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do.

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On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper, so that there will be no collection or no collecting when

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I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem.

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If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me. I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia, and perhaps

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I will stay with you or even spend the winter so that you may help me on my journey wherever I go. For I do not want to see you now just in passing.

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I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits, but I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries.

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When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the

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Lord as I am. So let no one despise him. Help him on his way in peace, that he may return to me, for I am expecting him with the brothers.

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Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now.

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He will come when he has opportunity. Let's pray. Father, I thank you.

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Thank you for the opportunity that we have to gather in your name here in a church 2 ,000 years after this letter was written to the church in Corinth, and the things that you said to them are appropriate for us here and now to think and consider the bigger picture of the broad scope of what you're doing globally, to not get so hung up and caught up in our own little pet projects and our own first world problems and our own lives in the here and now that we neglect to see this great and glorious and majestic and awesome big thing that you're doing, that we are connected globally with a network of believers all around the world.

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Your church is beautiful. Your church is glorious. Your church being the redeemed, those who are saved and rescued from their sins and are on a pathway to, as we've talked about in chapter 15, resurrection on a pathway to eternity with you.

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And so we rejoice in that, and I pray that you would give us a grander vision, a more glorious vision for the things that you are doing.

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Yes, gratitude and thankfulness for what you're doing right here in Matawan, right here in this congregation, but also a sweeping and glorious and beautiful picture that you have work to do all around the world and that you're doing it.

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Father, I pray that that glory would not be lost on us, but would actually fuel the joy that we have here in this local place for the big picture of what you're doing, and all for your glory, all for your honor.

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And as we sing these songs now, Father, I pray that you would allow our voices in rejoicing and gladness for the gospel that unites us here in this room to also remind us of the unity that we have with brothers and sisters all around the world, from different countries and different nations and different tongues and different peoples, and we are a part of this big, glorious thing, all worshiping our

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Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, and it's in his name that I pray, amen. Amen, all right, thanks again to the band for leading us, and encourage you to get comfortable and keep your

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Bibles open to 1 Corinthians chapter 16, verses one through 12, and as I say every week, if you need to get up and get more coffee or juice or donut holes, while supplies last, take advantage of those back there, whatever you need there.

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But do keep your Bibles open, and so that you could see and follow along and see that what I'm saying is coming directly from God's word.

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We might not, honestly, have gathered together here with a lot of interest in a collection being taken up for the church in Jerusalem, or the travel plans of Paul and Timothy and Apollos, and many of us have bigger fish to fry, and we might just be thinking, why would

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God have us here today, but I am convinced that this is God's holy word that he guides and directs us, and so for some reason, maybe it's even just a diversion into thinking more thoughts about the

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Bible and more thoughts about that right now, and less about ourselves, I don't know what that might be, but here we are this morning at a text that we would all probably likely just brush over in our read -through -the -Bible -in -a -year kind of plan or whatever, we would get through, oh, this is the end of the book, and chapter 16 might fly a little bit faster in our reading routinely.

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As I mentioned in the introduction, we see a subtle theme of humility that Paul is calling the church toward, to recognize it and lift their eyes up to see that there's a bigger picture, there's more going on.

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A church that never thinks outside of itself is a church that is at risk of becoming arrogant and insular and wayward, and so Paul highlights four things through the details of this section of his closing, this particular section, and there'll be more next week, but in a quite subtle way,

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Paul is calling Corinth to exhibit something that was not coming natural to them as a church, because Corinth was, as he said multiple times earlier in this letter to them, you're arrogant, you boast.

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So here are the things that a church is to exhibit, a church is to be. The first is that a church is to exhibit a generous and unified heart, verses one through four.

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Second, a church is to acknowledge the larger work of God, verses five through nine. Third, a church is to respect authoritative teaching or authoritative ministers, verses 10 through 11.

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And lastly, a church is to avoid competition in gospel ministry, that's verse 12.

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So we're gonna see these first four verses that a church is to exhibit a generous and unified heart. Paul is quite likely addressing something they already had written to him about, and the reason

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I say that is that there's a catchphrase here that indicates that he's answering a question. It's this now concerning, you see it in verse one of chapter 16, you're gonna see it again in verse 12, and that lets us, clues us in in the

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Greek language at least that he's identifying something that they've already talked about. Now concerning the things that you wrote me about might be a good way to translate that.

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So they've already talked with him about this, and he's responding to them. They have questions about the way to implement an offering that he's already brought up to them for the church in Jerusalem, and they're saying like, how do we do that?

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So Paul's been organizing a relief effort in his travels and defining the players, that relief effort for the church in Jerusalem particularly, defining those players in this relief effort have a major impact on how we understand what is going on here in this text.

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What is he calling this church to? You see, Paul's been organizing this collection among Gentile churches he planted in order to support the local church in Jerusalem, which was primarily a

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Jewish background church. So you have Gentile churches taking up a collection to support a primarily ethnically

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Jewish church. And so the animosity of course, I think you guys that have been kicking it around the church for a while and have read some of the

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New Testament, you understand there's a lot of ink spilled here about the bringing together of different ethnic identities and particularly those religious

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Jews under their Messiah, Jesus Christ. And so the animosity between Jews and Gentiles was baked into the cultural fabric of this era in which the

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New Testament was written. Cultural animosity, how many of you know this? Cultural animosity is a hard habit to break.

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Like it gets in people and it gets in cultures and it multiplies in generations. And so it's something that often is passed down through the ages and it's something that we really, really have to guard our hearts against.

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And so there are two things at play in Paul encouraging this collection from Corinth as well as he says in verse one that he's also encouraged it in Galatia too.

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Another again, mostly and predominantly Gentile churches, but he's encouraging generosity among the churches of God.

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That's the first thing, but also cultural unity among the churches of God to care for one another.

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It would be pretty reasonable if you really think about it, it would be culturally reasonable at this early stage of the church for the church in Corinth to ask a pretty pointed and direct but honest question.

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What do we have to do with Jerusalem? Is that not a logical question? What do we have to do with Jerusalem? Like why would we give them our money?

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Why would we give them our resources? What do we have to do with Greece, church? Why would we send a team to Greece?

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Don't we have plenty of fish to fry right here? Don't we have plenty of things to do in our local community? Why spend the time to invest in other places?

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Why would we ever do that? And that would be a logical question for them to ask. And even further, of course, underlying that question is, let them take care of themselves.

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Let them take care of themselves. But in this collection, Paul is highlighting that we belong to one another in Christ.

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We are brothers and sisters with more than just those in this room, but with a global church. And while certainly, we certainly have an increased moral responsibility that comes with geographical proximity, we do have more responsibility to love and care with our time and our resources here in this body.

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That is a reality. We have more responsibility here with those that we associate with.

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I wanna point out what is true and is important for us to grasp, and that's that we have more in common with a believer in Christ in Ethiopia than we have with our unsaved neighbor.

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Let me say that again. We have more in common with a believer in Ethiopia than we have with our unsaved neighbor next door.

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That's what's true. That's what's real. You have more depth and more richness of fellowship and continuity in your thoughts and the way that you process things with a believer there who honors the

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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in their own language and in their own culture. And so Paul encourages the church in Corinth to take up a weekly collection in order to set aside money for the need of the church in Jerusalem.

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And he tells them to do this. He tells them quite specifically on the first day of the week. Now, there's a perfectly sufficient phrase in Greek that means to do it weekly, like do this every week, but he specifically tells them to do it on the first day of the week, and I believe he says this because this is the day that they met, and so they're taking up this collection as they gather, and he's encouraging the pooling of resources.

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And further, by telling them to gather some each week on the first day of the week, each according to their own blessings, he says, he won't have to collect it when he arrives.

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He's not gonna take up precious time doing a collection, and I assume

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Paul also knew the offering would be more substantial if it was a product of weeks of giving, setting aside a little bit each week, than if all of a sudden, everybody's just forced to, in one moment, look in their wallet and go,

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I don't know what I got here. Let's just give a little bit. So the giving in this context was to each person as he may prosper according to English Standard Version.

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There is not a percentage given. There is not ever a percentage given in the New Testament, and despite the fact that many

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Christians, and I think it's okay. I mean, many people will talk about a tithe, 10 % or something like that.

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There is not a flat rate. There is not a percentage given. There was freedom to consider the way in which

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God has blessed each person for them to donate accordingly. So it can be a sliding scale for each of us, depending on how

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God has blessed us. But this is important for us to grasp, church. The model of giving in the

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New Testament should be carried over to the way that we give to God's work, both locally and globally, in the here and now.

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The place of generous giving to God and his church, this is important. If you're tuned out, tune back in for at least just a second here.

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The place of generous giving to God and his church ought to begin in our hearts and minds with thoughts about the way that God has prospered us.

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Like, that's where it starts. It's gotta start, not with some need out there, not with an advertisement, not with something we got in the mail, not with the guy on the

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TV saying, "'Sow your seed of $1 ,000.'" Not with me up here talking like this, because my skin is crawling right now, talking about money in the church.

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It's not something that I love doing. So no, it's not about an advertisement. It's not about a campaign.

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It's not about a push to try to wring more money out of each other. The place of generous giving to God and within his church ought to begin in your heart with thankfulness for the way that he has blessed you.

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His generosity towards you breeds generosity toward others. Now, historians identify that there's a particular problem that's likely to be the reason that Jerusalem needs an offering in this context.

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Historians identify that there was a documented famine in Judea around 40 to 45 AD, which would likely still be felt.

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This might be seven or eight years later that this is being written. We're not exactly sure of the timeframe and all of that, but that by Roman documents, this famine is quite well -documented.

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And so it's probably still being felt in Jerusalem, but we are not given in this text any insight as to why the church in Jerusalem was struggling, but they were.

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Text tells us they needed help. They needed help. And so Paul is launching out into care for the church in Jerusalem.

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And so Corinthian Christians are being called to think of more than merely themselves here. Do you see that?

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They're being called to lift up their eyes and see more. They're being called to concern for the church of God and where there is a specific need.

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So Gordon Fee, one of the New Testament scholars I checked in with this week, noted what

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I thought was helpful for us to pass along, and it is the subdued, matter -of -fact nature of Paul handling this giving.

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So he doesn't have a gimmick, no selling bricks, no pledges of memorial plaques on items so that you can have your name there for the next generation to see that you donated that bench.

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No capital campaign. No, what does he say here? Set aside money as you're able.

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Give as you're able. And I would commend the same for all of the giving here, for our general fund, and now the opening of an expansion fund.

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We are drawing closer and hope to being able to expand this facility and get back to one service, knocking this wall out back this way and getting us all back into one service would be great.

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But consider as the Lord blesses you to set aside money in accordance with the blessings you've received. You guys all know that I don't bang this drum frequently, but the text is talking about giving, so I'll talk about giving because I wanna be faithful to the text.

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But I've been encouraged, and I want you to know this. I think it's good for you to hear this from me. I've been encouraged by other pastors and other ministry leaders over the years, and I even get advertisements regularly for campaign, capital campaign companies that specialize in helping churches wring money out of you.

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Like, could we just squeeze a little bit more? Could we give a little bit more? Could we just squeeze that rag and see if there's anything more that drips out?

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I think it's disgusting. I'm not judging any other church that uses that. I'm just telling you that from my perspective and what

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I see in the word, that's disgusting. Because you know what, church? Guess who the church is?

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Us, us. We're family, we love one another. It's not the leadership squeezing money out of the congregation, are you kidding me?

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It's us giving as the Lord blesses us and letting us see where that goes. By the way, to the glory of our

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God, we have enough money in the bank right this second to pay this building off. It's, the property's ours, the house is ours.

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This is not, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is ours. So to the glory of God, without a capital campaign, without trying to squeeze money out, without,

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I mean, this is the most I think that, I think my wife could say, I think this is the most I've ever talked about money from this table.

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I don't do it, and those of you that have been around since the beginning, you can understand that that's not the way that I roll, but the text is clearly about giving, and here we are.

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And I'm off my notes. No, give, make sure that you give cheerfully as unto the

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Lord, and I refuse to allow some kind of capital campaign or paying for somebody to come in to teach our leadership how to get people to give more.

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We are the church. We're not seeking to wring money out of each other, so just give as you're able. Give as an act of worship to God, and I'm not seeking to do a switcheroo on you, by the way, with the text.

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The text is about supporting a foreign church, so now I'm saying, oh, please give to our local building.

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I merely highlight a local need, while I will also encourage you to support other ministries as you have opportunities.

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I am quite confident that Corinth collected money for their local needs and ministry, too. Here they happen to be talking about a collection for another church, and in verses three through four,

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Paul explains his intention to either write a letter of commendation to whoever the

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Corinthians trust, they are to select some men that they trust to carry the gift to Jerusalem, and he's even willing to accompany the gift there if the church deems that advisable, so that's kind of what's going on in verses three and four.

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What you need to understand is that moving money in that era would have been risky. Yeah, they didn't have brinks trucks back then, so it was dangerous work.

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Selecting trusted men and being sure that they know who to get the money to, who's the proper contact in Jerusalem to get the money to the right places, that would have required logistics and connecting points and relationships and all of that.

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So Paul's like, maybe it's advisable for me to go with them, in which case I'll go along and they can accompany me there.

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So here in this brief discussion about a relief effort for the church in Jerusalem, we see Paul pointing the

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Corinthians to see themselves as connected to other Christians in a spirit of generosity and unity.

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And this makes me curious if it isn't time for us as a church to find some place to invest in.

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Maybe it's a church in Japan, we have some missionaries that work in Japan, but I love the idea of us helping to support a church in an area where there is need.

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Maybe it's some place that's spiritually dark where it's not very easy to support a ministry. And no,

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I'm not talking about supporting missionaries, I'm talking about supporting a church. I'm talking about the way, and so just pray with me, maybe join me in prayer for God to grant us his focus for us to lift up our eyes beyond ourselves for the purpose of generosity and unity with our foreign brothers and sisters somewhere else in the world.

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I think that'd be kind of a cool process. Not so much sending missionaries as much as supporting a church of people who love

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God in a foreign place. I think that would be pretty cool. So pray that God would lead us and guide us in that.

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And this carries us on to our next point with a little change in tack. It's related, but you'll see that it comes from a different perspective.

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And that is that a church is to acknowledge the larger work of God. Not only are we, as a church, to exhibit a generous and unified heart, but a church is to acknowledge the larger work of God.

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In this section, Paul reveals his desire to come hang with the Corinthians for an extended visit. He says,

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I wanna come stay with you for longer. He doesn't wanna merely pass through Corinth, according to verse seven, but he wants to spend a more extended time.

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But he reminds them, I believe, with significant intention. What he says here is very intentional. That they are not the only thing that God has going on.

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They are not the only church on Paul's plate. That they are not the only thing that God is working on.

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No, Paul says, I'm gonna first pass through Macedonia. Well, where's Macedonia? It's northern Greece, where there's the city of Thessalonica and Philippi and Berea, places where Paul planted other churches.

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And he has a desire to visit those churches and see how they're holding up on his way south.

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He's gonna go north by ship, up to the northern part of Macedonia, and then head south by land down probably through Athens and then to Corinth.

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And he's writing in the spring, but hopes to spend the next winter with them, he says.

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And travel during the winter months was brutal during this era. The seas were usually closed off for travel for danger, and the overland routes were not fun in the winter.

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So a lot of times, a person like Paul, who was traveling and a traveling minister, would hunker down someplace for the winter and find a place to kind of focus.

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And so he's saying, I want that to be you, Corinth. But again, this can seem like so much reading of another person's mail, but what is

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Paul doing here? There's an intention by which this is recorded for our attention here this morning.

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Drawing attention away from the Corinthians' little self -made kingdom is the purpose. There's more going out here in the world than your local church, is what

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Paul's getting at. And how often, how often do we need to hear this? I think this would help us all to some degree with our own emotional and mental health.

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We can become so caught up in our first world problems that we begin to think that Chick -fil -A's closures on Sunday is a real problem, right?

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It's a real crisis. We can tend to think our local problems are the real problems. And further, we can think that our church is the best church.

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It is the flagship. This is the model. This is the one that God is really pleased with. Paul says to the

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Corinthians, I wanna visit you, but I've got a lot of other churches going on out here. I love you guys, and I love the

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Galatians, and I love the Ephesians, and I'm gonna visit the Thessalonians on my way, and I'm gonna stop by Philippi, reminding them there's a lot of churches out here.

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There's a lot of others going on. I love how tentative Paul is about his travel plans, by the way, in this whole section.

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Like I mentioned, travel was dangerous, and there was nothing that was a guarantee in those days, but he models for us a trust in God's will, even regarding his travel plans.

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Travel was sketchy and dangerous, but note in verse seven that he hopes to spend some time with them.

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And how does he end verse seven? If the Lord permits. If the Lord permits.

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Paul is certainly demonstrating to us a trust in the Lord for his future plans. He makes the plans while recognizing the

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Lord's will in it. If the Lord wills, I will be able to travel to you.

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And far from being a mere formula for our lives, we have a tendency to turn good thoughts and good practices into patterns, and eventually they become routine, and they become rote, so that everybody ends the prayer with, in Jesus' name, amen.

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Without having any thoughts about Jesus, without having any thoughts of so be it, without having any idea what his name means, and we can have a tendency to turn things into mottos or slogans or just something that you say, so you could just end every sentence with, if the

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Lord wills. Yeah, I'll have lunch with you next week, if the Lord wills, if the Lord wills, if the Lord wills. But that's not what

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Paul is intending for us to do here. Not merely a formula for our life, but it should be a hard attitude.

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Should be a hard attitude, if the Lord wills, that brings our thoughts regularly back to the reality that God is indeed in control.

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We will not retire. We will not get married. We will not get a promotion. We will not close on that house, and we will not go on our next vacation without the

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Lord willing it, without his will. The sovereignty of God is not some esoteric argument intended to give the church something to argue about for the last couple of millennia.

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The sovereignty of God is meant to fuel our faith, our trust, our prayers, our dependence. And on the flip side, the sovereignty of God is meant to defeat our arrogance and our self -reliance and to curb our trust in our own ways, which comes pretty natural to me.

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I think it does to you too. To see myself as the primary actor in my story. To see myself as the primary one who is working.

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To lean on these legs, to lean on these muscles. Not great, but to try to just depend on myself when

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God is the one who I hope, at the end of my life, can be declared to be the actor.

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He's got the lead role in the story of my life. Paul is writing this from Ephesus, and the timing of this can be followed up.

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It really was interesting this week to read Acts 19, starting in verse 21, so jot that down.

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If you enjoy this kind of like the way that scripture holds together, I encourage you, maybe even this afternoon, to pick up Acts 19, starting in verse 21, and read it, and you'll actually see the historical account of what's going on at the time that Paul is writing these very things.

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So he's in Ephesus during this time, and we see what's going on, and he even talks about his desire to go to Corinth, and then go on to Rome after that.

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So we know what his travel plan was when he says that you might send me on. I'd like to spend the winter there and hang out with you guys, that you might send me on my way.

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His goal at that point was to go to Rome. It doesn't quite meet that, but here in our text in verse nine,

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Paul tells the Corinthians about a wide open door for effective ministry among the Ephesians. Again, you read that Acts chapter 19.

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It wasn't open very long. It was open, but not very long, but he stayed for a while among them, and he also highlights that he's facing many adversaries there.

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He's planning to stay on a little longer than planned in Ephesus because they're responding in extreme and opposite ways, but he says both of these are good.

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They were very receptive while some are being very adversarial. He sees that as a plus.

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He's like, at least they're getting it. At least they're understanding. Like I'm proclaiming the gospel, and people are getting it, and some people are highly, how many of you know that there are different responses to people getting the gospel?

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Like when they understand it, they either hate it or they love it. Either it is to them the stench of death or it is to them the aroma of life, right?

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And some are like, gross. Are you kidding me? And some are like, glorious.

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I'm all in. And that's what Paul has experienced there in Ephesus. He's planning to stay on a little longer because they're responding in extreme ways.

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Paul is reflecting what I think many of us already know. Effective ministry will draw the attention of the evil one and evil people.

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I've heard it said that if you're not getting negative attention, then you're not likely doing any effective ministry, and while I disagree with the sweep,

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I don't love sweeping generalizations like that, I would still state something close to it, but in another way,

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I would state it this way. Don't be surprised that adversaries show up where ministry is having an impact.

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Don't be surprised. As a matter of fact, it's probably a good thing to kind of be ready for it. And I have been ready for it.

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As a matter of fact, I've been so ready for it that over the years, a handful of guys have accused me of being too vigilant over this flock.

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Oh, lighten up, Don. You're acting a little scared. You're acting a little timid. You're acting a little fearful for the flock, and I want to just tell you just directly and honestly as your pastor,

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I am not scared at all for you, but I will stand as a watchman over this flock. It is my calling.

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I will not accept your blood on my hands. I won't do it, as Ezekiel talks about.

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If I, woe is me if I do not declare the truth to you, and therefore you falter and fall because I've been unfaithful to share the truth with you.

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So I will stand up here and share the truth with you to the best of my ability, and at the end of my life,

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I hope to be able to say to God, I did what I could. I did what I could. But I will not allow wolves to come in unchecked.

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They'll have to get through me. They'll have to get through the elders. The New Testament, by the way, leads me. If you are a student of the

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New Testament, if you read Matthew to Revelation, you will come away. If you read it and you read it to understand it, you will come away with an expectation that within a congregation, there will be wolves, that it's gonna happen.

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It's not that I'm scared. It's not that I'm kind of like a little jaded or cynical and just kind of watching and always paranoid that someone here is a wolf.

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No, it's just that the New Testament says, my job is to watch. My job is to be attentive.

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The New Testament leads me to expect them. But a church is to acknowledge the larger scale work that God is doing.

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Recast is not at all the big thing that God is doing today. It's not. He's doing it, but it's not the big thing.

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It is merely one small sliver of the many things that God is choosing to use on this day for his glory.

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And God forbid that we ever get too big for our britches, that we ever believe our own hype, or that we need to be put in our place.

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As a church, how many of you raise your hand and say, I hope we never get put in our place? I don't wanna get

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God's attention that way, but let's just stay humble now. Let's be a people who praise him when we hear about successful ministry happening in other communities, in other places, in other denominations.

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When the gospel is going forward, we should be those who rejoice. And the third section is short and focused on the sending of Timothy to Corinth.

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Again, what appears to be a matter of housekeeping yields a deeper meaning for us.

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In this next section in verses 10 and 11, a church is to respect God's ministers, respect

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God's teachings. The edginess of Corinth, their divisiveness and sectarianism that was shined in the early part of this letter that was, well, it was kind of like a mar, a scar on the church, not necessarily shining, but actually like kind of a defect in the church.

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They were very divisive. And he has, that's the reason why Paul is sending a letter of commendation ahead of Timothy.

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He commands them to put Timothy at ease. He prohibits them from despising him.

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Well, why? Because he expects them to. And he further commands them to help him on his way in peace.

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Paul's expecting him to come back to him in Ephesus. While we have a quite different church culture than the founding era of church history, we still do well to recognize

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God's workers. Paul tells them that Timothy is doing the Lord's work just as I am, says

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Paul. Timothy working just like me. This demonstrates a humility on Paul's part to willingly put that much trust in his protege.

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We know that Timothy was significantly younger than Paul. We know he was significantly less experienced than Paul.

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We even know that he was significantly less educated than Paul. And yet Paul says, receive him like you're receiving me.

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And it also shows us that Paul recognized the work of God in others. He had faced plenty of hardship in ministry from inside churches and from outsiders, and he was hoping for better for Timothy, a young man who was just learning ministry.

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And I would just ask you this question in light of this one, churches to respect God's ministers and those who are bringing

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God's word. How might we be tempted to despise a younger minister? How might we be guilty of making younger ministers ill at ease?

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I think nothing could be more discouraging to an elder or a youth pastor or even a lead pastor than a person who is doubting them intentionally at every turn, constantly questioning, constantly nagging, correcting every little nuance of teaching, making the ministry a ministry of hardship rather than a ministry of peace.

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And that's not to say that there's never a time for questions. There's certainly a time for questions. I'm not above dealing with what you might perceive as anything that I say up here that's false.

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As a matter of fact, I open to that. But I do ask this question, and I ask it with sincerity, and I don't ask it to be mean, but I want you to deal with it in your own heart and think it through and figure it out.

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What are we as a church to make? And this is documented. What are we to make?

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What am I to make of the attendance going down on Sundays that I'm not here?

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What am I to make of that? Is that respect to those guys getting a chance?

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I don't receive it as respect. I don't receive that as honor. I don't receive that as, wow, people like my preaching, which astonishes me that you're here listening right now.

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I mean, Linda can testify that she could not stand my preaching the first few years that I was, I mean, God just,

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God just does this. Uh, there were some bombs there. Come on, come on, testify.

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It was not pretty. Oh, I was so scared. My knees were knocking. I was just terrified.

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My voice would crack. It was just, oh, I'm up here in front of people, oh. And then that kind of settles on me when

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I lose my place in my notes. So we'll get back to this. What was I talking about?

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Oh, yeah, what are we to make on Sundays? And it's at the top of my notes. What are we to make on Sundays that I'm not here and the attendance drops?

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And I've had people outright say to me, yeah, I don't come when you're not preaching.

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And I think they mean that as a compliment, and I don't receive it that way. I'm like, are you saying you can't learn from someone preaching the

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Bible? That's not healthy. Could that be a sign that we are not respectful of the things that God desires to communicate to us through other speakers here?

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Are we not respectful of the word as the word and giving another guy a chance to bring the word to us?

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I mean, I'd encourage you to think, if you're one of those that's not coming when I leave, oh, let's work on that.

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Let's especially work on that as we lead towards a sabbatical coming up for me.

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Just timing seemed to work. I would be the first to say that I have always experienced you guys, and I mean this with all sincerity, this is not flattery, this is not buttering you up in any way, shape, or form.

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I have experienced this church to be amazingly kind and amazingly peaceful. I talk with other pastors,

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I've got a lot of other friends that are pastors, and they can testify to hardships and difficulties, and I wonder, though,

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I can say that, I wonder if Ben, our youth pastor, would say the same. I don't know, I can't answer for him. Maybe he would just say yes, maybe he would say, eh, we got some work.

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Would our lay elders say the same? I can't answer for them, but consider what you communicate when you subtly indicate that you'd rather talk to me than them, when you'd rather have me come visit you in the hospital than them.

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Here's the way to ask it biblically. Here's the way to ask it from the text. Would Corinth be justified in ignoring

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Timothy? I'm sending Timothy to you, says Paul, and then I hope to come later.

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Skip Timothy. Screw Timothy. We're waiting for Paul, he's the real deal.

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He's coming. Why would we pay attention to the scrub? I mean, isn't that a legit question that you can imagine

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Corinth asking? Isn't that something that settles on people's hearts? Paul's on the way.

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Why listen to Timothy? God forbid that this church is built up around me in a way that creates a dependence on Don.

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I cannot be enough and will not be enough to meet the needs of this congregation. Paul is a good example of this in multiplying the work through others who he brought along to also do the work of the

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Lord. A church is to respect God's ministers, and note, note, note, that the word that I just said is plural, to respect his ministers.

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And that leads into the final point. A church is to be glad for gospel ministry wherever it's found. This is verse 12, quite short in only one verse.

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This quick message about Apollos. You'll probably miss it if you don't understand the history. So if you only read verse 12 and you don't understand the tension between the church and Apollos and Paul, then it just reads like, just so much like, kind of like, eh, but there's some really cool stuff here.

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Apollos had been at Corinth within the past couple of years, and that church fell in love with Apollos.

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As a matter of fact, they fell in love with him over and against the apostle Paul, so that many people in that church had formed a faction calling themselves

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Team Apollos. Why can't he just be our pastor? Why can't we just have him?

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Get rid of that Paul guy, because that guy can preach. Man, I love this. Man, I look forward to the

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Sundays when Apollos is preaching, would have been the attitude there. Well, he's gone now. He's no longer there.

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And it appears by the terminology that's used, again, the now concerning our brother

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Apollos, that phrase now concerning is an indicator that he's answering a question they've asked. Why can't

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Apollos come back? Why can't you send him to us? So it appears that they've written an ask for Apollos, and Paul said, no, no, you guys love him too much, and you're too dependent on him.

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Is that what it says? No. No, Paul obliged. And it says he strongly urged

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Apollos to go visit them, but it was not the will of Apollos to go at this time.

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I didn't stop him. I encouraged him. I wanted you to have a good gospel minister among you.

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Maybe later, when he has an opportunity, he'll show up. Now, I wanna highlight what an impressive lack of competition this expresses in the heart of the

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Apostle Paul. Many of us can become competitive with others in a variety of ways, at our workplace, in sporting events, in all different kinds of things, but even in the spiritual realm, we can become intimidated by people with what we perceive to be more effective gifts than ours.

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Paul shows no shred of intimidation or fear of being considered second fiddle to Apollos.

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In the history between the church of Corinth and these two men make for a beautiful demonstration of a non -territorial view of the church and church leadership.

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Corinth wasn't Paul's church, even though he planted it, and he was apparently glad to encourage anyone who would preach truth to them there.

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He wasn't intimidated by the love of people given toward another leader. And what this means at a deeper level for all of us is a call to love and celebrate gospel ministry and proclamation of the word from anyone who will preach it, anyone declaring the gospel.

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And I would confess to you that in my darker moments, I can get into the comparison game. I even have had wrong thoughts about other pastors in other churches, and I confess before you that this is more often wrong than not when

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I engage in this. Now, granted, there are some organizations that teach false doctrine.

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There are some organizations that call themselves a church that have false practice or even a false gospel.

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And even then, when we talk about those ministries, we need to be careful about the way that we would confront that falsehood.

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But then, honestly, there are plenty of churches that proclaim the truth, who lift up Christ, who lift up his gospel, and they just rub me the wrong way.

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How many of you know what I'm talking about? Just a moment of like honesty, like they're preaching the truth, but I just don't, this doesn't gel with me.

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It doesn't, it kind of feels like an off vibe, you know? And I need to let go of that.

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We need to let go of that and rejoice like Paul did, wherever the gospel was proclaimed in truth.

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Just whatever the reason that they're proclaiming the gospel, whether in pretense, I just rejoice that the gospel is proclaimed.

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So let's recap this before we come to communion and slide in here for a landing. We're being called this morning to exhibit a generous and unified heart, to acknowledge the larger work of God, to respect authoritative teaching, and to be glad for gospel ministry wherever, wherever, wherever it is found.

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And all of this revolves around the very hope that we have in common with Christians all around the world and coming all the way down into this room, the unity you have with a person sitting next to you and in front of you and behind you, and that is the belief in the good news.

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If you believe the good news, the gospel that Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, and you've asked him specifically to forgive you, and you've asked him to be your

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Lord and King, and you're at peace with others here in this room, as much as it's up to you, you're at peace with them, then

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I encourage you to come to the tables during this next song, and take the cracker to remember his body that was broken for us, and take the cup of juice to remember his blood that was shed in our place for us.

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Do this as an act of remembering what he has done to create for himself a restored people called his church.

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He is gathering people from all over the world into his family. And while we celebrate here locally in solidarity together with our

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Lord and each other, even through this act of communion, don't get lost in the local. Don't get so lost in the local that you forget that we are not the only one that Jesus bled and died for.

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He is doing so much more than just recast church today. Amen? All right, let's pray.

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Father, I thank you for your faithfulness to lift our eyes up from ourselves. We do have hurt, we do have pain, we do have suffering and difficulty, but sometimes the remedy is to think about others outside of ourselves, to recognize that our suffering is real, and yet also to recognize that there is a big picture of what you're doing.

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We thank you for the gospel, we thank you for the hope that we have, that this life is not all that there is, but even chapter 15, thinking back to the hope of resurrection, the hope for a life that is to come.

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And then here, closing this out with a return to humility. Here at the end of the book, recognizing that we ought not to believe our own hype, we ought not to focus solely on ourselves to the exclusion of the big picture of what you're doing, but rather to lift our eyes up to the greater glory of the big thing that you're doing and redeeming the people from all tribes and all tongues and all nations, that one day that glorious throne room will be filled with people singing in adoration of the

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Lamb from everywhere. I look forward to that day, but in the meantime I pray that you would help us to be faithful to the things you call us to hear and also to identify where you would be calling us to give of our time and our resources and our energy around the world as well.