Extraordinary Truth, Ordinary Church

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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We are picking up today back in 1 Corinthians chapter 16.

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We took a week off last week to hear from some missionaries, some local missionaries at Meadow Lodge Bible Camp, and now we're back in chapter 16, the second last sermon,

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I think, on this text. We'll see how today goes. And we're going to be looking at the first 12 verses of chapter 16.

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And I was thinking as I was studying this text and as I was looking at it in its context,

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I was thinking this, that over the last number of months we've been studying, really, if you look back in 1

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Corinthians 15, 14, 13, 12, and even earlier than that, we've been studying some of the most profound truths in all of Scripture.

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With the Apostle Paul, we have really tried to plumb the depths of God's revelation through this letter.

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And we've also been lifted up, I would say, to behold some of the most exalted doctrines in all of heaven and earth.

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And while you probably don't remember me saying this, some of you might remember that I said that, partway through the study at least, some of the

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Scriptures that we were going to look at are the primary texts for some of the most glorious realities, some of the most glorious theological realities, doctrines in the universe.

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They're not just passages that we read at weddings or read at funerals, but they're texts that Christians have looked at for some 2 ,000 years to understand how we should live this life and how we should expect to live concerning eternal life.

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And so if we were just to survey for a couple moments what we've looked at over the last number of months, even just since 1

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Corinthians 10, we'd see that we looked at the worship of God, the Lord's Supper, the spiritual gifts, how the church is to order her worship, the primacy and the characteristics of Christian love, the resurrection of Christ, the resurrection of the body, the resurrection body of every

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Christian when Christ returns, and then last time around the ultimate and final death of death in the death of Christ.

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And I like to think sometimes topographically or graphically, and I think if we were to chart the

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Bible, just the whole Bible, Genesis to Revelation, using something like a bar graph, like they would the peaks of the tallest mountains, what we would see is that Paul, looking at 1

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Corinthians, especially 1 Corinthians 15, Paul has just brought us to the summit of one of the highest peaks in Scripture, and he's brought us to the crescendo of the letter in 1

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Corinthians 15. And if this letter were to come to us, I was thinking like episodes in some kind of TV series, where you know the ones, not where the ones that you can binge watch, but the ones where you have to wait until next week to find out what's going to happen.

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I probably wouldn't be able to take it. If I were to give you 1 Corinthians 14 one week, and then 15 the next week and say, you can't have 16 until next week now.

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A lot of us would say, what can the apostle Paul possibly say next? I mean, he's just taken us to the point where the sting of death is gone.

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There's now no more fear of death. It's powerless. Sin itself has been neutered, and rendered ineffectual in the life of the

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Christian. Eternal life with God has been secured. The final victory is in Christ.

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And if you didn't know what was going to happen next, and if you had to guess, I would say that in chapter 16,

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Jesus Christ has to return. I mean, what happens after the glories of chapter 15?

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Oh, sin, oh, death. Where is your sting? Where is your victory? I mean, what comes after that kind of climax in the text?

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Christ has to return. It's very instant. But as we turn to chapter 16,

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I find it interesting. John MacArthur said, perhaps the apostle Paul and God who inspired him had a sense of humor that we would end on this peak in 1

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Corinthians 15 and verse 58. Just the climax of the book.

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And then in 1 Corinthians 16 and verse 1, where do we find ourselves? But in the valley of the mountains, right back to real life.

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So Paul has just transported us to the heavenlies for the last 58 verses.

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And then he pulls us straight down back to the earth. You could say a bit of a reality check.

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He takes us from the heights of eternal life and brings us down to the regular and the mundane of the ordinary life.

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If we think about the words that Lowell just read in the text, we've got all of these glorious doctrinal, rich theological passages.

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And then we've got now concerning the collection for the saints. Now, why is that?

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Why would Paul do that? We've taught it before. We've said it now in the last number of weeks that this is still because this is the reality in which we live.

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We are citizens of a kingdom and it's the kingdom of God. And yet that kingdom has been inaugurated and yet not consummated.

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We live in this time of transition between the already and the not yet. And what this means is that we still must walk in this world by faith and not yet by sight.

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And if we're living faithfully as Christians in this world, if we think about this as we go about our days as believers faithfully in this life,

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I think that we're reminded daily of this reality, of this mountaintop experience and this valley experience.

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Every day, many of us in this room, not only do we commute to work, we get in our cars and go to work or go to school or to some other responsibility, but every day, we make this 1

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Corinthians 15 and 16 type of commute where we commute from the extraordinary and the eternal things, specifically in our daily worship, our private worship, our daily devotions, and we commute to the ordinary and the temporary.

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Now, what does this mean? What am I talking about? I want to ask, how often has it happened to you?

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I hope often that you're reading the Bible, you're reading the text, you have time alone to be with God, and praise the

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Lord. He meets you in His Word in that moment, and He opens your eyes.

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You know those times when you read this passage and you go, I've read this text 10 times and I've never seen this, and now the

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Lord is showing it to me in this new and glorious way. So the Lord opens your eyes to discover something new, something rich, something that's soul -stirring, and as you're reading the text,

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I hope you've been there before. If the time allowed, you would tarry there with God for hours, but then you think, to your great disappointment, you're reminded that in 20 minutes, you have to leave for work, or in 20 minutes, you need to pack the kids' lunches or sanitize the baby bottles or whatever it is.

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There's some routine obligation that draws you from the extraordinary to the ordinary existence of your everyday life.

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Or how many of us, again, I hope many, have we been in a position where we have struggled to pray, and then as if the

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Lord Himself swings open the doors of heaven, we enter into sweet, rich, wonderful, glorious communion with God, and like Paul does in chapter 15,

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God draws us up into His throne room, and there in fellowship with God Almighty, the struggle of prayer gives way to the ease in prayer, and minutes pass like seconds, and hours pass like minutes, and then we remember that it's 7 o 'clock, and I have to drive to work now.

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How many of us have been in that type of situation? If you have a healthy walk with God, then

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I think, I trust, you know what I'm talking about, and you're familiar with this struggle, that we can read about the death of death and the death of Christ.

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We can read about the future glories of the kingdom of heaven in the presence of God. We can read about perfect communion with the saints and with Christ, and then we have to close our

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Bibles, and then go into a sin -riddled world. It's a struggle, and for some of us, we might begin to resent that struggle, or worse, move towards some type of monkish hyper -spirituality where we esteem only the spiritual pursuits and look down on anything that's physical or temporary, look down on work, look down on family, look down on the food

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I eat, or what I do with my time, or even exercise, and the care of the body. But here in chapter 16, what

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Paul shows us is that not only does true Christianity consist in the awesome, in the glorious, in the extraordinary doctrines and spiritual realities, like what we've been studying all through 1

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Corinthians, but true Christianity also consists in carrying out the ordinary and the mundane responsibilities of life.

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Not only that, it's the extraordinary truths of Scripture that inform the ordinary things of everyday life.

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You know, I like to give the main thesis of my sermon, usually the beginning, and so I'll give it to you now if you want to write down the big idea.

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But what we're going to see in these first 12 verses is that the Apostle Paul is going to show us, really, the application of the extraordinary truths that we read in the

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Scripture, the application of extraordinary truths in the life of an ordinary church.

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And so we have extraordinary truths in an ordinary church. And really, this is not the kind of sermon that I would probably bring as my conference message.

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If someone were to ever invite me to a conference, I wouldn't bring this to the conference because it's pretty unexciting.

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It's pretty ordinary, but yet it's so glorious, and I hope to show you that.

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And so Paul doesn't give us an exhaustive list, but he shows us what it's like to live the

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Christian life not with glitz and glamour, not in a flashy way, but in a faithful way in light of all the texts that we have read and studied together in 1

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Corinthians 1 through 15. So we'll get right into the exposition. We'll start at verse 1.

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Paul writes this. He says, 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 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. Paul begins this first line, this first verse with that familiar expression, now concerning.

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Now you guys probably remember what that means, but whenever Paul uses this, this is another fifth time that he's used it.

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Every time Paul starts in 1 Corinthians with those words, now concerning, peri -dei, in the

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Greek, what he's saying is, I'm going to respond to something that you have written to me about in your letter to me.

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So we remember that the Corinthians at some point had written an earlier letter to the apostle Paul. And so he's asked, or he's answered at least five of their questions, four of their questions, this being the fifth.

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Now concerning the offering. And he's making reference to something that the Corinthians have written about in regards to a collection of money.

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And verse three tells us that it's a collection of money for the Christians who were in Jerusalem. And besides a few very practical instructions in really very little detail, what we get are just a few brief instructions on what that type of collection is going to look like.

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But if you're the type of person, I don't know about you guys, but I love to geek out about these kinds of things where 1

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Corinthians intersects with the book of Acts and with other Acts on the timeline of early church history.

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If you're the type of person that likes to get a more complete picture, we're gonna do that so we can get a lot,

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I think a lot of clarity about what was happening in Jerusalem and what was happening with this collection that was being taken up in Corinthians.

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So to begin with, from the early chapters of Acts and from historical records, we know that Jerusalem, unlike other cities in the

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Roman Empire, Jerusalem was not a city that was marked by widespread wealth or opulence.

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To the contrary, Jerusalem was a transient city with people always coming and going. People were always coming and going to make their offerings, to celebrate the feasts and the festivals.

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And as a result, that meant that when people came to Jerusalem, they didn't always have a steady income as they entered into the city.

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And so people were left not necessarily with all the means that they needed for their travels. But not only that, but Jerusalem, unlike during the time when it was under the rule of King Solomon, Jerusalem, under the rule of the

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Roman Empire, was a relatively poor city. And we see this actually if we look in the early chapters of Acts.

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In Acts chapter four, we remember people like Barnabas and others sold property that they might meet the needs of the saints.

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In Acts chapter six, there was a dispute amongst the Hellenistic widows and the disciples.

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Why? Because the church needed to care for the Hellenistic widows. They didn't have enough money or resources to survive on their own.

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So the church started off poor. The city of Jerusalem, you could say, at least in the beginning of Acts, starts off poor as well.

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But something happened in AD 46 that added to the poverty of this city. And we read about that actually in the book of Acts in chapter 11.

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So this is again, if you'd like the chronological time of church history in the book of Acts, this is where we get to see all of this stuff come together.

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So in Acts chapter 11 in verse 27, it says this, Now in these days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch.

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That's really where the first church outside of Jerusalem started was in the city of Antioch.

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So these prophets came down and one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the

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Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world. This took place in the days of Claudius.

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He was the Roman emperor at that time. So in response to this prophecy, what we see is the disciples in Antioch in that same chapter immediately took up an offering.

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They took up a collection. Where am I? Took up a collection to support the

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Jewish believers in Jerusalem. And we read about this in Acts chapter 11 in verse 29 and 30.

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It says, So the disciples determined everyone according to his ability to send relief to the brothers living in Judea.

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And they did so sending it to the elders by the hands of Barnabas. I can't remember now if I even said it at the beginning but here we see that one of the very first things that marks the church these extraordinary truths that we read about in 1

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Corinthians they work themselves out in ordinary acts of generosity.

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And so we see the church in Antioch giving money. We're going to see the church in Corinth giving money.

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And so true to the prophet's words in any case. In AD 46 there was a great famine in Jerusalem and in the surrounding area even as far as Rome.

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And in fact if you like historical tidbits there was such a great shortage of grain that in AD 51 that Roman emperor

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Claudius was nearly mobbed in the streets by angry Roman citizens.

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So it's wonderful when we get to see world history at least told by secular historians overlap with biblical history.

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And so in response to this dire situation churches across the Gentile world ordinary men and women who had been saved and transformed through the extraordinary power of the gospel were eager to support their

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Jewish brothers and sisters. And so this included the churches in Macedonia. If you were to look at a map of that world in that time in Macedonia we'd find places like Philippi where we get the book of Philippians Thessalonica and Berea and then churches in Achaia and Corinth there was the capital city of that Roman province.

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And so these Gentile churches came together to offer relief to the saints in Jerusalem.

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And we don't and we won't take time for all the references but what we find is that Paul addressed the

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Corinthians here in 1 Corinthians 16 he then addressed them again in 2

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Corinthians maybe we'll see that one day when we study that book 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 and then he even speaks about it in Romans 15 verses 25 and 26 and there

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Paul tells us about the completion of that collection so at some point this church did come together they brought their money together they collected it and it was delivered to the saints.

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In Romans 15 and 25 it says for Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem.

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So this was the cultural context we had a famine in the land

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Jerusalem was already bad off as it was and so the church the Gentile church the outsiders as they were came together to put money together to provide for the

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Jewish church in the city of Jerusalem where the church started. And so Paul encourages here this relatively wealthy church in Corinth to be generous and so after he expounds on some of these weighty doctrines that we've already recounted

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Paul doesn't just tell them you might think for instance like the Thessalonians had the wrong idea that if Christ is coming soon

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I just need to quit my job and wait I just need to join a monastic community and wait for the coming of Christ but Paul doesn't tell them to quit their jobs he doesn't tell them to sell all their possessions he doesn't tell them just to sit around and wait he doesn't tell them to wait the second coming of Christ instead he gives them ordinary practical instructions concerning the collection of money and I think that we can learn as a church how we can carry out this ordinary response ordinary generosity as a result of an extraordinary gospel extraordinary truth in scripture so the very first thing that we see the

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Corinthians or the very first thing that we see the Corinthians do in terms of their giving that Paul says at least is that they are to give willingly so the church is to be generous and they're to give willingly and Paul we know this because of the words that Paul uses here and in the other letters and so Paul calls this offering a collection and it's the

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Greek word logia and this can refer to the mandatory collection of taxes or within this context it refers to a voluntary contribution we're going to see that as we continue but God's desire for us as his saints and for us when we give is not just that we would give begrudgingly or that we would give with a neutral attitude but God desires his people to give generously to give willingly and to give joyfully and we see this actually if we look at Paul's references to this event and to this collection in other letters and so if we were to look for instance to Romans 15

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Paul calls this same collection this logia he calls it a koinonia a fellowship offering he says that again in 2

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Corinthians 9 and this collection is to be a joyful expression of love and Christian fellowship between these

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Gentile believers and the Jewish churches in Jerusalem in 2

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Corinthians 9 Paul calls this same collection the same offering he calls it a diakonia we know that's the root from which we get our word deacon and it means service and so it's a service offering it's a way for the church to be a servant to have a servant hearted towards other believers in 2

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Corinthians 9 he calls it a gift or a blessing and then in 2

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Corinthians 8 again he calls this same offering a grace offering a chorus offering and it's in this context in this context that Paul roots this earnest and this generous offering in the gospel of Jesus Christ he explains why it is that the church is to be generous why it is that the church gives why it is that the church should be eager to give sacrificially and he quotes in that context immediately after calling a grace offering he says in 2

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Corinthians 8 9 for you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ the grace of our

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Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich yet for your sake he became poor so that you by his poverty might become rich and so it was

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Paul's intent for the church to give willingly to give cheerfully and he later reminds them of that in his letters to them in 2

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Corinthians 9 -7 where he says each one must give as he has decided in his own heart not reluctantly or under compulsion for God loves a cheerful giver and so when

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God calls the church to give he calls her to give cheerfully the next thing we see is that the church's generosity was to be practiced consistently

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Paul says that an offering the collection should be taken up on the first day of every week now why does

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Paul specify a day I mean why not just say you should take up an offering and I'll be there at some point to collect it he says no you should take it up on the first day of every week and it was because it was on this day on the first day of the week that the church met for worship it was functional it was practical and so when we as a church make opportunity for people to give on the

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Lord's day on the first day of the week it is really in obedience too it's in conformity to this text and again what happened on the first day of the week but the resurrection of Christ and so again this giving this generosity was rooted in the resurrection of Christ who rose on the first day of the week and as a result the church met on the first day of the week we see that in Acts 20 verse 7 it says that the church broke bread together meaning they commemorated the

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Lord's supper on the first day of the week and here the church was to give and to store up these offerings on the first day of the week now some might say why every week or why not once a month or whatever contention might be and perhaps

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God in his wisdom designed it this way knowing that anything that we don't do consistently we invariably forget to do all together and so we see that the church cheerfully consistently and also we see here that the church is to give according to their prosperity as in verse 2b the believers in the church were to give in Paul's words as he may prosper so notice we as a church will not teach we do not teach the practice of the

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Old Testament tithe if you think back to the Old Testament tithe those

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Jewish believers had to give a certain percentage of their income in service to God and to the temple but rather what we see here is that believers are simply to give in proportion to the means that God blesses them with so we no longer walk as believers according to the letter of the laws the

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Jews did in the Old Covenant but we walk according to the spirit and so for those who have been redeemed by Christ and have the spirit of Christ there is freedom but it's not the kind of freedom if you think about it what you did with your money before the

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Lord saved you it's not the kind of freedom that the world loves where the world says treat yourself spend a little bit of money on yourself take care of yourself but it's the kind of freedom that gives generously that gives sacrificially that gives joyfully

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I remember when the Lord saved me and maybe I shared this story and I'll just share it briefly but prior to the

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Lord saving me the Lord saved my wife Nicole first and I remember us having our conversations early on in our relationship as we were getting more serious and she was in the wrong about that just being with me in the first place but I remember her saying

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I plan to give 10 % to the church and I said why would you waste 10 % of your money and then

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I remember when the Lord saved me coming to Nicole and saying we need to give more how can we give more and I remember reading the treasure principle which

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I know a number of you in this church have read and I remember reading the treasure principle and saying this idea that I can't keep it with me when

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I die I cannot keep this money but I can send it ahead I can store up treasure in heaven and that inspired me all the more to be generous to give to give joyfully in contrast this is what we see in the world this is a little illustration

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I heard from the life of John Wesley one day John Wesley was preaching in the open air and there was a farmer there that was listening to him with his friends and this farmer was not a believer in Christ but his attention was soon riveted on Wesley's sermon because Wesley was preaching on the topic of money and so out in the open air as this farmer listened

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Wesley's first point was this he said get all that you can make as much money as you can if there's a way for you to increase your income get it and the farmer nudged his neighbor and said this is a strange kind of preaching

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I've never heard the kind of talked about industry and activity and purposeful living then came a second point which he said get all you can and then save all you can and the farmer became more excited was there ever anything like this he said

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I've done this since my youth and then one writer one biographer comments he said his third sentence was this he said give all that you can so get all that you can save all that you can give all that you can and the farmer replied ah dear he's gone and spoiled it all but that's what

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God desires for his people he has given us everything in Christ he's given us eternal life every good and perfect gift is from the

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Father above and we are to be stewards of those good things so as a church we should as Wesley would say get all that we can save all that we can and give all that we can and we see that that was the heart of the

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Macedonian church that ended up sending their offering to the Jerusalem church in 2 Corinthians 8

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Paul talks about it he says about that Macedonian church in a severe test of affliction their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part for they gave according to their means see that not the tithe but according to their means as I can testify and beyond their means of their own accord and so when the

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Christian is gripped by the gospel of Jesus Christ and he understands the resurrection and eternity and the permanence of our future home the

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Christian reflex is to see a need and to give to it it's to see a need and to meet it cheerfully sacrificially joyfully with an eye to eternity the next thing we see in verse 5 is this we see that the

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Christians were to give themselves to the ordinary act of hospitality verse 5 says

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I will visit you after passing through Macedonia remember those are the churches Philippi Thessalonica and Bria 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 again we see this practice of hospitality when

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Paul writes in verse 10 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 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 and so what we see was this that if we remember way back to the very first message in the book of 1st

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Corinthians what Paul had done was he went and planted the church in Corinth he made his way back to Antioch that was on his second missionary journey on his third missionary journey he came into Ephesus and there where he ministered in Ephesus that's when he wrote the letter to the

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Corinthians and so on this third missionary journey from Ephesus Paul is writing and his plan if you're to look at the map if you have a map in the back of your

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Bibles Paul's plan was to go from Ephesus through Macedonia and then down into Achaia into Corinth to visit with them as well and he says that he planned to leave

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Ephesus after Pentecost Pentecost in case you don't know it just means the 50th and Pentecost was the 50th day after the feast of the

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Passover and so 49 it was 7 weeks the feast of weeks the Jews called it and so 7 weeks after Passover 7 weeks times 7 days is 49 on the 50th day they celebrated the

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Passover and so after the Passover it was Paul's plan to go pass through Macedonia and then spend the winter in Corinth where it would be safe because as we read later in the book of Acts travel during the winter was not only unsafe but it was it was perilous and could cost a person their life and what

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Paul says here in verse 6 in verse 6 he says and perhaps

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I will stay with you and even spend the winter so that you may help me on my journey he uses the

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Greek word propembo and what that really encapsulated was providing shelter providing food providing money and even provide a travel companion to ensure the safe and successful arrival at the person's next destination and one commentator says this was the key means of Christian hospitality and what we see even later on when

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Paul speaks about Timothy in chapter 10 he says again put him at ease for he is doing the

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Lord's work so let no one despise him help him again propembo help him on his way in peace that he may return to me what happens when the church believes in the

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Lord Jesus Christ they believe the gospel God gives them a new heart a new nature new desires not only does he give them desires for a righteous life but he gives them desires for a hospitable life and we see this modeled in scripture over and over again that a healthy church a church that understands well that is mature and that is growing a believer that is mature and growing will practice hospitality that has always been one of the marks of God's righteous people through both the

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Old and the New Testament so we see this in places like Romans 13 or 12 -13 which is contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality

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Peter says in 1 Peter 4 -9 show hospitality to one another without grumbling and as I mentioned it was to be really a characteristic of the mature and the godly men in the church even the elders when they were to be appointed in the church the pastors the elders of the church it says in 1

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Timothy 3 -2 therefore an overseer must be above reproach the husband of one wife sober -minded self -controlled respectable hospitable able to teach

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Paul wrote to Titus but the elders were to be hospitable lovers of good self -controlled upright holy and disciplined and so in God's economy in God's plan it is expected that Christians will be hospitable that they will receive the true teachers of the gospel that they will receive strangers and aliens people that they know love and care for and people that they've never met before in their lives and we see this pattern taught also by the apostle

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John in 2 John verse 10 -11 he said that they were not to receive the false teachers so as to encourage them in their wicked works but he speaks in 3

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John verses 5 -10 he says beloved it's a faithful faithful thing you do in all your efforts for these brothers and he was speaking about traveling evangelists that were coming through strangers as they are who testify to your love before the church you will do well to send them on their journey propembo that same word that Paul uses in a manner worthy of the

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Lord and so the Christian was to practice hospitality and and then he even mentions this this guy

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Diotrephes who liked to put himself first and he refused to show hospitality it says but Diotrephes who likes to put himself first does not acknowledge our authority so if I come

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I will bring up what he is doing talking wicked nonsense against us and not content with that he refuses to welcome the brothers the unrighteous refused to welcome the traveling evangelists and missionaries and stop those who want to and push them out of the church and I remember hearing a story about this that I think illustrates this really well you heard me say talk about a woman named

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Sophie Iwabuchi when Frank Parker was here talking about going to funerals the funerals of the saints and I remember hearing this story about Sophie Iwabuchi who was one of the saints at Bethel Gospel Chapel where we were sent out from and Frank tells this story that whenever a missionary or an itinerant preacher would come to speak at the church after the service

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Frank Parker would approach this missionary or this speaker and would extend an invitation hey why don't you come to our house for lunch we'd love to host you and he said without fail the missionary or the itinerant preacher would always say oh

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Frank we would love to but we've already been invited to Sophie Iwabuchi's house but we'd love for you to join us there and so that was the witness of Sophie Iwabuchi and it became a running theme that if you wanted to have fellowship with anybody that was visiting from town it had to be at Sophie Iwabuchi's house and this is because again a mature and a godly woman a mature and a righteous person shows hospitality but it's not just to insiders it's to outsiders as well and we see examples of that in Hebrews 13 2 this seems fitting only if it's a total stranger

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Hebrews 13 2 says do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers for thereby some have entertained angels unaware and we see that in books like Genesis 18 or Genesis sorry chapters like Genesis 18 when

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Abraham entertained the angel of the Lord or Genesis 19 when Lot entertained angels and so the church is to be a place where we accept new people we accept the people that we love ordinary acts of hospitality in response to an extraordinary gospel and I was reading a story this week about about a man who did a survey and he went

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I think it was to almost 200 different churches just to see how people would welcome him and greet him now

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I don't know if he was going to services just in the morning or if he would do a service in the morning and then a service in the afternoon but if you were to go to 200 services that would take something like four years

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I wonder what church he was attending in reality but he went to 200 churches and he said in only one church did someone in that church say hi to him or say anything to him this was outside of anyone who was an official greeter someone who was sitting at that back table whose task it was to say hello and to greet people only one person said anything to him and what it was that they said to him they said would you please move your feet we don't want to be a church like that that's not ordinary hospitality we need to be

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I should say hospitality needs to be ordinary in response to this extraordinary doctrine next

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Paul says in verse 8 he says but I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost for a wide door for effective work has opened to me and there are many adversaries during these last couple of points are brief but what we see here just from the example of Paul is that in light of an extraordinary gospel in the light of extraordinary truths of scripture when we when we read our bibles in the morning and we get out and we go to work or we raise our children or whatever we do the church is to be involved in faithful ministry in the face of adversity we're to be engaged in faithful ministry in the face of adversity and what we see here is this that Acts chapter 19 tells us that Paul went to Ephesus and there he preached in the synagogues and when the opportunity came he preached the word of God let's go to Acts 20 together my iPad glitched out and so it deleted that text sorry

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Acts 19 together so in Acts 19 when he landed in Ephesus it says in verse 9 that 9b that he took the disciples with them reasoning daily in the hall of Tyrannus verse 10 this continued for two years so that all the residents of Asia heard the word of the

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Lord both the Jews and the Greeks and so here we see this door for effective service and the ministry the faithful ministry that Paul was engaged in in Ephesus is detailed in Acts chapter 20 when he's talking to the elders of the

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Ephesians in Miletus and he talks there about how he did not refrain from preaching the whole counsel of God to them he said in verse 27 for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God Acts 20 verse 27 pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the

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Holy Spirit has made you overseers to care for the church of God which he obtained with his own blood the very thing that motivated

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Paul in his faithful in his persistent ministry was the fact that Christ had died for those people and so that was the outcome or that was

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I should say the motivation for this service but we see that even while he preached in the hall of tyrants for two years how he preached and worked day and night how he preached the whole counsel of God we see later on in Acts 19 21 that this big riot that came and he said that he labored faithfully in the face of adversity so not only as we as Christians should we labor faithfully persistently perseveringly but we should expect opposition and we see that in places like Matthew 10 verses 24 to 25 there

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Christ said a disciple is not above his teacher nor a servant above his master it is enough for the disciple to be like his teacher and the servant like his master if they call if they've called the master of the house

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Beelzebul how much more will they malign those of the household of God in Matthew 10 he said do not think this is

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Christ saying I do not think that I've come to bring peace to the earth I've not come to bring peace but a sword for I've come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter -in -law against her mother -in -law a person's enemies will be those of his own household or in John 16 2

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Christ said indeed the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God and what this reminds me of this kind of plotting persevering service to God in the faith or in the face of opposition was a missionary to India named

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William Carey if anyone's heard the story of William Carey he moved to India with his wife there were tremendous difficulties in terms of health and even the mental state of his wife and he endured tremendous hardships with people colleagues around him dying or deserting and one day

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William Carey was asked about his great accomplishments in the work of translating the Bible think of this

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William Carey translated the Bible either in full or in part in large part in 34 different languages or dialects in his life imagine translating the

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Bible into one language and the task that that would be but he translated the Bible into 34 different languages and someone said how in the world did you do that and he said

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I am not a genius just a plotter but what a plotter he was 40 years in 40 years he translated that Bible into 34 different languages and because of his work thousands if not tens of thousands of people are able to read the word of God in their own language and so God calls us to persevere to minister for him faithfully it's hard even as I stand up here the sacrifice that is required to minister the word of God to the people of God but I'm not special nor is any minister or elder pastor in a church special God calls all of us to the task of serving him the

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Puritan Thomas Watson said has Christ waded through a sea of blood and wrath to purchase my peace has he not only made peace but spoken peace to me how should my heart ascend in a fiery chariot of love how willingly should

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I be to do and suffer for Christ and then lastly we see here that we should not only be marked as a church by cheerful giving by generosity by hospitality and by faithful service and adversity but also the pursuit of unity in humility the pursuit of unity in humility this is one of the central themes of the whole book of 1st

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Corinthians and so Paul writes in verse 12 that he says this 1st Corinthians 16 verse 12 now concerning our brother

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Apollos I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers but it was not at all his will to come now he will come when he has opportunity what do we see from those first two words in verse 12 now concerning I want to ask you who was asking

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Apollos to go to Corinth was it Paul what do we know when we see those words now concerning it was the church in Corinth the church in Corinth that was always pitting the apostle

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Paul against Apollos who said to the apostle Paul now Apollos can you send him back could you please have him we love that he is a skilled orator we love that he is good with words please send him back what do we see here the apostle

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Paul receives this information instead of withholding it so as to say well

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I can't have the church loving Apollos more than me so I'm going to hold him back instead what

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Paul does he shows he acts honorably he acts in the interest of unity he acts in humility and he goes to Apollos and says

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Apollos the church would really like you to go and I think they would benefit from that and it says that he strongly urged the church not only

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Paul but then other brothers as well but what did Apollos do

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Apollos probably again in the interest of unity in the interest of promoting the gospel in the interest of promoting the health of the church he declined he says but it was not at all his will to come now he will come when he has opportunity what we see here are two men in the church you have worldly minded people who are trying to pit them against each other and their interest is not their own glory but the glory of God and the unity of the church so Paul put his own glory and his own apostolic status on the back burner

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Apollos put his own glory and his own status as a skilled teacher on the back burner and Gordon Fee writes about this he says this refusal probably says as much about Apollos' own character as it does about Paul's in asking him in the first place most likely

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Apollos would have turned it down precisely because with Paul he resisted any implication that either of them was party to the internal strife carried out in the church in their names and so in a way we see

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Paul and Apollos outdoing one another and showing honor like we see in Romans 12 and verse 10 and isn't this really the cause of all of our divisions in the church is our own often our own desires for our own glory our own desires to draw attention to ourselves our own desires for our own pursuits

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James says in James 4 1 -3 he says what causes quarrels and fights among you is it not this that your passions are at war within you you desire and you do not have so you murder you covet and cannot obtain so you fight and quarrel you do not have because you do not ask you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your own passions and so here even as worldly minded people try to pit them against each other these believers pursue unity and then even where there were legitimate disagreements between Apollos and Paul and the

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Corinthians they pursued unity and it reminds me

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I was just thinking back to a few years ago when I saw a little video from Nabil Qureshi if anyone remembers

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Nabil Qureshi he was an apologist I believe he died in 2017 and on his deathbed he made a number of videos videos to exhort the church videos to give updates on his own health and on one particular video as he was looking weak and frail and about to die he made a statement that has stuck with me to the point that when

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I read this text I was thinking about unity I thought about Nabil Qureshi Nabil Qureshi was a brother who was born into a

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Muslim family he was raised as a Muslim he went to university where he was studying medicine and there while he was in university he was converted to Christ he was a very accomplished man a medical doctor brilliant above most people and this is what he said in one of these last videos before he died he said

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I think it is very important that we discuss matters of truth this is what he lived for he says but at the end of the day this is supposed to be under girded by love and peace when we talk to people about our beliefs we should do this through a lens of love the whole point should be to bring people together to the truth not to hurt one another but to help one another

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I've noticed at times that people will take information that I share and use it to undercut one another that has not been my intent my whole point in all of my teaching is for love to reign

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I hope my ministry leaves a legacy of love of peace of truth and of caring for one another that's what we see in scripture that's what we see here in Paul and Apollos' example that's what we should see in this church the pursuit of unity not at the cost of truth but unity in truth speaking the truth in love to one another pursuing unity rather than disagreements and we've seen this over the last couple of years haven't we that it's just so easy to divide over anything and everything your nuance of that doctrine is wrong therefore you are apostate your view on legislation or on mandates or 101 things under the sun is different from mine and therefore we must divide but that's not to be the heart of the church

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Thomas Brooks another Puritan he said one of Satan's greatest devices to destroy the saints you want to be destroyed he says is this by working them first to be strange so to be strangers with one another then to be bitter and jealous and then to bite and devour one another he says

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Christian take heed we must take heed of our own sinful inclination to divide over everything that we can we should adopt the mindset of another

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Puritan Walter Craddock who said when I have communion with a saint I must not look so much whether he be of such an opinion or whether he has taken to the covenant or has been baptized once or twice or ten times but I must see if he has fellowship with the

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Father and with Jesus Christ and so how do we live brothers and sisters as a church after having read and studied 1

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Corinthians 1 to 15 we have another week to go but how do we live in light of these truths again not exhaustively but a few of the things that we can give ourselves to because of what

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Christ has done for us are these generosity hospitality faithful service and faithful ministry in the face of adversity and humble unity and we'll get to the rest of that letter next week let's pray.