Learning Contentment

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Amen.
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If you want to, if you will stand or continue standing rather and take out your Bibles and turn to first Corinthians chapter seven.
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Now I rarely do this, but, uh, for the sake of some of you, I know standing for a long time is difficult.
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This is a long passage to read.
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If you need to sit down, sit down, but otherwise, if you'll remain standing, if you can, we're going to read verses 17 to 40.
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Uh, it is a long passage and I know that some of you probably think it's even a crazy thought to try to get through so much, but I promise you there is a reason and you will understand shortly, but we're going to look to 24 verses today.
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First Corinthians chapter seven, verse 17, only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him.
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This is my rule in all the churches.
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Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision.
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Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision for neither circumcision nor counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God.
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Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.
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Were you a slave when called? Do not be concerned about it, but if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity for he who was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed man of the Lord.
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Likewise, he was he who was free when called as a slave of Christ.
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You were bought with a price.
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Do not become slaves of men.
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So brothers in whatever condition each was called, let there him remain with God.
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Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy.
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I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is.
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Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free.
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Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife.
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But if you do marry, you have not sinned.
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And if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned.
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Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles.
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And I would spare you of that.
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This is what I mean, brothers, the appointed time has grown very short from now on.
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Let those who have wives live as those who had none and those who mourn as those who were not mourning and those who rejoice as those as though they were not rejoicing and those who buy as those who had no goods and those who deal with the world as those who had no dealings with it.
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For the present form of this world is passing away.
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I want you to be free from anxieties.
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The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord.
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But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife and his interests are divided.
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And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit.
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But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.
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I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
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If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong and it has to be, let him do as he wishes, let them marry.
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It is no sin, but whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity, but having his desire under control and having has determined this in his heart to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well.
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So then he who marries his betrothed does well and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.
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A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.
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But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes only in the Lord.
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Yet in my judgment, she is happier if she remains as she is.
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And I think that I too have the spirit of God.
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Father in heaven, I thank you for your word.
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Lord, we are taking a big bite this morning.
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May we be able to chew it and digest it and understand it.
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And Lord, I pray for your mercy as I preach.
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Lord, as always.
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Keep me in the truth.
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Open the hearts of your people to believe.
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For the unbeliever, Lord, convict them of sin, draw them to repentance and faith in your son.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.
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Now, last week I made a little joke saying that getting through 16 verses would be a miracle, but we did it.
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We saw a miracle happen.
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Some may think we went too quickly, but I think we covered what we needed to.
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But this week, if last week was a miracle, then this week would be a double portion because not only is it 24 verses, but it's also 24 verses that at first glance would seem to be overly disconnected.
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And it would seem that it would take maybe four or five sermons to get through it all.
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And I do reserve the right to go back and address some things if I do happen to skip over some things today.
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But I want to look at these passages as a unit because I believe there is a theme which binds them all.
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In fact, I think the entire seventh chapter is bound by a theme that is contained in these verses.
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Remember, these are Paul's response to something that has been written to him by the Corinthians.
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If you look at verse one, now concerning the matters about which you wrote, this is something they've written to him.
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We don't have a copy of what they wrote.
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We don't know if it was a list of questions or if it was statements and assertions that he's responding to.
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We don't know what he was given, but everything in chapter seven is responding to what he was given because he tells us that in verse one concerning the things about which you wrote.
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And there is a theme beginning in verse 17 that holds to the end, which I think explains the entire chapter.
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Everybody thinks that this chapter is about marriage and divorce, and it is, but it's about more than marriage and divorce.
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I want you to look with me.
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I want you to look at four verses.
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Verse 17, 24, 26, and 40.
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And I want you to rehear these.
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I'm going to read them to you.
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I want you to see if in your mind you can make the connection of what holds this whole idea together.
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Verse 17 says this, let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him.
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Now look at verse 24.
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So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, let him remain there with God.
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Verse 26, I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is.
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Verse 40, yet in my judgment, she is happier if she remains as she is.
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Do you pick up the connection between all four of those verses? There is a sense in which this whole passage is dealing with the believer's willingness to remain satisfied in whatever station they are when they become a believer.
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There is a sense in which this entire section is about learning contentment where we are.
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That is to say that when a person becomes a believer in Christ, he does not need to automatically make radical changes regarding his place in the world.
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God has saved the person.
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And in saving the person, he has sanctified his station in life.
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Now, if a person is in habitual sin, certainly that needs to be repented of.
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I am not saying that God sanctifies a life of sin.
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But what we are going to see in this passage is that many of the things in this life that the believer has when he becomes a believer will go on now sanctified as a believer.
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A banker can still be a banker even though he is a Christian.
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He is a Christian banker.
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A house painter can still be a house painter.
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He is a Christian house painter.
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A waitress can still be a waitress, now a Christian waitress.
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You understand that when you become a believer, it does not mean that you have to go through some kind of social revolution and make all of these sweeping changes that make you into something else.
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Someone might think that now that they are a Christian, they have to leave their station in life and become, let's say, a minister.
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A lot of people do that.
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They say, well, now that I am a Christian, to really serve Christ, I have to go into the ministry.
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The great thing about the Protestant Reformation was the idea that you could actually serve God in any place that you were called.
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You could be a Christian serving God as a plumber.
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You could be a Christian serving God as a carpenter.
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You could be a Christian serving God in any station in life because God has sanctified you and thus has sanctified your station.
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He sanctified where you are.
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We call this the Protestant work ethic.
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The Protestant work ethic is based on the idea that you didn't have to be a clergyman to glorify God in your life, that you don't have to be a priest or a monk to glorify God in your life, but that you can glorify God wherever you are.
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In fact, how many of you know Alistair Begg? Alistair Begg has preached on this text.
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I listened to his sermon and the title of the sermon I liked.
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I didn't want to use it because I didn't want to steal it, but I am going to mention it.
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The title of his sermon was Bloom Where You Are Planted.
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Bloom Where You Are Planted.
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And I thought that really it does kind of sum up the idea of being content where God has placed you.
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I want to read to you an article by Gene Veith, which is in the Ligonier website.
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Ligonier's R.C.
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Sproul's ministry, the late R.C.
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Sproul.
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And this is what Mr.
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Veith said, quote, Medieval Catholicism taught that spiritual perfection is to be found in celibacy, poverty and monastic withdrawal from the world where higher spiritual life is found.
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But the reformers emphasized the spiritual dimension of family life, productive labor and cultural engagement.
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Vocation is simply the Latin word for calling.
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Your vocation is your calling.
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According to Luther, God calls each of us to various tasks and relationships.
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We have vocations in the family, marriage and parenthood, in the workplace as either as a manager, a servant, someone exercising their gifts.
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In the culture, we're either leaders or we're subjects or we're citizens.
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We also have a vocation in the church.
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Why? They're pastors, elders, congregants, deacons, organ players, piano players, whatever.
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But the spiritual life is not to be lived out mainly in church and in church activities.
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Rather, when we come to church, we hear the preaching of forgiveness for the sins and we are committed to our vocations.
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And then through the word and sacrament, our faith is strengthened and our faith then bears fruit.
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When we go back to our vocations, back to our families, back to our work, back to our culture, we take what we learn in church back into the world.
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We take what we learn here and we go back to our stations that God has called us to and we bloom where we are planted.
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You understand? So that's Paul's focus.
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God has called you where you are for a reason.
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Does that mean it's never going to change? No, things do change and we're going to talk about that.
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Does that mean that at some point you might not even seek a change? No, we're going to talk about that.
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But ultimately, you do not have an immediate obligation to move because God has you where you are for a reason.
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And that's what Paul is dealing with in this section.
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Now, the context is the state of marriage.
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The context is the state of someone who either wants to be married and isn't is married and has been through a divorce or something like that.
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So there's all these contexts that sort of drive it together.
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But again, I do believe that verses 17, 24, 26 and 40 set the theme.
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And the theme is this.
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It's very simple.
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Let the person remain as he is.
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Understand that God has you where you are for a reason.
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And let's learn to be content.
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Can I say this? We live in the least contented time in the history of man.
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We live in a time where it seems that no, in fact, we're told not to be content.
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Everything that we see is trying to force us out of contentment and into the desire for something else, whether it's a desire for the bigger, better toy or whether it's the desire for the bigger, better job or the desire for the more illustrious setting or the bigger house or the different wife or husband.
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There's all of this push around us to to try to drive us out of contentment.
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And yet, Paul says here we need to learn contentment.
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So I've broken this down into two parts.
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Verses 17 to 24 is what I've called vocational contentment, being content where we are in our station in life and then relational contentment, being content where we are with who we are with in life.
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That's the two parts versus 17 to 24, vocational contentment versus 25 to 40, relational contentment.
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Well, yes, we're going to try to go through it all.
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Yes, we're going to speed through a little.
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So put on your helmets, put your seats and tray tables in their full upright and locked positions because we're coming in.
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We're coming in hot.
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Look at verse one with me only or verse 17, rather only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him and to which God has called him.
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This is my rule and all the churches, by the way.
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Who is Paul to give a rule in the church? Well, he's speaking here, he's writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
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But I think that this is Paul simply pointing out that this is the this is the lesson that he's given in all the churches.
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Paul has gone and established churches all throughout the Mediterranean.
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He's established churches all the way from Jerusalem to Greece.
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And the point is this.
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I have taught this in all the churches.
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This is not something new or unique to Corinth.
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This is my this has been the rule throughout all the churches that I have taught in.
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And the rule is this.
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Let each person lead the life the Lord has assigned to him.
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And then he uses verse 18.
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He talks about circumcision.
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Now, when we talk about circumcision, you have to understand why would Paul even bring up circumcision? Because it was a huge issue at this point.
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At this point in history, the question of whether or not you were circumcised was a huge issue, both religiously and socially, because religiously it identified you with the Jewish people and socially it identified you as whether or not you were a Gentile.
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And one of the things that was happening at this particular time in history is something called an epispasm.
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An epispasm was when a man who had been circumcised at birth did not want to be associated with his Jewish heritage.
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So he would undergo a procedure which would remove the marks of circumcision.
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It was called an epispasm.
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I don't know how it worked, but I know it happened.
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It's in the history books and it's part of what men would do to try to disconnect themselves socially or religiously from their foundation or from their background.
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So Paul talks about this in this passage.
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He says, was any of you at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision.
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Be content with where you are.
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At the same time, was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision.
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That was a huge deal because a lot of the early church thought that to be a Christian, you had to first be a Jew.
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So they thought that you had to get circumcised before you could become a Christian because you had to become a Jew first, right? Jewish people said you have to be one of us before you can be a Christian.
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And Paul was saying, no, here's the point.
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Circumcision doesn't count for anything.
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You know what does count? Keeping the commands of God.
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You know what really matters? Obeying God.
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That's what matters.
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And now somebody might throw up their hand and say, well, wait a minute.
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Wasn't circumcision a command of God? And so how can he say circumcision doesn't matter, but keeping the commandment of God? You have to understand at this point that Paul is distinguishing the commands of God morally from the commands of God ceremonially.
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Because when the commands of God are mentioned in the scripture, there are commands that were given specifically under the Mosaic covenant, which no longer apply in the New Testament church.
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You say, I don't know if I understand that.
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Well, if you have a pork sandwich with your lunch today, you do understand it.
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Because prior to the coming of the new covenant, when you were living under the old covenant as a Jew, you couldn't enjoy that Bono's real beef pork sandwich or whatever.
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You couldn't have that sandwich, real beef pork, whatever you couldn't have either.
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You certainly couldn't have them together and you couldn't have a cheeseburger because you can't mix dairy and beef.
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And if any of you are wearing mixed fibers today, I got news for you.
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You couldn't do that either, because the covenantal law that was given to Moses for the people of God and the old covenant.
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Restricted their diet, restricted their clothing, restricted even the way they would wear their hair.
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And so those restrictions were not a part of the new covenant, because in the new covenant, it wasn't about being a Jew or being a Gentile.
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It was about being a follower of Jesus.
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And so Paul here says it doesn't matter whether you're circumcised or uncircumcised.
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What he's saying, it doesn't matter whether you're a Jew or a Gentile.
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What matters is the commandments of God.
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And in that regard, I would say this, it's the command of Christ that we have been given and the new covenant, which is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength and love our neighbor as ourself.
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And that is called the law of Christ in the New Testament.
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And all the law and the prophets have found their fulfillment in that.
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So the commandments of God, love God with all our heart, love our neighbor as ourself.
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That's the commandment of God.
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That's what matters, not whether or not you're circumcised.
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And he goes on to say, verse 20, each one of you should remain in the condition in which he was called.
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Again, that's essentially the same thing.
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It's holding the theme together.
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Verse 21, were you a bond servant when called? This is huge.
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Because that word means slave.
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And he asked the question, were you a slave when you were called? Do not be concerned about it.
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What does that mean? If you're a slave when you're called, you may still go on being a slave when you're a believer.
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So I don't like that.
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I'm free in Christ.
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Yes, but you might not be free from your earthly master in this life.
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Now, he says this, and I do like that Paul points out, he said, if you can avail your freedom, if you can get your freedom and back then freedom, it wasn't like in early American days with the slaves here.
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Back then, slaves could earn money and actually purchase their own freedom.
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It was much more it was much more a type of almost like employment today.
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You were you were owned by a master, but you could purchase out your freedom.
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You could make money while you were a slave.
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And as you made money, you could purchase out of your your own slavery.
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And Paul, he makes the point, he says, if you can do that, if you can get out of that slavery, fine.
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But understand this.
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Even if you remain a slave until you die, your position in Christ is what matters.
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Even if you remain in bondage until you die, it doesn't really matter.
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What matters is your station in Christ.
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As he goes on to say this, were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it.
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But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of that opportunity.
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For he, this is verse 22, for he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freed man of the Lord.
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Likewise, he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ, a sort of an oxymoron there.
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Because guess what? If you if you became a Christian as a slave, you're really free.
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Because even though you're free and even though you're a slave in this life, you're free in Christ.
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Likewise, if you were free when you became a Christian, you're now a slave, a slave to Christ.
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Isn't that weird? But it's awesome, because the point is, you're both, whether you are the master or whether you are the slave, whether you are the owner or whether you are the owned in Christ, the ground is level.
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You're either free in this world and a slave to Christ or you're a slave in this world and you're free in Christ, but you're both standing on the same ground at the foot of the same cross.
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Verse 23, you were bought with a price.
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Do not become bondservants of men.
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And that he's saying this, do not be do not understand yourself as being a slave of men.
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You're a slave of Christ.
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You've been bought.
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You've been purchased.
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You are his.
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So verse 24, picking up on what verse 17 said, picking up on what verse 20 said, verse 24 reiterates.
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So, brothers, in what condition each was called there, let him remain with God.
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You have God with you.
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You understand that? Wherever you are, if you are a Christian, wherever life has brought you and sometimes life has the ability to really bring us to some places we don't want to be.
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But wherever you are.
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God is there because he is in you.
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And he is with you.
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That's the point, that's the part that I think people miss in verse 24, because they say in whatever condition was called, let him remain there.
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No, let him remain there with God.
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You're there, but you're there with God.
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You know what my favorite and I say this verse so many times, I hope it never becomes where people think I'm just saying it just to say it.
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But one of my favorite sections of scripture is Romans eight and in the last part of Romans eight, of course, we have the part about God causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him, for those who are called according to his purpose, for those whom he called.
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He also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son and those whom he predestined, he called and those whom he called, he justified and those whom he justified, he glorified.
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But it goes on to say this for neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate you from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.
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That is the blessing that brings contentment.
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Because we realize that no matter where life takes us.
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God is there and that's how we learn contentment.
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And as I said, I call that vocational contentment, the contentment of our calling, what has God called us to? Has he called us to be circumcised? Don't seek to change it.
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Has he called us to be uncircumcised? Don't seek to change it.
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And that's, again, referring to something that has essentially happened prior to our conversion.
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We're there.
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We don't need to seek to change that necessarily.
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Or have we been called as slaves? Don't seek to change it.
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If we've been called as free people, don't seek to change it.
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Understand that God's called you where you are for a reason.
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Does that mean it's never going to change? No, but we don't come to this to this salvation experience expecting that God's going to automatically uproot us from where we are and put us somewhere else.
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He may expect us to stay where we are and bloom where we are.
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And based on all that, now he's going to talk about marriage.
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Because this, again, goes back to the heart of the question that the Corinthians were asking.
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They were asking the question, what do we do about marriage? Some of us have been married multiple times.
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Some of us have been divorced.
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Some of us were slaves and we were in a common law marriage where we had lived with a man.
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And then we were uprooted from that.
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We've been placed in another common law marriage over here.
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And now we're living with a man and we don't even know where the first man is.
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He was sold somewhere else.
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And now we don't even know where the situation is.
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What do we do? And we've got some who are virgins.
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That's what the word betrothed here is actually translated from the word virgin.
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We got some who've never been married.
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Should they get married? Should they not get married? And so there's all these questions.
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Paul's ultimate answer to that, if you can remain as you are, that's the best way to be.
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But his also his addition to that is not everybody can remain as they are because not everybody's made for singleness, y'all.
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And if you're single and you ain't made for that, then that's going to mean that you're going to live a life of constant temptation.
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And God doesn't want that for you.
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That's simple enough, right? And if you're living in a situation where you want to be married, then you should get married because it's not a sin.
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He's going to say that, too.
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You shouldn't sit there and just burn with a desire, but you need to get married the right way.
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So let's walk through this.
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So just walk through it and I'm going to make comments as we go now concerning the betrothed.
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That's people promised to be married.
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I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy.
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That's huge, by the way, I could do a whole sermon on this.
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When Paul says, I don't have a command from the Lord, he is not saying that this section of text isn't inspired.
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But what he is saying is this section of text isn't a command.
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This is pastorly counsel.
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It's pastorly wisdom.
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Like if someone were to come to me and ask, what should you do? I can give you wisdom from the scripture.
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I can point you to the scripture.
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But if it's something that is, if it's an issue of conscience, all I can do is point you in a direction.
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There isn't a command here, it's a direction.
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He's saying, I'm giving my judgment as one who is trustworthy.
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Paul is acting as a pastor to the Corinthians.
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And he says, verse 26, I think that in view of the present distress, it is good for a person to remain as he is.
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I'm going to say something right off the bat.
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We do not know exactly.
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I want to say we, I don't know exactly what the present distress is he's talking about.
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This is actually written prior to what we would call the neurotic persecution of the church.
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This is being written prior to the heavy persecution that would come under the emperor Nero.
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So I don't think Paul is talking about present persecution as the issue of distress here.
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There may be something going on in the Corinthian church that is causing a distress.
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And Paul is saying that because of this distress, every man should remain as he is.
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But at the end of the day, I don't know exactly what distress he's referring to.
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Different commentators say different things.
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People tend to argue about it.
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And I'm not going to come in here with a dogmatic and say this is the distress that he's referring to.
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But I will say this.
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Ultimately, he's pointing to the fact that there's something happening in the first century.
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There's something happening at the time of this writing where he says it's good for a person to simply remain as he is.
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Now, later in this section, he's going to talk about the fact that the appointed time has grown short.
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Verse 29, I'm going to say this and you can shoot me later if you don't agree.
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But hear me.
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I believe the apostle Paul thought Jesus could return in his day.
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And I believe that some of what he wrote actually addresses the fact that he lived his life every day with the idea that Jesus could return today.
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And so when he writes verse 29 and he says, this is what I mean, brothers, the appointed time has grown very short.
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I think what he means is I'm living every day as if Jesus is coming back.
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And if I live every day as if Jesus is coming back and the appointed day is growing short, if I live every day that way, then I'm really not going to be thinking about marriage and divorce.
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I'm not going to be thinking about those things.
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I'm going to be thinking about living for Christ because he's coming back.
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Now, you say that was 2000 years ago.
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Was Paul wrong? Every generation thinks there's going to be the last one.
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You ever notice that you ever get on the tube and see all these guys who are prophesying that this is the year that Jesus is coming back, Jesus is going to come back before the end of this generation.
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Why? Because every generation thinks it's theirs and we're supposed to live that way.
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We're supposed to live as if Jesus could return today.
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Now, I understand that there are some prophecy arguments about whether or not he can return because certain things people say have to be fulfilled before he returns.
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But I want to tell you this.
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I think Paul believed that the time of the world was short.
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And so he's speaking to a group of people with the idea that this world has a short time.
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Was Paul wrong? Well, it depends on how you judge time.
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Do y'all know what the eschaton is? You've heard that word eschaton? Eschaton, where we get the word eschatology, it means the end days.
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And I believe the end days began when Jesus rose from the grave.
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I believe the end times or the end days began when Jesus came out of that tomb.
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And here's why, because we have been given a promise that when he ascended, actually, we could say when he ascended, when he ascended, that he will return.
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And we don't know when it is.
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In fact, think about the parables.
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What did he say? Watch for you know not when the master of the house cometh.
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Right.
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You don't know when the Lord is coming.
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So we live every day as if today is the day he could split the eastern sky.
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Today is the day he can come back.
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And we live with that attitude, an eye to the end.
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Now, understanding that, read verses 29 through 31 with me.
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He says, from now on, let those who have wives live as though they have none.
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Let those who mourn as those who are not mourning.
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Those who rejoice as those who are not rejoicing.
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Those who buy as those who have no goods.
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Those who deal with the world as those who had no dealings with it.
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For the present form of this world is passing away.
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That, let me tell you what it doesn't mean.
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Paul is not saying, if you have a wife, ignore her.
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Or if you have business dealings, ignore them.
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Or if you're mourning, ignore your mourning.
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Because that's what it sounds like on a on a ripping it out of its context.
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If you just read this, let those who have wives live as they had none.
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Let those who mourn live as they were not mourning.
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You might think Paul is saying simply divorce yourself from the cares of this life.
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It'd be like me going home tonight.
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I'm not even going to say hi to Jennifer.
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I'm just going to walk right past her, sit in my chair, watch.
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I'm going to pretend I don't have a wife.
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How long is that marriage going to last? That's not what he's saying.
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What he's saying in these verses is that this life, whether it's marriage, whether it's mourning, whether it's business dealings, whatever, has to be lived, has to be lived with an eye toward the fact that this life ain't all there is.
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We cannot be consumed with our marriages because guess what? One day your marriage is going to end.
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Now, I love my wife and I do look forward to the fact that we're going to be brothers and sisters in heaven.
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But our marriage life will end.
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The Bible says that in heaven, they are neither married nor given in marriage, but are like the angels of heaven.
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So in heaven, I do not get to be married to Jennifer anymore, but I get to be her brother in Christ and we get to enjoy that relationship in the future.
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So I look forward to the fact that one day we're going to maintain a relationship that's different than this one.
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This this relationship that I have with my wife has an expiration date.
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One day death will part us.
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So I live, I love my marriage and I love my wife, but I have to live looking at that marriage and that wife with an eye toward eternity.
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I love my wife so much, but that's the way I have to look at my marriage is it has an expiration date.
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My mourning has an expiration date.
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Let him who mourns live as if he didn't mourn.
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In the sense of this, look at your life as understanding the temporary nature of it.
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Your business dealings are all temporary.
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Your mourning is all temporary.
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Everything you do in this life is temporary.
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Put one of your eyes on eternity or maybe fix both of them on eternity.
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You ever heard this expression? It's an old Baptist expression.
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At least I think it's Baptist.
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I could be wrong.
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People say, oh, that man's so heavenly minded.
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He's no earthly good.
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Ever heard that? It's an old expression.
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It was pretty popular back in the middle of last century, I think.
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And what it meant was a person was thinking about heaven so much that they weren't doing anything on earth.
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They're so heavenly minded, they're no earthly good.
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Let me tell you about that phrase.
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It's a farce.
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I've never met anybody who was so focused on heaven that they weren't doing good on earth.
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In fact, the opposite is almost always true.
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People are so focused on this earth that they're no good for either.
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They're so focused on what's happening here that they're not thinking about what's going to happen when the new heaven and the new earth come.
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They're not thinking about what happens later.
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They're only thinking about the now.
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And they're so focused on the now that they're no good for here or there.
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So if anybody's ever told you you're too heavenly minded to be earthly good, take it as a compliment because we should be heavenly minded.
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Do you ever think about heaven? Do you ever think about the fact that we have a better life coming? Now let me tell you something, is that better life? I think about this because I mentioned a lot that I do a lot of funerals and recently did a funeral.
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And I was told I couldn't be religious in the funeral.
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I said, then I can't come.
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I can't be religious, I can't come.
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I'm not going to come if I can't talk about Jesus.
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And they apologized, oh, we're sorry, you can come, blah, blah, blah.
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I was like, oh, well, thank you.
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Didn't mean to insult you.
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But the whole time I'm thinking during the service and I'm thinking about what's being said, I get to give the gospel, but then they all get to talk, too.
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And I'm thinking the whole time just how sad I am for this, for this, for the way that we have, the way we've done funerals.
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Because we don't, we no longer believe in justification by faith, we believe in justification by death.
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That everybody who dies is going to heaven.
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We no longer believe in justification by faith in Christ.
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We believe in justification by death.
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As long as a person dies, they're going to heaven.
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That is not what the Bible teaches.
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But I will tell you this, if you are a believer in Christ.
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Then you have every reason to look forward to the new heaven and the new earth and to look at this life differently.
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That's what Paul is saying when he says, if you have a wife, live as if you don't.
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In the sense of this, don't live as the pagans do, who live everything for their wives, everything for their money, everything for their business.
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Everything that the pagans do is for the here and for the now.
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And everything the believer does is with an eye to eternity.
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And thus, whatever happens here, whether it causes joy or whether it causes mourning, whatever happens here is to be looked at in light of their.
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And that's how we find contentment here.
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This life isn't all there is, and you are no longer your own, but you have been bought with a price and you've been bought for a new kingdom and you've been placed in that new kingdom by the blood of the lamb.
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So you find your contentment there.
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And thus, he says, verse 32, I want you to be free from anxiety.
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I want you to be free from anxiety.
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Now, he goes on to talk about the fact that if you're married, you're going to be anxious about having a wife.
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And some people think that what he's saying is I want to be free from anxieties, don't have a wife.
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But that's not what he says.
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He says in verse 32, I want you to be free from anxieties.
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The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord.
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The married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife and his interests are divided.
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And the married and or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit.
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But the married woman is anxious about the worldly things, how to please her husband.
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He's not saying here that one is necessarily better than the other.
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What he is saying is this.
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He's saying that whether you are married or whether you are single, I don't want you to be anxious.
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And people tend to be anxious whatever condition they're in.
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If they're single, they're anxious about serving the Lord.
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If they're married, they're anxious about dividing between the Lord.
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And by the way, when he says worldly things here, don't think for a second that Paul is saying worldly things in the sense of sinful things.
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What he's saying is if you're married, you've got worldly things to attend to.
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You do.
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You have a wife and you likely have children.
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Those are worldly things and they require your attention.
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The Bible says you are supposed to take care of your children.
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You're supposed to take care of your wife.
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You have divided attention.
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I know because I got five of them and each one I have to divide my attention between them and I have to show love and affection and and care and support for each of them.
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And so that does take away some of the time that I would be able to devoted to be devoted to Christ.
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Does it make it wrong? And when Paul says worldly things that worldly cares, he's not saying that in the sense of sinful cares.
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What he's saying is if you're married and you have children, then you do have things in this world you have to care about and you have things in this life that are going to divide you from the things of God.
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So, yes, if you're single, you get to devote everything to God.
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But if you're married, you have to devote some time to caring for your family, your spouse and your children.
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And that's OK.
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Both of them are good.
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And here's the here's the real thing.
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You shouldn't be anxious in either condition.
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You shouldn't live in a sense of anxiousness.
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You should live in a sense of contentment, whether you're single and serving the Lord, whether you're married and you're serving the Lord while caring for your spouse and your children.
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You should be finding contentment in either.
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Now, verse 36.
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For time's sake, let me just run through this, because verse 36 to 38 is the hardest of this section to translate.
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And it is a translational issue.
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Because in verse 36, it says, If anyone thinks he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong and it has to be, let him do as he wishes.
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Let them marry.
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It is no sin.
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But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity, but having his desire under control and has determined this in his heart to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well.
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So then he who marries his betrothed as well and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.
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That section may sound easy in ESV, but if you read it in the King James and the New American Standard Bible, it comes across differently.
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I'll read it from the NAS.
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If any man thinks that he is acting unbecomingly toward his virgin daughter, if she should be a full age and if it must be so, let him do what he wishes.
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He does not sin.
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Let her marry.
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See, in the NAS and in the King James Version, the introduction of the idea that this is not a man wanting to be married, but this is a man that's wanting his daughter to be married.
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The word daughter is not in the original Greek.
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In fact, if you look at the New American Standard Bible, it's in italics to demonstrate that it wasn't in the original.
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It's added for a sense of understanding.
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So who is the person in view in verses 36 to 38? Is it the man wanting to get married or is it the father wanting his daughter to be married or not? I don't know.
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I know you didn't come here for an I don't know.
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But if I don't know, I'm going to tell you, I don't know.
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I don't know which is the better way to translate it.
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But I'll say this.
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Both are true.
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Because here's what he's saying.
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If you're a man who wants to be married and you want to be betrothed and that's the direction you're going, get married.
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It's not a sin.
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Likewise, if you're a father and you want your daughter to be married, let her get married.
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It's not a sin.
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That's the issue here.
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The point Paul is making is marriage itself is no sin because there was a sense in Corinth where the idea was you have to remain celibate.
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You have to remain single for to really serve God the way he deserves to be served.
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And Paul is saying, no, if there is a desire for marriage, get married.
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Fathers, don't refuse your daughter if she wants to be married.
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I say that with a heavy heart because I know one day one or all of my girls is going to bring home some knucklehead and going to want me to give a seal of approval.
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And if you have a daughter who's been married, you know, that's tough.
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And I don't look forward to it.
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I don't plan on cleaning my gun when he's there, but he'll know I own one.
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You understand that's a joke, but only halfway.
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The point of this whole section, though, again, is if a person can be unmarried and be happy with that, then they should remain that way.
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But not everybody can and not everyone should.
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If all Christians became celibate tomorrow and stopped marrying and having children, then what would become of the faith? You know, one of the one of the greatest ways that Christianity has flourished in the world is by Christian parents raising Christian children to become Christian parents who raise Christian children.
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Yes, we go out into the world and we preach the gospel to the unbeliever, but we also raise children in the faith.
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Verse 39, I do want to close with verse 39 and 40.
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A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives.
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But if he if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes only in the Lord.
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If you're a widow or widower.
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You are no longer bound to that original relationship.
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That doesn't mean you have to be married if you can live single.
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Paul says in verse 40, yet in my judgment, she is happier if she remains as she is.
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If you can live that way.
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Paul says, I think, too, I have the spirit of God.
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I'm saying this all as pastoral counsel.
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If you can stay that way.
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Great.
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But if you do get married, get married in the Lord.
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Here's what that means.
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Don't marry an unbeliever.
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If you're a widow or widower and you want to be married, marry someone who shares your same faith.
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Don't become unequally yoked.
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You see how it all held together, even though it took a little long to get us through there.
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You see how it all ties together with the idea of being content where we are and finding contentment where we are, whether it's in marriage or whether it's in our job.
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I believe Paul's admonition in this passage is that we learn contentment where the Lord has placed us in life and not scramble for change at every turn.
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Are there times when changes are needed? Most assuredly.
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But ultimately, we have to keep our eyes focused on the coming life and not get so bogged down in the issues of this fleeting life.
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Earlier today, Brother Dale came up and read our call to worship.
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I want to read it again.
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I think sometimes we don't even hear that.
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I think sometimes we're so focused on getting ready for worship, we sort of let the call to worship run over our head.
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You understand that's the last thing I put down.
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I always write the call to worship after I have the sermon because I want to make sure that it leads us into this study.
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And listen to what Paul says in First Timothy, Chapter six, verses six to 11.
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He says, Godliness with contentment.
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Is great gain.
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For we brought nothing into the world and we cannot take anything out of the world.
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If we have food and clothing with these, we will be content.
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But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction.
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For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.
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It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and have pierced themselves with many pangs.
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But as for you, oh, man of God, flee these things, pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, steadfastness and gentleness.
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And I would add one thing to the list.
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Contentment.
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Because godliness with contentment.
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Is great gain.
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Are you content this morning? It's a simple question, but it really is a hard one.
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We live in a world which tells us to not be content.
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And some men have all of the world's goods.
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They have fortunes beyond reason.
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They seem to be in want for nothing.
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And yet they are often the least content of all.
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We're going to sing a song.
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It's different than what's in the hymnal.
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I did change this.
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We're not going to sing.
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We're going to move.
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Jesus loves me to the end.
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We're going to sing.
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All I have is Christ.
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And I want you to think about.
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The words of the song as we sing, I want you specifically verse three, where he's where we sing this, oh, father, use my ransomed life in any way you choose.
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Let my song forever be.
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That my only boast.
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Is in you.
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Let's pray.
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Father, I thank you.
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I thank you.
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That in you, we can find contentment in you, we can find.
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A place.
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Where we understand that this life with all of its joys and with all of its sorrows.
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Is passing away.
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And we look forward to the day when our eyes will be made new, when our bodies will be made new.
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And we will forever be with you.
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I pray it, Lord, in Jesus name.
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Amen.