1 Corinthians 1 continued 02-01-10

No Compromise Radio. Thanks for tuning in to No Compromise Radio with pastor and author, Dr. Mike Ebendroff. Today on No Compromise Radio, we'll be hearing Pastor Mike open the Word of God in a recent message he preached at Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston, Massachusetts.

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

Thanksgiving for Salvation by Grace Alone

There's one main verb in the whole sentence found in verse 4, verses 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. There's one main verb and that verb is thank. I thank my God. Now Paul isn't commanding you to be thankful, but we're learning from Paul with preaching application that we can follow Paul.

I thank my God always concerning you, concerning Corinth, concerning you for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus. The first thing you can be thankful for at Bethlehem Bible Church, a less than perfect church is God has saved people here.

God thank you for saving these people. Salvation by grace alone through faith alone. The way the language is set up in the Greek is it goes back to something in the past that has been done, that has been accomplished by another.

God, you saved them. This isn't sarcasm. This isn't Paul in a backhanded way, you guys are all sinful and I just thank God for you. No, he really means it. He has an attitude of God, you have graciously done in Christ for them what they haven't deserved and you are to be praised.

I thank my God always concerning you. The thanking is an ongoing. Every time I think about you Corinth, I say thank you God for their salvation. But it's a tense in the original, an aorist passive if you'd like it, an aorist passive participle for the grace of God which was given, a one time gift given by another, salvation grace.

Paul saying this, I could be thankful because you aren't running around worshipping Aphrodite anymore. You're not running around worshipping Apollos anymore. You're not worshipping Zeus. You're not worshipping the Navy God Melkat that we learned about before.

You're not and if I look at you I could say if it wasn't for the grace of God, who would you be worshipping? Our ancestors in England, maybe we'd be with them worshipping trees. I've been to India and you think, you know, if it wasn't for the grace of God, my Indian friends that live in India and even here now, they'd be worshipping a whole variety of horrible gods, Ganesh and Saraswati and all these people but we look around, we don't worship ourselves anymore now do we?

Is that something to be thankful to God for? I think so. We don't worship, I say this in no jest at all but if you want to laugh that's fine, we don't worship the Red Sox anymore, okay you can laugh, I'm just kidding.

Think about it, people worship sports, you were born a worshipper and you will worship something and you'll get all into it and you'll look at it and you'll figure it all out and it just consumes your mind, your thoughts, everything.

It's by the grace of God that you at Bethlehem Bible Church don't worship rock and roll anymore. That just sucks people in. Whatever your past idol was, yourself, your wife, your kids, I don't know, the Virgin Mary, it could be a thousand different things.

If you weren't worshipping God and now God has saved you from that false worship, you should say about those people, God thank you that they're not running around kissing trees anymore, worshipping banyan trees instead of well you know these people don't measure up to my standards and the elders don't do such and such and da da da da da and the list goes on and on and on.

Instead God thank you, thank you for saving these people. Can you say about Bethlehem Bible Church, can you say to God, I thank my God always concerning Bethlehem Bible Church. God has graced this church.

We no longer are thinking to ourselves, the way to please God is through works. The way to get closer to God is to just do more. Haven't we been saved from that nonsense? We don't work by merit, by wages.

No. And Paul is big on this because for so long he has been a Pharisee and he gets to God through law, through deeds, through action, through tithing, through killing other people who don't agree with him.

Paul says my whole life is one of merit and then he says I thank God that for you Corinthians, you don't believe that anymore. Now of course they're not living up to what they believe but he says at the very beginning, you don't get favor from God because you keep his law and you've been open to that in your mind.

And it's so good. One man described grace this way, God's utter generosity, unselfish, spontaneous, recklessly prodigal generosity which acts wholly out of loving concern for his people's need. Even if they're completely unworthy of his love and help which he offers to them.

That's Bethlehem Bible Church. That is us. We should be thankful to God that he's given us grace. And when you get this grace of forgiveness, it's easier to serve others. It's easier to forgive others.

It's easier to be more thankful. We are not people who have saved ourselves and that should make you say thankful. I'm thankful. All right, let's keep moving. Let's keep moving. No, I don't want to keep moving.

Back to the text, I at all times give thanks. This doesn't mean that he's praying 24 hours a day. He just says when I think of you, when I pray, I often consider you and when I do consider you, the first thing I think about is God, thank you that they have been redeemed.

They are now set apart from pagan immorality and idolatry. If you're here at this church, I urge you. I commend you to think about this church from the vertical perspective first before you begin to say all these things that you don't like.

It's just people let you down. People have dogged you. The leaders don't understand this and that. Those all may be true. Corinth was ungodly, but we have been saved by the grace of God. Lutzer said, here's something you can count on.

The better you believe yourself to be, the less grace you think you need. The more self-confident you are, the more convinced you'll be that you could get by even if God were stingy with grace. Sure, you struggle with sin, but that's just a part of the human predicament.

All you need is some help from God and a bit of personal determination. You can make yourself good enough for God to accept you. You just need to get desperate enough to clean up your act. If grace can help you, fine.

And Lutzer paints that picture of a grace that's not real grace, a grace that's not good grace, a grace that isn't grace but really works. You should be thankful for the people at Bethlehem Bible Church.

Do you know if God loves the people here? You should, too. Who picked the people here? You know, besides, I think, Steve Cooley and Janet, I didn't pick anybody to come to this church. You just all came in.

You heard about the church. Our friends brought you. Some I inherited, you know, the Cranes and the O 'Leary's and the Shepherds and the Pharaohs, etc. People come to the church and they are by God's perfect wisdom, providentially.

We don't pick. I mean, it's interesting to me because if it wasn't for the local church, there are all kinds of things about life I wouldn't even know because I wouldn't pick people like you to be in my family.

Well, I didn't mean that that way but that applies, too. We pick people like ourselves. But God picks people and He brings them in with different gifts and other things and He's the one who's ordered the family.

He knows what we need. And I like it. I remember when we were in Los Angeles, I loved the pot providences we had at our Bible study because we had Cubans, we had Asians, we had Indians, we had Mexicans, we had some Anglos there, and it just made good, spicy potlucks.

Okay, pot providences. It's the same thing in the local church. We didn't pick each other but God picked us. And our response should not be, I can't believe these people. When you think that way, you should say to yourself, I should repent of that and start thinking about how God is putting this church together and how He shows His grace in sinners and then exposes other people to His grace through sinful people.

Thankfulness for Sound Preaching and Spiritual Understanding

1 Thessalonians 5 .18, Have you ever considered this verse for thanking God for this church? In everything give thanks for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. It is God's will for you to thank Him for this church.

Because we're perfect? No. Because God has granted us salvation. We're not worshiping someone besides God anymore. And you say, well, I don't feel like it. I can think of people by name and they're still bugging me, they're still rubbing me the wrong way.

One man said, you can learn to give thanks even if you don't feel particularly thankful. If God gives a command like in 1 Thessalonians, He expects obedience whether you are in the mood or not. Thankfulness like forgiveness is not an emotion.

Thankfulness is an intelligent response of gratitude to God. The Jews had a proverb and it said, If men thank God for good things, they wouldn't have time to complain about the bad. And the Africans would say, even the hen lifted her head toward heaven when she swallows her grain.

How can I be thankful for people that let me down? For sinful people? Paul says, I'm thankful to Corinth, number one, because they don't worship pagans anymore. They've been saved by grace alone, through Christ alone, through faith alone, number one.

Number two, you can be thankful for people at Bethlehem Bible Church because God has not only given you sound preaching, but an apprehension of it. Not only sound preaching, but an apprehension of it.

Now let's see what's said first of Paul to Corinth and then we'll apply the truth. Verse 5, that in everything, remember it's still the same sentence of thanks, that in everything you were enriched in Him, Corinth, in all speech and all knowledge.

Corinth says, Paul says to Corinth, you are rich. You are bountiful. You are holding all the cards spiritually. And they're all found, you notice the text, enriched in Him. If you've got Jesus, you can't get anything more.

All the riches that we have are found in Christ Jesus. In giving the Son, He has given us everything. Specifically to Corinth, in all speech and in all knowledge. What are these spiritual treasures in Christ?

All speech and all knowledge. Well, back in these days, of course, there were all kinds of people out there saying, I'm speaking for God, listen to me. No, I speak for God, listen to me. No, I speak for God, listen to me.

And was the canon of scripture, all 66 books, complete? And people have little Gideon pocket Bible walking around? No. Paul says, when it comes to you, Corinth, 60 AD, 62 AD, 64 AD, you understood the preaching of the Word.

A, you had the preaching, speech, and you understood the preaching, all knowledge. So someone would come along, and what would happen to Corinth if they didn't have someone who had the spiritual gift of prophecy or couldn't preach the truth to them?

Well, they would be saved by grace, but they would never grow. And Paul says, when it comes to speech and it comes to knowledge, people came and preached to you the truth. Paul, matter of fact, did himself, didn't he, for 18 months?

And you could understand it. Those are two things you could thank God for. We have biblical preaching, we have biblical prophecy back in those days, and we can understand what's being said. And the same goes true for us.

In every utterance and in all knowledge, you understand the truth. You understand concretely who Jesus is, what He did, how He will come back soon. Objectively, the truth is preached. Corinth had that.

Subjectively, the truth is understood. Corinth had that. Now, in a different way, don't we have that? You say, well, now you're just going to be talking about yourself. I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about we have had doctrinally sound preaching.

Ignore me. Think about the other elders. From Steve Lawson to John MacArthur in this pulpit, they are the gift of God. And so we say, well, people let me down in the church. Paul says that could be true.

But number one, they've been saved by grace alone. And number two, they've got real teaching. You know, if it wasn't for the grace of God, I would be up here giving you a bunch of Joyce Meyer mumbo jumbo.

Here's the words, they're containers of the truth, and you've got to say it. If it wasn't for the grace of God, people like Benny Hinn would be up in this pulpit doing his charade. True? Are we better than these people?

Or do we say, it's not better. We're sinners. But God has graced us, like he graced Corinth, with truth from the pulpit. And as the pulpit goes, so does the church go. How many churches? Just get online and type churches around the area, where it's a bunch of...

I'm just going to have to take a deep breath here. It is gruel. It is lowest common denominator. It is devoid of trying to say, what did God intend when he wrote this? And I better tie the sermon to authorial intent.

How many churches can you just type up? And maybe it was your old church. Maybe it was two churches ago. Or maybe you go visit a church, and you sit there, and you want to be fed the word of God, and you say, God, my heart is hardened, and I need preaching that's truth, so you can just jackhammer my heart, because I want to have a soft heart for you, a soft heart for my wife.

God, give me the truth. And somebody stands up here and gives story after platitude, after illustration, after you're really good. It's good to be good. It's nice to be nice. And God, through Paul, put it in Paul's heart to say, Corinth, you might not live up to what you've been taught, but you've got the truth preached, and you even understood it.

Do you not know Corinth? Do you not know Corinth? Do you not know Corinth? Do you not know Corinth? Didn't he say that often? Now, it sounds self-serving, but that's not my job to sound self-serving, is to tell you the truth.

So here's the truth. If we have received, and I think we have third-class conditional, since we have received the truth of God from the pulpit, from visitors to the elder board we have now, you ought to say to yourself, God, we have had biblical preaching of this truth.

Thank you. And you have given us your spirit to illumine our minds so we have understood what's come from the pulpit. Isn't that better than so-and-so deacon doesn't live up to what I expect, so-and-so elders let me down?

Friends, I don't want to let anybody down, and I'd like to live a more sanctified life. I think we all would. But at the end of the day, when I look at this motley group of people here, I could start naming the list of things.

I ask so-and-so to do something. They never did it. So-and-so is a complainer. So-and-so did such-and-such. So-and-so, so-and-so, so-and-so. And it just feeds on itself, doesn't it? Sinfully, I might add.

Isn't it better to look, and I look at every different kind of race and sex and background and color of skin, and I go, you're united for one reason, because the grace of God, like interrupting Paul on the way to Damascus, has interrupted you.

And you've had good preaching, and you've understood it. God, thank you. Isn't that a much better way to live? I don't like complainers, and I don't like it when I complain. It's just the default where you go, if it starts with God, we remember what we deserve and what we've got.

We don't have Kenneth Hagin preaching from the pulpit and his nonsense. We don't have all these people come walking up. I remember when I was in Los Angeles, I worked out at Gold's Gym, and I thought it was quite interesting.

That's where I basically learned Greek. And some people would come up to me, and they'd say, well, what are you studying? I'm studying Greek. Why are you studying Greek? The New Testament's written in Greek.

Why are you studying the New Testament? Well, because I'm a pastor. Why are you a pastor? And then it was just like, okay, just spot me. All right. And I met a guy, and he was a Hollywood actor. I mean, I would see Denzel Washington and different bands there and people.

And I met a guy, and he said, well, I was an actor, and God has saved me. And, you know, if you're an actor and you've been saved, then you get to preach to 5 ,000 people, and, you know, you're a big shot because you used to be an actor.

And I said, and this was in the Promise Keepers era, there's some kind of men's meeting, and I'm speaking to 1 ,000 people this Saturday. I go, man, that is awesome. Well, what are you going to preach?

He said, well, I'm waiting for the Spirit to move me, and I believe it would be against the Holy Spirit to prepare to bring notes, and I think I'll just get up there and see what happens. Friends, do you know how often that happens in local churches?

The most downloaded time, sermons .com on the Internet is when? Saturday night. Now, if you know me well, you know my faults. But God has given me, along with the three other elders, a determination to teach you sound, hygienic doctrine, whether the church blows up to 5 ,000 or shrinks down to the elders, wives, and kids.

So help me, God, to death do us part, yes? And God has put in your heart a love for the truth. God has put in your heart an understanding for the truth. And so when you look around at saints that don't live up to your expectations, you say, you know what, but they've been saved by grace alone, and God has given them preaching.

Preaching does change people, and God has given them an understanding. And if it wasn't for God, I'd be getting up here. I remember the time right over there, some guy brought his kids to Awana. Brian Bartlett knows the story.

I think I put it in my first book. And I always ask the questions to the pastor, what books are you preaching through verse by verse now? And then the pastor goes, well, I'm kind of doing a series out of my, you know, last-minute studies, or I'm doing some topical thing, or this or that.

I like when the pastor goes, I'm preaching through James verse by verse. Wow. To teach people the whole counsel of God, that even is a gift. So I said, well, what are you going to preach? What are you preaching through?

He said, well, you know, sometimes the spirit of God moves me not to even preach. We just worship in song. I thought, I don't know what spirit moves you not to preach, but his name isn't the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit doesn't move you to do anything that he's already commanded, because he says preach the word.

I really think this is true. I really think I'm not going to get through my sermon today. I sat in my study going, I don't have enough to talk about. And here we are, point two. I really believe there'd be almost as many people here next Sunday if I told you no songs, no offering, no baptisms, no communion, no praise choruses, no hymns.

I'm going to get up and I'm going to preach for an hour and a half next Sunday, and it's going to be a worship service. I think you'd come. Why? Do you think a pastor's thankful for that? God, thank you that you worked a work in the hearts of the people that they would even say, I'll just come for preaching.

I want to hear from God. It's good to sing. It's right to sing. It's good to give, et cetera. But if we have a church here that says, I want preaching more than anything else, it's good to say to God, we praise you for who you are, but then I want to hear from God's Word.

I want to be conformed through His Word to be more like Christ. I'm thankful for that. Are you thankful? Next time you see somebody and you go, yeah, I remember how they let me down 14 years ago and said they're going to bring a turkey over and never did and all these things, and I've always got a grudge.

One of you did that to me. No, just kidding. God, you save these people. I'm saved. They're saved. They've got good preaching, and I don't mean I'm a good preacher. I mean biblical preaching. There's biblical truth coming from the Sunday schools, from IBS, from the book table to the library to adult Bible studies to the nursery.

I've got Bible teaching, and God, you've even given me the eyes to see it. Thank you. And if you do that, you'll be just like Paul. It's a good time of year to talk about Thanksgiving, isn't it? It's a good time through the Spirit's empowerment to be thankful like Paul.

I think probably this week, I'm not a prophet nor a son of a prophet, but when you hear sermons like this, probably somebody is going to rub you the wrong way this week, the next two weeks. And the response could either be grumbling, complaining, murmuring.

You get on the prayer line or the complaining line, and it's like, you know, did you hear? How about call those friends that you like to complain to and say, I'm so thankful to God that he'd save us and he would help us understand the Word through preaching and illumination.

How about the next time somebody comes to you and begins to complain to you, you say, you know, I think if I hear this complaining, I think I'm going to go in contradiction to the Word of God. I don't want to hear complaining.

I know we all struggle. How can I help pray for you that you won't complain and you'll be more thankful to God? How about that would be good. And I guarantee you, when the complaining seeps in, we're going to find ourselves just like 1 Corinthians 1 -10 and following, where the schisms start.

The good news is I don't think we're there or even close to being there, but I want us to have preventative maintenance so we say, God thanks be to God for his indescribable gift shown in people. Let's pray.

Our Heavenly Father, what a great God you are. How wonderful is your Word. And I'm thankful, Lord, personally. When I was a member of a congregation, you gave me a church full of redeemed people with awesome Bible teaching.

And then, Lord, you gave me the ability to understand it by your Spirit's illumination. And so, Lord, now for the people here at Bethlehem Bible Church, I pray that you'd make them thankful. I'm thankful that you've enriched them with all things.

And I pray that especially this time of year, you would help us to look upon you, to look towards you. Lord, I'm thankful that in heaven, there'll be no more complaining, only praising. But Lord, on earth, we need your help.

We are weak. We are frail. So may your Spirit be lavished upon us as we learn to be a more thankful people at Bethlehem Bible Church. In Jesus' name, amen.

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

Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 10 .15 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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