Misplaced Reverence

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Don Filcek; 1 Corinthians 1:10-17 Misplaced Reverence

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filcik preaches from his sermon series titled, 1
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Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in. And welcome to Recast Church.
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I'm Don Filcik. I'm the lead pastor here. If you can find your seats, there's still people filtering in. Glad that you're here this morning.
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It is Mother's Day. And as I say, every Mother's Day, I encourage you, if you are able, to honor your mother today.
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It's a wonderful thing that our culture still acknowledges the value of moms. And so I encourage you to reach out, if that's a phone call, if that's a trip or whatever it might be, to honor her today.
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And that was Elijah Potter. He's going to be leading us in worship. Dave and Rachel Bund are out on a much -needed, much -earned vacation.
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And so they're going to be gone the next couple of weeks. But very grateful for Elijah stepping in and leading us in worship this morning.
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As you walked in, you received a worship folder. In there are a couple of QR codes. I think there might be some instructions on the screen.
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Not really. If you need any help, go out at the welcome table. They would be willing to show you how to use those QR codes to get a download of our app and a download of our weekly email that goes out and a way to sign up for that there.
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And then there's a connection card in there. Whether you're new or you're kind of just figuring things out here or you've been around for a while, that's still a good means of communicating with the office and with the elders here.
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We love to pray for people. We do pray for you. And it's just straight up a question of whether we're praying the right things.
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And if you are willing to share that on the back of that connection card, then we can pray for you knowingly, and that's always helpful.
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There's also a place for you to share your information if you're willing. And we won't spam your email address, but it just gives us a way of getting in contact with you if we need to.
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And then the last thing that you received when you walked in was an offering envelope. We don't pass an offering plate. We really, truly, genuinely believe that your giving is a spiritual thing, but it's between you and God.
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It's not between you and us. And so whatever is given in those envelopes, we consider given to God for the benefit of the blessing of the work that he's doing here through us in this community.
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And so there's a slot out in the welcome table where you can give that if you would be led to this morning.
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I'm really glad to be together with you this morning. I absolutely love Recast Church. I love the things that God has done here in our community, building us up together in his word.
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And I think it would be helpful to introduce the text of Scripture this morning by clarifying something that has likely become so much white noise for most of us here in this gathering.
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If you've been around for a while, you will notice that I get up here nearly every Sunday, and it's been years now that I step up here and I introduce myself as Don Filsack, the lead pastor here.
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And for many of those years, I was the only full -time paid pastor. And it might actually cross your mind at times, why in the world does he say the lead pastor?
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Why doesn't he say the pastor? We have Ben Wainwright, who's currently a pastor intern, and the goal is to take that title intern off and have him be a full -blown pastor.
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He's going to go through the theological gauntlet later on in the summer. And before the elders, and we're hoping to confer on him the title of pastor.
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But why do I add the word lead when it appears to be that I'm the only pastor here? And this is a good time to clarify this in introduction to this text, because I believe this text exists to give us all pause to consider leadership.
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As we read it, you're going to see what I mean. But our evangelical culture has seen its share of rock star solo pastors rising up only to crash and burn, right?
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Raise your hand if you know what I'm talking about when I say that. You read and you're aware, and if you're online at all, you have seen your share of pastors rising up to beat their chests only to fall off the stage and be done.
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And many of you sitting here have been victim of more local than that. You've been a victim of abusive leadership in just a local church.
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Like, you're here and I know you, and you've been wounded and you've been injured in the past by abusive leadership, and you're reasonably gun -shy about leaders.
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So this seems like a good time to explain that I am not the only pastor here.
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We have a board of pastors that meets once a month. We call them elders, which is the biblical word for the leadership of a church, but elder and pastor is used all throughout the
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New Testament interchangeably. When we say elder, we mean pastor, and when we say pastor, we mean elder.
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I happen to be a full -time paid elder, but we have a group of guys here who care for you, who love you.
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You see them up here praying for you and praying for the church every Sunday.
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We kind of have a rotation, and you'll see them come up here and pray. You see them in the back each Sunday, there to serve you, there to answer questions, there to reach out to you, there for you to share your requests with, there to even pray with you if you have a need on the fly, and they would love that.
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But I'm confident that our pastors here—this is what I mean, church— I'm confident that our pastors would do just fine if I got hit by a bus tomorrow.
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And as a matter of fact, I would be shocked and surprised if I was removed from the equation.
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I would be shocked and surprised if one of them didn't take over where I'm at today. I'd be surprised if it wasn't somebody within this church that God has been raising up to replace me in my absence, and that's my hope.
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That's the desire for Recast, is that we're a self -replicating church, that within us is the ability to train up leaders who will be able to carry on and continue to care for you.
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I'm saying all this because it's a good place to address this reality of the way that we're structured as a church, but also to highlight something to set the stage for this text that we're going to read here in a moment.
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And that is that there's a tendency in every human heart to obtain for ourselves teachers and spiritual guides.
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As a matter of fact, the book of Timothy says that in the end times, they are going to long for teachers and gathering teachers to themselves that say the things that we want to hear.
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And is that not our culture today, church? Is that not finding its way within the confines of the church?
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Is that not kind of the way that we roll, accumulating teachers who will tell us and affirm us and tell us the things that we desire?
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We have to be wary of allegiance to a favorite author, a favorite preacher, blogger, podcaster, or celebrity preacher.
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We have to be careful of that. Now, in all of this discussion and kind of introduction,
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I want to clarify, and I mean it sincerely, I am no rock star. I don't have any aspirations for that.
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I know that I'm not a celebrity preacher, and I'm hopeful that I'm going to make it out of life as merely a small -town pastor.
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Thank you very much. I hope that that's all that God has. But this text is not merely for my benefit, as if what
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I'm going to do here is kind of spew my own therapy session out on you, as if this is a text that's only for pastors, only for leaders.
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This is not merely for my benefit, but it's written, we're going to read and study this morning, it's written to correct a tendency that is in every single human heart that will take every single church in the wrong direction if given the chance.
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If given freedom to breathe and to flame the things that are natural in our hearts, it will lead us in the wrong direction, church.
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Our fallen sinful hearts will be tempted to follow charismatic teachers, hear me carefully, we will be tempted to follow charismatic teachers instead of attaching ourselves to right teaching.
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We will fall in love with the teacher and not with the word. Are you getting what
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I'm saying in that? That's the way our hearts are bent. We like charisma, we like energy, we like excitement, we like humor, we like, like, like, and there's all these things that we like, and the question, church, is do we love the word?
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Do we love his word? And more fundamentally, do we love the author of the word? That's my goal, is to point us to the one who loves us, who created us, who is redeeming us.
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Now we're tempted by glitzy flash and the glamour of humor and creativity and powerful manipulative rhetoric, and we can become a follower of an earthly teacher at the loss of the message and the gospel itself.
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And that's what's happening in Corinth. That's what's happening in this church that Paul is so concerned.
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Now, how many of you might be tempted, like in that day and age, like if Paul was the guy who started your church, you might go like,
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Paul's a big deal. Like he wrote the majority of the New Testament. Like, it might be some temptation to follow him and go like, okay, whatever he says,
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I'm going to listen. And even that, Paul is saying, don't do that. Don't do that to me.
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You see, the church was dividing along lines of their favorite teachers, and the gospel was being left behind.
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And so Paul accuses them of a pretty harsh thing in this text, dismembering the body of Christ, dividing the body of Christ, parting it into pieces.
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So let's open our Bibles or our devices or your scripture journals to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. We're going to read just a shorter section, verses 10 through 17 this morning, and let's see the first of many issues within the church of Corinth that God has been faithful to reveal to us.
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Don't forget, church, that as we're reading this, the title of the sermon series is, Sinful Church Glorious Gospel.
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Yes, Sinful Church Glorious Gospel, because this church that we're reading about is indeed sinful, but the gospel that saves is indeed glorious.
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So recast, this is God's holy word. Take it in. Give it your attention for these next couple of minutes.
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I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment.
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For it has been reported to me by Chloe's people that there's quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says,
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I follow Paul. I follow Apollos. I follow Cephas. I follow Christ. Is Christ divided?
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Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank
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God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name.
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Oh, I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.
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For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.
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Let's pray. Father, I thank you for your word that is faithful to meet us in the moments of our real life.
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I just see our culture all over this text. I see a tendency in my own heart and my own brokenness to accumulate for myself who would just be sounding boards for my own theology, sounding boards for the things, just extreme confirmation bias, reading the authors that I love that will say the same things and not challenge me and not press me.
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And Father, if we're not careful, we will become so independent in our intakes that we will no longer value the gathering together of your people.
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It would be so easy for us to be divided here without a divisive word, that each one sits in their own little bubble here in these chairs and no one just bouncing off of each other, doing our own thing, listening to our own teachers, listening to our own sermons, listening to our own stuff out in the world and not sharing in life vitally together.
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But Father, I thank you that you have called us to more. You have called us to unity. You have called us to say the same thing that Christ is our
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Lord. You have called us to worship you in the gathering together of your people.
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And we rejoice in that opportunity we have right now to sing songs before you in this gathering, uniting in saying the same things, united in mind, united in spirit, united in the worship of you through your
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Son, Jesus Christ. And it's in his name that I pray. Amen. All right, yeah, go ahead and be seated, but do make yourself comfortable.
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If at any time during the message you want more coffee or juice or donut holes, take advantage of that back there. And do please reopen your
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Bibles or your devices or your Scripture journals to 1 Corinthians 1, verses 10 through 17. That passage that I read earlier is going to be the text that we're going to walk through.
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What we're going to see in the start of this text is that Paul gives the prescription before declaring the illness.
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That starts off right away in the text. But let me start by reminding us what Paul has already said is true of the
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Corinthian church so that we don't go astray in our thinking that this is just merely now, just something that we're supposed to pull ourselves up by the bootstraps and do.
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Like as if all of 1 Corinthians, if you get into the latter half of it, you're going to get to a place where you're going to think, okay, there's a lot of instructions here.
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There's a lot of declaration of things that you need to do. But he's already began with the gospel, and that's why
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I want to bring us back to the gospel, and I'm going to be doing that regularly during this series, is to remind us who we are in Christ first, like Paul does, so then we can take on the instructions of our
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Lord and Savior who has loved us and given himself up for us. Just a reminder, he has called them saints.
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He is saying that they are those who have been saved and rescued from the consequences of their sin by Jesus Christ. They are awaiting the return of Christ.
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All of the stuff that he mentioned in those first nine verses of the book, he called them saints who are being sanctified together.
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He knows that through their confirmation of the gospel of Jesus Christ, that they are set apart to live for Jesus, to love
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Jesus. They've been equipped with all the things that they need for life and godliness in the church through Jesus Christ.
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And so once we've established those instructions, that these instructions throughout the book, rather, are for the blessing of those who belong to Jesus Christ by faith, then
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I think it's safe for us to go on looking at the reformation projects that God desires within his church.
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These are the things that God wants to work in those who love him and are called according to his purposes.
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This is so important that we get this right, church, because a failure to understand this has resulted in many people thinking that our message to the world is just reform your behavior.
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Just get it right. Just start acting the part. Just start playing Christian. How many of you know you don't start with rules?
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You start with Christ. You come to a savior, not to a list of rules and cleaning up your act.
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But that's what so much of the world has heard from the church. They've heard it inadvertently from us because we love the latter half of the letters, but not the earlier parts where the gospel is clearly conveyed.
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The Bible is not calling people first to a lifestyle change, but first to a savior.
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A savior who is our master and Lord who will then initiate for us life change.
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Paul begins right away in verse 10 with a proposed change for the entire church of Corinth. So our structure for the text is a rather unhelpful outline.
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It's a funny outline, but it's the way that Paul writes. Verse 10, the remedy.
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Verses 11 through 17, the illness. We've got one verse on the remedy, and then a bunch of verses that are describing the illness that the remedy is there to solve.
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We can tell something about an illness even by studying the remedy, so we start off with seeing the things that God desires in Paul's writing to give to the church.
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He begins with an appeal to the brothers and sisters in Corinth, and he appeals to them by the
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Lord Jesus Christ. By the Lord Jesus Christ, I appeal to you. Now the word appeal and urge is a more gracious word than the word command.
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Paul doesn't say definitively, I command that you do this. He says, I appeal to you. What's he appealing to?
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He's appealing to them who love Jesus. I appeal to you on the basis of your declaration that you love
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Jesus. He's your Lord, he's your master, he's bought you with a price, with his great love and his blood shed on the cross for you, so I'm appealing to you on that framework.
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I want to point out that we are no longer those who relate to God on the basis of command. That's kind of the idea of the old covenant law versus new covenant grace.
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How many of you are just glad that we live in a covenant of grace, that we don't have to jump through all those hoops?
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I didn't have to get up here and sacrifice a lamb this morning, amen? We didn't have to do all of that.
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We don't have the curtain that separates us, that special people who have to have their quiet time on our behalf, or something like that, or only person who can go to God is the priest, and you have to go through them and all of that rigmarole.
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No, we live in a day and age of abundant grace as revealed in his word.
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And so he is indeed, I want to be clear, he is indeed a master and Lord, but he is a master and Lord over those who love him and have experienced his love.
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And if we love him, then we will want to obey him, thus appeal, thus an urging from Paul.
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I urge you, by Christ who has purchased you, to clean up some things. And I want you to think about this appeal from Paul as a way of highlighting a subtle truth for each and every one of us here, the way that he appeals.
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The true follower of Jesus Christ can be moved toward obedience by mere appeal. If it takes more than subtle and clear declarations of the will of God to move us toward obedience, then we need to be concerned for our spiritual health.
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How much does it take to convict our hearts? How much does it take to go, oh, that's what
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Christ wants for me? Then I want that too. We all have sin, but as children can be easily convicted of sin by loving appeals.
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And here the appeal is for five very related things in the text. In English, they are these.
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He's appealing to a church, a group of people, not just an individual. And he's appealing to us as a church, to the
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Corinthians as a church, and he's saying, I appeal to you to have agreement, no divisions, unity, sameness of mind, and sameness of judgment.
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Now, those seem to be very related. There seems to be a lot of overlap in English about the way that we think of those different things.
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No division and unity seems like, well, that's different ways of saying the exact same thing. But in Greek, we see the word same three times.
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We only see it twice in English, but the word same occurs three times in these five things. And these words are nuanced enough to need our attention.
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They need a little bit of explanation. It's important to get this right, by the way, because these are things that God is calling us to exhibit as members of his church.
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The first is that all of us agree. Now, that seems like a tall order, right? All of us agree. Right off the bat, you're like, agree about what?
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And in what way are we all to agree? In Greek, this is a phrase that literally means, it's a very direct statement.
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It means say the same thing. Say the same thing is exactly what it says literally in Greek.
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We translate it that all of us agree, but this is that we say the same thing. So Paul is asking the church in Corinth, could you all get together and say the same thing?
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It's very clear that Paul does not expect everyone in the church to be clones of speech and conduct and actions.
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He doesn't expect us to all walk around like robots, saying exactly identically the same thing every day, all the time.
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Not at all. This is clear by the freedom he allows, specifically over gray area issues of the faith.
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He referred to Romans 14 for a lot of freedom that we have to disagree. This is kind of like saying, are we all supposed to agree about homeschooling?
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Are we all supposed to agree to send our kids to public school? Are we all supposed to agree about Christian school? Are we all supposed to agree about whether we can drink alcohol or not drink alcohol?
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Are we all supposed to agree about everything? Are we all supposed to say the exact same thing about every nuance?
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Well, Paul in Romans 14 says no. So what is he asking of the church in Corinth here?
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Saying the same thing is the idea of being unified around a common belief. Not saying everything the same, but realizing that it is because we can say some exact same things in this gathering that we have unity.
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It's the fact that we can declare some things together in unison that matters.
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That is what it means to be a church, and we need to be able to say some same things. Do you agree with me on that?
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In order to call us a church, there must be some things that we say the same. So I'm going to encourage us all to practice the very act of unity that Paul is asking right now by saying one thing in common this morning.
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I'm only asking of us to say one thing. I want you to only say it and declare it if you mean it.
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Here's what I'm going to ask us all to repeat. I'm going to count to three, and then I'm going to ask you to say it. I'll give you the phrase in advance.
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Jesus is Lord. That's what we're going to say together here in a moment when I count to three.
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Now, I only want you to repeat it if you believe it. But if you believe it, I want you to say it like you want Matawan to know it.
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Okay, can we do that together? We might have to do this a couple of times, because I have a feeling the first time you're going to be a little shy.
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Second time, you'll probably be a little louder. Third time, you'll be like, Don, let's get over it, and you'll say something loud.
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Jesus is Lord on three if you mean it. If you are united in that truth, then let's say it.
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One, two, three. Jesus is Lord. That was actually pretty good the first time.
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But I'm going to ask us to do it again, because it gave me chills. Jesus is Lord on three.
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One, two, three. Jesus is Lord. Amen. Jesus is
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Lord. We have done more than merely say the same thing. I hope your heart is as encouraged as mine is in this very moment hearing that.
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I'm not alone. I'm not the only one out there in this community who believes that Jesus is worthy of my affection, worthy of my life, worthy of my worship.
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But you do too. Amen. Oh, that is encouraging to my soul, and that's the kind of unity that Paul is driving for in Corinth.
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Can you say the same thing? Because if you can say that, then we're on the right track toward the
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Lord Jesus Christ. Is he your Lord? Can we say it together?
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Yes. We've declared a common thing we believe together that goes beyond mere theory into the fabric of knitting us together in common truth.
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Second, he not only reminds us that we are knit together by a common confession, but he further asks that in light of this confession that unites that we have no divisions among us.
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Now, I want to point out that this is less about theology, theological divisions, and more about individual exclusivity and individualized allegiances.
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You'll see that as we go through this. Later in the book, he's going to identify some of the divisions that are going on in Corinth, and they have nothing to do with theology.
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They have a lot to do with wealth and classism. The wealthy are doing one thing, and they are subjugating the poor in their midst and looking down on them, and that has nothing to do with theology.
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It has straight up to do with their social classism and stuff like that. Well, I guess it kind of does, everything kind of touches on our theology if we think we're higher than others or something like that, but not a direct theological disagreement, but more of a sociological disagreement.
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As we're going to see, there's some sociological things going on here in this paragraph as well.
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There also seems to be, as we're going to see in a moment, individual favoritism forming around favorite teachers.
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All of these teachers proclaiming Christ. It's not as though Apollos was saying one gospel, and Paul had another, and Peter Cephas had another gospel, and they were all in disagreement, and they were wrangling with each other.
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No, all of these teachers were proclaiming Christ, but some teachers were gaining a following based on other criteria, like how gifted they are at speaking.
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Some gained a following among those they had baptized. Well, Apollos baptized me, so I follow him, or Peter baptized me, or Paul baptized me, and so they're my homeboys.
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They're the ones that I follow, and so there was division centered on that as well. So Paul is calling them together under a common confession.
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He says, stop dividing up around secondary issues, and third, he wants them to be united.
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It sounds the same as no divisions, but this word in Greek is a picturesque word. It's actually a medical term.
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It's found in ancient medical documents from the Greek known world, and it is from the ancient
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Greek context, and it is a medical word for setting straight a broken bone. It's straight up about resetting something that is broken.
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I had a compound fracture in my right arm, both ulna and radius, when I was about seven years old.
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I'm grateful that the doctor united those bones back together. That probably wasn't a fun procedure.
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I don't really remember it super well. I remember cracks and noises, and that's about it. But I'm grateful that the doctor realigned my arm in unity.
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You get what I'm saying? In this sense, Paul is both acknowledging that something is broken in Corinth, and it needs to be set right.
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There is a disconnect, and he wants them to pull back together and heal together.
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The fourth thing that he says is having the same mind. So united is that idea of setting a broken bone. The fourth is having the same mind.
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Paul is not calling us to the board where we all have a hive mind and resistance is futile, but same mind in Greek has the nuance of being centered on focus.
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We have one focus. Does anybody want to guess who ought to be our one focus?
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Jesus, that's right. Always give the Sunday school answer if you don't know. Always give that one.
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Who died on the cross to save us? Who built the ark? I got you.
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It's not always the right answer, but deep down we know he is the answer because he told
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Noah to build the ark or whatever. I always think that's funny. But yeah, you ask the kids in Sunday school, and it's like,
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Jesus. We're going to give you credit for that. Further, the last remedy given in the text is that we would have one unified judgment.
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Again, a Greek word that has just a whole breadth of meaning. It's a phrase for united purpose.
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I read this week that this phrase bleeds over into will. That is our active center of who we are, the part that actually puts things into practice.
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So you have both a motivation. Right now, you're not doing a whole lot. You're just like literally sitting there listening, right,
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I think. Maybe you're playing a game on your phone. I don't know. But you're not doing a ton right now, so what you're doing is you're fueling your motivation.
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But how many of you know that tomorrow you're going to do some stuff? This afternoon you're going to do some stuff? And that's where the will begins to be enacted, where we are to have a commonality in our desires and the way that we act, not just merely common thought and theory, but a common way of living this life.
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Are you getting it? That's what it means here, this idea of same judgment that's translated as same judgment there.
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It doesn't mean, by the way, that we all do the same things, but rather that we have the same goal and motivation in the things that we actually do.
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Some of you are going to spend Monday corralling kids, some in a classroom, some at home. Some of you are going to be delivering packages.
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I'm going to be studying for a sermon and meeting with people in coffee shops and in my office. And yet, as we disperse to our extremely varied weeks, we can even then have the same mind and same judgment by doing what we do from a heart that desires to worship our
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Lord and Savior Jesus Christ in the day -to -day of the things that we are dispersed from this place to go do.
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In what we do, we have a common way of doing it. It is worship to God.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? So that two people who are nurses here might actually discharge their responsibilities very differently, and yet both be in the worship of God in their hearts toward Him.
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Does that make sense? There's all different kinds of ways to do that, but our heart is the same in its desire to see
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Christ elevated and lifted up. Paul wants us to consider our unity beyond this Sunday morning gathering, church.
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We are salt and light in this world, and I find great joy knowing that there is salt and light wherever our church disperses to go.
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And we are together in the purpose to glorify God in that, as a church, spread throughout the community.
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Paul is calling them to a radical and glorious unity in Christ because they have been dramatically pulling apart that unity through divisions and individual favoritism and wayward allegiances.
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There has been values in their heart and default settings in their heart that has been warring against the kind of unity that he's calling for here in verse 10.
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And he knows this because Chloe's people tattled on everyone. It says right there in the text, tattletale. The interesting thing is they even tattled on themselves.
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We're a little unsure who Chloe actually is because she's a given in the text, and the fact that she's a given in the text and without introduction, without explanation of who she is, means that she was close to the
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Corinthians. They didn't need an introduction. They didn't need any explanation. Which Chloe? What Chloe are you talking about? No, they would have known right away what
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Chloe, and that implies that she was likely a part of their church.
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And she reports to them. It's likely, by the way, that there was a lot of business travel between Ephesus, where,
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I know that that's true, there was a lot of business travel between Ephesus, where Paul was writing from, and Corinth.
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And so it's likely that some of Chloe's people came to Ephesus to give Paul a face -to -face report. I mentioned that I already assumed that Chloe is a member of the church in Corinth, and maybe even a hostess of one of the many house churches that met there in that city.
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She's well known. She needs no introduction, as I said. And she and her people are loyal enough to Paul to report to him about the divisive nature of the church.
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She reports quite directly that there's a lot of division, there's a lot of independence, there's a lot of following after whoever you want to follow after.
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And I think it's funny, as I study this, kind of chuckle a little bit, that one who is on Team Paul reports to Paul that there's a
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Team Paul. She's obviously on Team Paul. She goes right to him with it. And she's kind of tattling.
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Some people say, I'm of Paul. Well, what do you think, Chloe? The central problem of the quarreling mentioned in verse 11, see it generic there, it starts to take shape in verse 12.
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The division follows down the lines of favoritism towards leaders. Some say, I am of Paul.
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Now, the translation in English standards, I follow, but it's a lot more possessive than that. I am of Paul.
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Others say, I am of Apollos. Others say, I am of Cephas, which is the Aramaic name or the
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Jewish name for Peter. Peter is the Greek name, but he mentions him by name as Cephas, Peter, or I am of Christ.
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Note that each one begins with what word? I. I. Meaning that these are individual self -assessments.
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Not we. It's not a faction. It's not a clique within the church identifying themselves as, like, the
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Paul club, or the Peter club, or the Apollos club.
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No, individuals are having this self -assessment about themselves. It's unlikely, by the way, that these were formalized clubs or cliques within the church.
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Instead, there was what's going on here is a spirit of disunity and radical individualism that has developed in this wealthy, upper -crust church in Corinth.
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I find it interesting that Paul and the other New Testament authors actually recommend, and this might come as a shock to some of you, and if this is new to you, then
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I'd love to talk with you about it, but Paul and the other New Testament authors actually recommend separating from people over central doctrinal issues.
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They don't say, just get along with everybody who spouts something about Jesus. They say, if it's heresy, get out of it.
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Go. Leave. Run. Divide. The New Testament authors are pro -division where there is heresy, where there is error in the gospel.
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They go somewhere else. That would be their instruction. So this leads me to conclude that the problems in Corinth were not primarily doctrinal.
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They were not primarily theological, as if Paul and Apollos and Peter were all in theological disagreement against one another.
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No, the divisions were far more petty than they were theological in Corinth, just like they can be in our own hearts.
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They stem from a radical independence that hits way, way, way too close to home. I have my teachers.
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I have surrounded myself with the people I want to hear. And I can just go and do that on my own.
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Thank you very much. As a matter of fact, even to the degree that many in our culture today say, I don't even need a gathering of the church.
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I can listen to a sermon online. I can give through the online function. I could just go to the store and buy some crackers and some juice and take communion all by myself.
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Thank you very much. I could sing songs on the radio, and I could just do my own church thing.
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How many of you know what I'm talking about? Some of you have some friends. Some of you have some people in your life that that's been their effective way of handling the post -pandemic church, is just to say,
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I'm just going to do this on my own. I don't need others. So the concern Paul was expressing here is not a fear that you will too closely align yourself with your church, but the opposite.
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He is afraid that you will primarily find your allegiance and align yourself outside of the local gathering.
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He's afraid you will align yourself with those out there. You will see yourself primarily as a lone ranger who gets what you need from wherever you can get it.
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You can get it from Paul. You can get it from Apollos or any other traveling evangelist. Apollos, by the way, needs a little minor introduction here.
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I'm not going to get deep into it, but he was a traveling evangelist. He met with Paul in Ephesus, went back and forth to Corinth, very gifted in rhetoric.
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He has spoken of in Acts 18 as a gifted, gifted orator. Luke, writing the book of Acts, says this guy was a good speaker.
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People wanted to hear him talk. I find an interesting quote from Martin Luther that seems appropriate at this point in the message.
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When he heard that some were referring to themselves as Lutherans. This is Martin Luther. He becomes aware.
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Some messenger or somebody wrote him a letter and he reads it. They're calling each other Lutherans up in northern
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Germany. They follow you. Celebrating. Slow clap. Lutherans. He got mad.
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By the way, the dude had a temper. He always said some strange things when he got mad.
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This is what he said. What is Luther? The teaching is not mine, nor was
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I crucified for anyone. How did I, and here it comes, a poor stinking bag of maggots that I am, come to the point where people call the children of Christ by my evil name?
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Luther got it. How dare they call themselves Lutherans? How dare they take my name?
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How dare they not merely be satisfied with Christ? I'm not maligning Lutherans because others would say the same thing, right?
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Like Wesleyans or there's others that are named after people. It's just that the founder of the
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Lutheran movement said, I don't like the title. I don't like the name because the name he knew was an evil name because he knew his own sinful heart.
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But I want to point out what I think Paul intends for us to notice. One of these things, one of these names in this verse, one of these names in verse 12 is not like the others.
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One of them is not the same. Some of you got it? Some of you old enough to get that?
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Or do they still do that? I don't know. Paul, Apollos, Cephas, Jesus.
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I don't think that there was a Jesus faction, by the way, in Corinth, but instead that Paul tacks this onto the end of Chloe's report in a dramatic and intentional gotcha moment.
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He's not like the others. Did you know that? Jesus is a bit different than Apollos. He's a bit different than Cephas, a bit different than Paul.
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Much like if you ask me, are you a follower of Calvin or are you a follower of Arminius?
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Imagine that I answer, oh, it seems like you left out a really good choice, like Jesus. I want to follow him.
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Thank you. That's what Paul is doing in this text. Oh, by the way, Jesus, it would be nice if Jesus was one of these options.
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Paul weaves Jesus into the choices to demonstrate the absurdity of this division and this divisiveness that they're experiencing.
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I don't think people are walking around Corinth saying, well, I'm of Jesus, because that would be really good. That's not what he's getting at.
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Oh, some of you are getting it right. No, we don't see any of that in this text. But he adds Jesus in here and immediately asks three rhetorical questions that get to the heart of the divisions, kind of like in a gotcha moment.
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Is Christ divided? The answer is supposed to be no. At which point the Corinthians ought to shudder a little bit because Christ will not be divided.
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He will not spread around a little bit of himself to everyone. Either you have all of him or you don't have any of him.
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He will not share his glory with Paul. He will not share his glory with Apollos. He will not share his glory with Cephas or Don or Driscoll or Piper.
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Whoever your online favorite preacher is, he will not share his glory with them. He won't.
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Christ will not be dismembered. He will not be divided. And in the second question, he makes it more explicit.
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Was Paul crucified for you? I love this question because it brings back to us understanding of what
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Paul saw as the center of it all. The cross is the center of it all. We come to communion every week to remember the centrality of the answer to this rhetorical question.
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And we do this every single week. Only one was crucified for you,
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Recast. Only Jesus. All others must be pointing to him and his sacrifice or they are misleading you.
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If they're not pointing to the cross, if they're not pointing to Jesus, then they are pointing in the wrong direction. If they don't take your shoulders and turn you toward the cross, then they are pointing you in the wrong direction.
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Are you hearing me? And there are plenty who will point you to their own glory.
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Who will point you all other directions, but not to the cross. Paul says,
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I wasn't crucified for you. Why are you following me? Why would you follow me?
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Only in as much as you get to Christ through me is there any value. The third question launches out into a brief aside about baptism.
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Were you baptized in the name of Paul? Another rhetorical question, of course not, is the intended answer.
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And Paul is glad in verses 14, 15, and 16 that he baptized very few of them. Because apparently a good portion of this division, we can kind of infer, was people considering themselves to be a disciple of the one who baptized them.
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Well, he baptized me, so he must be something. At first, Paul only remembers baptizing two dudes in Corinth.
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What most scholars think in this aside that you see in the text in verse 16, where he's like, oh wait, I did baptize another family.
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And I don't even remember who else I baptized. That it's likely that the transcriptionist who's mentioned in verse 1 of this letter,
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Sosthenes, was like, dude, dude, don't forget the family of Stephanus. I mean, you baptized them too.
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Probably not going to go super well if you leave their name. Oh, that's right, the family of Stephanus. Only the very first converts, according to the book of Acts, in this entire territory.
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The very first ones, do you remember them, Paul? Oh, yeah, Stephanus. And he writes that in there.
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I love how that just brings to light the way that, I mean, there's a very earthy and spiritual balance in Scripture.
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There's something that's so much Paul's personality, and equally the Spirit inspiring, working through his personality to produce
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Scripture. But I want to think about this together. Paul is quite literally glad that he has not been the one to do all the baptisms in this community.
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He has ministered among the Corinthians in a way that makes it clear that he is not the center of the church.
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And I fear that on this point, I may just need to spill out some of my own conviction on all of you for all of our benefit.
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Again, a little bit of therapy, self -reflection, but for better or worse, I'm not confident that I've done a fabulous job on this here at Recast.
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I do not want to be elevated here in this place. Just this past week, I was meeting with one of the other elders, and I told them
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I am so grateful for the wonderful leaders that God has raised up here in this church. I am blessed to serve alongside of these other men here, fellow pastors who care for you as much as I do.
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You see them up here praying. You see them in the back every Sunday eager to meet with you, eager to talk with you, eager to pray with you, eager to pray for you.
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They would even be eager to meet with you and talk through any struggles or issues that you may be going through. And I mentioned in my introduction that I'm confident that this church will continue in an excellent direction, even if I go get to be with Jesus this afternoon.
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Because we, as the elders of this church, care for your souls.
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Not Don, but we the elders care for your souls. It's not just me here loving you.
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It's not just me here praying for you. It's not just me here pastoring Recast. I happen to be up here more often, but I am not the only pastor here.
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And I think it's way past time for you guys to be well aware of that. At the end of verse 17,
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Paul draws a distinction that is helpful regarding a potentially difficult theological issue. A potentially difficult theological issue.
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He pulls apart the gospel and baptism just far enough to remind us that it is possible to have a gospel ministry that does not have baptism at its center.
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This is the place where Paul... I just want to point out, this is where he would double down if you had to be baptized to be saved.
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This is where it would be. It would be right here, in this text. If he wanted to make it explicit that you must be baptized to be saved, that would be the next sentence.
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But it's not. So we have to put baptism in its proper place according to what
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Paul says here. Paul was called to win the lost with the proclamation of the gospel.
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And he says, that's my ministry. Baptism is subsequent to that. He was sent out to tell people to believe in the
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Lord Jesus Christ, trust in his sacrifice, and you will be saved. Baptism, I've mentioned recently, is very important.
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We're going to be having a baptism service coming up. Anybody who wants to talk about that is interested. Even if you just want to kick the tires and see what it's about,
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I would love to meet with you. You can contact office at recastchurch .com to set up that meeting. But I would love to talk with you, excited about a handful of people that are already interested.
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But I want to point out very definitively, according to this text and others in Scripture, especially the thief on the cross, it is very possible for a person to be saved and not be baptized.
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My question is why? Why? I think Paul wonders the same thing. Why? Paul is a good team player.
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He let others handle the baptisms. He went all over, fulfilling his calling to preach the gospel.
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Let some of the local dudes do the baptisms. But now we see that it isn't merely baptism that has caused people to grant unwarranted allegiance to specific ministers, but it also goes more shallow than that because human hearts.
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They all had their favorite speakers. And this hits far too close to home. We live in a day and an age where we have access to more sermon content online than you could listen to for your entire life.
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You could put it on, shuffle, put the internet, sermons on shuffle, and listen the rest of your life.
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Do you know that? You could do that. Paul is calling them to unity within the local church gathering in their town.
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And Paul leaves us a teaser for next week in this context of divisions. There's going to be a lot more on this next week as the rest of chapter 1 is going to highlight the distinction between worldly methods and the word and worldly wisdom as opposed to the revelation from God and the word of the gospel.
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But let me say this. Let me say this definitively, church, on the proactive side. There is only one power to rescue and to save.
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There is only one, and it is the power of the cross.
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It is in the cross that we are united, church. And the message of the cross in the gospel is our good news.
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It's good news, but it's also a message of our weakness. It's a message of the darkness of our hearts.
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It's a message of our powerlessness to save ourselves, and therefore an even clearer message of our inability to save one another.
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The power to save is not in our hands. It's not in our voice. It's not in our rhetoric.
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It's not in our skill of delivery. Do you get what I'm saying in that? So often I have been thought back in my college days, especially the
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Bible college that I attended, that, oh man, I better get it right so I can save some people. I better get this memorized and get this down padded, get this formula down so that when
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I say this and they say this and they go, oh wow, I never thought of it that way, and boom, they're on their knees giving their lives to Jesus.
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Do you know what I'm talking about? Anybody? Okay, getting some blank stares, but we can tend to over -own the delivery as if, oh man, they didn't accept
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Jesus. I must have sucked that up. I didn't get that right because if I had got it right, they'd be a believer.
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No, we don't have that. We don't have that power. It is only the cross that has the power.
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And so the way that Paul preached the gospel was with a heart to highlight the weakness of the cross.
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He trusted the power of it to draw people to the love and forgiveness of the
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Savior. The opposite of this, the opposite of trusting in the cross to save is manipulation in any way, shape, or form.
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Manipulation defined as my intention to try to weasel and word and get things down pat in such a way that I think that the power is in me to change people.
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I'm trying to change them rather than allowing the cross to transform them. See, Paul intentionally avoided attempts at powerful rhetoric, meaning he didn't seek manipulative preaching methods.
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He was not into the market research about attention spans and the most eloquent methods of speech delivery.
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He didn't set out to impress his audience. He was not a member of Toastmasters. And if this is understood to be what
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Paul opposes, then all types of sermon delivery are acceptable if the heart of the speaker is trusting in the content and not in their rhetorical skills.
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Not in their ability to get the right word in the right place and pronounce it correctly. And I want to just point out how utterly and unreasonably tricky this is for you where you're sitting.
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It's tricky because you cannot see my heart. You can't see what's going on in here.
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You cannot tell whether I'm preaching what I'm preaching and the way I'm preaching it for likes and retweets or because I love
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Jesus. You really can't see that. It's a sticky spot. You see, what
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I'm getting at is two preachers could preach the exact same sermon with the same inflection and the same humor and the same illustrations and the same slides and all of that and be motivated out of one, be motivated out of a desire to manipulate and the other motivated for passion for the gospel in Christ and for the content in the truth.
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Are you getting what I'm saying? And yet, praise God, that whatever the motivation on the part, the word is the word.
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If they accidentally, if even a fool or a donkey gets up here and proclaims the word of Christ and his cross, well, that's enough.
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He could have the worst motives possible and people could still respond because it is not up to him or his heart or his motives or his delivery or any of that.
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But it is the word rightly proclaimed. Does that make sense? In context, this is a stark and shocking message for the church, for our teaching and for evangelism.
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Paul sees a connection with too much concern for delivery and rhetorical skills and he says at the very end of this text, emptying the content of the message of power, sucking the power dry from the message.
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I'm convinced that there is far too much navel -gazing among Christians who spend more time considering their preaching, their teaching methods, evangelism training, finally honing apologetics and gospel methods and memorizing gospel presentations while Paul is here pointing us to the power of the cross to rescue and save.
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I have shared the gospel with people in the most eloquent of ways, walked away and thought, nailed it!
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And they didn't accept Christ. And I have bumbled my way through thinking, what a poor example.
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What a poor example of a human. And I have seen people come to faith in Christ through the most chintzy of presentations, namely mine.
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He's calling the church in Corinth and us back to the simple uniting message of the cross.
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The starting point for ministry is trust in the gospel, not trust in methods, not trust in the specific oratory skill of the speaker, not in any charismatic pastor, not in the intellectual prowess of a blogger or a speaker or an author, but the cross.
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A simple wooden post with a cross member on which the Son of God bled and died for you and me.
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A crude wooden implement of torture is where the power of God is unleashed on us.
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And through the powerful truth of that simple wooden cross, everything that has been plunged into darkness will be remade, church!
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It's coming back together because of that cross. So let's celebrate this morning our unity.
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If you have Jesus Christ to be, if you've asked to be your Lord and Savior and you have unity together with each other here, then
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I encourage you to come to the tables this morning for the cracker and juice that reminds us of His body broken in our place, of His blood shed for us.
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Go to the tables with eyes wide open this morning, church. Not looking at the floor, not shuffling your feet, make some eye contact, shake some hands, give some fist bumps.
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Even a little whoop would be appropriate. Fist bumps and smiles are encouraged here because in these lines we once again express that we agree that we suck enough to need
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His sacrifice. We declare we are not divided and neither is Christ in our midst.
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But we are called to be reset once again like broken bones. Like as we line up, I picture the imagery of us getting in these lines, in these aisles, as being reset together.
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Being reset together as we come to Christ. Because it is at the end of that line that you find the thing that only can satisfy your soul.
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His body broken for you, His blood shed for you. No, His body broken for us and His blood shed for us.
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Let's pray. Father, I am so thankful for this gathering.
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We don't get it all right. There's so much individualism in our culture that we probably don't even recognize it.
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We can come together in a gathering and be in our own bubbles and leave in our own bubbles and maybe have a conversation about coffee or the weather or the price of gas.
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Father, I thank you for your grace. Your grace that is breaking through to us, is melting us together, is bringing us together, is reforging us like broken bones being reset in unity.
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All coming together in Christ. Father, would you continue that work that you started here?
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Would you continue to break down barriers and break down walls of disunity? Would you continue to knit us together as your people?
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Even as the days draw nearer and Christ draws nearer and there's a day coming when you will look to the sun and say,
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Go get your bride. As that day nears, we need each other all the more. Not forsaking the gathering together, but all the more gathering as the day approaches.
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Because there's a day coming where we need that confession. Where fewer and fewer will be able to say,
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Jesus Christ is Lord. We're going to be leaning on each other more and more in the coming years.
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So I pray that we would be practicing that now before that day comes for us. And we look forward to the return of Jesus Christ where he will set all things right.
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But until that day, I pray that you would guide us and direct us deeper into fellowship together.