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Sermon: So Near Yet So Far Date: January 8, 2023, Afternoon Text: 1 Corinthians 9:27–10:14 Preacher: Josh Sheldon Audio: https://storage.googleapis.com/pbc-ca-sermons/2023/230108-SoNearYetSoFar.aac
Well, let's go to the Lord in prayer and ask for his blessing upon this assembly, once again, upon the preaching and the hearing of his word. Heavenly Father, again, your people, again, gladly and willingly and expectantly assembled in your presence.
So by your Holy Spirit, Father, fulfill our desire to hear more of Jesus, to know Jesus Christ better, to know his cross more fully, to appreciate what you, Father, have done for sinners like ourselves.
In Christ Jesus, your Son, do this, Father, by the power of your Spirit and the proclamation and now the hearing of your word, once again, for we ask it in Jesus' name, amen. You know, one of the reasons I picked this hymn for John to lead us to begin the afternoon message is in that fourth stanza.
Watch against thyself, my soul, lest with grace thou trifle. Watch thyself, thy soul. Lest with grace thy trifle. Begin today, God willing, a short series, a two-part series in 1 Corinthians 10, 1 to 14.
We'll look at the first five verses this afternoon. And the Apostle Paul, if you read through Corinthians, has been warning the Corinthians for some time of some delusions that they had, some dangers that they weren't seeing in this mixture that they were prone to of mixing their old styles of worship, their old pagan practices with Christianity.
And way back in 1 Corinthians 6, he warns them when you join yourself with a prostitute, looking back to the ritual prostitution that was part of pagan worship in that day, says, don't you know you're bringing Christ Jesus himself into that relationship?
How can you do such a thing? And we don't wanna go through all of 1 Corinthians, but this is really a theme that started way back in chapter six, which we're gonna pick up in chapter 10. At the end of chapter nine, though, and this will be the segue into the message this morning, the Apostle Paul speaks to them, he writes to them about the danger of this mixture of the old ways with the new ways, the old self, if you will, with the new self, and the dangers are much more extreme than they had ever realized, and probably more than we ourselves today realize.
He speaks of himself just before our passage, the last verse in chapter nine, before 10 .1, obviously. He says, but I discipline my body and keep it under control. Emphasis, mine. He says, the Apostle, this mature man in Christ, I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified.
This is the segue, the transition to our passage, because there, in these verses, we'll stand for in a moment and I'll read them to you. Paul warns them, he warns the Corinthians, and by this living and active and powerful word, warns us that they may feel themselves to be ever so close to God by being near to the means of grace, by seeing the power of God, by hearing the worship and actually being part of it, and doing the practices, and doing, if you will, the stuff of Christianity, so near to the means of grace, and yet could be so far from God, so near to what he does for his people through his spirit, and yet never really enter into that grace that we have in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We can be ever so near to the means of grace ourselves. We might delight in those means of grace, yet that delight might be only an emotional response, our spirits being leagues away from true and saving faith in Jesus Christ.
Like Herod, who gladly listened to John the Baptist outwardly, but inwardly hated his message. So the Israelites were near to the grace of God. The Israelites, being this example, they were near to the grace of God, yet by their faithlessness, they were displeasing to him.
Likewise, you too, I too, we all, frail humans, can be so near, yet so far. So let's stand, and I'll read to you 1 Corinthians 10, verses one through 14. For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.
Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased, for they were overthrown in the wilderness. Now these things took place as examples for us, that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not be idolaters as some of them were.
As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play. We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and 23 ,000 fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents, nor grumble as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer.
Now these things happened to them as an example, but they were written down for our instruction on whom the end of the ages has come. Therefore, let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.
No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation, he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it.
Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry. God bless the reading. Now the hearing of his word. Please be seated, and here's the message. Here's the warning that Paul gives to the Corinthians, and here's what we must take heed to today.
If it happened to Israel, he says, if it happened to Israel who beheld God's works with their own eyes, who saw his manifestations by day and night in cloud and fire, they saw daily bread on the ground with no explanation, but God rained it down from heaven.
If they saw living water gushing from a dead rock, and yet still God was displeased with them, Paul warns the Corinthians, it could happen to you. Those Israelites were ever so near to the grace of God.
They saw his power. They saw his might. Not just in things that happened, they say, well, God must have done that, but they saw him do it. In the manifestations that he gave them. They witnessed according to 2 Corinthians 12, 12.
In the apostle Paul, when he came to Corinth and evangelized them, they saw signs and wonders and mighty works. Now understand that God will never condemn a true believer. As Jesus Christ said, I will never leave you or forsake you.
No one is able to snatch you out of the Father's hand. These are true. There is security in Christ. But we must check our spirits. We must ask ourselves, what is it that has me coming to church every Sunday?
What is it that draws me here? Is it my emotional response? Do I just enjoy the company? Is there something exciting about this to me? Or is it true, fast, saving faith in Christ Jesus our Lord? Too often what is called faith is not really true faith at all.
You could be amazed. You could be maybe entertained by signs and wonders. Maybe only attracted to a warm fellowship and a feel-good meeting every Sunday. We could be ever so close. We need to check our spirits as Paul admonishes the Corinthians to be those who came into a church, saw the worship and the reverence, and said God is truly among this people and left it at this people and not the self.
You know, we are good at deceiving ourselves and this is something the Corinthians have been doing. Deceiving themselves as they kept up their idolatrous practices, as they kind of mixed it together with their Christianity.
They deceived themselves and we are good at that, are we not? I would argue that it is one of our greatest talents. Self-deception. They know it wasn't that bad. I'm really better than this one act made me out to be.
No, we can deceive ourselves. We can trick ourselves. We're such good self-justifiers. It's a great talent. One that we practice often. We shine it up and we have it as a very keen edge because it's something we use a lot.
Now Jesus Christ addressed this in Matthew 7. He said, 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?
Aren't those wonderful things to cast out a demon? What could be wrong with that? What could be wrong with prophesying in the name of Jesus Christ and doing the mighty works in his name? What does Jesus Christ say?
And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you workers of lawlessness. You see, near enough to God to do the mighty works. As God was working his spirit back then in a way that is different than it is now, but the same spirit working.
Those men who Jesus Christ will say, depart near enough to God to be used of him in that way. And yet in the sense of true saving faith, love for Christ Jesus, appreciation of his cross, acknowledgement of a sin.
Now, so near and yet so far. How do we get food like this? How is it the Corinthians were fooling themselves really is what they were doing all along as they went through the ritual practices of their former idolatrous practices, as they ate food that was offered to idol and all these things that Paul deals with with this crazy church there in Corinth.
How do we get to this point? How do we get fooled like that? Well, let me say that it's not the Lord who fools us. The Lord is not tricky up there and trying to see if we can figure out his little traps.
No, it's not the Lord who fools us, we fool ourselves. As James says, let anyone who is tempted not say I'm tempted by the Lord for God cannot be tempted by evil. We step into it ourselves, don't we? We make a decision, especially we who are Christians who've been under the preaching, who read our Bibles, who know the God we've prayed to.
We know the difference between sin and righteousness. And I would argue anytime we choose the former, we know what we're doing. And we fool ourselves. You know, God's revealed himself to all mankind by way of what he's made.
That's Romans chapter one, verses 18 to 22. He's revealed himself in the clouds. He's revealed himself in the stars. He's revealed himself in everything that has been made. So anyone who looks at it is responsible to say a holy, righteous answer to God.
In other words, we answer to him that kind of a God has made these things. And I owe him something. I answer to him. He's revealed himself to all mankind in that way. And to many, such as you here today, this afternoon, Christians all, God willing, to many he's revealed himself much more closely.
Revealed himself to you, Christ Jesus, risen from the grave, having died for your sins. The gospel in a word. But to many he's revealed himself in a close way, bringing you close to the means of grace, but not quite in it.
Perhaps you were raised in a Christian home and you watched and participated in your family worship. Maybe you happened to a church one day, as I was alluding to before. You observed the worship. You heard the prayers.
It was so sincere, a devotion so pure that you could only leave saying, God is truly among that people, this people, them. Or maybe you, having tasted that the Lord is good, joined in the joy of a church, but what you call faith is only your subjective view of Christ and his cross.
Your commitment to him, being parceled out to him on your terms and not his. Beware, because few tools in our kit are more often employed with the skill of an experienced craftsman than self-deception.
This is what the Apostle Paul's been warning the Corinthians against, deceiving themselves. Having accepted Jesus, but practicing things that were very much opposed to him. So it says, God was displeased with most of them.
In verse five, he was displeased with those who, having seen his might and power, forgot about it. And by being forgot about, I don't mean out of memory in the literal sense, it made no impact in their lives, no inroads to their spirits.
When a decision needed to be made of ethical or moral consequence, then they forgot about what they'd seen of God. They didn't let that inform how they chose to go one way or the other. No impact on their lives.
As it says in Psalm 78, they forgot his works and the wonders that he had shown them, and then fell into the zone of the sins that in verses one through four that I read, Paul reminds them of. But I ask you, I mean, could anyone actually forget walking past a wall of water?
I mean, could your memory actually lose sight of an entire army drowned, or manna and water, or pillars of cloud and fire? So they did what we do. They did what we so often do. They chose not to remember.
They chose to view God's works as mere incidents rather than the mighty works of a mighty God. They displeased God by choosing to live their own way rather than the implications of what God had shown them.
So near to the means of grace. Can you imagine ourselves, had we actually seen God in the pillars of cloud or fire? We'd actually seen or felt or watched the effect of that east wind which parted the ocean that they passed through.
Wonder what impact that would make, and for how long. Paul says that God was displeased with most of them. Most, he doesn't enumerate. He says most as though he shudders to give it a number. But he knew as well as we know how many, right?
Don't we know how many? Because Exodus 12, 37 says how many came out of Egypt. It says 600 ,000 men on foot besides women and children. Let's just take that 600 ,000, okay? 600 ,000 men, just the men who were accountable.
How many then was most? Do you know? You actually do know. 699 ,998 of them is most of them. And that is actually the exact number. That's 99 .97 were displeasing to God. And in a sense, though he was saved, I think we'll see him in heaven, but in a sense that included Moses who displeased God so he was not allowed to enter the promised land.
How many believers were overthrown and destroyed? Overthrown in the wilderness. You can answer that too. You know as well as I do. None, 100 of true believers, every one of them was delivered. Not a single one of their bodies fell in the wilderness.
So most of them, 599 ,998, that was 99 .97 of them, 0 .03 too. Joshua and Caleb, the rest so near yet so far away. Now have no fear that God will spit out the true believer, the one who's truly closed with Christ.
I will never leave you or forsake you. All whom the Father has given me will come to me. No one is able to snatch you out of my Father's hands. Those are the words of Jesus Christ. But Paul's warning here is about our self-deception.
When we get to part two, verses 6 to 14, God willing next week, we're gonna add pride to this list. But we'll save that for when Paul really brings it forward. For now, let the words of scripture incite in us humility.
If they, the Israelites, having seen so much with their own eyes, fell by unbelief, then it's a good time, it's a good practice to look to our own hearts. So I ask you, loved of the Lord, I inquire into the heart of each of you upon whom God's love and mercy have showered in buckets overflowing with grace because of the faith he gave you to believe in his son, Jesus.
I ask you, are you near to God in person, yet far from him in spirit? Now here's a metric. Let me ask it this way. Say, okay, you're asking a tough question here. Am I just excited to be with the people?
Is it just a warm fellowship that makes me feel warm and fuzzy when I drive home? Or is it the Lord Jesus Christ declared from this pulpit that draws me here? That by his spirit, I humble myself before him and seek his transformation.
So here's your metric. Here's a question I would ask. Here's just one way I would put it. There are many others you might think of. In the past X number of months, ask yourself this or answer this question.
In the past X number of months, I've been convicted of and have known victory over sin, let's call it Y. So sort of an algebraic formula. In X amount of time, I've been convicted of Y number of sins. I'm not saying I have complete victory over them.
I'm not saying that they're not besetting upon you, that it's easy and they just kind of went away, but convicted in your spirit, reading the scripture and saying, this is me that's being told I must repent.
This is me that tells me I've stepped away from the transforming trajectory of the spirit working in me to bring me into the image of Jesus Christ. So what sin has the God with whom you claim intimacy has shown you?
Many? Any? None? So I ask, are we even reading our Bibles? Are we paying attention to what we read? Like the prophets who encountered God up close, Isaiah and Habakkuk come to mind. Peter, when he fell down and begged Jesus, he said, depart from me for I'm a sinful man, oh Lord.
As we encounter Christ in the Bible, and it's almost like we have to jump away from it because the holiness and the perfection of Christ Jesus, our Savior, jumps out at us and shows you the difference between he and you.
And you find room for repentance. And you find incidents that prove a nature that requires repentance. How many sins has God convicted you of as you pray and read the Bible and let the Bible speak to you this powerful, living, and active word that can divide asunder joints and marrow and soul and spirit, that's a revealer of your conscience and the thoughts of your hearts?
I let the question just hang there. Are we even reading our Bibles? Are we paying attention to it? Not just finding a better way to live, three steps to being a better husband, and two and a half steps to whatever you want to progress in.
No, not just a better way to live, but conviction of sin buried deep down in a mineshaft whose walls collapsed a long time ago, guarding the sin that we hid away and forgot about so long ago. And the Bible uncovers it for it, excavates it for us, if you will.
How long has it been since that has occurred to you? Since you've had that means of grace foisted upon you by the Spirit of God that won't let you close that Bible until you acknowledge what it said about yourself.
And you've repented, and begged God for transformation and forgiveness. How do we bury it away? Well, memories fade. Embarrassment and shame swept away like leaves before a blower. When the consequences don't come to pass, we wipe our brow, we get a relief, kind of whew, oh, got away with that one, and having dodged a bullet, we forget it and we carry on like nothing ever happened.
That could be the most dangerous thing that could happen to you is to get away with the sin. The most dangerous thing that could happen to you in your development and progress towards the image of Jesus Christ, your growth and holiness and righteousness, could be to get away with it.
To be to not pay the price for your sin in God's providence. So near to God, so far from the means of grace, full of ego-puffing knowledge, able to amaze your enemies, impress your friends with theological insights.
Superman could not leap over the stack of commentaries that you've digested. So near, but for what good? How do we draw near to God? If this is you, if this is pricking your conscience at all, that you've come to the means of grace, that you truly believe in Jesus Christ, and yet haven't progressed into his image, so near, yet maybe so far?
Well, the answer is simple, at the same time, impossibly hard. The answer is simply become like his Jesus Christ, his son. Sin confessed and God beseeched. Something like this, maybe. Show me more, Lord, search my heart and see if there's another wicked way that you would have me to correct by the power of your spirit.
This is true reading of the scripture. Not just memorizing it, not just being able to put together arguments to prove it to be true and better than any other way of living. Now, the Bible shows us who we are.
As I quoted from the book of Hebrews, it's a powerful living and active word, and it does that and it tears us apart. It undoes us, but by God's mercy and by his spirit puts us back together and when back together, more in the form of Jesus Christ.
I think what I said there, it's not words that are gonna work like magic for you, but show me, Lord, search me and find another wicked way. Place it before my eyes and Father, show me the way through it and show me forgiveness.
And then greater strides into the image of Christ. Sin revealed, sin contested, sin mortified, never fully, we'll never 100 get there in this life, never able to drop our guard, but every mortified iniquity is that much closer to Jesus Christ.
And it's simply the word of God. It's reading it and praying through it and reading it with sensible eyes open and letting it speak to you in the way that God intends it to. This idea of the fight that we have as believers, it's the struggle of Galatians 5, 16 to 22, where it says these are opposed to each other, speaking of the spirit and speaking of the flesh.
The war between your God-given new spirit and the old sinful, sin-infused flesh is what the Corinthians were dealing with. They were new in Christ, yet following the old fleshly ways. It will never end.
This battle will never end so long as Jesus remains in heaven and we remain here, but the fight's a good one. And we're not expected to achieve perfection. We're not gonna get there all the way. We can't achieve complete perfection.
But far from that being a depressing conclusion, we can say rejoice because the battle is the Lord's, but the fight is ours. The battle of the Lord's, and he will have us and he will bring us to him and we will be like Jesus for we will see him as he is.
But as long as we're here, it's a fight, it's a struggle. It's only a trajectory. We will never get there until he calls us to himself. With whom is God displeased? Pretenders, false claimants to his son Jesus' sacrifice for sin.
With what is he displeased? With sin, with big sin, with small sin, with public sin, with private sin, sin of commission, sin of omission. And all this concerns he who searches the heart and it concerns him greatly.
So greatly is he concerned for sin that he sent his only son Jesus Christ to be sin for us at 2 Corinthians 5 .21. He, Jesus, who committed no sin, who thought no sin, who left no good undone, he became what we so easily slip into.
How near to the means of grace we can be, yet how far from true faith. From really believing in the Lord Jesus Christ and thinking we do just because we got kind of close. Use Jesus' words, we can look back on our upbringing, on our traditions, on the religion of our fathers.
Was it that Jesus said, do not say we have Abraham for our father and do not say, I would say, I was baptized into the covenant before I could even speak. Nor should you say, I go to church, I read my Bible, I have devotions at home, and I, and I, and I.
The Israelites saw the world's best army, the proud military, the world's most powerful nation drowned. They saw the waves piled up like a heap. They passed through on dry ground. The strong east wind that divided the waters, do you know what else it did?
It sucked all the moisture out of the seabed. It's an important detail there in Exodus chapter 12 that they crossed on dry land. It really caught my eye this last time I was reading through that. It's like, okay, pretty amazing to walk past two walls of water, right?
That's pretty incredible. But on dry land. You see, what's the point here? That Jesus' cross answered fully for our sins. That God's care for us as it was for them is complete. They crossed on dry ground.
He said, there's no moisture, it's gonna be like quicksand. The same east wind that parted the waters brought the moisture out, shoved it into the waters. I don't know how it worked, but it was dry. God does not miss a detail.
Jesus Christ's cross answered for us. Answered for us getting ever so close and drawing back. It answered for all the sin that we refuse to acknowledge. It answered for all our self-deceptions. And brethren, if we are self-deceived, we need to repent and tell God, or ask God as we read his scripture to take away the deception that the scriptures speak plainly to us.
The call here is to realize how near we can be to the works of God, yet so far from real faith. Let us glory in our heavenly Father's works and incorporate them into our being. No work being more glorious, no deliverance being more complete, no salvation so secure as what Jesus Christ accomplished and that the Lord God confirmed by the resurrection of his beloved son.
I just wanna add, if I have a moment, barely a moment, just to add on to what Pastor Brian preached this morning, that complete redemption. You know, someone who witnessed their sins being resolved before God on the cross, someone who needed sins to be resolved by that son who was suffering on the cross was Mary.
She sat there and she saw her son suffer. We don't have a word in scripture that she said during that time. I imagine perhaps she was just so heartbroken to see her son suffer like that, but perhaps, it's just me, but perhaps so incredibly amazed at a God who had set his perfect son on the cross, her son, her first son, by all the means that Pastor Brian preached, answering to God for her sin.
Know that the cross was complete. Know that as I preach this and about the self-deception that the cross answers your sin. Have no fear to open the Bible and remove your self-deception. To be open and honest before God, who are we trying to fool?
And for those of you who maybe just come near to the means of grace, who have, as it were, walked between walls of water, seen the pillars of fire and cloud, seen the water coming from the rock, and just think, that's neat.
I like being around that. So near and yet so far, close with Christ. Repent truly of your sin. Acknowledge his cross and Jesus Christ's atonement as your only answer. And the God of peace will confirm these things for you and bring you into the image of him who bought you and answered for your sins, and before whom we can no longer be self-deceived, amen?