1 Corinthians 3:5-9

November 12, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 13:45 in the audio file.

Or, The Lord of the Harvest and His Laborers

It’s been said that the graveyards are full of people the world could not do without. That tongue-in-cheek comment is intended to point out that no man is indispensable, but just the opposite. Every man is replaceable; no one on earth is necessary in an ultimate sense.

Perhaps in no occupation is this more true than in preaching and pastoring. You might not know it from how so many of us pastor-types promote ourselves and pimp our ministries and prepare our legacies. Sometimes it is not the preacher’s fault but the fault of his followers. They not only listen to but lean too heavily on a man. But too high a view of those in ministry fails to acknowledge how ministry works.

This does not demand that we have too low a view of preachers either. No man is indispensable but God has made many men instrumental in our faith. While God could have done it other ways He chose men to teach (or translate and transport) God’s Word to us. The Holy Spirit used and uses these men to grow us up for fruitfulness. So in terms of God’s story, He has caused certain effects through men and, in that way, we are to thank God for their work.

1 Corinthians 3:5-9 is about the proper perspective on those who preach the word of the cross. The Corinthians had the wrong perspective and had divided over which preacher was best. From 1 Corinthians 1:18-3:4 Paul demonstrated that such quarrels missed the point. The message ins’t something that can be marketed. The Holy Spirit must overcome the natural man’s revulsion to a crucified Christ. As is true of the message so it is true of the messenger, which now becomes Paul’s focus through 4:7 if not 4:21.

Those elders who “labor in preaching and teaching” (as Timothy called them, 1 Timothy 5:17), who labor for the Lord of the harvest (Matthew 9:37-38), must be seen in their proper place. This paragraph profiles six principles of gospel labor that should give perspective both to preachers and those who listen to them.

The Assignment of Labor (verse 5)

Where there is jealousy and strife and sectarian quarrels there is too much fleshliness. It’s the human way to divide over which human, including which preacher, is more important. “When one says, ‘I follow Paul,’ and another, ‘I follow Apollos,’ are you not being merely human?” (verse 4) And isn’t this a misunderstanding upstream?

What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each.

Shouldn’t the question be “Who is Apollos?” and “Who is Paul?” Apollos and Paul are persons after all. Yet the interrogative pronoun in Greek is not Who? (masculine) but What? (neuter). Some later copies of the text changed it to the masculine form in order to tone down the grammatical discord. But this is Paul’s point: the person himself should be considered as a tool.

Apollos and Paul, and all laborers like them, are servants (διάκονοι). They are agents of another, those who answer to someone else, they do what someone else wants. Servants are not greater than their masters. The Corinthians were seeking to increase their own status by attaching themselves to certain men, and Paul explains that they were going the wrong way, at least in the eyes of the world.

The Lord is great, though the worldly-wise refuse to acknowledge His glory. The Lord assigned to each servant his labor, and that labor was effective. They were servants through whom you believed. The servants were God appointed means to bring about the faith of the believers, so Paul quotes Isaiah to the Romans that the feet of those who bring good news are beautiful (Isaiah 52:7 in Romans 10:15). We are thankful for those who spoke to us the word of life (see Hebrews 13:7), but we remember that they only did what the Lord assigned.

The Division of Labor (ver[...]

1 John 2:1-29

November 5, 2017

Evening Service

Dave Light

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The post I Am Writing These Things to You appeared first on Trinity Evangel Church.

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1 Corinthians 3:1-4

November 5, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 14:15 in the audio file.

Or, The Character of Carnal Christians

Spiritual men—the ones who have received the Spirit of God and have been instructed by Him—have God’s own wisdom. Even though natural men—those without God’s Spirit—think the gospel of a crucified Christ is folly, spiritual men are able to discern all things, including the world- and history-altering results of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Spiritual men have “the mind of Christ,” they have the lenses to put everything in perspective in light of the cross.

A problem happens, however, when a man with the mind of Christ doesn’t look at things with that mind. 1 Corinthians 3:1-4, confronts these sorts of Christians for acting all too human. They are acting like mere men rather than acting like spiritual men. We might call them carnal Christians. Our word “carnal” comes from Latin carnis “of the flesh” which is the genitive of caro “flesh, meat.”

All the evidence in the context signals that Paul is talking to Christians. He just referred to natural men, to those who aren’t believers, those who won’t accept the things of the Spirit of God. But in this paragraph he addresses his readers directly as “brothers” in the first sentence, and this fits with all the titles he’s used for them since the beginning of the letter. They may be infants, but they are infants “in Christ.” In the following paragraph, he and Apollos are “servants through whom you believed.” There are no qualifications; these are Christians.

But they were not acting like Christ. What’s worse, they thought that they were the spiritually mature ones. Paul’s words sting, but the Corinthians needed it. Their life together in the gospel was at stake. And if they couldn’t see how the word of the cross affects their selfish ambition and preference over preacher, how would they see the wisdom of the cross in other areas of their lives?

In 1 Corinthians 3:1-4 we see three characteristics of carnality.

Carnality Diminishes Capacity for Gospel Meat (verses 1-3a)

There is a threefold not being able in these initial sentences. Paul was not able to address them in a certain way, they were not able to receive what he said, and in fact they are still not able to receive it if he tried now. What it was is what it still is, and it’s not good.

And I, brothers, was not able to speak to you as spiritual people, but as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. This goes all the way back to Paul’s initial preaching in Corinth, preaching that they received, but only up to a certain level. They are brothers, and they are in Christ, but they were not spiritual, not in the fulness of maturity. “Spiritual” is the key word in chapter 2. The spiritual understand the things freely given by God; they discern all things, and it all starts with recognizing the wisdom of the cross. The Corinthians got it, but with limitations.

They weren’t spiritual but people of the flesh. This is not the same Greek word as used in 2:14 for the “natural” man. The natural man is ψυχικὸς, this man is σαρκίνος. It’s an adjective about things belonging to the physical, material realm. There is a similar word used twice in verse 3, σαρκικός, which overlaps in meaning with σαρκίνος but maybe emphasizes that it characterized them. They were “fleshy” and even now are “fleshly.”

At the time Paul was with them they were infants in Christ, and the diet he fed them was according to their capacity. I fed you with milk, not solid food, and that was because you were not ready for it. It was too hard to chew. Before we talk about the two types of food, note that it hadn’t gotten better. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh. It’s an adverb party: even…now…not…yet…still. By this time, some three or more years after Paul’s visit, what had been a more understandable imm[...]

Ephesians 1

October 29, 2017

Evening Service

Jonathan Sarr

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A Glorious Inheritance and What to Do with It

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1 Corinthians 2:14-16

October 29, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 16:00 in the audio file.

Or, The Power of a Spiritual Starting Point

Today is a monumental day in church history. It is the closest Sunday to October 31st, the day that is usually acknowledged as the day in 1517 when Martin Luther made public his 95 Theses against indulgences. It is as impossible for us to know how much we’ve been influenced by the 500 year-old Reformation effects as it is for a fish to know how wet the water is. We’re in deep Christian waters due to God’s blessing on the Reformers’ work.

1 Corinthians 2:14-16 is not the text of Scripture that broke open the protest, but it sure does explain a lot of what was happening. This paragraph probably isn’t the first one that comes to mind when we think about the five solas or the five points of the doctrines of grace, and yet it does, at least in context, touch all ten doctrines. For many years after my own “conversion” to Calvinistic theology, verse 14 may have been my single-most referenced verse regarding evangelism and preaching and teaching and pastoral counseling, especially when it came to wondering about why it seemed so difficult for people to listen.

Paul has been poking at the immature divisions among some of the Christians in Corinth since his greeting to them at the beginning of the letter. Their quarreling came about because they were focused on the wrong things. It is not too simple to say that they were focused on man’s things—his abilities and accomplishments and social ranking—rather than on God’s things. This is no good on a number of levels, including the self-evident demotion of themselves. If you could choose, whose trail would you rather follow to the top of Mt. Wisdom? The path of the old Sherpa or that of the new prancersise instructor? And what does it say when you start dividing into tribes by what brand of hair product the prancerciser-prophets use? You’d say that has nothing to do with whether or not they can get us to the top of the mountain.

The philosophers of the world are the pracerciser instructors. They are dancing around selling their particular brand of leotard as the key to wisdom, and the only thing sillier than that is that Christians copy their moves. As if a certain hair spray or pair of stretchy pants will help us promote Christ.

You can’t get someone to love the gospel with gimmicks. And it’s laughable for men to convince themselves that they can think God-level thoughts apart from God-given help. It illustrates the great axiom: to misjudge is human. We are constantly getting things wrong, including our stubborn tenacity to deny that we’re getting things wrong. “Nuh-uh.” The only way out of this, the way that Luther and Calvin and Tyndale and other Reformers realized, is by God’s Spirit.

Here is a Reformation text worthy of a 500 year anniversary, even knowing that it will only be any good to us as God’s Spirit helps us to appraise what we’ve got and why it’s so great.

In 1 Corinthians 2:14-16 there are two declarations of reality, one about the limits of human judgment and one about the reach of spiritual judgment, and then one amazing celebration of these realities.

Every Man’s Logical Misjudgment (verse 14)

Paul’s just said in the previous paragraph that he and the preachers of the cross “do impart wisdom…a secret and hidden wisdom of God…revealed to us through the Spirit.” He’s completely dependent on God’s Spirit for his own understanding: “we have received…the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.” He doesn’t need or use rhetorical eloquence as defined by the world, he is “interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual,” the ones who have God’s Spirit.

Now he contrasts the one who is spiritual (verse 13, and again in verse 15) with the one without the Spirit. He’s called the “natural man,” the man in hi[...]

1 Corinthians 2:6-13

October 22, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 16:00 in the audio file.

Or, The World-Upsetting, Glory-Making, Mind-Bending, Freely-Given Wisdom of God

The phrase “little did he know” might be used in a story to give critical information to the reader that is unknown to a key character. This narration takes on a perspective called “third person omniscient.” The author knows more than his characters, and that usually sets up dramatic tension. The readers know that the bridge is out ahead but the semi-truck driver shifting up trying to escape from the bad guys doesn’t.

The apostle Paul is not all-knowing, but he knows far more than the “rulers of this age.” Paul doesn’t have all wisdom, but God has revealed “a secret and hidden wisdom” to Paul while the world saw none of the signs. As he explains in this next section of his letter to the church of God in Corinth, the wise and powerful of the world not only miss what God is doing, they have undone themselves through the very thing they considered their triumph.

Again, Paul is not omniscient, but he is providing voice to the third person omniscient narrator and pulling back the curtain on God’s revealed wisdom. The world is lost, the world has lost. The world has not been the same since the Logos took on flesh, was crucified, and rose again as the firstborn from the dead.

I used to think about the gospel as the good news that because of His work on the cross Jesus made salvation possible for everyone. Then I came to think about the gospel as the good news that because of His work on the cross Jesus secured salvation for all who would ever believe. And now I see that the gospel is also the good news that because of His work on the cross Jesus has turned the world upside down. The nations rage and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord. The wise among men plot their overthrow of God, and He who sits in the heavens laughs. If the rulers of the earth would be wise, they would hurry to kiss the Son and take refuge in Him before they perished. But by continuing to pretend that they are something, that they are men of understanding and influence, they bring their own doom to pass.

These spiritual truths are weltanschauung truths, world- and life-view truths. These spiritual truths are concrete walls against the cotton-candy arguments of the world. These spiritual truths are intended to humble us, yes, and they fortify our conviction in the wisdom of God.

Paul has been painting the contrast between the word of the cross and words of eloquent wisdom since 1 Corinthians 1:17. There is folly and offense, there is power and strength, and which is found on which sideline is not according to the world’s scorecard. Paul himself refused to orate himself into esteem or show off his verbal skills, instead he proclaimed Jesus Christ and Him crucified and let God’s Spirit do the demonstrating of power.

Now in 2:6 Paul explains that the wisdom of God in the word of the cross is a deep wisdom. It is a World-Upsetting, Glory-Making, Mind-Bending, Freely-Given Wisdom from God.

Secret and Subversive Wisdom (verses 6-9)

A well is a simple concept but it can reach deep into the earth. The message of Jesus Christ and Him crucified is similarly focused but it is anything but simplistic. The word of the cross is deep, and we’re about ready to see how deep it goes.

In contrast to the “wisdom of men” in 2:5, among the mature we do impart wisdom. Paul doesn’t identify the mature, the spiritual adults, by name (or group), but they are the ones whose faith rests in the power of God. They are the ones who believe the gospel of a crucified Christ and are coming to live in light of the cross. These are any (and should be all) Christians. He’s not setting up a new division in the church made up of the spiritual upperclass; he[...]

Galatians 1

October 15, 2017

Evening Service

Sean Higgins

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Or, That Time When the Grace of God Was Nullified

The only thing worse than unrighteousness is self-righteousness. Here we are as the church, at an evening service no less, to hear the teaching of God’s Word. We are (ostensibly) not the people that love to have their ears tickled, we want the truth. And we know enough truth to know that God is holy, that God has standards, and that all have sinned against those standards. “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18).

The rest of Romans 1 presents an ugly picture of unrighteousness descending into disgusting and dishonorable behavior. But there is something worse. Before Paul gets to justification by faith and the righteousness of Christ near the end of chapter 3, he confronts the moral people (2:1-6), and in particular the moral Jewish people (2:17-3:20) who had God’s law and judged everyone else (except themselves) for not obeying it. Self-righteousness is worse than unrighteousness because it not only doesn’t submit to God’s law, it tries to make others submit to God’s law while congratulating itself.

Self-righteousness is a killer. It actually kills other people. Cain killed Abel because of self-righteousness. We usually talk about Cain’s anger, but why was he mad? His hatred boiled because he believed his offering should have been accepted. He did the right thing. God should have accepted his righteousness, at least as Cain defined it. The Jews killed Jesus because of self-righteousness. They believed that they were right and were doing what was right. They thought Jesus was the evil one, claiming things that messed with their system. Saul, who we know more comfortably as Paul, executed Christians because of his self-righteousness. He excelled his brothers in zeal so much that he killed for righteousness’ sake.

And self-righteousness is a figurative killer as well. Self-righteousness kills a man’s peace and joy; how can you ever be comfortable if you always have to perform perfectly? Self-righteousness kills a man’s friendships; it makes everything a competition, there must always be a winner, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. This is about what’s right after all.

And self-righteousness sends men to hell as slaves of guilt. Self-righteousness is the opposite of freedom, it is the enemy of grace, and it is the antithesis of the gospel. Men love it, God damns it.

After Paul planted some churches in the region of Galatia self-righteous men came behind him and questioned how he got the gospel he preached, they questioned whether his gospel of faith and grace was enough to save, and they supposed that such an emphasis on grace leads to unrighteous living. That’s why Paul writes the letter. It is a book of first principles, a book of the gospel, and a book about a truth always in danger of being forgotten or fought against by our self-righteous/legalistic little hearts.

Tonight I want to observe two parts to chapter one and then consider two doctrinal summaries related to the two parts of the chapter.

Paul’s Concern: A Gospel Crisis (verses 1-9)

No other letter opening from Paul is so significant, both in what is said and what isn’t.

What is said is that he was an apostle. This, as we’ll see, is more than filling in the epistle formula; his apostolic authority was being challenged. He will defend his calling starting in verse 10 and will continue through most of chapter 2. In the first words he claims to be an apostle—not from men nor through man. He learned it and was commissioned directly through Jesus Christ and God the Father.

What is also said is that this letter is To the churches of Galatia, which makes it the only letter written to a plurality of congregations in an area rather to a single church. There are historical questions about which “Galatia” Paul means, a[...]

1 Corinthians 2:1-5

October 15, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 13:00 in the audio file.

Or, Preaching Christ for Faith by Faith

Preaching is weird. That is not the only, or probably the best, word for it, but it is an unusual and strange thing to do. The apostle Paul told Timothy to “preach the word…in season and out of season,” and in some ways preaching is “in” and in other ways it’s “out” in this season of history. One of the reasons that I chose to preach 1 Corinthians was in order to preach about some of Paul’s principles about preaching.

Preaching is not his main point here at the beginning of the letter. If the three paragraphs starting in 1:18 are like a multi-stone ring, then the quarreling among the Corinthian Christians is the center stone and preaching is one of the surrounding gems. He appealed for them to be united in the same mind and the same judgement—the main problem, because he had hear a report that some measure of division was happening among them according to their favorite preacher—with gospel preaching being a related issue.

The gospel is a foolish and offensive message. There is no way to preach a crucified Christ in a way that appeals to man’s ego. Salvation doesn’t come by stroking self-esteem and letting a man hold on to his pretense. Abandon all hubris you who enter here by faith. God isn’t out to polish man’s wisdom to be a little more smooth or straight or shiny, He shatters the rock. God isn’t out to let men have a spin in His seat of judgement while He tries to make His case about why they should accept His claims. He atoned for such arrogant presumption on the cross.

In 1:18-25 a crucified Christ is beneath human wisdom and significance. So are Christians themselves. The cross is foolishness in the eyes of the world, and God calls fools to the cross. In 1:26-31 the resumes of the believers in Corinth are public record, and they were not impressive. They were not the educated or influential people. Yet God in His grace called them to Christ, and in Christ they got wisdom and acceptance with God and a status as His people. They could and should boast in the Lord, not themselves.

The message is not dependent on cleverness but on the cross. Those who believe the message are not important, but they are elected. And the one who proclaimed the message was also nothing special, just committed to proclaiming Christ. All this exposes preferences over preachers as petty, as foolish, and out of place with preaching Christ. It also provides some principles for preaching: 1) preach so that men will have faith in Christ not the preacher. There can only be one star. And 2) preach trusting that God, not the preacher, will bring men to faith in Christ. We preach Christ for faith and by faith.

Two “and I’s” at the beginning of verse 1 and verse 3 make for two points about the preacher.

The Preacher’s Proclamation (verses 1-2)

Paul returns to his own principles. He talked in the first person about preaching the gospel in 1:17, then he described in third person how the world hears the gospel in 1:18-25, and then he described using second person who the Corinthians were in 1:26-31. He’s back to first person in this paragraph.

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. This is God’s revelation, the testimony of God, that’s what makes it special, and not lofty speech or wisdom. The “lofty speech” refers to high-sounding talk, to “big words” (TEV), and “wisdom” is the status-elevating philosophy of the world. Paul made a conscious choice not to “compose speeches fishing for admiration” (Garland).

It’s not that Paul was incompetent. “When Paul and Barnabas were in Lystra…the pagans identified Paul with Hermes, the Greek god of communication (whose Roman name was Mercury), because Paul was the chief speaker (Acts 14:12)” (Carson, The Cross and Christ[...]

1 Corinthians 1:26-31

October 8, 2017

Lord’s Day Worship

Sean Higgins

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The sermon starts at 16:00 in the audio file.

Or, Boasting Like a Nobody

I’m not sure what evangelism and apologetics and pastoral ministry were like a couple hundred years ago. We have some books, we can study history, but it’s hard to get a full picture of both what men wanted to say and what men wanted to hear. Since I’ve been alive and able to listen to gospel preaching and gospel presentations the emphasis is usually on how much value and worth and significance the other person has in God’s eyes. You don’t have to search too far to hear, “God values you so much that He sent His Son to die for you.” But, is that true?

What is man’s worth in God’s eyes? Does God see something of value in us that causes Him to love us? Yes, men are made in God’s image. No other created being in the universe has such capacity for glory as a human being. We do believe that all human life, all human lives, are valuable in this respect. But even at this point no person has inherent importance. Any value is still a gift and worth is borrowed. Our best glory is reflected glory.

And that was before the fall of mankind in Adam. We are all born into Adam’s guilt. We all sin and fall short of the glory of God. We are sinners and we sin. We are wretched.

Yet men want to feel good about themselves. They want others to think they are great. They want respect and appreciation and admiration. They want to be liked, and get likes.

In his 17th century book Pensees, Blaise Pascal wrote:

That something so obvious as the vanity of the world should be so little recognized that people find it odd and surprising to be told that it is foolish to seek greatness; that is most remarkable. (Pensees, 5)

The cross does not boost our egos, it kills them. The cross does not make us feel good about ourselves, the cross demands that we repent from loving ourselves. Love of self belongs with wisdom as the world defines it. That’s why the world thinks that a crucified Christ is folly. But the word of the cross is the power of God and it ruins the world’s evaluation of status. Some people think a crucified Christ is foolish, yet a crucified Christ saves fools.

Paul could have pointed to any number of proofs, but he starts with the personal testimonies of those to whom he wrote. They were not special, certainly not in the world’s eyes. They didn’t have extra influence. They were nobodies. And Paul says God chose them to receive everything in Jesus. All they lost was pretense and all they gained was glory in God.

There were quarrels in the church (1 Corinthians 1:11) apparently not based on who was speaking the truth but who said it better. Believers were tempted to divide from one another based on a pecking order of personality and external preferences. But the church isn’t built around significance, it’s built around the cross, and the significant people of the world think a crucified Christ is offensive. Paul wants the believers to boast, but to boast like a nobody. To get them there he urges them to consider their calling.

The Fact of Their Calling: They Weren’t Significant (verse 26)

Paul’s first evidence is the status of most of the church. They weren’t great or popular or pretty people by worldly standards.

For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. Paul tells them to stop and assess, as if he said, “Look at yourselves! No one thought of you as anything special.”

The wise guys are those esteemed for their education and intelligence, at least according to worldly standards (κατὰ σάρκα, “according to the flesh”). The powerful are the influential; “the strength in view is not the strength of the weight-lifter but the strength of the opinion-maker” (Carson, The Cross and Christian Ministry, 27). Those of noble birth are those with [...]

James 1

October 1, 2017

Evening Service

Jim Martin

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The post A Manifesto for Gospel Living – Part 1 appeared first on Trinity Evangel Church.

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