Extraordinary Truth, Ordinary Church

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.

Extraordinary Truths in an Ordinary Church

We are picking up today back in 1 Corinthians chapter 16. 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, 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. And I was thinking as I was studying this text and as I was looking at it in its context, I was thinking this, that over the last number of months we've been studying, really, if you look back in 1 Corinthians 15, 14, 13, 12, and even earlier than that, we've been studying some of the most profound truths in all of Scripture.

With the Apostle Paul, we have really tried to plumb the depths of God's revelation through this letter. And we've also been lifted up, I would say, to behold some of the most exalted doctrines in all of heaven and earth.

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 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.

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.

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

And I like to think sometimes topographically or graphically, and I think if we were to chart the 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 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 Corinthians 15.

And if this letter were to come to us, I was thinking like episodes in some kind of TV series, not 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, 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, 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.

There's now no more fear of death. It's powerless. Sin itself has been neutered and rendered ineffectual in the life of the Christian. Eternal life with God has been secured. The final victory is in Christ.

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, Jesus Christ has to return. I mean, what happens after the glories of chapter 15? Oh, death, where is your sting?

Where is your victory? I mean, what comes after that kind of climax in the text? Christ has to return. It's very instant. But as we turn to chapter 16, 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 Corinthians 15 and verse 58, just the climax of the book.

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

And then he pulls us straight down back to the earth. You could say a bit of a reality check. He takes us from the heights of eternal life and brings us down to the regular and the mundane of the ordinary life.

If we think about the words that Lowell just read in the text, we've got all of these glorious doctrinal, rich theological passages. And then we've got now concerning the collection for the saints. Now, why is that?

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. We are citizens of a kingdom and it's the kingdom of God.

And yet that kingdom has been inaugurated and yet not consummated. 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.

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

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 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.

Now, what does this mean? What am I talking about? I want to ask, how often has it happened to you? 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 Lord. He meets you in His word in that moment. And He opens your eyes. 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 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, 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.

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

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

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 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 I eat, or what I do with my time, or even exercise, and the care of the body. But here in chapter 16, what 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 Corinthians, but true Christianity also consists in carrying out the ordinary and the mundane responsibilities of life.

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

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

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

It's pretty ordinary, but yet it's so glorious, and I hope to show you that. And so Paul doesn't give us an exhaustive list, but he shows us what it's like to live the 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 Corinthians 1 through 15.

So we'll get right into the exposition. We'll start at verse 1. Paul writes this. He says, As I directed the churches of Galatia, so you also are to do. 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 I come.

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

Now, you guys probably remember what that means, but whenever Paul uses this, this is another fifth time that he's used it. Every time Paul starts in 1 Corinthians with those words, now concerning, peri day in the 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.

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.

Now concerning the offering, and he's making reference to something that the Corinthians have written about in regards to a collection of money. And verse three tells us it's a collection of money for the Christians who were in Jerusalem.

And besides a few very practical instructions, and really very little detail, what we get are just a few brief instructions on what that type of collection is going to look like. 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 Corinthians intersects with the book of Acts and with other Acts on the timeline of early church history.

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

So to begin with, from the early chapters of Acts and from historical records, we know that Jerusalem, unlike other cities in the Roman Empire, Jerusalem was not a city that was marked by widespread wealth or opulence.

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. 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.

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 Roman Empire, was a relatively poor city.

And we see this, actually, if we look in the early chapters of Acts. In Acts chapter 4, we remember people like Barnabas and others sold property that they might meet the needs of the saints. In Acts chapter 6, there was a dispute amongst the Hellenistic widows and the disciples.

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

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. So this is, again, if you 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.

So in Acts chapter 11, in verse 27, it says this. Now, in these days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. That's really where the first church outside of Jerusalem started, was in the city of Antioch.

So these prophets came down, and one of them, named Agabus, stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine.

Over all the world.

This took place in the days of Claudius. 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.

They took up a collection. Where am I? Took up a collection to support the Jewish believers in Jerusalem. And we read about this in Acts chapter 11, in verse 29 and 30. So the disciples determined, everyone according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea.

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 Corinthians, they work themselves out in ordinary acts of generosity.

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

And in fact, if you like historical tidbits, there was such a great shortage of grain that in AD 51, that Roman Emperor Claudius was nearly mobbed in the streets by angry Roman citizens. So it's wonderful when we get to see world history, at least told by secular historians, overlap with biblical history.

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 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. And so these Gentile churches came together to offer relief to the saints in Jerusalem. And we don't and we won't take time for all the references.

But what we find is that Paul addressed the Corinthians here in 1 Corinthians 16. He then addressed them again in 2 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 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. In Romans 15 25 it says,. For Macedonia and Achaia have been pleased to make some contribution for the poor among the saints in Jerusalem. So this was the cultural context.

We had a famine in the land. 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 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, Paul doesn't just tell them.

You might think, for instance, like the Thessalonians had the wrong idea that if Christ is coming soon, 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 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 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. 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 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, Paul calls this same collection, this logia, he calls it a koinonia, a fellowship offering.

He says that again in 2 Corinthians 9. And this collection is to be a joyful expression of love and Christian fellowship between these Gentile believers and the Jewish churches in Jerusalem. In 2 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 Corinthians 9, he calls it a gift or a blessing. And then in 2 Corinthians 8 again, he calls this same offering a grace offering, a chorus offering. And it's 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 it a grace offering, he says in 2 Corinthians 8, 9,.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the grace of our 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 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 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 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. Paul says that an offering, the collection, should be taken up on the first day of every week.

Now why does 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 Lord's day, on the first day of the week, it is really in obedience to, 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 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, you know, why every week? Or why not once a month? Or whatever contention might be. And perhaps God and his wisdom designed it this way, knowing that anything that we don't do consistently, we invariably forget to do altogether.

And so we see willingly, cheerfully, consistently. And also we see here that the church is to give, he says, according to their prosperities. 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 Old Testament tithe. If you think back to the Old Testament tithe, those 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 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 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.

I remember when the Lord saved me, and maybe I shared this story and I'll just share it briefly, but prior to the 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, I plan to give 10 to the church. And I said, why would you waste 10 of your money? And then 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 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 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 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, 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. I've never heard the likes of this before.

This is very good. And then in his preaching as John talked about industry and activity and purposeful living, then came his 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, 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 has gone and spoiled it all. But that's what 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 Father above. And we are to be stewards of those good things. And 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 Macedonian church that ended up sending their offering to the Jerusalem church. In 2 Corinthians 8, 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 Christian is gripped by the gospel of Jesus Christ and he understands the resurrection and eternity and the permanence of our future home, the 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 Christians were to give themselves to the ordinary act of hospitality.

Verse 5 says, I will visit you after passing through Macedonia. Remember, those are the churches Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea. And perhaps 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. 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 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 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 1 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 Corinthians.

And so on this third missionary journey from Ephesus, Paul is writing, and his plan, if you were to look at the map, if you have a map in the back of your 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 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 Passover. And so 49, it was seven weeks, the Feast of Weeks, the Jews called it.

And so seven weeks after Passover, seven weeks times seven days is 49, on the 50th day they celebrated the 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 perilous and could cost a person their life. And what Paul says here in verse six, in verse six he says, and perhaps I will stay with you and even spend the winter so that you may help me on my journey.

He uses the Greek word propembo. And what that really encapsulated was providing shelter, providing food, providing money, and to 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 Paul speaks about Timothy in chapter 10, when he says again, put him at ease for he is doing the 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 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 Old and the New Testament. So we see this in places like Romans 12, 13, where it says contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality.

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 Timothy 3, 2, therefore an overseer must be above reproach. The husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach. 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 John. In 2 John 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 John 5 -10, he says, Beloved, it's a 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 Lord.