Sunday Sermon: Final Instructions (1 Corinthians 16:5-18)

You are listening to the teaching ministry of Gabrielle Hughes, pastor of First Southern Baptist Church in Junction City, Kansas.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday on this podcast, we feature 20 minutes of Bible study through a

New Testament book. On Thursday is our Old Testament study, and then we answer questions from listeners on Friday.

Each Sunday we are pleased to share our sermon series, presently going through the letters to the

Corinthians. This is the sermon that was preached last week from our pulpit. Here's Pastor Gabe.

As the Apostle Paul presents his final address to the Corinthians, he writes, Now concerning the collection for the saints, 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 collecting 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.

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 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.

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.

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

He will come when he has the opportunity. Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.

Let all that you do be done in love. Now I urge you brothers, you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints.

Be subject to such as these and to every fellow worker and laborer. I rejoice at the coming of Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaia because they have made up for your absence, for they refreshed my spirit as well as yours.

Give recognition to such people. The churches of Asia send you greetings,

Achaia and Priscia together with the church in their house send you hearty greetings in the Lord. All the brothers send you greetings, greet one another with a holy kiss.

I Paul write this greeting with my own hand. If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.

Our Lord come. The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with you all in Christ Jesus.

Amen. Let us pray. Lord, as we consider these words today, I pray that your spirit would illuminate them to us, that we may be able to discern spiritual things by the spirit of God, vanquish the natural heart, the sinful man that is within us, all who are descended from Adam and create in us a clean heart.

Oh God, renew a right spirit within us. Make us born again, washed by the word, this sanctification in the

Holy spirit that we have received, having removed the heart of stone and given to us a heart of flesh.

May we be soft to receive the words that the spirit imparts upon us today.

May we do this as your church. Growing one another in love, encouraging and admonishing each other, holding fast to the head who is

Christ Jesus, from whom all the body, the joints and ligaments together grow with a growth that is from God.

We grow in love in Christ Jesus, our Lord. I pray that you continue to bless this congregation in that way, that we would grow in maturity and in the faith according to what we read in your word.

And we ask these things in Jesus name and all God's people said, amen. Thank you. You may be seated.

So we had a small crowd last week. This is like three times the size of what we had last week because of that snow that came down.

And even then I tried to preach through the sermon that I had prepared quickly so that I could get everybody out and they wouldn't have too much accumulation on their cars.

So I preached a 25 minute sermon. That's about half what I usually preach. Got done and we partook in the

Lord's supper together and then dismissed. And wouldn't you know it that right when we said our final amen, the sun came out and it quit snowing.

I could have gone all morning long and into the afternoon and here

I was trying to be courteous and we still had the same amount of snow to sweep off our cars as we would have had if I went long.

But I understand wanting to play it safe out on the roads, especially with the kind of weather that we had.

And sometimes you might be a fine driver in the weather, but it's everybody else that you're concerned about and the way they drive in the weather.

So let me give you briefly what it was that we talked about in 1 Corinthians 16 verses 1 through 4.

The principle was simply this, give and give with a cheerful heart.

Give unto the Lord what it is that he has blessed you with. As you know that you have the opportunity to give.

Oftentimes the model that is set before the church is the tithe. A tithe means tenth.

So give 10 % of what it is that you make to the church. And as I highlighted last weekend, those of you who have sat under my teaching for long know that I don't teach the tithe because I don't see that the tithe is the model of giving in the

New Testament or the Old Testament. Tithes in theocratic Israel were taxes.

And then there were freewill giving that Israel was encouraged to give on top of the taxes that they had to pay in their tithes.

And so freewill giving is what we have been called to as Old Testament Israel or as the

New Testament church. We give of what the Lord has given to us for the benefit of the kingdom of God.

And we do this as an act of worship. It's part of our worship service.

As we just collected the offering this morning, that you would give in worship to our

God. As we are supposed to worship God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength.

Don't you know that part of that includes your checkbook as well? I mean, even checkbook it seems like anymore is becoming an old -fashioned term.

How many checks do you write from month to month, let alone all year long? You probably don't go through a checkbook anymore like you did a decade or so ago.

Now you can give online, now you can even with a touch of a button on your phone make a contribution that way.

Or you can still take cash out of the ATM and drop it in the offering plate as it comes around.

But that's still a part of our worship service because that is something that we do in worship to God. We even worship

Him with the money that He has blessed us with and that which we give back to the

Lord. It all belongs to Him anyway. So as Paul has said here to the Corinthians, collect and do so on the first day of the week as you prosper.

What the Lord has blessed you with, so give unto the Lord. As we've had new members that have come into the church, some have asked me, so when it comes to giving, how much should

I give? And I'll say to them, give what you know the Lord can bless you with. And they'll say, well, growing up I was always told 10%.

And I'll say to them, you know, if you can give 10%, do that. If you, it's a good benchmark, it's a good, you know, kind of a marker to put in your budget every month.

If you can give 10%, then do 10%. If you can do more than 10%, do more. But if you're strapped, you got loans that you have to pay, it would actually be irresponsible for you to pay 10 % and then fall short on other bills that you are obliged to pay.

If somebody were to decide, I'm going to max out a credit card and give it all to the church, that would be irresponsible giving.

I wouldn't encourage you to do that. And so give as the Lord has given to you, that you may be a blessing to his kingdom and do this with a cheerful heart in worship to God.

Paul says in his next letter, which we'll get to this when we study through 2 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians 9, 6, the point is this.

Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, but whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully.

Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.

And that's the way we are to give. So I know that the reason why you didn't make it last week was because of the snow and not because Gabe was doing a sermon on offerings.

But that was the short version of the text that we looked at in 1 Corinthians 16 verses 1 through 4.

Now as Paul gives final instructions to the church in the section we're looking at today verses 5 through 18,

I'm going to go through these verse by verse and kind of let you know what it is that Paul is encouraging for the

Corinthians to do, keeping these things in context because some of this comes back to what we've already read in the first three chapters in particular in 1

Corinthians. And then once we finish going through this section, I want to talk about the difference between the visible and the invisible church and why it's important for us as Christians that we gather regularly on Sunday.

Notice that as we went through these first four verses, Paul said that as you gather on the first day of the week, collect an offering.

That's the Lord's day. That's when the church gathered in the New Testament period, in the first century, that's as the church has gathered most traditionally for the 2 ,000 year history of the church.

We gather together on Sunday. Why? Because that's the day our Lord Christ rose from the grave.

He was in the grave on Saturday. That day which was called by the nation of Israel the

Sabbath, the day of rest. And then came back from the grave on Sunday, moving that day that we commemorate to worshiping

God from Saturday to Sunday. And so now traditionally the church gathers on Sunday to worship our

God and King. And as we gather, it is important as the body of believers that we do this visibly.

There is a visible church and an invisible church. We'll talk about the difference between those two and how those two are related coming up at the end of the text that we examined today.

So first of all, verse five, Paul says to the church in Corinth, I will visit you after passing through Macedonia.

Macedonia was the region immediately to the north of Achaia. Achaia is kind of that southern region of Greece.

It's where Athens is at, Corinth is there. That's the place where Paul is writing to,

Achaia. Macedonia is that territory up north where Thessalonica is there and some of those other churches that Paul had planted.

So he wants to be able to stop and visit some of those churches. And while doing that, he's going to swing south and stop into Achaia and in Corinth.

Perhaps I will stay with you, he says in verse six, or even spend the winter.

So that you may help me on my journey wherever I go. So Paul has encouraged a collection from the

Corinthians in the first four verses, and this is a collection very specifically that's going to help to provide relief for those

Christians who are being persecuted in Jerusalem. But Paul is also saying to the Corinthians here that when

I come to you, it's going to be an opportunity for you to bless me. Now that's a couple of different ways.

That's also monetarily, as Paul talked about in those first four verses. So he will take an offering from them that will help him on his missionary journey as he goes out from Corinth, but also that the

Corinthians may encourage him in spirit. Because this letter has been very rebuking.

And what Paul is saying to the Corinthians here, I'm going to come, I'm going to stop in, and I'm going to see if you are following the instructions that I've given you in this letter.

So the Corinthians know this isn't just something Paul is writing because it's easier for me to write a letter than to just come and rebuke you face to face.

He's tied up in work that he's doing in Ephesus at this particular time. And so, not able to make it there to Corinth, he has received word from Chloe's people, we read about this in chapter one, of some of the misconduct that has been going on in the church.

And I don't even mean to gloss over that or soften that in any way. It was sin. The church was steeped in sinfulness.

There were people who were committing adultery, there was class separation, there were those who were misusing the

Lord's table to the effect that some of them were even getting sick and dying. Christians were suing one another.

Some were boasting in the knowledge that they had and thinking that they were smarter than other people because they followed

Apollos or Cephas or Paul or any of those things. There was all kinds of division going on in the church.

Selfishness, abusing the spiritual gifts. Some of them were speaking out of turn and the worship service itself had become a gathering of chaos.

And so Paul was rebuking the way that they were doing church. And what we're going to see when we get to 2

Corinthians is how some of those rebukes that he had issued in 1

Corinthians were deeply penetrating in the hearts of the believers there in the Corinthian church.

And they mourned and they were filled with sorrow over the sins that they were committing against God.

And much of that church repented. But some of them were still following false apostles.

And so we'll still see more rebuke in 2 Corinthians. But what a great and relieving letter this is that we get to see some of the effect that Paul's previous letter had upon them.

And so as this has been a very rebuking letter, he's not just writing this for the sake of writing it because I couldn't make it to you or because I don't want to come and do this face to face so I'll just do it by letter.

Paul means to follow up with this rebuke that he's issuing and says, by the way, I'm coming to you.

And so I'm going to see whether or not you've made some of these improvements that I've told you you need to make.

You need to repent of your sin. You need to come back to the sound teaching of the gospel that we first gave you when we were there in Corinth.

Perhaps I will stay with you. I'll even spend the winter. So this is going to be very personal.

It's going to be very intimate. It's going to be a long process of staying with the

Corinthians there. And this also is Paul showing his affection for them. That he's not just writing them off, if you'll pardon the pun, but that he truly wants to spend time with them and would be doing so if it was the

Lord's will for him to be there. So a time is coming in the near future where he is going to make the journey himself and he will spend time if the

Lord permits, he says. Verse 8, but I will stay in Ephesus, which is where he's at presently at the time that he's writing this letter, until Pentecost.

Pentecost was 50 days after the resurrection of Christ. So that kind of gives us an idea of the season in which

Paul is writing this. He's going to be there until Pentecost. For a wide door for effective work has opened to me and there are many adversaries.

As we elders had sat down and talked about this passage this past Monday, Dave and Dwight and I, one of the things that, or I'm sorry,

Chris and Dwight and I, Dave is working hard for our government this week.

As Chris and Dwight and I had sat down and had gone through this passage, one of the things that Chris pointed out is that a wide door of effective work has opened to me and there are many adversaries.

So as Paul talks about here that a wide door of ministry is open, I must take this opportunity while it's there.

He's not saying that the work is easy. Hey, look at this, a door is open, let's go minister while we have this opportunity to do it.

No, he knows this ministry opportunity that is before him is full of persecution.

So whenever we use that term, we'll say something like there's a ministry opportunity for us.

Let us not be filled with some sort of idea that ministry opportunity means something easy.

Well, look at this ministry opportunity. It's easy for it. We can go spend some time in Bermuda and share the gospel there and enjoy the beach a little bit, nothing like that.

Or that we would go into this region where there is no persecution, so it would be easier for us here than going into this region where there is persecution and we could potentially lose our lives.

Joy Smith from our own congregation who is in the Philippines right now, sharing the gospel, a door was opened to her to advance the gospel among the people where she was born.

And it's not easy work. And she knows her life is on the line every day in a heavily

Muslim region where she is sharing the gospel. But this opportunity had arisen for her to do this didn't mean it was an easy step for her to take, to leave her comforts and luxuries that she was enjoying in the

United States and going back to the Philippines as she shared with us in this church. This is not something that a person who is from the

Philippines does. They leave the Philippines to come to the United States, never to go back again. And yet she was going back there, putting herself in danger for the sake of sharing the gospel in an otherwise unreached region.

That was a door of opportunity that was open to her. And it's not an easy door to walk through.

There are many adversaries before her. And likewise, there were many adversaries before Paul, where he was sharing the gospel there in Ephesus.

And we read about that when you go to Acts chapters 19 and 20, some of the persecutions that Paul faced while he was there in Ephesus.

But this door is open now. The gospel is advancing now in Ephesus, even though it may come at a great cost.

So I must take this opportunity while it's here to share the gospel, not leave this work but continue to do it as the body of Christ is growing in Ephesus.

So Paul goes on 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. Oftentimes, Timothy was sent to a place to report back to the

Apostle Paul how growth was progressing in that particular church.

And Paul is saying of Timothy here, you know, he's not my squealer. He's not going down there to look at you guys and then come back and report back to me all the things that you are doing wrong.

He loves you as affectionately as I do. So as Timothy comes to that church, you receive him knowing that he's doing the same work that I'm doing here.

Do not look down upon him, but receive him as a brother. So let no one despise him, he says in verse 11, help him on his way in peace that he may return to me for I am expecting him with the brothers.

In Hebrews chapter 13, it says to submit to your elders and follow their example of faith and do not make it hard on them, the work that they do in the church, for that would be of no advantage to you.

And so the same would apply here in this instruction that Paul is giving to the Corinthians regarding their submission to Timothy and the word that he brings from Paul to the

Corinthians. Don't make his stay hard on him. Listen to what he has to say, receive him and send him on his way in peace.

That his journey would be easy as he comes to me, his spirit would not be vexed by what it is that he's experienced in Corinth, but knowing that he would come back to me, let it be in a good spirit, as he has received good help from the time that he spent while he was there in Corinth.

Then we get into final instructions beginning in verse 12, now concerning our brother Apollos, this is a name that we've seen come up a couple of times already in this letter,

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.

Let's go over to 1 Corinthians chapter 1, so leave your finger there in chapter 16, which is the last chapter, let's go all the way back to the first chapter.

1 Corinthians chapter 1 beginning in verse 10, this was about the third or fourth sermon that we did when we began our study in 1

Corinthians. Paul says, I appeal to you brothers in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree and that there would be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and in the same judgment.

For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers, and then

Paul gets specific, the kind of quarreling that he's talking about. What I mean is this, verse 12, that each one of you says,

I follow Paul, or I follow Cephas, or I follow

Apollos, or I follow Christ, and it's in that overly pious sort of way, right?

Well, I follow Jesus. I'm not a Calvinist, I'm a

Christian. That sort of way that we would compete with one another even now to say that my theology is better than your theology, that was the way that the

Corinthians were battling with one another. And so when they would use the name of Christ, they would use it in vain to sound like I'm more pious than you are.

And then Paul goes on in verse 13, is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you?

Were you baptized in the name of Paul? Let's go from here over to chapter 3, 1

Corinthians chapter 3, starting in verse 1. But I, brothers, could not address you as a spiritual people, but as a people of the flesh, as infants in Christ.

If this kind of quarreling is what was going on in the church, they were not mature in their faith. They were still acting like babies, like fighting children.

Surely, some of you parents know what I'm talking about. They were not acting like mature adults.

They were acting like infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, verse 2, for you were not ready for it.

And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. While there is jealousy and strife among you, are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a human way?

For when one says, I follow Paul, and another says, I follow Apollos, are you not being merely human?

This is the same thing that the Greeks did when it came to competing over the philosophers. Well, I follow

Socrates. These different Greeks would war over the different philosophers.

The Stoics would be at war with the Socratics, and so on and so forth, because they felt like they had a better philosophy than the other philosophers had.

And when a new philosopher came along, well, his philosopher was better than the old guy.

This is the way the Greeks would constantly war with one another. It should not be this way in Christ. Paul was pointing out that Apollos and Paul are doing the same work together.

We're not competitors. Neither one of us are fighting in this way.

We are encouraging one another as brothers in the faith. So why are there splits between you over who your teacher is?

That's one of the things that I love about conferences. Whenever I'll go to one of these conferences,

I tend to go to one or two of them a year. And thank you to the church for supporting me and sending me to one of these conferences.

So I'm able to hear a bunch of different well -known teachers together in one room, and they're all there for the same purpose.

And some of them come from different denominations. Now, this coming June, I'll be attending the

Southern Baptist Convention down in Dallas. They'll all be Southern Baptist. But at most of these conferences that I go to, we've got not just Baptists, different denominations of Baptists in the room, but Presbyterians, evangelical free, non -denominational.

People of different backgrounds, different denominations, but all together in one spirit and in one

Lord for the same purpose, and that is to exalt our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So I love going to conferences and hearing different teachers.

No one would be able to sit together in that room and be able to say, well, I follow Steve Lawson. Well, I follow

Votie Bauckham. Now, they would get stern rebuke if that was the case, for we're all there for the same thing, and that is to exalt

Christ. And so Paul is pointing that out with the work that Apollos and he are doing.

It's the same work. There should be no competition here. What then is

Apollos? Paul says in verse 5, what is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the

Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.

So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only

God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one, and each will receive his wages according to his labor, for we are

God's fellow workers. You are God's field, God's building.

Before I came to this pulpit and preached here at First Southern Baptist Church, Nate Butler was the preacher here.

Before Nate Butler, it was Brian Jones. You know what? After me, there's going to be another pastor up here.

And we're all working together for the cause of Christ, to make his gospel known, to build up the saints for the work of ministry,

Ephesians 4, 11, and 12. So none of us are competitors in this work.

And even as a pastor, it's frustrating when I see it happen in any church, this one or anywhere else.

If the leadership changes hands, they go from one pastor to another pastor, and then, inevitably, there's people who will leave because they don't like the new pastor.

And I want to come to 1 Corinthians 1, 2, and 3, and, like, sit down with them. Have you never read this?

There's no competition between these men, or at least there shouldn't be. They are all administers of the word of Christ for your benefit, the same word.

And so Paul is saying, as Apollos watered, I was the one who planted, we're all receiving the same reward.

So there should be no competition here among speakers. Now, we know from what is said about Apollos that he was the more proficient speaker than Paul.

Talks about that in 2 Corinthians 10. When Paul came to Corinth, some of the Corinthians were like, this is

Paul? This is the guy? This guy who's so meek and so weak in his speech? He writes such weighty things in his letters, but he's so simple in his voice.

Well, they liked Apollos because Apollos talked like one of the Greeks. He sounded like one of the

Greek philosophers. He had that booming voice, that eloquent public demeanor.

And so there were some that followed Apollos just because of his eloquency. Paul wasn't as eloquent a speaker.

And so some preferred Apollos over Paul, but Paul, once again, says that we are both out to achieve the same goal, and that is the advancement of the gospel of Christ, that it would even mature and grow in your hearts.

So when in these final instructions, back to 1 Corinthians 16 now, he says, concerning our brother

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

Here is what I suspect is going on based on the way Paul words this at the end of this letter.

The Corinthians want to see Apollos again. We would rather Apollos come than Timothy or Paul.

So send Apollos to us, and we'll listen to him. And Paul, in due diligence, went to Apollos and said, would you consider going back to Corinth?

And Apollos said, no, because I know they want me to come because I'm Apollos.

I'm the star there, and they don't need to listen to me. They need to listen to you.

So at the conclusion of this letter, this is Apollos very graciously saying, you need to receive the words of the apostle

Paul. His rebuke is good. It is righteous. It is for your benefit.

Let these changes happen in the church in Corinth first before Apollos would then come back to them so they're not just following the word of who they think is a superstar, but they're listening to the word of Christ as it was delivered by the apostle

Paul. Paul goes on in verse 13 and says, be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong, let all that you do be done in love.

And this is simply coming back to a rebuke that he made that we just read at the start of chapter 3. Don't act like children.

Grow up in your faith. As I've said to you before, if we have people in here who have been walking in the faith for 20 or 30 years and you're still just as mature a

Christian as you were when you first came to the faith, that's a problem. And you may need to do what

Paul rebukes the Corinthians to do when we get to this next letter, 2 Corinthians. Examine yourself to see that you're really in the faith.

Test yourself, lest you find that you don't pass the test and you may actually not be a

Christian. We're going to talk about this a little bit more as we examine the visible church and the invisible church here in just a moment.

Paul in verse 15 says, now I urge you, brothers, you know that the household of Stephanas were the first converts in Achaia and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints.

Be subject to such as these and to every fellow worker and laborer. In 1

Corinthians 11 .1, Paul says, imitate me as I am of Christ. But Paul is not with them in person right now and it seems based on what he's saying here in this conclusion that he won't be with them again for a little bit of time.

So what he does is that he lifts up certain names before the brethren in Corinth and says, imitate their faith.

These men have been a blessing to Paul. He knows they're mature. So as the

Corinthians need to mature, follow their example. Be subject to these, these who have been in service to the saints, men who are like Stephanas and Fortunatus and Achaus, because they've made up for your absence, for they refresh my spirit as well as yours.

Give recognition to such people. Listen to what they have to say. Follow their example.

I don't know if these men were elders in the church in Corinth or not, but what I do know about them is they were mature men of the faith, men who are worthy of imitation.

In Titus 2, we are given a structure of mentorship in the church.

The older men are to mentor the younger men. The older women are to mentor the younger women.

And may those who are older in our church congregation in age also be older in the faith, that you have maturity, that you may lead those who are younger than you, spiritually and physically.

So Paul says to imitate their faith. This is a common address that he makes in a lot of his letters.

He says it to the Philippians. He is saying it here to the Corinthians. He said it to the

Colossians. And of course, I talked about how in Titus, it's mentioned there to imitate those who are older.

Hebrews 13, I've mentioned to you already as well. There are constant mentions in the

New Testament epistles that we would imitate the faith of one another. And my friends, you can't do that.

You can't imitate the faith of those who taught you the faith, of those who are mature in the faith, unless, guess what?

You fellowship with them on a regular basis. If you're not here at church, how do you know what example to follow?

If you're not here to listen to the preaching and teaching, how do you know that you are not mature and you need to grow up?

Because I tell you, left to our own devices, you think you're way better than you really are, right? If you can't say amen, you ought to say ouch.

I know that is definitely the case with me. And it's so casual. It amazes me how casually

I'll just fall into this. Well, I'm doing pretty good right now. Look at how mature I am.

Look at how great I am compared to all these other speakers that I love listening to and learning from.

I'm just as good as them. Folks, I fall into that same bout of pride all the time if I don't keep careful watch on myself.

And then I come back to the word and praise God for his spirit that convicts me of something stupid that I'm doing.

And I realize I'm not as great as I think I am. And Christ cuts me down to size and praise

God for that, that I constantly realize through his word how far

I need to go and how much I still need to grow. I'm not there yet, and neither are you.

Praise God for his faithfulness to us. It's in moments like these where I realize the growth that still needs to happen in my faith that I'm so encouraged by passages like the last words that Jesus gave to his disciples at the end of Matthew 28, lo,

I am with you always, even to the very end of the age. And praise

God that he is with me in my deficiencies that in Christ I would grow to become a man of God.

So Paul addresses this church, this letter that we've been studying for over a year now to the

Corinthians, 1 Corinthians. He sends this letter to the church that would have been read in their presence.

Just like I'm standing up before you now and we'll read a particular section of 1 Corinthians and then digest it, we'll take it apart, we'll understand it, we will rightly divide the word of truth as is talked about in 2

Timothy 3, rightly dividing the word of truth. And so as we do that each

Sunday that we come to the text, so they would have done this with this letter that would have been written to them, and they would not have just read it one time.

It wouldn't have just been one gathering of believers on a particular Sunday and an elder stood up and said, hey, look, I've got a letter from Paul, and then they unroll the scroll and they read it to the congregation, and then many of them are even convicted over some of the things that Paul says, they would have come back to this letter again, again and again, to make sure that all the

Christians who were part of that church heard it and that they would continue to be convicted by the things that are said in it.

Some churches even had collections of other letters that were written, which

Paul talks about at the end of Colossians, go and read the letter that I wrote to the Laodiceans and take this letter to them so that they can see what

I wrote to you. And Peter talks about this also in 2 Peter 3, where he says that Paul writes weighty things in his letters, and as he's addressing the churches, it's likely that those churches

Peter was writing to had a collection of letters of their own. So just like we go through this as a church, the churches in the first century did the same thing.

This isn't a new brand of preaching. This is the way that preaching has been done since the church began, going through the scriptures and seeing the mightiness of God through his son,

Jesus Christ. And again, I say to you, how else can we come to understand this and grow together in the knowledge of him that is revealed to us in his word if we're not together on a regular basis studying these things as one?

This that we are doing this morning, this is the visible church.

And you may have heard of these terms before, visible church and invisible church.

Well, what's the difference? What is a visible church and what's an invisible church?

Well, the visible church, my brethren, is the membership of the church, just like we have.

Well, you could go to the roster of First Southern Baptist Church, and you could point out all the names.

These are the people who've been committed to be members of this church. That's the visible church. We can verify in one another that we are fellow saints, that we are convicted over the same things, that we love

Christ and we desire to obey what it is that he has said, and we're growing together in this faith, and we revere his word and obey it.

We partake in the Lord's Supper together. That's a visible act. That's something we do with each other that you may be able to see.

This is my brother in the faith. This is my sister. We sing songs together as we are instructed in the scriptures to do so.

Colossians 3 .16, let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, encouraging and admonishing one another with all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in your hearts to God.

That's an address that Paul gives to the church. We would all lift up praises to our

King together as the church of God. You have to be together to do that.

And that instruction there also to encourage and admonish one another. How do you know what to encourage your brother and sister in?

And do that meaningfully? Like not just the platitude, hey, how's your day?

Oh, I'm doing good. You know, not that sort of a thing. But you really know what's going on in your brother or sister's life so that you know how to encourage them rightly.

Or you know how to admonish a brother or sister, meaning that you correct them with goodwill because you know that there's something in their life that they are doing that is in disobedience to the word of God and they need to be corrected.

We can't do that with one another if we don't know one another. If we don't see each other, if we're not regularly together as the church of Christ.

So this is the visible church. Anyone who's a member of the church, a member of the local church, they're part of the visible church.

So what is the invisible church? Well, the invisible church are those who have been regenerated by the

Holy Spirit of God, and they are known to God.

How many of you believe, this may even be convicting to some of you, but how many of you believe that all of us who are sitting here in this room may not actually all be

Christians? There may be some in here who are just doing church to go through the religious motions, but are not actually convicted of sin and do not know

Jesus Christ as Savior. They might be part of the visible church, but my friends, they're not part of the invisible church.

And there are passages of scripture that talk about this. Let me go through a few of them with you.

There were three of them that I was looking at last night to kind of emphasize this point. So in the

Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapter seven, verses 21 through 23,

Jesus said the following, not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my

Father who is in heaven. On that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

I never, never knew you. And that word knew, as it's written here, as it's applied, that word means that Jesus never had an intimate fellowship with that person who at one point in their life professed to be a believer.

And there are many out there that you can see in the public eye today that claim to be doing many mighty works in Jesus' name, but they are far from God.

As a matter of fact, there was one of such teachers that made headlines just this past week. Anybody hear about this?

Gloria Copeland said, and made even USA Today was where I read the story, and Al Mohler talked about it on the briefing.

Gloria Copeland said, you can choose not to get the flu. You just choose not to receive it.

I'm not gonna receive it. I'm not gonna receive the flu. And she gave you something that you could just repeat over and over and over again to yourself.

And if you repeat that, well, then you are guaranteed that you're not gonna get the flu. Gloria Copeland and her husband,

Kenneth Copeland, are wolves. They are deceivers. They store up for themselves treasures on earth.

And just about everything that they say related to the word of God is wrong. And we can tell by their fruit that they are not part of the flock of God.

Yet they are doing many things that they claim are being done in Jesus' name. And unless they repent of this,

I tell you, they will be among those who are talked about here in Matthew chapter seven that will stand before the throne of judgment and Christ will say, depart from me,

I never knew you. And they'll say, well, didn't we do many mighty works in your name?

Jesus will say, I never had fellowship with you. Maybe on the outside, a person will at some point in their lives confess some kind of relationship with God.

They'll confess it. But as the prophet Isaiah said, their hearts are far from me.

They acknowledge me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. And I say these things to you, my brothers and sisters, so that would not be you, that you might examine your own heart and know that you're not just part of the visible church, you're part of the invisible church.

You are known by God in your heart of hearts. It is known that you have been regenerated by the

Holy Spirit, that you are sealed by the Spirit and that you are forever marked by the blood of Christ for eternity with God in heaven.

So this is one example from the scriptures alluding to a visible and an invisible church.

The next passage that I was looking at last night was in 2 Peter. If any of you follow me on Twitter, you've probably saw me post this verse.

Out of 2 Peter 2, verse 22, Peter says, and this is in a chapter in which he's just gone through this chapter rebuking false teachers.

He's just gone through this chapter rebuking those who claim to be of Christ, but are not of Christ. They lead people astray.

So then in verse 22, he says, what the true proverb says has happened to them. The dog returns to its own vomit and the sow after washing herself returns to wallow in the mire.

The point in this with Peter singling out this particular proverb is that a person will do what is in their nature to do.

If a person has not actually been regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God to turn from sinfulness and worship

God, then it doesn't matter how clean they look on the outside, they're gonna go back to doing the thing that is in their nature to do.

If God has not turned that person from a pig into a sheep, then they're gonna go back to the mire and wallow in the mud from which they came.

That kind of transformation that happens in a person's heart happens only by the Holy Spirit of God. Who among a people are the wolves?

Who among them are the goats? Those that Jesus separates from the sheep at the final judgment, which we read about in Matthew 25.

Which of them are the sheep, the true flock of God who follow the voice of the good shepherd? And a false shepherd, they won't follow him for they know the voice of the shepherd in Christ they follow,

John chapter 10. So may we be among those who are of the flock of God that know the voice of the good shepherd and follow him.

And lastly, right next to 2 Peter is 1 John. In 1

John 2 verse 19, we read the following. They went out from us, but they were not of us for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us, but they went out that it might become plain that they are not all of us.

Now let me be very clear about this particular passage. If a person goes from this church to another church, that does not immediately mean that they are not saved.

It's not what we're talking about here. Somebody is PCS and they leave First Southern Baptist Church and they're relocated to another part of the country and they start attending a church there.

Well, we're not looking at this passage and seeing them go and go, well, they must not have been of us because they've been taken away from us to another place.

That's not what's being said here. There are churches in other denominations, even here in Junction City where there are worshipers this morning lifting up praises to Christ our

King and they are every much our brothers and sisters as those you are sitting among here in this church today.

Sometimes a person will leave a church for another church. It does not always mean that that person is deficient in their faith, has denied the brotherhood that they are a part of, but it simply means that there are those who are gonna pretend for a time to be part of the church of God.

And then when they go out from us and they leave the church, probably all together, never to return again, it becomes evident to us then that they were never among us in the first place.

This is the point of the parable of the sower in Matthew chapter 13. There are many who will hear the word of Christ.

Some will even receive it for a time, but it is only those who are of good soil where the message falls and produce a harvest.

Phil Johnson at the G3 Conference, that Becky and Sonia and I just went to this past January, one of the things that Phil Johnson said is that when you hear a person make a profession of Christ for a time, but then you see in their lives that transition away from the

Christian faith into unbelief or false belief, or maybe even some sort of imitation

Christianity, what you see in that person was never a genuine confession of faith.

Rather, it was just a passing opinion. Now, I say these things to you once again, not that you would become suspicious of one another, and please don't do that.

That's ungracious. That you might look at someone else and see their sin and go, I don't know, not sure

I should have even been sitting next to that person this morning because they don't look like a believer in the faith.

I say these things to you that you would examine your own heart and see that you are in the faith, that you are truly a follower of Christ.

And for some of you, this may mean realizing that you've been straying from the path of righteousness.

Maybe you haven't left the faith, but you were on that trajectory until the

Holy Spirit of God convicted your heart to bring you back to the path of righteousness. I would just encourage you that as you make that course correction, you don't do that on your own, but you would confess that to a brother or sister in the

Lord and ask them to pray with you and encourage you and even keep watch upon you that you might get an opinion from somebody on the outside to see to it that you continue to follow the narrow road that we are on in Jesus' name.

Maybe some of you in hearing this message this morning are convicted that you've never been saved. I've been going to church my whole life.

I don't know that I could ever even really call myself a Christian. You've seen

Chris up here who prayed today and I've stood before you. Please come and talk to one of us that we might pray with you and show you from the scriptures what it means to be a

Christian. Paul, or John rather at the end of his letter in 1 John 5, he says, I've written these things to you that you may know that you have eternal life.

God does want us to know and we can show you how to be sure that you are not following after Satan but are instead following after Christ who conquered the grave and he is the giver of life.

And if we remain steadfast and true to his promises as Jesus said to his disciples, he who endures to the end will be saved.

♪ Oh, he comes with power to save a sinner's slave ♪ ♪

Swell the tribe with strength, alleluia ♪ ♪

Jesus now shall ever be those who stand at the gate of heaven ♪ ♪

Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing ♪ ♪

Shall the great Messiah see ♪ ♪

Now redemption laws see in solemn pomp appear ♪ ♪

All his saints, my own, shall meet him in the air ♪ ♪

See the day of, day of, high on thy eternal throne ♪ ♪

Savior take the power and glory, claim the throne of God ♪ ♪

And the kingdom for thy own ♪ ♪

Oh, come quickly, oh, come quickly, oh, come quickly ♪ ♪

Alleluia, come on ♪

Thank you for listening to our weekly sermon presented by First Southern Baptist Church of Junction City, Kansas.

For more information about our church, visit fsbcjc .org.

On behalf of our church family, my name is Becky, inviting you to join us again this week, Growing Together in Christ, when we understand the text.