1 Corinthians 1:4-9
You may be seated. Turn in your
copy of the scriptures to 1 Corinthians chapter 1. Today we’ll be looking
at verses 4 through 9. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verses
4 through 9. So in typical fashion, the Apostle
Paul writing a letter to a church has named them. looked at that
opening last week. Today he gives a thanksgiving
in the Roman context that thanksgiving would have been given to whichever
Roman gods out of the great pantheon would have been to the advantage
of those people. But Paul sort of rips off that
tradition and makes it about God, our heavenly father, who
enriches us so great and graciously through Jesus Christ. And so
that is his focus in verses four through nine. Before we read
God’s word, let’s look to him now in prayer. Lord, on the pages before us
are holy words written by a holy man, the apostle Paul, as he
was carried along by the spirit of the living God. These are
not human words. Yes, through a human author.
Yes, through his personality and all those great things by
which you made him. But this is your word. This is
a lamp to our feet. This is a light to our path.
This word can convince and convert sinners, and this word can comfort
and build up saints. And so that is what we wish for
now. Lord, do the divine work that
is meant to be done among your congregation by the reading and
preaching of your word, we pray in Christ’s name, amen. The apostle
says this in verse four of first Corinthians chapter one. I give
thanks to my God always for you. of the grace of God that was
given you in Christ Jesus that in every way you were enriched
in him in all speech and all knowledge even as the testimony
about Christ was confirmed among you so that you are not lacking
in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our
Lord Jesus Christ who will sustain you to the end guiltless and
in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful by whom
you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ, our
Lord. Amen. Well, what do you say to
a church like the church that is at Corinth? What do you say
to a church that is like the Corinthian congregation? Remember
in our introduction, we mentioned that they are full of all kinds
of immorality. In fact, in one place, the Apostle
Paul will say there is an immorality among you all that not even the
pagan Corinthians would speak of in their own company. What
do you say to a church like the Corinthians who are in constant
legal battle with one another? They’ve hauled one another into
court. What do you say to a congregation that has elitism and classism? has a divide in the people of
God between the rich and the poor, those with and those without,
those with education, those without. What do you say to that kind
of church? Well, if you’re the apostle Paul,
you throw at them every bit of ammunition that you can. You
throw in the TNT, the explosives, the bullets, if you will, from
the word of God, as God has blessed him as an apostle of Jesus Christ.
I mentioned to you last week that Paul writes to them four
letters. There’s been a letter before
1 Corinthians, and apparently it was a kind of a nasty gram.
It was an unpleasant letter as he calls it. Then there’s 1 Corinthians,
the one we’re reading, and there’s another nasty gram. And then
there’s 2 Corinthians, so four letters. We got the good ones,
the tough ones, the nasty grams, the ones where he gives them
both barrels and probably both fists are not preserved in the
sacred canon of scripture. But what do you say to a church
that is embroiled in all kinds of sinful behaviors. What do you say to a church that
seems to be falling apart in every way? The wheels are coming
off. Well, you say to them what’s
biblically true. What do you say to them that
is biblically true when their lives are outwardly off the mark? Their lives do not represent
those who have come to faith in Jesus Christ. What do you
say to people in that sort of spot? Well, you say to them,
what is biblically true? Well, these people aren’t looking
so good. They’re what we might call port city people. You know
the lot. They live for the sun, the sand,
the boat. They live for the, you know,
they’re pirates on a ship. merchants making money, they’re
educated people, they’re slaves, they’re worker bees, they are
educated, not educated, they are rich, poor of all kinds of
nations. What do you say to these folks
whose spiritual reality is one thing, but their outward life
is not matching? Well, Paul speaks to them as
if they are converted. He speaks to them as if they
are believers in Jesus Christ. He recognizes who they are in
Jesus and what they are in their spiritual walk. He’s an understanding
man, a caring minister. And the big thing that he presents
to them in these couple of verses, and we ought to take to heart
ourselves, knowing what a mixed bag of mess we all are with sin
and misery, As he says to them, you’re in Jesus Christ. He speaks
to them of the grace of God that they have in their fellowship
with the Lord Jesus Christ. He says in this passage, importantly,
that the testimony of Jesus that was presented to them has been
confirmed in their lives. So way back when, when the apostle
Paul came and spent those 18 months or so ministering in their
midst, And when he preached the gospel, when he reasoned with
them and persuaded them that Jesus was indeed the Messiah
and many Jews and Greeks and leading folks believed on the
Lord Jesus Christ, he said, you know, been with you those 18
months, I’ve sent Timothy, I’ve sent Apollos, I’ve sent several
others back there to minister to you. And though you’re a big
mess, It is very evident to me, Paul, the apostle, the sent one
by Jesus, that Christ is indeed implanted in you. The testimony
about Jesus has been confirmed among you. You can imagine his
ministry there and the ministry that would follow with other
visiting apostles. It was Christianity 101 and 201
and 301 and so on. And many of them were graduates
in the Christian faith. They were walking strong in the
Lord. Well, what can Paul say to them
when they’re out of order, out of step, when they’re in great
disarray? What better can he say to them?
uh, than the grace of God and Jesus Christ. And that’s what
we find in this passage. And so we want to take a little
sort of hop and skip through the passage and, and hit these
big things that were good for the Corinthians to hear, but
because they’re true about us. because they are true about our
own spiritual walk. If indeed we have faith in Jesus
Christ, we want to think of them ourselves. He speaks first of
the grace of God in Christ Jesus. You know, if it wasn’t for God
almighty and his kindness and his grace, we would all be dead
in our sins and trespasses. You know, when Adam and Eve sinned
in the garden, when they transgressed God’s clear command, his law,
his moral law for them, when they transgressed it and said,
you know, we’re fine doing it by ourself, God. You know, he
could have dusted his hands off and zipped out of the garden
back up into heaven and said, good riddance. He could have
given that you people speech, right? He could have said, you
know, I gave them everything and that’s that. But we know
from the scriptures of his grace, he went looking for Adam and
Eve. He went calling for them in the garden. Adam and Eve,
where are you? And he found them in their self-redemptive
work. They had taken fig leaves and
sewn them together and they had tried to cover their own sin
and shame and nakedness with fig leaves. And what did God
do? Did he have a chuckle? No, he
said, this won’t do. He took the life of an animal
and clothed them with the skins pointing to the coming grace
that he would offer them in his own son, our Lord and Savior,
Jesus Christ. Were it not for the grace of
God, we would be dead in our sins and in our trespasses. You know, we live in America
where we earn it. We live in America where we’re
just a generation or two or three past that great generation. you
know, our moms and dads, our grandparents and perhaps our
great grandparents, maybe the younger ones in the room, the
great, great grandparents, they were the great generation. They
had that can do spirit. And so we live in a nation where
people have built some wealth. People have built some careers.
People have built some homes and built some cities and we’re,
we’re, we’re America after all. And so we can blend that with
our Christianity. And we can wrongly say, you know,
I’m a self-made Christian. But if you’ve lived the Christian
life long enough and fallen flat on your face enough times, we
know God has a sense of humor and he has a way of very quickly
reminding each of us, it’s all about Jesus. It’s all about grace. It’s all about the goodness of
God in Christ. In fact, the apostle Paul, as
wonderful as he was, as brilliant as he was, as gifted as he was,
He had that thorn in the flesh that he speaks of to the Corinthian
church to remind him that it was all of God and none of him. And so the grace of God in Christ
is something we ought to recognize in us. If there is any good in
us, any salvation in us, it is because God came looking for
you and called you by name and said, where are you? And he worked
that great work of redemption in your heart. Well, the second
thing that Paul speaks of in addition to the grace of God,
he says, you have been enriched. I give thanks to my God always
for you because of the grace of God that was given you in
Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all
speech and knowledge. Now in America, again, we hear
the word enriched and we think prosperity gospel, you know,
trust Jesus, make big plans and you’ll be you’ll be rich, right? That’s what the TV preachers
say. But what he means here, you’ll be enriched in Jesus.
He specifically speaks of two gifts that come to the Corinthian
church, speech and knowledge. Speech and knowledge are given
to them in this apostolic era where they do not yet have the
canon or the word of God in its entirety, where the word of God
is still spreading across the globe. God the Spirit would give
these communities of faith the blessings of being able to speak
to one another, but also the gifts of knowledge where they
could understand the gospel of grace and they could spread that
gospel of grace through their gifts of speech. Today we live
in an era where we have the church, we have the word, we have ministers,
we have one another. And as we are taught, as we go
about, we speak. But we have to learn these things.
We have to work at them. We have to be able to articulate
the faith. We don’t live in those extraordinary
redemptive times where the apostles And those who came to faith had
these extraordinary gifts. Paul’s going to speak of that
later. We’ll get to the whole tongues thing. We’ll open up
that bag of worms and figure that one out. You probably about
know where us stuffy Presbyterians are on that one. But they are
enriched in every way with speech and with knowledge. Now think
about this. These are Corinthian people.
These are people who are well-versed in Roman myths. You think about today, if you
walk around America and maybe you watch these TV shows where
they stick a microphone in somebody’s face, you know, what do you know
about this? What do you know about that? And what do we ultimately
prove on camera? We’re one of the dumber nations,
right? You hear that statistic and I think it’s sadly true.
We’re way behind. We think we’re so smart, but
we’re not that smart at all. And so, uh, for these Corinthians
who were much debauched, like our own nation today, to be able
to speak the wisdom and word and ways of God in such a way,
uh, that it, it spread across the globe was a wonderful thing. You know, we hear, uh, You could
think I don’t like America here for a sec. In American kind of
church theology, what have we come to believe? I think it crept
over here from maybe the 1800s in Great Britain, the Keswick
theology and all the rest. If you come to faith in Jesus,
that’s great. Welcome to the family. but you got to have that
second blessing, right? You got to graduate up, you know,
and we act like there’s tears and, and, uh, categories and
levels of spirituality. And when God saves a person,
he gives them everything. What does Paul say to the Ephesian
church? In him, you have received every spiritual blessing that
is in the heavenly places. You’ve been raised up with Christ.
You’ve been seated with him and you have been given every spiritual
blessing. Now we live below our level of
provision. We live like we are paupers when
we are spiritually rich. If you had a checkbook that had
10 times the money in it that it has now, And maybe for some
of you, 10 times zero is still zero. But if you had 10 times
the money you had now, you would live a little differently. You
might pay something off. You might eat fewer sardines. You might do something that has
needed to be done for a little while. And I’m afraid we live
as Christians sometimes like we have an empty checkbook. You
know, we have the church, but we don’t come. We have the word,
but we don’t read it. We have a father with an attentive
ear, but we don’t pray. And I could go down the list
and I’m not saying anything that I think about you all. I’m saying
things that I know about me. We live like we’re broke. We
live like we have nothing. And God says to the Corinthians,
and he says to us, you have been enriched in Jesus Christ in every
way. For them, it was, speech and
knowledge. I mean, here we are 2000 years
later, past the death and resurrection of Jesus. We have the church.
We have we’ve we’ve had the Reformation after the Dark Ages. We have
Bibles. We have study Bibles. We have
the things on our phones and our tablets. We can listen to
things. We can get in our cars and drive
places to hear the word of God. And yet we live like we’re broke.
And that ought not to be. So what does Paul say to the
Corinthian church so messed up and broken? What does he say
to us? You’ve got the grace of God. You’ve been enriched in
Jesus Christ. But he gives a third thing. He
says, you get to live expectantly of the second coming of the Lord
Jesus, the apostle, well, whoever he is, who wrote the book of
Hebrews. It’s about to say Paul, but that would get me in trouble
because I tell you all the time, I don’t think he wrote it. Whoever
wrote the letter to the Hebrews says that we should long for
heaven and look to Jesus. So we’re running the race. We’re
running the Christian race. We should have one eye up and
one eye out. We should long for heaven and
we should look to Jesus. He’s the author and the perfecter
of our faith. You know, we have friends in
our Christian circles who may be Those folks who look to the
second coming a little bit more than we do, maybe a little too
much. Maybe they read too much on it,
read too much into it. But at least they’re thinking
about it, right? We don’t think about the second
coming. We hammer our tent pegs in deeper. We’re in love with
this present world much more. But there ought to be an eye
on the sky. I’m sure today, saw your umbrellas
come in, y’all looked at the Weather Channel. Probably some
of you for a really long time looked at the weather, made really
good and sure the bad weather was what was going to be the
weather. We need a channel that tells us what’s going on in the
sky. Now, it might be hokey or something,
but you’ll get the idea I’m trying to make. We need to be eye on
the heavens opening. We need an eye on the trumpet
sounding. We need an eye on the judgment seat. being exposed. We need an eye on the next world
being ushered in, the new heavens and the new earth. There was
an expectation among the Corinthians of the second coming, and it
ought to be true of us. Now, as I read the New Testament,
one of the things I see, it was in Thessalonians for sure, it’s
here in Corinthians, Paul must have said a whole lot to his
new converts about Jesus coming. That was 2000 years ago, and
he thought it was imminent. And here we are, we’re just piddling
along. We’re in love with this world.
We build higher, we build down, we build out, we accumulate. But the second coming ought to
be more important to us. Do we live life in light of the
any moment now coming of the Lord Jesus? Well, that’s something
that the Corinthians had. Well, there’s another thing in
this passage, the sustaining grace of the Lord Jesus. Verse
eight says, he will sustain you to the end. I don’t know about
y’all, but I come to church most every week worn out and weary.
Maybe it’s from cutting the grass. You know, yesterday we moved
children up into a second story apartment building. That was
fun. But maybe you come relationally weary. Maybe you come weary because
your health has deteriorated. Maybe you come weary because
you don’t know what’s next. And this passage is very encouraging.
Christ sustains us to the very end. What does he say elsewhere?
I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. Psalm
23 is beautiful. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall
not want. And you follow Psalm 23 through its kind of year round
through the mountains, valleys, pastures, streams, back to the
farm again at year’s end. Maybe a picture of our life cycle. God, our shepherd, Jesus, our
shepherd is with us through the peaks, the valleys, the sunshine,
the rain, the torrents, the storms, the disease, the death. He’s
with us through all of these things and the sustaining grace
of Jesus Christ will get the Corinthians through their moral
mess. And it will get us through whatever
God sends our way. He will sustain you to the end. What do we call it when runners
are out and they’re weary? What’s the danger? They’ll hit
the wall. And that’s a danger in the Christian life, isn’t
it? The apostle Paul says of several people at the end of
some of his letters, they got the DNF that did not finish stamped
on their jersey. They did not run the race. They
did not keep the faith. They did not get the crown. made
a shipwreck of their faith. They walked away from Jesus. And so, dear brothers and sisters,
if you’re weak-kneed, if you’re stumbling, if you’re faltering,
he is with you to the end, the sustaining grace of Christ. Well,
there’s a fifth thing that’s in this passage, and I think
it’s the most important one. Verse eight says he’ll sustain
you to the end guiltless. guiltless in the day of our Lord
Jesus. It’s one thing to look up to
the sky to see the second coming of Jesus expectantly. It’s another to say, what will
that day be like for me? I think I’ve told y’all before,
you know, it’s been a while. I got a speeding ticket over
in Western North Carolina and you know, the trooper lectured
me, gave me the summons pink slip or whatever court date,
um, called my brother-in-law. He took care of it. That’s how
that ended. But, I stood accused. And, you know, me, I was thinking
about, well, I could drive over there. I could go to court. I could,
you know, maybe the police officer wouldn’t show up, the state trooper.
I mean, I thought through all the rest, but what if the judge
was in a bad mood? Or what if he did say, you know,
you are guilty? Didn’t know the outcome. Didn’t
know what would happen. But here’s the blessing as Christians. When we are justified through
faith in Jesus Christ and God sees us as he sees his own son,
he sees us just as if we never sinned and he sees us just as
if we always obeyed. We get the obedience of Jesus.
the perfect satisfaction of the law of Jesus. But we also get
the forgiveness, the cleansing of our guilt and our pollution,
all in Jesus by faith. And so in our justification,
a judicial declaration is made when we come to faith. And so
we know one day we will stand before the bench, before the
judgment seat of God Almighty, and we know the outcome already.
We do not have to spend our entire life searching for the best attorney,
searching for the best advocate, searching for the one who can
represent us and get us off God’s hook. For there is one man, one
mediator, one advocate between God and man. And that is the
man, Christ Jesus. And when God says, dear servant,
You’d like to enter my house. You’d like to enter my presence.
You’d like to be in my heaven with me forever. What gives you
the right? And you point and say Him. You
point and say Jesus. There is, as we just sang, nothing
in our hands that we can bring. There is no pleading. There is
no zeal. There is no endless whatever
in us that could make the judge of the earth say, well, okay,
I like your spirit. No, he looks at the perfect obedience
of Jesus. He looks at the perfect righteousness
of Christ. And when that is credited to
us, and we are justified by faith alone in Christ alone, we know
the outcome at the last day of our grand court date before God
almighty. I don’t know how much better
feeling of assurance you can have. If you know your own heart
as I know mine, We daily break God’s law and thought and in
word and deed. And those days we wake up and
say, this is going to be a good one. It’s stumble and fall within
minutes. And the day we say, I’ve got
this, boy, God’s going to be so glad that I’m on the home
team. the world and the flesh and the
devil. And there’s, there’s good days
in the Christian walk. There’s average days in the Christian
walk. There are days when you are ashamed before the face of
almighty God and it is all paid for in the blessings of our Lord
Jesus. Some people will say, well, that’s
why I don’t have to worry about disobedience. That’s why I just,
What is the antinomian song? Free from the law, O blessed
condition. I can sin all I want and still get remission. No,
that’s a terrible song, isn’t it? We live a life of gratitude. God has saved me. Therefore,
my heart desires what pleases him. My heart desires what will
bring him the most glory. And the reason that is, is our
final thing we want to consider in this passage. We have been
called, verse nine says, and to the fellowship of his son,
the Lord Jesus, Jesus Christ, our Lord. There’s this wonderful
phrase in the New Testament, in Christ. Maybe some of you
who come to the Westminster Confession of Faith classes, you’ve heard
us speak of our union with Jesus Christ and that union with Jesus
Christ is the, it’s the, it’s the everything of what we have
in God. United to Jesus, we have everything. Not united to Jesus, we have
nothing. And so when we have been called
into the fellowship of His Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, it doesn’t
matter if you are an absolutely filthy, immoral, struggling Christian
at Corinth. It doesn’t matter if you are
a Hadn’t missed a day of Bible reading in all these years. It
doesn’t matter what you are, where you are in your walk. If
you are in fellowship with his son, you are in fellowship with
his son. It doesn’t come. It doesn’t go.
Now what’s the challenge to us? What is the challenge? to the
Corinthian church. If all these things are true
and the apostle is thankful for them, how then should we live?
Well, like Paul, we should be grateful. The grace of God, the
fellowship of the son, the second coming, the kept blameless till
the last day. All those things ought to give
rise for gratitude. But I think the more we know
these things, the more our hearts are settled and our hearts are
settled from restlessness. Our hearts are settled from an
aimlessness and our hearts are settled spiritually, we’re content. Our hearts are settled from a
restlessness because we rest in God. Our hearts are settled
in a contentment because we know what we have in Jesus. But our
hearts ought to lean into what pleases God, what makes God happy. And not in a way to earn righteousness
or earn his favor or his merit, but simply I want to live for
his kingdom. I want to live for his glory.
I want to do what pleases him most. And that’s really hard
today. You know, we got these things
in our pockets that buzz and ding. It has endless stuff you
can read and look at that turn us into idiots. Right. And then we wear it on our wrist
and it buzzes and dings. And then, you know, I mean, everywhere
we go, our brains are just toast. They’re gone. And so it’s a challenge
for us in today’s digital world and today’s connected world to
stop and have some quiet and to think about God’s goodness
and grace. At least start with today, day
of rest, to do that, but build some time in each and every day
to spend time in the word and to see what’s in the checkbook,
to see what God has in heaven at your disposal for your Christian
walk. Let’s give him thanks now and
pray. Lord, we are thankful for this reminder that we are not
spiritually broke. Our lives may be full of our
own mess making, but in Jesus Christ, in the grace of God and
in the provision for his people, the church, we are so well off.
Lord, help us to take a peek into there and live out of those
blessings. May the blessings of heaven be of use. May we be
like that servant that Jesus speaks of. What did you do with
what I gave you? Lord, I buried it. We don’t want
to be that one. Lord, I stuck it in the bank
and got 1%. We don’t want to be that one.
We want to turn it into sevenfold, a hundredfold blessing, serving
others, serving you, but also growing in the grace and knowledge
of our savior, Jesus. Lord, we need your help and blessing.
So we ask for it now. And we come with thanksgiving
that you have not left us dead or destitute, but have given
us the fattened calf, the robe, the ring and the sandals because
you’re that kind of father. And so we praise you and thank
you in his name. Amen. We want to respond to God’s
goodness by standing and singing number 518.