The Lord, not the Messenger (Part 1)

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No Compromise Radio Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author,

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Dr. Mike Avendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the

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Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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Now let's join Pastor Mike in progress as he preaches through the scriptures, verse by verse with no compromise.

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My goal this morning is to get you to think less of me.

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That's the purpose of the sermon today, so you would esteem me, not in a higher way, but in a lessor way.

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For some, that's probably very easy to do. Maybe you'll have roast pastor for lunch, which is your typical course of fare on Sunday afternoon.

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Reminds me of Sinclair Ferguson who said he would listen to children criticize the pastor and his sermons, and Sinclair would say they've learned well from their parents.

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But in a very real way, you need to think properly, in a very godly way, about leadership.

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About all the great preachers throughout the ages, about the leaders here at this church, about the

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Apostle Paul, there's a right way and a wrong way to think about leaders. Now I've been here 13 years and I have to say from the bottom of my heart, this is not flattery, this is not

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I'm trying to soften you up to get the knife to just go straight in like sometimes

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I might do. I feel and receive love from this church.

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I know you love me. When I'm out of town and I come back, I've missed you and you've missed me, and we have a relationship now over 13 years and there's a right kind of bond, there's a right kind of we love our pastor, we want to imitate him as he imitates

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Christ. There's a good healthy dose of that and I'm glad, by the way, it's better to be loved by your congregation than hated, despised.

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I've felt both in my life and I like this one better, where people love me. I'm just a go along to get along kind of guy.

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But Paul writes in 1 Corinthians to the church of Corinth and he says there's a right way to look at leaders and a wrong way, a proper way to evaluate them and an improper way and the way you look at your leadership at a local church determines how unified the church is.

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Wrong view of leadership, wrong view of the church. Proper view of leadership, good healthy unity.

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And so I really think from the bottom of my heart, you look at me too highly. You think too well of me.

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And I want to bring us back down today to 1 Corinthians, so please turn your Bibles there. And I want you to see that you can evaluate leaders in a proper way.

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We preach the Bible verse by verse here and I'm so glad for that because we cover all kinds of topics.

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I never in a million years would pick a sermon like this in my life, but it's good. It's healthy. It's right.

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After all, who wants to preach a sermon? I want you to think less of me today, especially in our society. You know, you go to Haniford and you're meeting the cashier.

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Oh, hi, how are you? I'll say, because they rarely talk to me. And you know, in California, it's bubbly.

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You know, hi, how are you? And I think these people are con artists. They want something from me. I'm thinking like a New Englander now when

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I go to California. It's wearing off on me. There's an agenda here. You smile at me.

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And I'll say, how are you? And you know what I say. And they'll say, how are you back? And I'll say,

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I'm doing great, especially compared to what I deserve. You deserve everything, the high life, the best.

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I'm special. I'm the center of the universe. I should be on People Magazine's cover. I'm the best.

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We live in that kind of society. And I know something for a fact, because it's dwelling in my heart and yours, too.

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We all have a tendency to idolize people. We're worshipers.

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And we will worship someone. And God needs all of our worship.

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And he will not give his glory to another. And I don't want any of your worship. I don't mind encouragement. I don't mind thank you.

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But we need to think rightly, because it's bound up in our hearts to worship people, to idolize them, to think of them too highly.

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Now, we haven't been in 1 Corinthians for about, I think, about nine weeks. So just let me give you the panoramic overview, and then we'll come to the spot where we are.

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This is a letter meant to be read at one time, so you could get the full sweep.

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And here we just dive into these few verses in 1 Corinthians 3. It's necessary for us to understand the book.

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So, 16 chapters, and here's what Paul does to this struggling church.

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He says, I've got four main issues, four moral issues. Chapters 1 through what?

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6. And it's one of these books that is very spicy. I call this a picante book, and you begin to read it, and you think, anything but boring.

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There's crazy things going on. And Paul says, the church is divided, and I want you to be unified.

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The church has sexual sin going on, incest and stuff. That can't happen in the body of Christ.

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The church has lawsuits. People are suing each other for gain. Can't do that.

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And he deals with those kind of moral issues. Lack of purity. There are people who are adulterers committing adultery, fornicators committing fornication, homosexuals committing those kind of acts, on and on and on.

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And Paul says, I need to deal with this problem. Those kind of people do not inherit the kingdom of God. And then some people wrote

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Paul a letter and asked him some questions because they wanted the answers.

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And some of the questions were, is it okay to be celibate? What do we do about meat sacrifice to idols?

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Should women wear some kind of veil or head covering in public worship? What do we do with the

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Lord's Supper? What about speaking in tongues and spiritual gifts? What about those?

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Did Jesus really be raised from the dead? Was he raised from the dead? And what about giving? So, four moral issues, seven questions.

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And now we're back in chapter three, dealing with this first moral issue, unity in the local church.

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I wouldn't normally spend chapters one, two, three, and four on unity, but Paul does. And we're right in the middle of this first reproof, this first moral issue, in response to these reports that were brought by those in the household of Chloe, what about church unity?

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You've got to have the right view of wisdom. And now we move to the section, you've got to have a right view of leadership.

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I think this is going to be good for us today because most... Did you know this? What's the average tenure for a pastor today in Protestant churches?

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Mainstream and evangelical. Less than three years, two and a half to three years.

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Partly because mainline churches say, if you leave the guy in for too long, he gets too much power.

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He gets to know the people. He marries some of them, he buries some of them, and he kind of gets to know them. And we, the senate, we, the bishops, we, the leaders, we, the presbyters, we need to keep control of this thing, and we can't let the pastor get in there.

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So you're in for two and a half years, and then you're out. Sometimes pastors are out because they're lazy, sinful, and stupid.

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And they get fired, and they should get fired. They think they're the next John Knox. Sometimes churches hire pastors because you're our hireling, we tell you what to do, when to do it, how often to do it.

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We want to see your expense reports, we want to see your day timers, we want to know where you were today, how many miles you drove, and why aren't you at the church building all the time.

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So then pastors just leave. But I think there's more of a tendency, at least I think in our church, is to look at a

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Dave Jeffries, or a Pradeep, or Steve, or myself, and say, we don't hate these guys, we love them, but we just might love them too much.

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How to properly evaluate leadership in the local church? Let me give you six considerations in Chapter 3, verses 5 to 9.

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This is a thought here that Paul has on how to evaluate leadership, and I'm going to give you six total, maybe not six today, but six total, in Chapter 3, verses 5 to 9 in 1

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Corinthians, so that you can properly evaluate leadership so that you may contribute to the unity of this church.

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Number one, focus on Jesus Christ, not on the hired help.

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Focus on Jesus Christ, not on the farmhands, not on the hired help. Look at verse 5, what then is

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Apollos? What is Paul? What's the next word? Superstars, pedestal standers.

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Is that a word? It's no. Servants through whom you believe, as the

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Lord assigned to each. Now, when I was in Los Angeles, I would meet celebrities for the first time.

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I was a kid from Nebraska, and all of a sudden, you know, somebody would say to me, would you please pass the cream?

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And I would look over, and I think, I know that voice. And I'd look over, and there's Spock standing right next to me. Leonard Nimoy, you know, and I'm just staring at his ears thinking, what's going on?

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Then I'd go, I went and ran a triathlon, and a guy came up to me and said, what kind of after triathlon party are you going to go to?

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And I looked and said, I haven't made up my mind, and it was Tom Cruise asking me which party I was going to go to. And I'm thinking, wow, this is pretty good.

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I ditched him, couldn't be bothered. Everywhere you would go, you would see people from Mr.

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Tito, Walter Matthau, to Bono, and you just see them on the streets. And I would watch people just go up and worship them, and just have to be by them, and the paparazzi, and you know what it's like,

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People Magazine, Us Magazine, TMZ, you name it. It's just this celebrity idolatry.

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But you know, in evangelicalism, we do the exact same thing. I know

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John MacArthur pretty well, and he doesn't want this, but I watch people do the same thing to John MacArthur that they did to Rob Lowe and Melissa Gilbert when

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I saw them at the video store. The exact same thing. If you'd go to somebody's house that was prominent, let's say the president invited you to the

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White House, and you noticed every time you picked up a shrimp cocktail and some kind of little apple juice, and you set it down, there was people with kind of aprons, people kind of dressed up, and before you know it, and they could do it in a very sly way, they'd just slip in, take all your stuff, and move on out.

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And the president was talking to you, and you would say, well, excuse me, president, but I've got to get to know this servant better.

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I've got to know this servant, and I want to follow them, and I want to see where they go, and I like them better.

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By the way, what kind of shoes do those servants have? Are they some kind of special suede shoes? And what are they drinking behind the scenes?

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Does that person kind of drink Diet Coke back there? What do they do? It'd be ridiculous. And you could see where the parallel is.

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Jesus Christ is the only God, and let's just compare, just for a brief moment,

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Jesus Christ and me. Let's just say Jesus was here today in the flesh, if that was theoretical.

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And now we're greeting people at the end of the service, and I stand and greet. I hope you would be trained well enough that I would say to myself, not one person has come over here and said hello to me.

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They're flocking to Jesus, and Paul says, I am a servant. Now, he doesn't say I'm a slave.

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He says I'm a servant, and the Greek word is diakonat. I'm a deacon. I'm a table waiter.

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Do you ever go to a restaurant? I was one in California, Carl's Jr., and they give you like a little, you order, you pay, and they give you a little number.

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And you go to your table, and you set the little number there. And that person that comes out looking for the number, number 18,

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I've got two double cheeseburgers and five 99 -cent value meals. And, okay, that's the ebendros.

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Oh, man, you're awesome, and I get down on the floor and begin, you are exalted. Paul says, we are servants, and look how he says it.

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What would English grammar dictate? Who then is Apollos? Who is

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Paul? But that's not what the text says. The text says, what?

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The function's important. The people are not. This is not a who. This is a what.

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These are worker bees. These people are nobodies. They're farmhands. I was a farmhand once in Nebraska, in northern

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Nebraska, up in Crofton. And we worked really hard for two summers. And then, finally, the family invited us in for lunches during the day, about 11 o 'clock for lunch.

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And I was with my friend Scott, and we were the two hired farmhands. And we got paid,

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I don't know, about $50 a day, and they let us sit over to the side. We were nobodies. We were nothings.

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Paul says, I'm a servant. And you guys are running over here, I'm of Paul, I'm of Apollos.

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Paul says, that's not right. Personality cults. You can just see it in evangelicalism today.

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One pastor, 19 campuses. Once every 19 weeks, we get the real pastor. The other 18 weeks, we get the video.

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Because they're focused around the guy. I'm going to die one day, I'm going to get kicked out one day,

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I'm going to get fed up with you one day. Maybe not all at the same time, just comma in between each of those.

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And servants are replaceable. You can just look down in the corridors of church history and say, oh

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God, what were you doing taking Calvin home at 55, and Edwards at 56, and, you know, you shouldn't have

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William Cary lived longer? What about Adoniram Judson? What about Mary Schleser?

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Somebody dies, Spurgeon dies, the kingdom is never going to come to England. Or the world. God just reloads.

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Here's another servant, here's another servant, here's another servant. And so if everybody's looking at Jesus, the church comes together.

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That's what he's after here at Corinth. Because they're all looking at Paul. And I have a question for you. If Paul says, don't look to me, look to Jesus.

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How much less am I than Paul? Are James Boyce, are

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R .C. Sproul, are John Piper? Here's Paul. Paul says, don't look at me. I'm a servant.

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If you go to a fancy restaurant and the waiter comes out and gives you this five -star meal, you might say thank you to the waiter.

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But who's the one that made the meal? The chef. We are not to exalt leaders.

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They are what's, not who's. I'm a what. Paul tries to lower his status in their eyes.

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I just find that fascinating. I read an article last week, and it was by a pastor who described his wife's view of his preaching.

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And here's what she said, as he relates it. She is supportive, but unimpressed.

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I thought, I'm married to a woman who's very supportive, but she is unimpressed with me and my preaching.

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Now, that doesn't mean she doesn't think that I'm not preaching the Bible, or I'm not being faithful. But she is supportive.

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I guess you get a dollar, because I'm bringing you up. If we're bringing a kid's name up, they get a dollar. She's supportive, but she's unimpressed.

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I want you to be supportive, but unimpressed. I'm not even close to Paul. And Paul's saying, why would you look at me?

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And you notice what the text says? Servants. That's who we are.

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Why worship the servant? Turn over to John chapter 2, if you would, please. I want to just give you an illustration of this.

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And you think, well, you know, Mike, you just think you're such a big shot around here, so you're telling us all, you know, it's something you've created in your own mind, and we don't worship you.

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We don't have you as some kind of idol. And we know you have clay feet.

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Well, then, if the answer is that, I'm glad. Excel still more. John chapter 2.

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Now, when we read this, I dare you to let all your focus and attention and praise and admiration go towards the servants.

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I dare you to not stare at the son, Jesus. Here's the first miracle that Jesus did.

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John chapter 2, verse 1, on the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

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Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, they have no wine.

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Jesus said to her, woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the table waiters, the servants, do whatever he tells you.

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Now, there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding 20 or 30 gallons. Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water, and they filled them up to the brim.

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He said to them, now draw some out, take it to the master of the feast, so they dutifully took it.

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When the master of the feast tasted the water, now become wine, did not know where it came from.

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Though the servants had drawn the water new, the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, everyone serves the good wine first.

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And when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine, but you have kept the good wine until now.

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This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him.

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Isn't the servant awesome? Do you notice how praiseworthy they were? It was just awesome to watch and they did it so quickly, so obedient.

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And even preachers turn these things into, well, how do we serve the Lord? We should serve without asking, delayed obedience is disobedience.

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We should serve with joy and we should do whatever the master says, no matter what the outcome is. That's how we should serve Jesus. That's not the way to preach this passage.

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The passages should be preached this way. Jesus is awesome and he has the authority over natural elements.

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He can do whatever he wants and he's giving them a good spiritual lesson that the old wine of Judaism is gone.

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Here's the new wine. Look at Jesus. Where's Waldo? I don't see Waldo. I see some servants and some people, but I see

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Jesus as the sign maker. I drive by churches and there are signs,

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Reverend, Doctor, Founding Pastor, Double Doctor, so and so, and I just want to go, yuck.

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I'm so glad I'm not the Founding Pastor, Double Doctor, Reverend Bishop, Apostle.

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John the Baptist knew the disciples come to John, John's disciples come, and is this the real deal?

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Is Jesus the Messiah? You're somebody and we listen to you preach and you're preaching about repentance and what about this

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Jesus who's come? What do we do with him? And John the Baptist says, what? I can't even tie his sandals,

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I'm so low. And I have a job to do and that's this, minimize John the Baptist and extol

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Jesus. He must decrease John so Jesus may increase, right?

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That's exactly what Paul's trying to get across. Paul, Peter, John, your favorite missionary, your favorite pastor dead or alive,

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Martin Lloyd -Jones, Elizabeth Elliot, they're all table waiter farm hands.

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They're nobodies, they're nothings, they mean nothing in terms of worshipping them.

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And I think they'd all say that too. Well, you know

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Ike, my favorite preachers are so and so, then such and such, then such and such. But you don't know anything because my favorite preachers are better than your favorite preachers.

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You can't even analyze preachers very well because you think Piper's the greatest preacher, I think S. Lewis Johnson's the greatest preacher.

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You listen to John MacArthur. That kind of talk makes a church not unified but disunified, ununified.

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Number two, second consideration. Number one, focus on Jesus, not the hired help.

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Number two, focus on Jesus Christ because he himself and no one else gave you eternal life.

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And for that matter, every other good thing you have spiritually, physically, temporally. Focus on Jesus because no one else gave you eternal life.

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Look at verse five again. We're just going to dive into verse five and these words are important.

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If you read the Bible too fast, you're not going to get it. You need to read the Bible like a Middle Easterner. Here's how

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Westerners read the Bible. I can read as fast as I can. I've got to read the Bible in a year. I've got to read the speed reading, kind of Evelyn Woodhead speed reading class, you know,

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I've got to just get through as fast as I can and go as fast as I can. Yes, I read the Bible. I read a Bible every year. I read a different translation every year.

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And now I'm up to my 15th time going through the Bible this year. Well, that's good.

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But unless you're Reverend Dr. Founding so -and -so pastor, you didn't remember anything you said. You didn't remember anything you read.

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But when you read slowly and over and over, you get this kind of just how they would read back in those days and just systematically with understanding.

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What then is Apollos? What then is Paul? Servants, now mark these two words in the

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ESV, through whom you believed. Those are the two key words. You might want to just underline them. Through whom?

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Not because of. If you got saved when I preached, you didn't get saved because of me.

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You got saved through me because I preached the word of God. If I have converted anyone here,

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God have mercy on your souls. You need to repent and trust Jesus alone because you're not saved. But there are preachers, evangelists, men, women, personal discipleship.

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And when they preach the word, you believe because of them or you believe through them.

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I believe through them. And you don't say, well, you know, the instrument is really important.

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No, the Savior is the important one. If you go have surgery,

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I don't think, and I've been in a lot of surgeries and I won't bore you with any more gory stories today. But the first time

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I saw that scalpel cut some skin open, I didn't know if I was going to faint or pass out or, you know, be intrigued.

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And then they took the tumor out and sewed them all up and gave them some antibiotics and then they're walking back and forth.

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I didn't see anybody, especially the patients, say, can I have a copy of that, can I get that scalpel? Can I just put it in the autoclave and sterilize it?

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And I just want to mount that scalpel up above my living room because, my living room fireplace because I just want to,

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I just want to remember that scalpel. It means a lot to me. I kind of have a soft spot for scalpels. I collect scalpels.

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No, hopefully you go and say, thank you, the surgeon hand saved me.

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He used that as an instrument. That's exactly how God uses people, as instruments.

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Nobody gets saved because of preachers. You get saved through preachers. So why idolize the instrument?

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff, or management.