1 Corinthians 3:16-4:5 What's the Church Got to Do With It?

You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Matawan, Michigan. This week, Pastor Don Filsak preaches from his sermon series titled, First Corinthians, Sinful Church, Powerful Gospel. Let's listen in.

Well, good morning and welcome to Recast Church. I'm Don Filsak. I'm the lead pastor here. And it's really good to be together on this Father's Day. As I say every year, this is a day set aside for you to honor your fathers if you're able.

And it's a glorious thing that in our culture, it's a day of recognition that our culture still recognizes some value. God values family and he values family high enough to command us. Out of 10 commandments, he chose to give us a command that says, honor your father and mother.

So this morning, we're going to continue working through the next section of First Corinthians. But with a mind, I just want to encourage you as much as possible with a mind towards honoring your parents and thinking through that if that's a possibility.

Maybe it, I say this often, but maybe it's a phone call that you need to have if there's some distance there or whatever. Maybe it's even some reconciliation because I recognize that not everybody has a great relationship with your parents.

And so, I encourage that. But continuing to work through First Corinthians and we're going to be, we're getting near the end of Paul's first point, not the end of the book, but the end of the first point of rebuke to the Corinthian church.

Now, this letter takes the form of waves of rebuke, waves of correction, waves of things that they're not necessarily getting right that he wants to correct them. And how many would identify that there are times in your life where somebody has been gracious to give you a little correction?

Like where there's been, like I needed it and I got it. Well, we're talking about Father's Day. Hopefully, you receive some correction in your youth. But he's been addressing them at the point of their divisions.

Divisions is this first area where the Corinthians are not getting it right. And he's been deeply concerned for the root causes of those divisions. And that's why it's been a longer chunk of scripture dedicated to divisions within the church.

One of the root causes of division in the church of Corinth was centered on the idea of deeper knowledge. The church in Corinth thought that there was a secret, deeper understanding, a secret, deeper knowledge available more than just the gospel that Paul had brought to them.

And so, some thought they had found that key to deeper wisdom, kind of growing beyond the gospel, growing beyond Paul was their idea. And they found that in their favorite preachers. And that was the second root cause of divisions is that they were dividing up into factions that followed specific famous preachers.

Some said, I follow Paul. Others said, I follow Apollos. Others said, I follow Cephas, which is this Aramaic name for Peter. I follow Peter. So, Paul has been trying to pull up the weed of division from this church, roots and all, while trying to keep the healthy plant of a gospel-centered church intact.

And I confess that the section of 1 Corinthians has been repetitive as we've gone through it. It's been quite thorough. It's been extensive. And yet, I hope for you, just like me, very helpful. When a man repeats himself a lot, as much as Paul does throughout these first, really, four chapters of 1 Corinthians centered on the one subject of division, we ought to listen up.

Especially in a day and an age when ink and parchment was precious. It was expensive. And it took his time and his effort to write these things down, and he has done so in a repetitive fashion. But not just the cost of ink and the cost of parchment should grab our attention, but it's also clear that the Spirit of God desires for us to see this problem of division from every proposed angle.

And that we would walk away by the end of chapter 4 in the next sermon on this section in a couple of weeks with a strong conviction that divisiveness within the church is a very, very, very bad thing.

I won't ask for a show of hands, but my guess is that many of you here in this room have experienced some level of Christian division in your lifetime. That you've experienced some of the heartache and some of the hardship that can come about through a faith community that is warring against itself.

That is, like I said, you can testify, it's a very, very, very bad thing when there's divisiveness among God's people. So I want you to open your Bibles or your Scripture journals or your devices to 1 Corinthians 3, verse 16.

And we're going to read all the way through chapter 4, verse 5. And I do say that, almost kind of like a mantra every week, open your Bibles or your Scripture journals or your devices. The reason I say that is that somebody actually told me at one point, they were kind of new to Recast, and they saw people, as soon as I started to read the Bible, they saw people pull out their phones and they thought, how rude.

And I'm like, no, no, no, you pull out your device. If that's the way you access the Bible, that's absolutely fine. But we're going to read 1 Corinthians chapter 3, please follow along, verse 16 through the first five verses of chapter 4.

In Recast, I'd love to remind you that this is God's holy and precious Word, a holy moment for us to hear from the Almighty in this gathering. Do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's Spirit dwells in you?

If anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him. For God's temple is holy, and you, you are that temple. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.

For the wisdom of this world is folly with God. For it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise that they are futile. So let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future, all are yours.

And you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. This is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful.

But with me, it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself, for I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.

It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things that are now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.

Then each one will receive his commendation from God. Let's pray as the band comes to lead us in worship this morning. Father, we are here together on this Father's Day, and I recognize that that brings up all kinds of different thoughts and different emotions.

Some have a fabulous example in a father. Some have no father in their life anymore. Some have a broken relationship with their father who exists now in a tense relationship. Father, I thank You for Your Word that drives deep into our hearts, words of caution, words of command, words of instruction to honor Father and Mother, words of instruction toward the church even here to identify to us the things that You desire to accomplish in us and through us.

Father, I pray that You would make us a people of the Word that would think of our relationships in terms of Your Word, would think of the church in terms of Your Word, would think of the way that we do our responsibilities for our employer in terms of the Word, the way we relate in family to Your Word in all areas submitted to the Word, which is the Word of Your Spirit, the Word of Christ, the Word of You, Father.

I ask, Father, that You would be with our worship now as a people that are moving toward that day, a day of judgment, but also a day of great glory when Christ will come back for us. So, Father, I pray that as we think about the cross, we think about the salvation we've received through Jesus and His grace, that You would light our hearts on fire with enthusiasm and with passion as we sing these songs to You, united in the church, which is this glorious temple of Your Spirit.

We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen. Go to make yourself comfortable, but reopen your Bibles or your devices or scripture journals. 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 16 through the end of that chapter, going on to the first five verses of that.

If at any time during the message you want to get up and get more coffee or juice or donut holes, while supplies last back there, and then if you need to use the restrooms, those are out the barn doors down the hallway on the left-hand side, just to acquaint yourself with that.

And then if you need to get up for any reason during this sermon, you're not going to distract me. So, whatever it takes to keep our focus on God's Word during the remainder of our time. Let me start with an outline this morning, and then we're going to dive into the text.

But all of the points begin with the phrase, be careful this morning, because Paul has been in a mode of giving caution to the church in Corinth, and kind of by default giving that same caution to us through the pages of the revealed Word of God, His Spirit speaking to us the things that He desires the church to know.

So, the first one is, be careful the church matters, verses 16 and 17. Be careful the church matters. The second one is, be careful godless wisdom is foolish. Godless wisdom is foolish, verses 18 through 20.

And then on verses 21 through the first verse of the next chapter, be careful the best humans are mere stewards. The best humans are mere stewards. The fourth one is, be careful judgment is coming, verses 2 through 5.

Be careful judgment is coming. So, each of these points addresses a common temptation for each one of us, and I just kind of want to point out why he's talking this way, because there's temptations that we're going to face together as a church, but also as individuals in a church, as Christians, followers of Jesus Christ.

These are going to be some temptations that tie in with these points. We're going to be tempted to marginalize the value and importance of the local church. Anybody kind of see that happen a bit during COVID?

A bit during these last few years? A little bit of a marginalization in our own hearts about the value of gathering together as God's people. And the corrective to that is found in the text, the church matters a lot to God.

We're going to be tempted to follow the godless wisdom of this world. There's plenty of that going around in every media and every source that we look at. There's tons of worldly wisdom that is completely and utterly godless.

So, Paul tells us that godless wisdom is actually foolishness. No matter how it sounds, no matter how many letters are after somebody's name, no matter how much they are a subject expert, if it is godless wisdom, it is foolishness.

We're going to be tempted to trust people and to attach our lives to those we would lift up on pedestals. And so, Paul says in this, they are mere servants and stewards. And we're going to be tempted to ration quick judgments over those who are fallen and those who are successful, assigning value to people according to whether or not they are successful in the world's eyes or not.

And Paul reminds us that there is only one assessment that really matters in the end. Only one assessment really matters and it is still yet future. And it is that everyone is going to give an accounting to God.

And so, let's jump at the beginning here. Be careful. The church matters verses 16 through 17. We had a lively and I would say beneficial discussion at our community group, the Young Marrieds group, that meets at our house on Sunday afternoons after church.

And we had a good discussion about the local church versus the universal church. And I thought maybe if our community group had questions about it, maybe you do too. So, to clarify that here in this point about what the church is, it's a question mark over us, really.

When we're reading the Bible and we read these epistles, it's important for us, the letters that Paul writes, it's important for us to kind of suss out who's he talking to. Do Paul's words here in 1 Corinthians to the Corinthian believers apply to us, recast?

It's a viable question. Or is it just generically applicable to all Christians individually? And you really don't need to gather. You really don't need to be a part of a church. You just kind of, you know, apply these things in your life and you'll be fine.

The New Testament, what you need to understand, is extremely very communal in its language. Very much about connecting people. Very much about us living the life of Christ in community with one another.

Rubbing each other the wrong way. Encouraging one another. Building one another up. Praying for one another. Rebuking one another. All kinds of things within the church that make us uncomfortable in the amount of interaction that we are called to with one another.

Paul ends the letter, for example, to the Romans with an entire chapter of names of people. I point that out to say how utterly communal these letters are. They are written to real people in real context.

He is not writing these letters to the generic average Christian. He's writing them to people with names, with histories, with relationships. Real people just like us. And people with, and churches with, real divisions.

I think it's helpful for me to say here that God desires all Christians to be connected into a community of a gathering of believers for mutual edification and for encouragement and for accountability.

If somebody invites you, let me think about this universal church versus local gathering for just a moment. If somebody invites you to Starbucks, you would never ask, all of them? All of them? That's going to take us a while.

Because you are a finite person, you cannot meet the whole, you can't meet at all of the Starbucks, right? What's the logical question when somebody says, let's meet at Starbucks? Which one? And because you are a finite person, you cannot meet with the whole universal church.

You never have. One day in glory you will. One day in glory you will. People from every tribe, language, people, nation, and era of human history that are born again and are in the family of God through Jesus Christ.

It's a glorious thing. So, the clear instruction of the New Testament is plug into a local assembly, commit, and work out these things that Paul has for all who take Christ seriously. By the way, this wars against the idea of making a church of people connected to me.

How many of you know there's multiple churches in Kalamazoo? Did you already know that? There's a bunch of churches. You could be in a whole bunch of different places, and my hunch is that the average person here has a whole host of friends that are in other churches today, right?

This morning, you're not with all your friends. So, is all of your, couldn't you just make a church of your friend group? Couldn't just your friends be your church? We get together, we hang out, we have fun.

We're a church. Well, who's the center of that church? You. You're the center of that church. You're the center of your friend group. You're the one that has all of these different relationships that you're, they're all in association with you.

How many of you think you need more than that? People just who think like you, people who you have fun with, people who you enjoy the same shows, you enjoy the same stuff. And so, no, we need more than that, do we not?

Some people think that a church is just merely a gathering of the friends, but the church is a gathering of people who, yeah, incorporates friends and also some people who it's work to be friends with.

That's true. I'm saying all this because the definition of church matters significantly to our passage because the church matters significantly to God. Writing to a specific group of gathered people in the city of Corinth under the leadership of elders, under the direction of Christ for His glory, for His honor, practicing baptism and the Lord's Supper together.

All of those categories of a church. Paul asks a very accusatory and even snarky question in verse 16. Look at it. Don't you know? When somebody starts a question like that, it's like, wait, where are you going?

Don't you know that you're God's temple? Speaking to a local group, a gathering of people with names and issues and problems, he reminds them that the Spirit dwells within their midst, within their fellowship, is the very temple of God.

And all of the you's, what you need to understand is that all the you's in verse 16 and 17 are plural. This is not talking about the Spirit dwelling within us as individual believers, though that is true and he will talk about that later in this very same letter.

But this passage that we're looking at this morning is intentionally more corporate in nature. What is a church? A church is a gathering of redeemed people under the Lordship of Christ in the power and the presence of His Spirit, organized under qualified leadership with the practicing of the ordinances of the Lord's Supper and Baptism.

Paul has been speaking about the church as a metaphorical building, and he cautioned that all who are seeking to build upon the church should do so with caution. But now in verse 17, he gives us an even stronger caution.

If anyone destroys God's temple, that is the church, that's the fellowship, that's the people. If anybody divides the church, God will destroy him. And the you's guys are you's guys. Y 'all are that temple.

Anybody who comes in here and tries to divide this body, tries to get us warring against one another, tries to, through gossip and slander, tries to get factions, tries to say, aren't you teamed this elder?

I'm teamed this elder. I'm on this side of this issue. I'm on that side of this issue. I think you guys have, many of you have seen it. Many of you have seen how divisive a church can be. Praise God that that hasn't been our history 14 years of God's blessing of unity and love in this fellowship.

Working through issues, not perfection, but working through it together. I love it. His church is set apart, the text says. It is holy. That's what the word set up, that's what the word holy means, is set apart for the purposes of his glory.

It is a unique institution that God has God's heart and God's protection over it. And the very fact that Paul says this to a small gathering of Christians that love Christ in Corinth gives me confidence that we can apply it to a small gathering here in Matawan, Michigan in 2023.

Now, the text seems to indicate a category of person that we don't feel very comfortable even identifying. As a matter of fact, we don't like to believe that they exist because we don't regularly, regularly, fortunately, encounter this type of person.

So we tend to become blind to this kind of person's existence in verse 17. But you see, he said that there are some who would seek to dismantle churches from within. They would love to blow it up. Some, last week he was talking about judgment for Christians, those who are followers of Christ.

And what's it going to look like when we stand before God on that day? And he says some will build with, some build up churches with good intentions. They want to glorify Christ. They want to lift Him up and lift Him high.

And so the work that they do in the building up of the church is like building with gold or silver or precious stones. When he says that some others will build with bad intentions of self-centeredness, and it's like building with wood or hay or straw.

But here identifies a third category of person. Some are absolutely destructive, and they show themselves to not belong to Christ in the destructive intentions and actions, and are worthy of themselves being destroyed.

Now, there is nobody, there is nobody who would break into my house and seek to harm my wife that I would assume is with me. You get what I'm saying there? If somebody breaks in and tries to destroy my bride, I don't assume that they're on my team.

How could we assume that somebody who would come into the flock and seek to destroy the bride of Christ is with him? We are talking here about people who will infiltrate and come within the walls of the church with the intention of destroying the bride of Christ.

Do you have a category for that kind of person? The New Testament authors had a category of this kind of person, and they called them ravenous wolves. It's a real type of person. People who pretend to be together with the church and are actually destructive in their hearts.

And so, a church without elders who concern themselves for the protection of the flock is a church in danger of being torn apart by wolves. And the church matters to God. Recast, our fellowship and our unity matters to God.

With the basic, with that basic caution of unity out of the way, we move on to the second point of the text here, with the first one being be careful, the church matters. The second is be careful, godless wisdom is foolishness.

Now, all of these are rehearsals of themes that Paul has already talked about that he's reiterating for us. He's cycling through these again here at the end of this section of scripture to reiterate those kinds of things, those root causes of division.

And there's a switch between the corporate church and the individuals within the church in the way that he uses pronouns and language in verses 18 through 20. Now we're getting a chance at self-assessment as individuals.

Now that we're reminded that our connection with community matters with one another, now that that's out of the way and we know that he loves the church, he loves the gathering of his people, we see a warning against self-deception in verse 18.

And we ought to pay close attention whenever scripture identifies an area of common self-deception, we ought to perk up our ears a bit. Because the trickiest part of self-deception is the inability to see it.

Nobody is deceived intentionally. Nobody deceives themselves intentionally. And so the revelation of God's word is going to seek to open our eyes to something that we are routinely blinded to here, church.

We will be tempted in worldly wisdom to follow the self-professed wise guys of this age. That's going to be a temptation for us. To follow the experts. We have been taught and told for the past few years, just follow the experts.

Blindly follow the experts. We are drawn to people. We are drawn to people naturally in our nature. The way that we're built is that we follow the strong guy. We follow the attractive. The person with strategies and plans, the influencers, the ones who grab our attention.

Those are the ones that the world seeks to follow. We will gravitate toward men and women who tell us where they're going and where they will take us. And of course, it's always a good place, right? It's always a good place they're going to take us.

Now, I don't think for a second that Paul is saying that a sure sign of a guy you ought to follow is uneducated and foolish in the world's eyes. Like that's not a qualification that you're looking for somebody uneducated.

Now follow them. No, but a leader in the church, hear me carefully, a leader in the church who never speaks anything contrary to our prevailing culture is a man who is likely compromised with the wisdom of the world.

Do you get what I'm saying? If he never says anything that is contrary, that is divisive, that is open to the critique of our culture, then he is likely compromised. Becoming a fool in this text, you can see it there in the text, becoming a fool in order to become wise is equivalent in our modern day to proclaiming Jesus Christ as the crucified Messiah, proclaiming His sacrifice for our sins, and even being bold enough to declare what sin is, and proclaiming His empty tomb is victorious, that this life is not all that we live for.

The line between the foolishness of this world and the wisdom of God has become more and more obvious in recent years. Do you guys see it? And the divide between the revealed Word of God and the prevailing winds of secular doctrine are shocking to our system, how rapidly these changes are coming at us.

Anybody raise your hand and testify like, I'm a little shocked. I'm a little scandalized. Like the rapid rate of the foolishness of the world becoming like all of a sudden, that's wise. These things are being declared wise and they're being pushed.

And I can imagine that parts of God's Word, parts of God's wisdom, parts of God's revelation of His will and His desire will likely be declared to be hate speech during my lifetime. You don't preach Romans 1.

You preach Romans 1, you're in trouble. Can you imagine a culture like that? I don't think it takes much imagination, does it? In verses 19 and 20, Paul backs up God's opposition to attempts at worldly wisdom, godless wisdom, wisdom without Him.

And he quotes Job 5, 13 and Psalm 94, 11 to just demonstrate His power and His authority over worldly wisdom. They both emphasize in their context that God opposes the plots and schemes of the self-proclaimed wise and declares their efforts futile, empty, coming to nothing without Him.

What he's getting at here, church, is something that we do need to take on for ourselves because all of the foolishness is not just out there. We get foolishness in our own hearts, right? God opposes the plots and schemes of the wise and declares that all futile.

But here's what He's getting at. Our best thoughts, our best thoughts are empty if they do not come from our Creator. We cannot hold in our minds, we are not big enough to handle the weightiness of the unifying principles of all the loose threads of understanding of God.

How many of you would just identify that you probably even in your theology have some inconsistencies? Like we're an inconsistent people. Like we can't gather the entirety of Scripture into our brains and really bring them all together.

I want you to think about who our God is. He not only knows the current location of every single atom in the universe, but He can trace the history and location of every single atom since He created it.

That's just mind-bending. Unless you hate science and then you're just kind of like, I just tuned out there for a second. But I don't know. It's unthinkable, church. It is unthinkable that we would seek to add our wisdom and our understanding to His ways and His plans.

This is folly defined to correct Him, to revise His strategies, to try to spend PR for Him, to take His church down a road that He has not prescribed. Church, not a good idea. Not a good idea at all to oppose the ways of God and His wisdom, which appears to be foolish to the world.

Paul wants to make sure that we're getting this because he's been on this for a while. He's so emphatic. He's so repetitive that we ought to really develop a red flag surrounding worldly wisdom as a tool within His church, godless wisdom in the church.

I confess that even after several weeks of studying this, I don't have a hard and fast clear line of delineation between worldly wisdom and just plain old common sense. And I think we ought to have some common sense.

I think the Proverbs declares some common sense, but it's God-revealed common sense. But I lean towards emphasizing that the worldly wisdom, worldly wisdom is trust in anything besides the gospel of Jesus Christ to really affect lasting change in people's hearts and in culture at large.

What is going to change our culture? What's going to change hearts? What's going to change people? It is the gospel. It is the good news. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The thing that Paul said, I didn't really speak of anything among you except that.

The cross of Christ. The worldly wisdom that Paul opposes here is a godless wisdom that disagrees with anything that God has revealed to be true. And I think it's hard to discern, by the way, when a church gives over too much to the world system.

It's often a behind-the-scenes slide that happens. But I can tell you that my concern for the last 14 years here as the pastor planter of Recast Church has been to steer away as far as I can from worldly systems and prefabricated programs to grow the church.

You might be surprised in all this. It might not shock you, but I get junk emails every single week and ads on social media that they know I'm a pastor because things that I post. So, you know, probably even hear it, probably listen to this sermon right now.

I'm preaching from an iPad. So they're getting all this content somehow. But I get regular junk mails and ads to sell me books or sermon series or management systems guaranteed to grow your church by 20, 30, 40 percent or your money back.

Get a refund if it doesn't work. But hear me carefully, church. You're not my play thing. This isn't a sandbox in which I'm testing various building plans, trying to tweak it just right so we get mega church status or something.

Let me just suggest to you what we started with and what I hope to end with is eventually I go out of this world. How about we stick to the revealed word of God? How about we stick to that? How about we keep following hard on the heels of Jesus as we take up our cross and follow Him?

You see, this is true, church. You might not want to think it, but my best laid strategies, I'm saying this as a pastor here, my best laid strategies could very well take us all to hell. That's true. So, let's follow the inspired teachings of the apostles instead.

Everybody good with that? Let's keep doing that. So, in light of the futility of the wisdom of humanity devoid of God, that leads into the third caution, why would we ever boast in men? Be careful. The third point, the best humans are merely stewards, verses 21 through chapter 4, verse 1.

Verse 21, Paul directly and emphatically prohibits our boasting in people. It's a command. Don't do it. I think we rarely do it. We rarely disobey this command overtly like the Corinthians did, saying directly, I follow Paul, I follow Apollos, I follow Peter, but I think we do it more subtly.

And I think it's ironic that Paul turns the entire structure of their boasting on its head. They say, I'm of Apollos, and he says, don't you know that Apollos is of you? You don't belong to Apollos. Apollos belongs to you.

He is your servant, Corinth. He's there in terms of serving you. The phrase that all things are yours is better defined in verse 22, verses 22 and 23. But again, I want to emphasize that the yours in this text, in these texts, in verses 22 and 23, your is plural.

Now, I got a grammar lesson early on from my brother-in-law who's a Texan. Now, everybody needs a Texan in your life, but I recommend only one. I don't know if anybody hears from Texas, but it still stands.

You might be that one. He clarified for me very early on the superiority of the Texan language. You see, there is y 'all, and then there's all y 'all. The extra all is for emphasis to a larger group. Not just y 'all, but all y 'all.

Verse 21 translates into Texan, for all things are all y 'alls. Unfortunately, they didn't offer Texan in my high school, so I had to settle for Spanish, which was close enough. Some of you are getting it.

It's coming in waves. The reason this plural matters, the reason I'm going on about it, is that Paul is emphasizing the corporate nature of the Corinthians again. The church that has been dividing and fracturing and at risk of breaking apart into various factions.

Together, together, he said earlier, they are the temple of the Spirit. Together, they have been granted all things and their unity. You don't have all things by yourself. Did you know that? You don't have everything that you need to grow in Christ on your own.

You need to be in community because there are people in this room that have gifts and talents and abilities and see things from a perspective that you need. That's why he brings us together. But together, all things are ours in Christ.

You see, they don't belong to Paul. They don't belong to Apollos. Lift up your eyes, church. In Christ, we have been together given all things, whether elders or deacons or authors or podcasters or the world or life or death, the present or the future.

And he just adds on top of things the great inheritance. Are we forgetting our inheritance, church? Are we satisfied to identify ourselves by one mere human's name? While to the church has been given the glorious resources of all of the dominion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, we are Christ's church.