Greatest Dangers Lie Within

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Well, let's remain standing and we're going to open our Bibles and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 18-23 is the text for the morning, 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and verse 18.
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Verse 18, let no one deceive himself.
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If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.
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For the wisdom of this world is folly with God, for it is written, he catches the wise in their craftiness.
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And again, the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise that they are futile.
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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.
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And you are Christ's and Christ is God's.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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I pray now that as I have the opportunity yet again to preach your word, that you would first and foremost keep me from error.
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As I know that I am a fallible man, I am capable of preaching that which is incorrect and for the sake of my conscience, I don't want to do that.
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And for the sake of your people, I fear that.
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And for the sake of your name, Lord, I would dread that.
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So, I pray, Lord, that you would, by your Holy Spirit, speak through me today, that you would sanctify the words of my mouth and, Lord God, that you would open up the hearts of my listeners to hear what your word says.
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And I know, Lord, that that is a work that only your Holy Spirit can do.
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For, Lord, if your Holy Spirit is not among us instructing hearts, then it is as I am just speaking into the air.
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So, I pray, Father, for you to open hearts today, open eyes that they might see, open ears that they might hear the wonderful truths contained in your word.
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In Jesus' name, Amen.
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Ever since the fall of man in the garden, God's people have been at odds with the world.
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Jesus tells us specifically in the Gospel of John that the world would hate those who love him.
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He says, know that if the world hates you, that it hated me first.
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And whether it's going all the way back to Nero lighting his garden with the burning bodies of believers to modern-day terrorists painting the symbol of the Nazarene on Christians' homes to mark them out for persecution, we know quite well that the battle that is going on in the world and has gone on in the world since the beginning is a spiritual one.
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And so, in our last session, Paul provides a warning.
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In fact, if you haven't been here with us, just to give you a quick overview, we are doing a study of 1 Corinthians.
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So, I've been preaching verse by verse since the beginning of the year in the epistle of 1 Corinthians.
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And we go verse by verse each week and we take as many verses as is appropriate.
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And last week, we looked at verses 16 and 17 of 1 Corinthians chapter 3.
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And just by way of reminder, I want to remind you what it says.
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It says, do you not know that you are God's temple and God's spirit dwells in you? And if anyone destroys God's temple, God will destroy him for God's temple is holy and you are that temple.
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And you might recall that I pointed out last week that the temple here is not referring to the church building, of course.
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This building is not a temple.
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But it's referring to the believers as being the ones in whom the Holy Spirit dwells.
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And the church collective is in view in Paul's words here when he says that if anyone destroys the temple, God will destroy him.
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Essentially, he's saying if God has brought together a church, if God has brought together his people in collection, in congregation, then that collection, that congregation of people is holy.
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God has established a church.
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And if anyone were to come and try to destroy that church, then God will destroy them.
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That's what the text says.
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And I don't know if you remember last week, but I mentioned that one of the commentaries on this says, it says the simple statement is beware church wreckers for you will be wrecked.
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Beware those who wreck the church for you yourselves will be wrecked.
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And so it should be unthinkable, especially for a believer, it should be unthinkable to attempt to do damage to the body of Christ.
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That should go without saying.
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Jesus said this is his bride.
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This is his body.
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And to do violence to the church is to do violence to Christ himself.
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In fact, if you remember, when Jesus spoke to Saul on the road to Damascus, you remember Saul of Tarsus, the one who was persecuting the church who would eventually become the apostle Paul, Jesus said, why are you persecuting me? Because Jesus identifies so much with the church that to persecute the church is to persecute him and to lay an attack against the church is to is to lay an attack against Christ.
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And as I said, it should be unthinkable to do such a thing.
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It should be unthinkable that we would lay an attack against God's church.
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And yet one might easily think of several ways in which people do this.
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It wouldn't take long for me to pull out a whiteboard and write a copious list of false teachers down through the ages, from the beginning of the church even to today, who demonstrate their willingness to fleece the flock or hurt the flock or damage the flock or lead the flock into disaster for their own selfish, egotistical gain.
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And combine that with those who from the outside have sought to attack the church with evil rhetoric, false accusations and even physical assaults.
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And it's not hard to see that there are those who attempt to destroy God's people.
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I mean, just look overseas.
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We we we find, you know, right now we're very comfortable.
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So we might be a little chilly and I apologize, but we're pretty comfortable in here.
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Right.
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But overseas today, there are people who have to hide to do what we're doing.
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There are people who have to who have to be in hiding from their neighbors.
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They have to be in hiding from those in power.
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Some of them are even in hiding from persecution, which is sanctioned by their own government.
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Church leaders are killed.
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Church members are attacked.
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Church families ripped apart.
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And even in our own land, we've seen terrible attacks.
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We've seen churches, several churches over the last few years that have had mass violence done within them.
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Up in the Carolinas, there was a church that was attacked.
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Out in Texas, there was a church that was attacked.
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And God tells us these acts will not go unpunished.
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Those who come and attack the church are under the judgment of God.
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But having said all that, I want to make a point that I don't believe that that's what's in view in chapter 16 and 17.
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Because even though we could talk all day about false teachers, we could talk all day about those who attack the church from within or from without.
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What's in view in verses 16 and 17 is a danger from within the body itself.
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In fact, the context leading up to verses 16 and 17 is folks who are within the church who are puffed up with spiritual pride and a sense of superiority.
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They are folks who are filled with a love for the wisdom of the world.
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And they are happy to align themselves with leaders and teachers who they believe will increase their spiritual stock, who will increase their spiritual position.
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You remember this all the way back to chapter 1.
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And then in chapter 2, Paul has been saying, some of you say I am of Paul.
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Who was Paul? He was the founder of the church.
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Some people want to be attached to that foundation stone of the church.
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And some people say I am of Apollos.
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Apollos was this great preacher who brought great gains to the church at Corinth.
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And some people want to be attached to that one who God used to really grow the church.
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And some people say I am of Cephas.
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That's Peter.
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That's the connection to the Hebrew roots of the church.
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And Peter was the great apostle, the leader of the apostles.
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And some people want to be connected to him.
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But you understand, and some people said I am of Jesus.
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And you remember what we said about that.
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That was a way of saying I am of Jesus and you're not.
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It's a spiritual pride issue.
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So this whole issue that's arisen is folks within the church who are willing to divide the church over their own sense of spiritual superiority.
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They're willing to divide God's people and create sects and cliques and division within the church on behalf of their own sense of self-righteousness.
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Paul says they're carnally minded in chapter 3 verses 1 to 4.
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He says he can't even speak to them as spiritual people.
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But he has to speak to them like they're children of the flesh.
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I put this out as a...
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If you're on social media, I put out little blurbs sometimes.
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And this was a quote I put out.
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And this is just something from the message.
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I said, the most subversive and aggressive danger to the church is the unrecognized hand of selfish pride that dwells within.
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The most subversive and dangerous...
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Excuse me, the most subversive and aggressive danger to a church is the unrecognized hand of selfish pride which dwells within.
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You know, we can talk about dangers from outside.
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We can talk about false teachers.
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We can talk about people who might come in and do damage to the church.
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But the most serious thing that we have to consider in the church is those who seek to do damage from within.
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Because that's what destroys the church.
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That's the most aggressive form of destruction that comes to a church.
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So when Paul gives his warning in chapter 3 verses 16 and 17, I don't think he's looking at Nero.
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I don't think he's looking forward to Isis.
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I don't think he's looking to some flowery false prophet.
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I think his eye is directed at the Corinthians themselves.
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You all, you, not you all, but the Corinthians, as Paul is saying, they all, and by extension I guess us all, are the potential danger.
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We have to be careful.
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Because our pride can become our own downfall.
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And it can lead us into destruction.
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So in verse 18, and it's where we're starting today, all that was the introduction to get us to our text today.
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In verse 18, Paul gives an imperative statement.
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An imperative statement is a statement of command.
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He says in verse 18, Let no one deceive himself.
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That is an imperative statement.
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That is a command.
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It's not a kind suggestion.
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I think the worst thing in the world that has happened, especially in modern Christianity, is we look at the Bible as a list of suggestions.
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In fact, we look at it as a list of multiple choice selections, as if it's a cafeteria style Christianity.
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I'll take this, and I won't take that.
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I like this, but I don't like that.
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So I'll take what I want, and I'll put that on my tray, and that's what I'm going to sit down and have, but I'm not going to have the rest of it.
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Paul doesn't allow for that.
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He says, Let no one deceive himself.
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He is demanding that the Corinthians stop any kind of self-deception.
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But what is it they're self-deceived about? What have they deceived themselves about? They have deceived themselves about their own spiritual superiority.
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The Corinthians, rather, really thought highly of themselves and their own wisdom.
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It doesn't take long to read through the first three chapters to notice that Paul is continually attacking the world's wisdom and uplifting the wisdom of God, and saying that if you want God's wisdom, you have to forget the world's wisdom, and you have to turn to God for His wisdom.
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He's demanding that they stop valuing human wisdom, worldly wisdom.
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Now, we've said, we've talked a few times, this doesn't mean that the world is always wrong about everything, but what he's talking about specifically is about those who try to build their own sense of spiritual superiority on what they know of the world's wisdom and what they know of the world's knowledge, rather than God's knowledge and God's Word.
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John MacArthur made a good point.
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He said, you know what? He said, if I had a choice between taking a group of men who were all PhDs and didn't know the Word, but a group of men who hadn't graduated high school, but know the Word of God, and who am I going to choose as my elders? It's not even a question, right? He said, it's nice to have a PhD who is also a man of the Word.
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It's nice to have someone who is educated and also is a man of the Word, but at the end of the day, what matters is do we know the Word? My wife and I have had this conversation many times.
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Both of my older kids are in college.
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My younger kids, of course, are five and under, so we're not there yet at all.
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But I'm so much more concerned that they know Christ than I am that they know algebra.
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It's good that they know algebra, and it's good it's going to be valuable to them, possibly in certain areas of life, but the most important thing in the world is that they know the Word of God.
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That's the wisdom that matters.
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And that's the eternal wisdom that is that gold, silver, and precious stones that we talked about a few weeks ago.
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Those are the things that have eternal value.
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And I am not downplaying education, but I am saying this, to be educated in all that the world has to offer and to not be educated in all that God has to offer is to leave you spiritually ignorant and in danger of being caught up in the world's wisdom.
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So he says, let no one deceive himself.
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If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool so that he might become wise.
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Now, I want to just quote Gordon Fee here.
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Gordon Fee wrote a tremendous commentary on the book of 1 Corinthians, and he says this opening salvo is irony once again when he says, if any one of you thinks he is wise, of course they do, that is quite the point.
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When Paul says, if any of you thinks they are wise, that's the point.
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That's the whole issue with chapters 1 through 3.
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They all think they are wise.
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They all think they are brilliant according to this age.
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They all are so concerned with feeding at the trough of the world's wisdom.
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And so confident are they in their wisdom.
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So confident are they in their pride that they are willing to divide over it.
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That's the key to all of this.
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Not only are they so overwhelmed with a desire for the world's wisdom, but that overwhelming desire for the world's wisdom has caused them to come against one another.
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It's caused them to create division and sex within the church that's causing them to hate one another and drive wedges between one another.
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Beloved, I want to say this.
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I want you to hear this with the heart from which it comes.
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Church division, when it is based on spiritual pride, is no small thing.
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It is very, very serious.
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I hear people all the time, oh this church had a church split, or oh that church had a church split.
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That is horrible.
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It's not funny, it's not cute, it's not a blessing.
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It's a bad thing to see God's people come against God's people because their pride has eaten them up.
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And I say this, my wife and I, I always read my wife my sermon notes before Sunday, and I said, you know, I probably should stop at this point and say, just so you know, we're not dealing with any of this here right now at this moment.
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I'm not preaching to anyone who's leading a division in the church.
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Because some of you may come in as a guest and say, boy, what am I getting myself into? No, this is where we are in the text.
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But it can happen anytime.
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And I say this because it's so serious, the word of God addresses it so specifically.
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In fact, I want to show you a few verses.
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If you want to turn with me, you can, or I'll just read them to you, that's fine.
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But I want to show you how serious the idea of church division is from the word of God.
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In Romans 16, verses 17 and 18.
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Romans 16, verses 17 and 18.
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The apostle Paul writes this, he says, I appeal to you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught.
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Avoid them, for such persons do not serve the Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery, they deceive the hearts of the naive.
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Think about what that's saying.
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It's saying that those who come into the church to cause divisions and create obstacles to the doctrine of the truth are dangerous, and they are to be avoided.
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Titus chapter 3 and verse 10.
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As for the person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him, knowing that such a person is warped and sinful and is self-condemned.
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You understand how serious that is? The person who comes in to create division, the person who's creating the sex of division, they're actually warped.
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They're self-condemned, Paul says.
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And this is the second time he says, have nothing to do with them.
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But you know what I find? Oftentimes when folks create division, people gather around them.
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Because they want to know what's going on.
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Oh, I've got to call them and find out all about what's going on, and I've got to get involved in this too.
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And so one person becomes two people, and the two people become four people, and then that type of division grows.
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Rather than avoiding those who create division, we flock to them, because it feeds our own ego.
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Those who cause division and strife within God's church are dangerous, and they can lead many people astray.
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Now I said earlier that I don't have any issues going on right now, but I do want to tell you a story.
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And I kind of fought with myself a little bit as to whether or not I wanted to talk about this, but those of you who remember this, and some of you, many of you don't, because many of you came here after.
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I've been the pastor for 12 years, and in my second year as the pastor.
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So this would have been around 2008.
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Some of you have been here that long, some of you haven't.
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There was a man who was a member of the church, and he did not like the theology that was being taught.
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He did not like the preaching and the teaching that was here.
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So he began to meet with folks to try and encourage them to create a faction which would ultimately see the church remove me and remove the theology and teaching.
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And his subversive tactics are legendary, because he not only tried to create division, he distributed literature secretly.
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He met with people privately.
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He even tried to involve other area ministers in this divisive plan.
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But thankfully, God saw fit for him to leave and to bring his destruction away from here and move on.
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But do you realize I almost resigned over that? In the midst of all that was happening, I wrote a resignation letter.
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I still have it.
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I was ready to resign, not because I was the person who was creating the division, but because I did not want to be the reason for the church to split.
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I did not want to be the reason that God's people fell apart.
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I didn't want to be responsible for dividing the church.
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Beloved, we should fear such a thing.
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And we should always look to ourselves first.
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And is it me? It's easy to point fingers and say, Oh, well, I know, Chris, you're the problem.
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You're not.
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Point fingers.
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Dale, you're brand new.
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Just joined last week.
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So, you know, it's easy to point fingers.
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But am I looking at myself? Am I being honest with myself? Because to be the cause of God's people to divide, especially when it's not over something that is worth dividing over.
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And I want to say this very quickly.
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There are things that have to divide God's people.
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There are things that have to.
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And Paul is going to talk about this in 1 Corinthians 11.
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He says there has to be divisions at some point because sometimes division demonstrates the true and the false.
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Because sometimes, just like that man leaving, he left to demonstrate who he was.
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And I'm thankful for that.
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But the most dangerous thing in the world, the most dangerous issue that I have found with people who want to create division is this, is they often feel that they are doing God's work.
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The people who want to create division often feel very righteous about it.
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I'll give you an example.
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If you go back to the book of Numbers, in your mind, if you remember the story of Moses leading God's people out of Egypt and through the wilderness and ultimately trying to take them to the Promised Land, do you remember there was a man in Numbers chapter 16 named Korah? In Numbers 16, a man named Korah came to Moses and Aaron and essentially he said this.
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It says he assembled himself and his group against Moses and Aaron.
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And he says, You've gone too far for all in the congregation are holy, every one of them.
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The Lord is among them.
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Why then do you exalt yourselves to the point of the leader of the assembly? Essentially what he was saying was, Who are you, Moses? Who are you, Aaron? We're all God's people.
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We're all holy.
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Who are you to take leadership? So I'm going to lead the people against you.
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And I think, at least in his warped mind, and that's the way that Titus tells, it says men like that are warped.
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I think in his warped mind he thought he was doing the work of God.
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And that's the most dangerous thing in the world.
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When people come against God's church thinking they're doing God's will.
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In fact, doesn't the Bible say that? Doesn't the Bible say there will come a time when people will kill you and think they're serving God? That they're going to attack you and think they're serving God in doing so? So what did God do with Korah? The Bible says, God opened the earth beneath his feet, and all in his company went down into Sheol.
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That means the grave.
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They were all brought down to death.
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Now I don't expect God to open up a hole in the center of the congregation and swallow up anyone who tries to bring division in the church today.
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But judgment from God is still worthy of our consideration.
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Beloved again, and I hope you don't think I've left the text, because really I think this is the heart of the issue.
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Because division within the body is serious.
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And Paul is saying in this text very simply that no one should deceive himself.
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And if anyone thinks he is wise in this age, then he needs to become a fool that he can become wise.
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And what he's saying there is, if your wisdom is causing you to have this sense of spiritual superiority and ultimately is creating division within the body, you need to re-examine yourself, you need to adjust your thinking, and you need to repent and come back to the true wisdom, which is the wisdom of God.
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And then in verse 19 he follows that up and he says, For the wisdom of this world is folly with God.
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For it is written, He catches the wise in his craftiness, and again the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise that they are futile.
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And by the way, those two passages are quotes of the Old Testament.
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One is quoted from Job.
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It's a quote from a man named Eliphaz, who was one of the three men who came to Job.
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And it's quoting him.
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Eliphaz used this phrase wrongly, but Paul is turning it and using it properly.
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He's saying God catches the wise in their craftiness.
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You ever seen somebody who tries to outsmart God? And you say, well, I don't know what you mean by that.
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Have you ever seen somebody who thinks they're smarter than the Bible? Or smarter than the Word of God? It happens every day all around the United States and all around the world.
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People try to come against the Word of God and they consider themselves wiser than the Word.
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It's sort of like the old joke.
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Preachers have a thousand jokes that we sort of share back and forth.
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But the old joke about the man who said, He told God, we don't need you anymore.
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Our technology has gotten us far enough to where we don't need you anymore.
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We can do everything that you can do, God.
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You can just leave us alone.
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And so God says, well, I tell you what.
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Let's have a man-building contest.
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I made a man.
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You say you can do everything I can do.
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Why don't you make a man? And the guy says, OK, we'll get right on that.
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And he says, well, you have to do it the way I did it.
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I made man from the dust of the ground.
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And the scientist said, OK, God, I'll...
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He reaches down and grabs a handful of dust.
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He says, no, no, no.
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You've got to get your own dust.
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That's mine.
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There's this haughtiness in the world that makes us think that we can say to the word of God, We know better than you.
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And that's that worldly wisdom that brings destruction that Paul's talking about.
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He says he catches the wise in their craftiness.
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And he knows the thoughts of the wise, they're futile.
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That's from Psalm 94.
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So he's quoting these two passages about wisdom, essentially simply to say this, that those who try to find their value in the wisdom of the world will ultimately find that the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God.
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The wisdom of the world is moronos.
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Moronos is where we get the word moronic or moron.
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It's moronic when compared to the wisdom of God.
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As a result, verse 21, Let no one boast in men.
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I keep telling you, this is going back to the whole situation where they're dividing up and they're assigning for themselves leaders.
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And by the way, Paul and Apollos and Peter, they weren't a part of this.
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It wasn't like Paul was there with his group and Cephas was there with his group and Apollos was there with his group.
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These people had assumed these leaders on their own.
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And they'd said, I'm of him or I'm of him or I'm of him in a state of spiritual pride.
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And Paul says in verse 21, Let no one boast in men.
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For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future.
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All are yours.
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And I want to tell you something.
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When I first read that in preparation for this message, I found it confusing.
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Let me explain why.
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Verse 21.
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So let no one boast in men.
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Again, it's an imperative statement.
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Very similar to the earlier imperative statement where he says do not be self-deceived.
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Here he says another imperative statement.
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Let no one boast in men.
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I would suspect that the following statement after that would be something like this.
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Let no one boast in men because that is foolish.
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That seems like to me that would be the natural thing to say.
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Or let no one boast in men because when you do so you create division.
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That's been the whole issue, right? Or let no one boast in men because in doing so you're behaving fleshly or carnally.
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That's what he said in the early part of chapter 3, 1 Corinthians 3.
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Now I'm not saying that I know better than the Bible.
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I'm saying that what I would expect the Bible to say here is let no one boast in men because it's bad.
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But that ain't what it says.
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And I think what it says is really powerful and really thought-provoking.
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But you really have to think about what it means because this is what it says.
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It says do not boast in men because all things are yours.
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That seems like it came out of nowhere.
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In fact, it seems like it sort of doesn't fit.
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Because all of this up until this point has seemingly been a rebuke and it's a command statement.
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Let no one boast in men for all things are yours.
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And what are the all things? All things are Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life, death, present, future.
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All of this is yours.
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So what does it mean? Why is there this seeming disconnect between the first part and the second part of verse 21? Let no one boast in men for all things are yours.
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This is what it means and I believe this is what it means.
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It says this.
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Why would you fight and divide over worldly pride and boastfulness regarding a little something when in reality as a church together you have everything? Why would you fight and divide to have a little something when together you have everything? Because guess what? If you fight and divide and this one has Paul and this one has Apollos and this one has Peter, together you have them all.
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If you fight and divide you're going to come into these little cliques and you're going to have these small groups but together you have all the gifts.
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You have all of everything.
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Why would you divide over which teacher is yours? Why would you divide over anything when as the church, the body of Christ, the world is yours? You have the promise of God's Holy Spirit living in you.
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You have the promise of life and life abundant on this side of the grave and life eternal on the other.
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You are the object of God's love and blessing.
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Why in the world would you want to divide that? Why in the world would you want to find value in anything but that? You have your value.
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You know what your value is today? You know where your value comes from today? Verse 23, you are Christ's and Christ is God's.
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That's where you should find your value.
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Not in the wisdom of this world, not in the accolades of this world, not in what this world has to give you but if you really want to know where spiritual value and eternal value comes from it is understanding to whom you belong.
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You are Christ's.
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Do you understand that? You are Christ's.
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If you are His, if you have come to Him in repentance and faith, you belong to Him.
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Why would you boast in anything else? Why would you want to boast in a teacher when we belong to the greatest teacher, Jesus Christ? Why would you want to exalt in worldly wisdom when we have a gospel that is the wisdom of God according to the Apostle Paul? Why would you be searching for some kind of satisfaction from the world when we can have complete satisfaction and joy that passes all understanding in Christ? Beloved, we began today by talking about the fact that the most dangerous thing in the church, I believe, is spiritual pride and it was that danger that Corinth was dealing with and it continues to devour churches and ministries today.
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So the question becomes, how do we combat that? I think that we combat that by remembering to whom we belong.
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Because when you remember you are Christ's, when you remember that short phrase, you are Christ's, you belong to Him.
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Guess what? That doesn't feed your ego.
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In fact, that destroys your ego.
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Because if you truly understand it, you know that the reason you are Christ's is because God saved you.
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God reached down into the muck and the mire of your sin.
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He picked you up, He cleaned you off and He seated you in heavenly places with Christ.
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God did that for you.
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You didn't do that for Him, He did that for you.
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We are Christ's not because of anything we've done.
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We are Christ's not because of anything we're doing and we are Christ's not because of anything we are going to do.
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We are Christ's solely and completely because of what God has done for us and that, my brothers, should kill any sense of spiritual pride.
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It should absolutely lay us bare on our knees, face down at the foot of the cross.
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And guess what? The ground at the foot of the cross is level.
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There is equality at the foot of the cross.
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Now I want to make one more comment before I close because if I don't, I will feel like I've missed this and I can't.
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But if you look at the last verse, it says, and you are Christ's and Christ is God's.
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This particular passage, and I could do a whole sermon on it, but I'm not going to.
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This particular passage has been used to attack the doctrine of the Trinity.
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In fact, I remember one day I was in a Hardee's restaurant and there was a lady who was a Jehovah's Witness and she was handing out pamphlets and I walked over to her and I wrote down a few Bible verses and I asked her to please think about these and to read them and to consider what they mean about the deity of Christ.
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Well she, in kind, in turn, wrote a Bible verse to me and handed it to me.
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And it was 1 Corinthians 3, verse 23.
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We are Christ's and Christ is God's.
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And the argument, of course, simply is this.
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If Jesus is God, how can he also be God's possession? It's a possessive term here.
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And the answer is this.
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And it's really not that difficult if you understand what we mean when we talk about the Trinity.
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If you understand Trinitarian theology, which Christians have historically been Trinitarian in their theology, this passage is not attempting to describe Christ's relationship to God within the Trinity.
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It is attempting to describe his relationship to God in the Incarnation.
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When Christ entered the world, he already preexisted himself as being a man.
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You understand that? When Jesus came into the world as a man, he had already preexisted.
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It says, In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
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And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.
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So Christ preexisted Jesus of Nazareth.
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He existed prior to that.
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And he was not a man until he entered the womb of Mary.
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And at that moment, Christ humbled himself and he submitted himself to the Father as a man.
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This is why Jesus prayed.
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This is why Jesus said, I have not come to do my own will, but to do the will of him who sent me.
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Because he was speaking as one who had humbled himself in becoming a man.
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Jesus is the God-man.
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And we focus a lot on the God and forget about the man.
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But I want you to hear from Philippians chapter 2 because I think it does explain this.
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In Philippians chapter 2, Paul gives us what's called the Carmen Christi or the Body of Christ passage.
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And he says this in verses 5-11.
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He says, Have this mind among yourselves which is yours in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form.
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He humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
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Beloved, why did Christ do that? Why did Christ leave his home in heaven, come in the form of a man, and take his place nailed to the tree of Calvary? He did that for you.
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He did that for his church.
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He did that for every person who would ever believe on his name.
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And that's why the passage can say, we are Christ's.
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Because he came down from heaven and purchased us by his atoning blood.
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And nothing that this world has to offer, no gifts, no power, no wisdom, no stature, no money, no fame, no fortune, no anything can ever compare to what it means when we say, we are Christ's.
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Beloved, that is what should keep us united.
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That is what we should found ourselves on as a church.
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And that is what keeps us moving forward in the kingdom.
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We are Christ's.
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And Christ is God's.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you for your word.
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I thank you for the opportunity to preach your word today.
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And I pray, Lord, that the word has been used to instruct the body to call where needed those who need to be called to repentance.
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And Lord, I'm certain in one way or another, we all do.
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And specifically, Lord, for those who are believers, that they would be encouraged to be reminded that we are Christ's.
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And those who are not believers, those who have not yet bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, might recognize the need to be called the children of God.
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Your word tells us that Jesus came to his own, and his own did not receive him.
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But to as many as do receive him, he gives the power to become children of God.
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Father, I pray today, by your mercy, extend that power to this group.
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And if there are those here who know not the Savior, give them power to become children of God.
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In Jesus' name, amen.