A Vision for Church Cooperation

1 Corinthians 16:1-12 and the Call to Prepare for Kingdom Work

1 Corinthians chapter 16 verses 1 through 12. Now about the collection for the saints. Do the same as I instructed the Galatian churches. On the first day of the week, each of you is to set something aside and save in keeping with how he is prospering, so that no collections will need to be made when I come.

When I arrive, I will send with letters those you recommend to carry your gift to Jerusalem. If it is suitable for me to go as well, they will travel with me. I will come to you after I pass through Macedonia, for I will be traveling through Macedonia, and perhaps I will remain with you or even spend the winter so that you may send me on my way wherever I go.

I don't want to see you now just in passing, since I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord allows, but I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, because a wide door for effective ministry has opened for me, yet many oppose me.

If Timothy comes, see that he has nothing to fear while with you, because he is doing the Lord's work, just as I am. So let no one look down on him. Send him on his way in peace, so that he can come to meet me, because I am expecting him with the brothers.

Now about our brother Apollos. I strongly urged him to come to you with the brothers, but he was not at all willing to come now. However, he will come when he has an opportunity. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for another day to come and worship you, to celebrate with singing of songs, with hearing your word, with fellowshipping together.

God, I pray that as your word is taught and unveiled for us by the power of your Spirit, Lord, that we'd be receptive, that we'd be exhorted and rebuked, Lord, that we'd be submissive to your word, that we'd be a faithful people.

Lord, I just pray for us as a church that we would operate with love for each other, but with love for other churches that you have around our city, our state, our nation, and the world. Lord, that we would all pull to do ministry to share the gospel of your son Jesus, Lord, who's made a way, a path for sinners, who apart from you are condemned.

And so God, we submit these things in your hand, knowing that you hold all things in your power. Lord, that you're accomplishing all ends for good and for your glory. So God, just bless our church, Lord, bless our meeting today, that we would be sharpened by it.

It's in your powerful name we pray, amen.

Well, this is one of those sermons that pastors don't usually, or passages, this is a passage that pastors don't usually fight over to get. This is typically among pastors, we usually dodge these ones to avoid them, which is not good.

We tend to like the juicy ones, the theologically rich ones, and this seems more logistical. This seems like, hey, practically, this is how we're going to go about doing ministry. But on further examination, there's actually a lot to be gained from this passage.

I've prayed a lot about this, and there has been a sweet revelation here when going through the oracles, and I'm excited to share this sermon with you. It's called Prepared for Kingdom Work, okay? So let's start with the text, I know we just read it, but I've got it divided into different sections.

So we start with, Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, you are also 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 collecting when I come.

And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem. And if it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me. There's a little bit of context that we need to put to light when understanding this passage here.

We know that Agabus had prophesied that there would be a great famine over the whole world, and the leadership in Jerusalem decided that Judea, specifically Jerusalem, would probably be impacted the worst.

Believers there are being persecuted by Jews. You also have them being ostracized from their families because they were a collective culture. So if you're cast out from your family, you might be cast out from your job.

You would be seen as unclean. There are a lot of factors that go into the persecution of this people that would keep them in poverty. You see also in 2 Corinthians that is written maybe in the timeline of three months to a year later that Paul still hasn't collected it.

This collection is happening for a while. And Paul expects them to be diligent in this collection as to not humiliate him and to not humiliate themselves. So we know that this collection is for another church, and they were called to do so by an apostle himself.

This might give us precedent that we are responsible for other churches. We are our brother's keepers. We also know that Paul called on the Galatians to do it, and later in 2 Corinthians we see that he calls the Macedonian churches to do it, which would be Philippi and Thessalonica.

So there's a lot of churches participating in this help for Jerusalem. They are in dire straits. And if you also don't know, Jerusalem is about to be under a great siege too. So if they have it bad now, it's about to get really, really bad.

Also in the text we see that there's this command for every day of the week, or on the first day of the week you are to do this collection. And he doesn't invite this love offering like we've probably historically have seen in our churches.

You ever have like a traveling revival or, you know, a lot of us are Southern Baptists, we did that a lot. Or you have like maybe a quartet come in, and at the end they're like, well let's give a love offering, and those guys are praying that they're going to get enough just for fuel to get out of there.

Because sometimes those things are bountiful in blessing, and sometimes those things are not great in blessing. It's a little bit easier to set aside a collection here to not be humiliated, to have something substantial.

They're collecting for a year. This is going to be a substantial gift, but it's also as each one may prosper. And each one may prosper, we tend to mix up this collection with the normal idea of offerings in church.

This is something on the side of it, it's different than normal offerings in church. And we also like to think about this 10 rule with normal offerings in church, but that's not historical Protestantism.

Historical Protestantism doesn't stick with the 10 rule. Now can you do that? Yeah. Is it a good baseline? Absolutely. But it's as you may prosper. We aren't given a hard line 10 in the New Testament.

And that 10 that was given in the Old Testament was often for government funding too. So you see that 10 would go to the temple, some of it would go to the government, there is a dividing up of it.

Not to say that they didn't pull extra taxes out there. And then on the, getting close to the end of this text, we see that Paul tells them to pick people that they would accredit with letter. This was a normal Greco-Roman practice, and it's kind of normal for us today.

With monetary things, we tend to have witnesses. Jake is not the only person on the bank account for your church, right? There are other witnesses to this, and you are a witness to the budget. But what's really interesting is how Paul finishes this part.

He says, and I will accompany them if you so desire. This was not a small offering. This is a month's long trip, and would be highly inconvenient to what Paul has planned. But he invites that. He says, I'll help you here.

So he's ever the father to the Corinthians, always the father to them. That's the specifics about this text. But there is this underlying theme that's assumed in the scriptures in this passage, and it's that these people are prepared for kingdom work.

Paul is preparing them. Paul himself is prepared. He prepares them for Timothy later, and he shows other preparations with Apollos. So my first point is going to be that discipline supports freedom. Discipline supports freedom.

This might sound vague at first, but I'm going to go ahead and define. Discipline is a mindful practice to rule oneself and obey God. And you can tie that in with self-control in scripture too. And freedom is liberty from sin and bondage to joyfully pursue God's commandments.

We know that that was accomplished in Christ, but we're called for self-control to support ourselves of not being ruled by the flesh. So how does discipline create freedom? Well think about chaos. If you have chaos in your life, are you not more likely to sin?

What if your finances are chaotic? Well, it's one of the self-reported leading reasons for divorce. Causes a lot of strain in the marriage. Causes a lot of strain with hopes and desires. What if your time in your home is chaotic?

Do you have sex with your wife anymore? Has it been months? Are you intimate and close? What about the anger that comes from being timeless? You just have no time and you have no money. You're a strain, you're tied, you're captured by worldly affairs right now.

And there's also frustration when things aren't getting done. Maybe communication starts falling apart because there's so much chaos. And lastly, when we have so much chaos going on, we often just distract.

We just kind of put off the problem by distracting. But God's a God of order, and chaos invites sin in your life. It invites opportunity for sin in your life. So if lacking discipline can open us up to sin, it also ties our hands for other things.

If we're absolutely engulfed by the tasks of daily life, then how are we prepared for kingdom work when the opportunities arise? Whether they be ordinary faithfulness or special places that the Spirit's at work.

Are we even looking forward to those things? Because we're so tied down right now. Are we even looking for them? Are we looking forward to them? Are we motivated by them? If your finances aren't in order, how can you assist other believers in need?

If your time is totally constrained, when do you disciple or evangelize? And you might be thinking right now, well, Pastor, I disciple my kids. And that's great. You should. We are called to do that. And more.

We are commanded to share the gospel and to disciple the nations. We have an obligation to train and equip believers beyond the boundaries of our own home. That command is not just for pastors. We're all called to this.

So these are the problems that arise with a chaotic life and not having discipline. What can we do about it? Well, in all things, pray. Your God is a God of order. And your God desires for you to be more and more in the image of His Son.

Even a bad father doesn't give his son a scorpion when he asks for a fish. Pray for self-control. Take the example in James when James says, well, pray for wisdom. That's how you get wisdom. Pray for it.

Well, can we pray for self-control? It is a fruit of the Spirit. Spiritual fruit produced by the Holy Spirit. And you have that Holy Spirit. Trust the Lord and don't doubt. Evaluate your spending. Let's just be pragmatic here.

Evaluate your spending. Prepare a plan for your finances. Enjoy the fruit of your labor, of course. But spend within your capabilities. Seek help from a brother if you're absolutely entangled. There are many men who would love to help you out of it.

Let's not tie our hands being drowned in worldly affairs. Again, there are so many opportunities for ordinary faithfulness in our lives. Being in the Word, praying, discipling our kids, having fellowship.

But when that chaos reigns, those things tend to dwindle. Because you just can't keep up. So we see an example of discipline here. These people are going to put aside their collections and be disciplined in that for a year.

And Paul is looking forward to this with excitement in 2 Corinthians and with an added jab of, don't humiliate me. But I do have a little bit of a sub-point in this. 1 Corinthians 16, 5 -9. It can be a little weird because Paul is just talking about where he's going.

So you kind of wonder, well, what's a good lesson here? He says, I will visit you after passing through Macedonia, for I intend to pass through Macedonia. 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 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.

That wide door is that they just had a giant witch-burning fest. They weren't burning the witches, they were burning the books. But, close to it. So, there was a massive revival going on. Massive amounts of people in Ephesus coming to the Lord.

There was lots of work being done in Ephesus at this time. And Paul was there for no short amount of time. And Paul was writing Corinth on the back end of his time in Ephesus. There's a lot of things happening, a lot of work of the Spirit going on, yet he still desires to be a father and spend time with them.

From the text, it can be hard to decipher, well, this is to them, it's also for us, what here is for us, other than knowing the facts of what's going to happen. If we take Corinthians in a whole, of what has all just been done, there's been correction, hard correction, there's been order for worship, we see that Paul is prepared for what will be confrontation with that church.

And you see some of the results of his time there. Even in 2 Corinthians, he talks about having a hard meeting with them. So, his time there isn't exactly easy, but he does love them. And we need to be prepared for confrontation because we love our brothers and sisters.

And you have practice at this, fathers and mothers, you already understand that you love your child after the conflict happens. But we often forget that lesson when it comes to dealing with other believers in the church.

Because you'll discipline your child, and then you'll love them right after. There's conflict going on, believe me, I mean, you know. But we don't always afford that same grace in the church when there's conflict.

They will know we are his disciples by how we love one another. So expect conflict and love your brother, love your sister, walk through it together. If you can't love through conflict, do you really love?

And trust that the Spirit will empower you to do this. Conflict will always be in a church. Our responsibility is to love through it, handle it well. On to my second point. This one's a little different.

This one's talking about Timothy. When Timothy comes, see that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the 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.

We see a couple things in this text. We see a call to hospitality. He's preparing them for hospitality with Timothy. That he should feel wanted and at ease. The word ease here is untroubled or unworried.

That he wouldn't be anxious. You also see that Paul put the claim on him that he's a worker of the Lord. And we know that workers of the Lord deserve honor, and then some of them even deserve double honor.

This despise part, though, you're probably pretty familiar with the despise part, because you've heard it in Timothy before. He said, let no one despise you for your age. It might not be the same way that you think about it in your head.

It's more of like a disregarding or like a casting off. What they say and their opinion is not that important. It doesn't have that much gravitas. This could be because of his age. I mean, that is what the book of Timothy says.

In Greco-Roman times, you weren't really treated the fullness of your manhood, I guess, of coming to full age until you were 40. That's usually when you would become the pater familius, the head of the family.

There's also another dichotomy going on with Timothy because he's a half Jew. His mom's a Jew, his dad's a Gentile. He's a man caught between two worlds right now in the midst of probably the most amount of chaos between those two worlds.

Because it wasn't the Romans that were persecuting Christians in our early history. It was the Jews persecuting Christians. The Romans typically just didn't want to have anything to do with it. They didn't want to be bothered.

Those stories will pop up later. We'll see it in Revelation. We'll see Nero. We'll see a grand persecution around 200 AD. But early on, it was typically the Jews. And so Timothy is this man who's not fully a Jew, not fully a Gentile.

He has been circumcised, but that's so it wouldn't cause obstacles for other people. So he's a weird guy, torn between two worlds. And so he needs encouragement. He's a young guy. Paul tells them, help him.

Timothy's on a mission. He has things to do. He needs to get to Paul after he goes there. And Paul even tells the Corinthians to help him when he comes through. Shepherds need their churches. They need their help.

So what is all this context? What is the meaning of this text? How can it bleed off into something practical for us? Well, this point is named, prepare for a generation. And we need to be careful not to discourage young men and women.

They belong to Christ, and they should be edified with the rest of the body. We need to be careful that we're not thinking of the word despise, and not the way our culture typically means it, but to disregard, to think of as unimportant.

Oh, you're not married yet? Well, I don't know if I really care about the opinion. Oh, you don't have kids yet? I don't really know if I care about the opinion. Oh, you're in your 20s? We need to be very careful on our handling of young adults.

Yes, sometimes they say stupid things. Sometimes do foolish things. But you're here to help them and to give them wisdom. Sometimes you do foolish things. And I know when you were their age, you did say stupid things.

We don't have to agree or heed dumb ideas, yet we encourage and build up in holiness. Sometimes we kill dreams, but only so that we can build dreams on the kingdom, not to leave young men and women hopeless.

It shouldn't be a teardown fiasco. Let them put it on the table, and then you help them clean it up. We are called to disciple, and they are edified with us. Prepare a generation, because they will replace you.

We're going to be replaced. I think that's a helpful thing to see from this passage. I know it's a stretch. But there's still preparation done there on behalf of Timothy, for Timothy, so that he would not be discouraged.

And you see in the epistles that Timothy does need encouraging. Paul goes out of his way to do that. Now what about young men desiring ministry? Careful not to brush them aside. Everyone does start somewhere.

And you have time to prepare that person. So maybe they desire to go into ministry. The young man decides to go into ministry. But they're not going into ministry today. You have time to prepare, time to pray over them, for them to grow in maturity, to be the qualified man.

Sometimes, I remember a youth group, we had a young guy who wanted to go into ministry. And he was chaotic. He was kind of crazy. But he did love the Lord. But man, I don't know if he should have led anybody.

But the Lord did mighty things in him. He came to pastor a church, teach at a seminary. He loves the Lord, very even-minded now. But you have time. People are not going to stay the same as they are now.

The Lord has not left you the same. So trust that He's not going to leave them the same. All that to say, let's be careful with our young men and women to not discourage them. There's already enough reasons for blackpilling.

Houses are already hard to afford. Jobs typically don't pay enough to pay for those houses. Most people are living in apartments right now. Having to delay building wealth for their family to come. There's already enough hopelessness.

Let's not encourage that in the church. If God is sovereign over the world, He's sovereign over your lives in the church. And we want to encourage them. 1 Corinthians 16 .12. Now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you.

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. This is kind of like a conclusive circle to what Paul was speaking about earlier with factionalism.

While Paul and Apollos aren't even in Corinth, somehow these people have created holy orders in their name. And Paul says, what are you doing? We're all under Christ. We're both co-laborers for the kingdom.

Paul could have said, I've talked to Apollos, we're good. But he leaves it to here. Paul leaves it to here and says, I told Apollos to go to you. Or I strongly urged him, but he's not ready yet. He'll come when he can.

That sounds like they're in good fellowship. Paul's respecting his opinion to not go yet. And if he wanted the factionalism, Paul wouldn't want him to go to Corinth. So this is a nice conclusive end to this useless idea of factionalism.

So I think we need to prepare for unity with each other. If we're preparing for confrontation, if we're preparing a generation, if we prepare for unity with each other, and God is calling us to self-control, we really need to think about intentionality with the bride of Christ.

And honestly, I hardly feel the need to go over this point with you. I have been astounded for the love I've heard from many of your own mouths for the high regard that you treat other churches with now.

It doesn't feel like we're in the Reformed death spiral of we are the last bulwark. No one's faithful, no one's a Christian unless they believe like us. That does not seem to rule here, and I'm very thankful for that.

And that does honor the bride of Christ. I praise the Lord for that. So I think we need to be prepared for unity. I think you guys have demonstrated that in such an encouraging light, but we always need to be on guard.

Our tongues can always get away with us with slander on other churches. We need to think about these holy brothers and sisters as the bride. You would not tolerate anyone speaking that way about your wife, and Christ won't either.

All of this assumes, this whole sermon is assuming that you want to do kingdom work. The whole thing is assuming that if you are tied up with too many worldly affairs, which, by the way, that can happen in seasons, and we shouldn't stay there, but if you're tied up in it, what we should do.

But what about the people who have no desire? What if, in our chaotic lives, we just don't really want to? Two options. For the first, man, don't lose hope. You can pray to God for your desires to be changed.

You can say, Lord, there is something wrong with me. I am just not feeling love for the body like you're telling me I should. I can't make my hand grow an INC just like I don't feel like I can feel this love for the body that you're calling me for.

But don't lose that hope. Ask God to change the desires of your heart. He will transform your mind. He says so in Romans. If you lack love for brethren, pray for love. If you lack will to work, to do the hard thing of putting discipline and self-control in your life, pray for God's help, and then put one foot in front of the other.

But for the person who will not pray for a change of desire, for the person who is not eager, or maybe not eager, for the person who just doesn't want to, doesn't care, and will do nothing about it, that's where I would be in fear of hellfire because you have to love the bride.

Going through a season is one thing, but you do have to love the bride. Church, your faith is absolutely personal, but it is impossible for it to be private. It must be shared among the believers. You are called to a body, and we all have parts to play.

So, all that said, we should desire to prepare our lives for kingdom work. If we are tied down, and we stay that way, then what are we doing? We can't be faithful. Especially if we're not faithful in little, we can't be faithful in much.

So I would urge you to be like Paul, to prepare another generation, to prepare in unity, to prepare for confrontation, and to be disciplined because that supports freedom. All that said, church, that's where I'm going to conclude today.

If you would bow your heads and pray with me. Lord, we thank you so much for your message that you gave to the Corinthians. We thank you that we can learn from Paul and his shepherding, that we can learn how he encourages young men and how he desires unity with other brothers who could be seen as competition, but they're not because they're co-laborers for you.

Lord, we praise you. We thank you. And in Jesus' name, amen.