Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

Well good evening. Tonight we're starting our study in the Apostle of James and if you aren't familiar with that or the epistle, what did I just say? The epistle of James? The epistle. So every time I say Apostle tonight I'm probably meaning to say epistle, okay? If you know nothing else about the book of James you probably have heard at least part of verse two. Consider it all joy when you encounter various trials and I want to congratulate you guys because you passed the trial of having a Seahawks game on at the same time church is happening. So you're all here, so you already passed. And Sonya was telling me before the service started or during the meet and greet time that James is actually her favorite book so I trusted she's particularly excited for this study. James is also a special book to me. It's been one of my favorites for a long time. It's actually the only book of the Bible that I've committed the entire book to memory.

I did that some years ago. Dave was asking me beforehand, can I still go through the whole thing? I can get all the way through Chapter 1 and well into Chapter 2. I start to stumble after that because I haven't been brushing up on it. But some years ago, I could go through the entire book of the epistle. So it is a favorite book to me as well. But James is a very unique epistle among all the others, and it's unique because of what it lacks. Nowhere in its five chapters do we find any doctrine pertaining to the gospel. The other epistles are full of doctrinal truths that explain the way of salvation, but not so in James. In fact, if James was the only book of the New Testament that we had, it would be pretty easy to infer that salvation is based upon good works. The Roman The Roman Catholics will point to James' proof of the necessity of good works as part of the salvation equation.

They point to James 2.17 to support their teaching where James wrote, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. Fortunately, we have other epistles full of doctrine that help illuminate what James means by real faith. For example, you know Ephesians 2, 8, and 9, it says, for by grace you've been saved through faith, and this is not of your own doing, it's the gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no man may boast. Whatever point James is making in chapter two, it can't be work salvation, otherwise, we would have a major contradiction among the apostles' teachings.

It was the lack of gospel doctrine in this epistle that caused Luther in his commentary to make this comment. St. John's Gospel and his first epistle, St. Paul's Epistles, especially those to the Romans, Galatians, Ephesians, and St. Peter's first epistle. These are the books which show the Christ and teach thee everything is needful and blessed for thee to know, even though thou never see or hear any other book or doctrine. Therefore is St. James epistle a right strawy epistle in comparison with them, for it has no gospel character to it. So what does Luther mean by calling James a strawy, S-T-R-A-W-Y epistle? During his time as a Catholic monk, as you know, Luther was severely tortured in his conscience by the impossibility of being justified by works.

The epistle James with its emphasis on works of faith, perhaps made Luther think of 1 Corinthians 3, 12 through 13 where Paul wrote, now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one's works will become manifest for the day it will disclose it. Because it will be revealed by fire and the fire will test what sort of work each one had done. Perhaps that might help us understand what was in Luther's mind when he referred to it is the strawy epistle, although I don't think he was questioning the fact that it was part of the legitimate canon of scripture. So who wrote James?

Our first clue is found in chapter one, verse one. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. The author identifies himself as James, but as you would expect, the scholars disagree on who the James is and even if it was James, and maybe in fact it was a forgery. Is this one of the James found in the New Testament? Is it some other James not found elsewhere in the Bible? Is it someone who's just claiming to be James? And the various scholars have made arguments for each of those cases. The two James that we find in the Bible were James, brother of John, son of Zebedee, and James, the half-brother of Jesus.

Now we can rule out James the son of Zebedee because in Acts 12-2, we're told that he was martyred by Herod before the Epistle of James was even written, so he's not a candidate. Now the Roman Catholics and others don't accept that it was James' half brother, because they don't believe that Jesus had any brothers, half or otherwise. That would mess up their belief that Mary was a virgin her entire life on earth. Now one of the scriptural challenges to that particular belief is found in Mark 6-3 where Jesus is preaching in the synagogue in his hometown of Nazareth. And the people who knew Jesus as the carpenter's son are incredulous as they hear Jesus speak.

And they say, is this not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joseph and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us? The Roman Catholics and others will claim that these brothers and sisters were just close friends of Jesus' nuclear family, Or perhaps they were children Joseph brought into the marriage or maybe just nephews and nieces. And that's how they explain that away. But it seems like this is just twisting the plain sense of the text to fit the tradition of Mary's perpetual virginity.

Others who recognize Jesus had a half-brother reject him as the author of James because of the excellent Greek found in this book. They argue how could a Jewish carpenter's son write such perfect Greek. To them it just seems inconceivable that James being just a carpenter's son could have written that kind of Greek. Historical records have shown that the Palestinian Jews spoke Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. In addition, Nazareth was on a pretty busy trade route and so it's very reasonable to believe that Jesus' family would have been multilingual and had lots of opportunities to converse in all of those languages. There's even more evidence to suggest the author is Jesus' half-brother.

After initially denying Jesus was the Christ, he became eventually a believer himself, and he came to be recognized as one of the pillars of the faith over in Galatians 2.9, Paul sharing his testimony. There was a point in time when he was still questioning his calling to the Gentiles. He went to Jerusalem, to the Jerusalem Council, to make his case and say here's why I'm going to the Gentiles, and he says I spoke to Peter and James, who were reputed to be pillars of the faith. So James, the half-brother, was a top leader in the church, early church. So it stands to reason to believe that he could have written a letter to the churches that made it into scripture.

Another argument for a Jesus half-brother being the author is just doing a textual comparison between some writings we know come from James, half brother, and the book of James. We see a speech given by James the half brother over in Acts 15 and there are certain words that show up in that speech that only show up in the book of James as well throughout all the scriptures. So again some textual evidence that hey these two people are probably the same people are speaking here. Well there's more evidence regarding this Epistle's authorship but and I believe the preponderance of the evidence supports the claim that the Epistle of James was written by Jesus' half-brother, again, who was a pillar of the early church.

So who's he writing to? Verse one, again, the Epistle of James was written to the 12 tribes in the dispersion. The reference to the 12 tribes tells us that James had Jewish believers in mind when he wrote. In addition, we know from Galatians that James' ministry was primarily to the Jews when he and Peter and the others commissioned Paul to go off to the Gentiles. He says, you go to the Gentiles, we'll go to the Jews. That'll be the emphasis of our ministry. The dispersion refers to all the Jews who were scattered among the known world. At the time this epistle was written, many Jews had fled Jerusalem to avoid persecution, and in some cases just to go off and try and start some new business opportunities.

And if you go further back in Jewish history, all the way back to the division of the Kingdom of Israel after Solomon's reign, we also see that would have contributed to the Jews being scattered far and wide. So over time, the gospel had spread and members of this dispersion had heard it and received it. So now we've got Jewish believers mixed in with the general population all across the known world. And it's believed that this epistle was written somewhere between AD 44 and 49. And if that's true, then it's possible that James might have been the first book of the New Testament written, or certainly one of the very first books written.

So why study James? What makes it useful to us today? If there's no doctrinal content in there, why study it? Some have called James the New Testament version of the book of Proverbs because of its style. It presents the reader with a list of examples of what Christians living looks like. It doesn't actually belabor any one point. It just simply describes, by way of comparison, what a Christian in the wild looks like. And you just go through an example after example after example. I like to think of this epistle as the teaching notes that go with the lab portion of a course in Christianity 101. If you've taken science classes, probably not for high school or college.

You know, there's sometimes a class has a lecture part and a lab part. We can think of the other epistles with the doctrinal content giving us the lecture portion. And James is now giving us the lab portion. Okay, here's the theory of Christianity. Here's the doctrine. Now let's go out into the lab and we'll see what it actually looks like.

The epistle of James does not tell us anything about how one gets saved, but it shows us by way of example what a saved person looks like. Others have viewed James' series of tests one can take to examine if they have a real saving faith or not. I think Dr. MacArthur, he outlines his commentary that way as a series of tests. James is useful because it takes us from memorizing doctrinal sentences in the other epistles and throws at us real world examples to see what faith and action actually looks like. It isn't an exhaustive list of examples, but it will suffice to give us a pretty good idea of what a true believer looks like in everyday life.

Think of it as a book, The Life of a Christian. It gives you a picture of what a Christian ought to look like. And so tonight, we'll cover part one in this series on James, and we're gonna see two examples then of real Christianity tonight. The first is joyfulness and trials. That's one example. And the second is doers of the word. So let's go ahead and dive in chapter one. First talk about joyfulness and trials, verses two through 18. The first characteristic of a person with saving faith, we find in this epistle, is how that person responds to trials. And I'm just gonna read some of the verses now, up to verse 12.

So follow along. Count it all joy, my brothers. when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness, and lets steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given to him, but let him ask in faith with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind, for that person must not suppose that he'll receive anything from the Lord. He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.

Let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich in his humiliation, because like a flowering of the grass, he will pass away. For the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass, its flower falls and its beauty perishes. So also will the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial, for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. To be human is to have trials. Job observed man is born in trouble as sparks fly upwards. Psalm 34, 19 says, many are the afflictions of the righteous.

It is self evident that trials are a normal part of the human condition. The only choice we get in the matter is how we respond to them. It's important to note that trials are not just random acts of fate that fall upon us like bad karma. There is nothing impersonal about trials at all. We're going to see that they are personal tests given to us by a good God who wants the best for us. The only thing bad about a trial is our sometimes stinky attitude about them.

In verses two through 12, we see the inevitability of trials, the source of trials, the reason for trials, the benefit of trials, and several things we can do that will help us to pass the trial and grow stronger in our faith. The inevitability of trials is found in verse two. Count it all joy when you meet trials of various kinds. It's not if you meet, but when you meet. The word meet refers to an unexpected encounter. You're minding your own business, going through life, and all of a sudden a trial is in your way. We don't have to go looking for trials. They're going to find us. We need to come to terms with the fact that trials are not out of the ordinary, but in fact are preordained.

We just don't know when they're gonna occur, kind of like a pop test that a teacher throws at you. The source of the trial is alluded to in verse three, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Wherever there is a test, there must be what?

A test giver, all right? Tests don't just appear out of thin air. Verse 12 identifies the test giver for us. It says there, for when he has stood, when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life which God has promised. Every trial we encounter has been given to us by God. So trials are inevitable and they come from God, but why? What is the reason for all these tests or trials? Verse three gives us the answer. For you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Now steadfastness can be translated as patient endurance. emphasis on the word patient there. You are not steadfast when you grit your teeth and grumble your way through a trial.

So trials produce steadfastness in us, but what's so great about that? Because it leads to one of the benefits of trials found in verse four. And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. Now James is not saying that trials will lead you to some kind of a sinless perfection. That's not what he means by perfect ink of belief. He's not promising earthly health and prosperity. That's not what he means by lacking in nothing. By perfect he means we are matured into Christ's likeness. Trials have the effect of refining us and burning off the dross of worldliness so that we better reflect the image of Christ.

and nothing refers to that which is of spiritual value, not temporal things. This is not a verse for the blabbering grabbit crowd to use. In addition to becoming mature, we have an additional benefit found in verse 12. Blessed is the man who remains steadfast under trial for when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life, which God has promised to those who love him. First Peter 1, 6-9 adds a little bit more color to what this crown of life entails. In there we find in this you rejoice, though now for a little while if necessary you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.

Though you have not seen him, you love him, though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. Elsewhere in the Bible, the crown is referred to as the crown of righteousness, 2 Timothy 4.8, and the crown of glory, 1 Peter 5.4. This crown is not to be confused with the reward each one receives based on the works mentioned in 1 Corinthians 3.14. The crown of life is something every believer receives and is not contingent on what we do or don't do.

Well that covers the inevitability, the source, the reason for and the benefits of trial. But from this passage we can also draw from the text what it takes for us to pass the test. First, we need to have the right attitude about trials. Count it all joy. Let's face it, joy is not our natural inclination when trials come our way. Even though I know better, I tend to think of trials as random bits of bad luck that pop up in life and impede me from doing what I want to do. I keep getting suckered into that. I've been a believer for 40 plus years. I know this stuff and yet a trial pops up and I forget that that was just delivered by a loving God and I treat it as some kind of a random event.

We've already seen that that is not the case. Trials are truly gifts from God designed to make us into better image bearers. Making progress in the faith requires challenges along the way. Someone once observed, you can't climb a mountain on the smooth side. Think about that. You're trying to climb a mountain. was just perfectly smooth all the way up. How are you gonna climb that? That's a good metaphor for what it takes to mature in the faith. It requires tests in the form of trials in order for our faith to increase, for it to grow. We see this principle of struggle designed by God in the natural world. Our muscles need hard work to grow.

I tried for years just eating Oreos and cheddar cheese and expecting my muscles to grow and it just didn't work. I was like, that was a heart attack for my trouble. Plants are sturdier when they are stressed to a degree by the environment. You'll often find that when a plant goes under a certain stress, the temperature change or the conditions of the soil, it'll actually make the plant healthier. The adage, no pain, no gain is found everywhere you look. It's a principle that God has just filled our creation with. When I begin to think rightly about trials, it can then help me to learn to appreciate them for what they are producing in me, rather than resent them as unplanned interruptions.

I have to keep in mind who they're from and what their purpose is. Nobody wants to go through trials if there's no point to them. Thankfully, the pain of a trial really does have gain in it when we respond rightly. Warren Wiersby in his commentary on James wrote these words, our values determine our evaluations. If we value comfort more than character, then trials will upset us. If we value the material and physical more than the spiritual, we will not be able to count it all joy. If we live only for the present and forget the future, the trials will make us bitter, not better.

I've always believed that perception and value are among the most decisive factors as to how we respond to situations. Jesus gives us an example of this in Hebrews 12 too, where it says, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross and despised the shame. He had a bigger picture in mind, he had a greater thing, a greater goal, something he valued more, which then allowed him to put the cross into perspective.

If we value growing in Christ as we ought, it will make it much easier to have joy when trials come our way. Secondly, we don't have to rely on our own wisdom when facing a trial. Typically, trials bring with them uncertainty about what to do. That's part of why we don't like them. It throws us off our game. James tells us that we don't have to go it alone in our trials. We can ask our Father in heaven for wisdom and He'll supply it, verse five. If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given to him. Notice that God is neither stingy nor judgmental when we ask him for wisdom.

He's a gracious God who gives abundantly. He doesn't say, would you stop bugging me? You're being a sissy. Go figure it out on your own. That's not our God. He does not rebuke his children when they turn to him with their problems. He is the one who gave us the trials for our good and he's the one who supplies the wisdom we need to know how to navigate through the trial. We are never abandoned to figure it out on our own. But there is a caveat, verse six through eight. But let him ask in faith with no doubting for the one who doubts is like the wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that man must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord.

He is a double-minded man unstable in all his ways. In Pilgrim's Progress there's a character in there, there's a man who exhibits this kind of a doubting spirit. His name is Mr. Facing Both Ways. Can you try it, how do you face both ways at the same time? But that's this character is Mr. Facing Both Ways. It's a humorous way of describing the kind of purses at James' warningness against being. When we fuss at trials or doubt God's ability to see us through them, we really are impugning his character. I mean, aren't we? When we really fuss at that trial, that test, that gift he gave us, and we doubt him in the wisdom he can supply, we are saying something about God.

And typically we're impugning this character. Why should we expect God to respond to that kind of a wishy-washy thinking? Well, there's a third ingredient necessary to pass a trial, and that is to rightly understand our position before God. And we find this in verses nine through 11. let the lowly brother boast in his exaltation and the rich man in his humiliation. Because like a flower of the grass, he will pass away, for the sun rises with its scorching heat and withers the grass and its flower falls and its beauty perishes. So also would the rich man fade away in the midst of his pursuits. Sometimes the pain of a trial is rooted in what we physically lack and sometimes by what we physically stand to lose.

The lowly brother described here is the person who doesn't have much in this life. This person can tend to get down on themselves and start to grouse about how miserable life is. They might view life in terms of the haves and the have nots with them being in that latter group. It would be tempting for this person to feel sorry for themselves and be envious of other people they believe have more. To this person, James says, boast in your exaltation. He's referring to this person's exalted status as a child of God. He may not have much in this life, but that's really only a short-term problem, isn't it? That's not gonna be that way forever.

The day is coming when he will be a full partaker in all that is Christ, and this should give him hope in the midst of trials stemming from his low station in life. And conversely, the rich man needs to be careful to not put stock in what he's been given in his life. His peace and joy are not to be rooted in his earthly treasures because like flowering grass, it's gonna vanish. When all this stuff is stripped away, both the rich and the lowly stand on equal footing before God. A proper understanding of this truth then will help the lowly and the rich to view their respective trials properly, which is in all humility.

To summarize this first example then that we've gone through on trials, trials are inevitable because God is using them to mature us into Christ's likeness. They should be viewed joyfully as evidence of God's love for us and plan to grow us. We can be thankful that these are open book tests, meaning we can ask God for grace and wisdom we need in them and He'll supply it. He'll supply it generously. Finally, we need to maintain a proper attitude of humility and surrender our will to his because he knows what's best for us and what tests we need in order to grow. Well, at this point in the discussion on trials, James then brings in the topic of temptations.

Each trial, if you think about it, carries with it the potential to not pass the test. If a trial is a test, you can pass a test, He can fail a test, and this is where temptation comes in. Perhaps James has in mind the person who might be objecting when we say God's the one who gives trials, this person might say, well hey, if God is the source of my trials, then it's his fault when I sin. But starting in verse 13, James responds to that person saying, let no one say when he is tempted, I am being tempted by God, for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire.

Then desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin, and when sin is fully grown, it brings forth death. Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variation or a shifting shadow. I just switched into the new American standard from my memory, but you get the point. It's interesting to note that the words tempted in verse 13 and trials in verse 2, so we've got trials up there in verse 2 and tempted in verse 13 are the same Greek word, pareosmos. If you look it up in the Greek, exact same word. Now this can lead to some confusion.

In verse 2, we're told to count it all joy when we encounter trials, pareosmos, pareosmos, if Shawn can correct my Greek letter. Then we are told in verse 13 that God tempts Perosmos, no one. But aren't trials from God? Our belief in the sovereignty of God would tell us yes. So what gives? How are we on the one hand, are we to consider it all joy? And yet then, but God's not the one that does it to us. It creates some confusion. The word itself simply means test or testing. It does not carry any implied positive or negative connotation by itself. It's the context that helps us determine how to interpret the meaning of this word.

When a teacher gives a student a test, the goal is to assess how well the student's learning, right? Isn't that the purpose of a test? The test's purpose is to evaluate and help identify areas of further growth. Everything about the test is aimed at improving the student's knowledge and skill. Make sense so far? Now suppose a teacher tells the students there's going to be a test tomorrow. Suppose now that some of those students faced with hours of boring study time are tempted instead to watch TV and as a result they bomb the test the next day. I know that never happens but just hypothetically. Would those students be right to accuse the teacher of tempting them to be lazy and watch TV because they were given by virtue of the fact that the teacher gave them a test.

If he hadn't given me the test, I wouldn't have been tempted to watch TV, so it's your fault that I blew the test. And that's in essence what we end up doing into what James is arguing against. In the same way, God gives us tests called trials to assess our faith and to help us increase in it. The goal is our betterment. It's never for our harm. But with the trial or test comes the opportunity or temptation to fail. God does not give us trials to make us fail. We fail because our fleshly desires or lusts come into play.

So then, God gives trials to make us grow and succeed in faith, but our flesh works against that goal and thus temptation to sin arises in the trial. James is simply pointing out that we can never blame God if we fail the trial he gives us. Now we can be sure of this because Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 10-13 and you guys know this, no temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape that you may be able to endure it. We must own our failure to pass a trial. When we don't pass it, that is on us.

James goes on then to explicitly, explain explicitly how the process from temptation to sin occurs. Look at verse 14. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. desire when it is conceived gives birth to sin and sin when it's fully grown brings forth death. Let's consider an example of how this works you can kind of see it in real world how this works. Let's consider an example let's say that you are in the the fast checkout line at the grocery store and there's a sign overhead that says this line is for people with ten items or less and you You notice that someone up ahead of you clearly has more than ten items in their basket.

Now again, this is just hypothetical. This would never happen in the real world, but follow the example. All of a sudden, God has just thrown a pop-up test on patients at you. What are you going to do? Somewhere in the back regions of your conscience, you recall a sermon that you heard on patients, and you've already decided in the past that you need to work on your patients some more. As one said, don't ever pray for patience, because you're going to get lots of opportunity to work on it. Well as you're pondering in your mind, this need to be more patient, all of a sudden you kind of catch yourself trying to count how many items are in the violator's cart.

As the numbers start to grow, 11, 15, 20, you start to get a little hot under the collar. It's starting to bug you. But being a good Godly Christian, you know, remembering the patient's sermon, you're trying to settle yourself down, 25, 30. Finally, you can't take it anymore and you make some rude comment about the other person's lack of arithmetic skills. And then a brief tit for tat conversation ensues before you both finalize your purchases and head home. What happened? With the test of patience came a temptation to tell the other person how rude they are in a not so kind way. The test, parosmos, was from God.

The temptation, parosmos, happened because you were lured in by your own sense of righteous indignation. That righteous indignation conceived an unkind thought which birthed a sinful remark. To reiterate and emphasize God's good and pure modus for testing us, James adds, verse 16 and 17, do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of Lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. James caps his current thought by reminding us of the true nature of God. He is the source of all that is good and perfect. He does not try to lure his people into sin.

Now, Father of Lights, that was a phrase, a Jewish title for God, that embodied him as the creator who gave light in the form of the sun, the moon, and the stars. But unlike these sources of light, which can fade and can cause shifting shadows, James says that the light that comes directly from the Father never varies, nor causes any shadow. James is stressing here the point of God's purity and his unchangeableness. I mean, it's really hard for us to imagine some kind of a light that's so penetrating that it can't even cast a shadow. I mean, we know from physics, basic physics, that light is a particle, photon particles traveling in a straight line in any object that gets in the way.

The light's gonna go past it, and it's gonna cast a shadow. Unless you're into quantum physics, Tim in the back there, he knows quantum theory, which says light can be a particle in a way, but that's a different discussion. But treated as photons traveling in a straight line, it casts a shadow. And what kind of a light? doesn't cast a shadow. And I personally, as a sidebar, and this is just an opinion, and this is not gospel, when Christ returns, and we're told that everybody's gonna see, be at the same time Christ returned, and I've heard preachers say, well, people are saying, wait, if I'm in China, whatever he's coming in over Washington or something, how's China gonna see him?

And people have tried to say, well, now with the age of technology, he'll be on CNN and so everybody will get to see them. I think God's light is such that everybody on earth will be able to see Jesus at the same time. Somehow that light will engulf the globe and everybody will be aware.

But anyhow, you can throw that opinion out if you want. That's just my opinion. It's interesting to note how James switches from the talking about trials to also using the word gifts. We talk a lot at TEC about viewing all that comes from God's hand as gift. James seems to be indicating that trials, when viewed properly, should be considered as gifts because of what they're intended to do for us and who would consider it all joy when they receive gifts from God. You can see the problem is not the trials. The problem is the way we view trials, our understanding of them. That's what keeps us from having the joy that we're supposed to.

Well, that's the first example that James gave us of what a saving faith looks like. They have joy in trials. Let's move on then quickly to the second example that he gives us, and that is doers of the word, verses 18 through 25. This next set of verses seems to center on the importance of letting the word of God richly dwell in us and then doing something with it. about our walk of faith is to flow from careful attention to the word. In accordance with the will of God, it is by the word of God that everything was created and by it all things are sustained. Verses 18 through 19a. Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures. And I believe, I could be wrong, but I believe that first part of verse 19 really ties back to 18.

I think it should read, knowing this, knowing this, then we would move on. Everything God is doing through his word is marching towards the fulfillment of his plan for a new heaven and a new earth. A necessary step in that process is to sanctify a people by his word. James refers to these people as the first fruits of his creatures. All who have a true saving faith make up the group that referred to here then as first fruits. James is saying this big picture thinking, this end view of what God's working towards should have ramifications in how we live now. Knowing what God's long range plan is, James proceeds to list some of the ways that this knowledge of what God's doing should affect our actions.

He lists talking too much, listening too little, simmering anger, filthiness, and rampant wickedness as examples of cultural maladies that all stem from the same root problem, not receiving the word implanted which can save your souls. And then picking up in 19b, let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God. Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the word implanted which is able to save your souls. Now perhaps James had some divine foreknowledge that someday we would have Facebook when he wrote Be Slow to Speak.

Proverbs 10.19 is fulfilled every day in the digital land that Zuckerberg created. When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent. In the context of this passage, when James says to be quick to hear, I don't think he's saying that we need to listen to each other more, although that's not a bad communication principle, because a fool does not become wise just because he listens to other fools. I believe James' admonition is to listen more to what the word of God is saying. It's only as we understand God's word better that we will have something useful to say when it is time to speak.

As our thinking coalesces around what the word says, we will see then a decrease in anger. The more we debate our own opinions, the greater the chance there is that anger then will take over. James goes on to make the obvious point that anger is never going to bring about the righteousness of God. That's a fitting warning for those of us that like to engage the culture with our words. Jesus said, they will know you are Christians by your fight, right? No, by your love. And yet, so often we engage the world out there with words and angry words at that. And as a result, we wonder why we don't have the impact that we could have, should have.

Now, in addition to controlling our mouths, the word of God will lead us away from what James calls filthiness and rampant wickedness. It should come as no surprise that as our culture reveres the Bible less, there has been a corresponding increase in all matters of filthiness and wickedness. You have to have come out from underneath a rock if you cannot see what's going on in our culture in this slide. A few of us here are old enough where we've lived through and seen the 60s revolution and all of the downstream effects of that. And it's amazing to me today to see the effects of the filthiness and the wickedness.

And I mean, look at the Women's Liberation Movement and now I'm thinking, you gotta be careful here, but women being free to walk around without clothing clothing does not seem to me to have advanced the cause of women. And yet, this is kind of the degradation, the filthiness, the wickedness, just how sin works. It just makes us stupid. By way of common grace, God allowed for some level of self-control even among unbelievers because of the widespread cultural respect for the Bible that once existed. Even in our culture, even though not everybody is Christians and the majority haven't been yet the Bible once had much more influence in our culture.

Most people cared about what the Bible said. Even the evildoers were doing it in the shadows in the dark because of the biblical influence in our culture. But as that influence has diminished, they're coming out of the dark and now they're parading proudly out there and just again showing their depravity to no end. As that respect for the Bible is eroded, the depths of depravity man will stoop to have increased dramatically. We are increasingly becoming a culture that knows not God. Several times in the Bible we see that phrase used, and they knew not God. And our culture is quickly getting to that point where we'll be able to say, and they knew not God.

True saving faith does not acquiesce to the culture, but humbly submits itself to what the word implanted says, no matter what the cost may be. Christians must be ever wary of becoming the proverbial frog in the kettle, lest they start letting the culture transform them rather than the word of God. Now this does not mean that we isolate ourselves from the world, but we must be mindful of how easy it is for us to begin making compromises in order to fit into our world. James continues his discussion on the word of God by stating that it isn't enough to be just a hearer of God's word, but you must be a doer. Now clearly obedience to the word is being a doer, but I think James may actually have more in mind than simple obedience.

Verse 22, but be doers of the word and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves, for if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he's like a man who looks naturally, intently at his natural face in the mirror, For he looks at himself and goes away, and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty and perseveres, being no here who forgets, but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing. And then a few verses down, he says, a part of what makes up true religion is caring for orphans and widows, verse 26 there. If anyone thinks he is religious, and yet does not bridle his tongue, but deceives his heart, this person's religion is worthless.

Religion is pure and undefiled before God. The Father is this, to visit orphans and widows in their affliction and to keep oneself on stain from the world. And then if you'll let me, I'll refer to chapter two, just jump ahead of chapter, you don't have to go there right now. He makes the statement that faith without works is dead. You put all this together and it appears that James is trying to stress the point that saving faith knows the word and then does something with it. The point of our salvation isn't just to have a bunch of truth sentences in our heads. Yea, that I memorized the book of James, but that in and of itself is not enough.

There's a doing part. As if to reinforce this call to doing, he actually takes a shot at religious talkers. In verse 26, he calls out those who think they are religious and are very wordy about it. There's no indication there that he's condemning them for what they're saying, but rather for being all talk and no show. A few verses back, we read his admonition to those who were just hearers of the word and not doers. Now he's calling out those who are presumably talkers of the word, but not doers. James is making the point that saving faith is a call to action. It includes things like keeping oneself on stain by the world as he points out, but it involves so much more as taking care of the needy as an example.

Now this kind of talk can make some people in the camps that some of us have come from nervous. This starts to sound like a call to social gospel. The fear is that this kind of talk will lead to less gospel presentations and more soup kitchen work. This is a false dichotomy that we're presented with. It's like you gotta do one of the other, you gotta do soup kitchens or DE visits on Thursday night. You can't do both. False dichotomy. Caring for the needs of people is not the alternative to presenting the, or preaching the gospel, it's the outflow of preaching the gospel. Doesn't Jesus commend those who gave out cups of cold water in his name and went out and visited prisoners in prison?

When did the church surrender ministering to the needy to the unbelievers? When did that happen? It was the Christian organizations and the churches of the past that were taking care of the needs. And now we've somehow allowed that to be taken over by the pagan institutions.

Well, those are just two examples of saving faith. In the subsequent parts of the series to come, James is gonna continue to rock our boat and force us to examine the evidence of faith in our own lives. Nowhere has he said or implied that works are necessary onto salvation, but he is making the case that genuine faith ought to be evident by the works we do. Of course the work we do must be through the power of the Holy Spirit and not the flesh, but work we must. It's high time for lovers of God's word to take it from the lecture hall and into the lab of everyday life where its power can then be made manifest for all to see.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this study we've had tonight and the strong admonition from James, a loving kick in the behind as it were, calling us into action, calling us first to understand that you are the one who sends us trials to shape us and to grow our faith and to make us stronger. We ask that you would help us, Father, as this week proceeds and trials certainly come, that we would respond better, that we would respond with more joy, that we would see them as gifts, that we would pass the tests. And then Father, we pray that you would open up our eyes to see the needs around us, the opportunities that are there to take the gospel out into the world.

Certainly the proclamation of the gospel, the truths that we find, but then Father, also the feeding and the caring for and demonstrating what true love looks like, that we might see the influence of the church begin to grow again in our community as we set the standard as we lead out in what love and care really look like. Father, thank you for all of your good gifts. Thank you for this body of believers. As we head home tonight, keep us safe, and for the rest of the week, may again to be filled with opportunity and blessings from you. We just pray all this in your Son, Jesus' name, amen.

I don’t know anyone who dislikes pretentiousness more than my wife. Of course God dislikes it, and He can see the fullness of everyone’s heart, but Mo seems to have special (albeit not inerrant) sensors and serious unimpressed-ness when others try to act impressive. I am very grateful for this part of her.

Sinful human beings like to pretend that they are impressive. We make believe, and try to make others believe, that we are something to behold, someones to esteem. The world presents a variety of options for stroking our egos, and those in the church are not less susceptible to the marketing of these self-centered mindsets. You can be admired because of your authoritative presence, your financial power, your insightful wisdom, your winsome speech, your sharp appearance, even your ostensible righteousness. If you can’t have those qualities yourself, you can at least identify with those who are. You can be cool by association; you have the t-shirt.

Of course there are people who have genuine influence, who exercise actual discernment and can teach true truth to others. There are obedient saints, and they do tend to hang out together. But, to those with eyes to see, the ones who play at appearances are funny, foolish, and the object of God’s destruction. There is nothing that flays a faker and causes such offense to human pretense as a crucified Christ.

The church in Corinth was vulnerable to impressive appearances and under the spell of status seeking celebrities. Some of Chloe’s people reported to Paul that quarrels and divisions were happening among the believers over their favorite religious figures (1:10-17). Division is one of the reasons Paul writes this letter, and it’s one of the most inconsistent behaviors for those who believe in a crucified Christ.

In 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 Paul reminds the church about appearances, about foolishness and wisdom, about weakness and power, about destruction and salvation, about who gets the last and loudest laugh. He reminds them that the best they can get from what men have to offer could never get them to God; why do they care so much about appearances? And he reminds them that his message and ministry were centered on the word of the cross, the perfect offense to all human pretense.

There is the “wisdom of word” (σοφίᾳ λόγου, ESV: “words of eloquent wisdom”) in verse 17 and it contrasts with the word of the cross (Ὁ λόγος…ὁ τοῦ σταυροῦ). There are two ways of thinking, two paradigms that shape how men evaluate things.

The word of the cross is the “gospel” about the “cross of Christ” (verse 17), the preaching of “a crucified Christ” (verse 23). And this cross talk is folly, it’s ridiculous, and in a few verses we’ll see it is a stumbling block (verse 23). The cross is offensive to anyone and everyone in the world who thinks about it. In the Roman world the cross symbolized all that a man did not want to be. A crucified man wasn’t just a convicted criminal, he was scum to the Romans and was cursed according to the Israelites. The cross was a symbol of torture, yes, but for those who were judged and rejected. To die like this, in such a remote place like Jerusalem—in the Roman Empire equivalent to Fargo, SD, from the perspective of a New Yorker—was so obviously laughable.

And Paul agrees. The word of the cross is folly...to those who are perishing. A crucified Christ is clearly stupid to a certain kind of person who is in the process of being ruined.

Here is the antithesis. But to us who are being saved it is the power of God. We would expect the contrast to be between folly and wisdom, and it is that (see verse 24), but more. The word of the cross not only shows itself to be a good option, it causes effects.

The first effect that it causes is judging those who think they are wise. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.” Paul quotes Isaiah 29:14, a passage where God declares His purpose to expose and frustrate and defeat those who act as if they don’t need Him. This isn’t merely “how it turned out,” this is God’s purpose. God cracks all self-promoting pretension, especially religious pretension.

And the Lord said:

Paul then asks four rhetorical questions proving God’s triumph. Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Here are three categories of persons: the philosopher and the law-man/academic/scholar/theologian and the rhetorician/advertiser. They could be three separate types, or mixed in one type. Each kind is an expert, a professional, the kind of man you look up to who has answers.

And, by God’s common grace and the realities of being God’s image-bearers, men have come up with some great things. Men have invented instruments and music and art, men have built houses and businesses and countries. Men have harnessed electricity and send invisible signals from virtually un-scratchable pieces of glass off of orbiting satellites and written formulas for gravity. But none of these have reconciled any man to God. Where are the experts who brought us to God? They don’t exist.

So the fourth question, Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Yes, He has, and is, and will. They are congratulating themselves and celebrating their great achievements and conferring degrees on their wisdom, and the joke’s on them.

The world cannot know God on their own, that’s how He’s made the world to work. For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom. This does not contradict what Paul wrote to the Romans about creation making certain attributes of God known to all men. All men know His eternal power and divine nature though they suppress that knowledge (Romans 1:19-20). But in 1 Corinthians Paul describes how no poet or philosopher or scientist has discovered communion with God. The world does not know God’s Son, God’s grace, God’s love, God’s salvation through any effort of observation, hypothesis, or experiment. Again, this is how God made it to be.

Instead, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. His purpose and delight was to reveal Himself in the Word made flesh and then crucified and then proclaimed. It pleased Him not to reason men into salvation or answer all their curiosities. He used the very thing perishing men think folly, not the act of preaching but the fact of a crucified Christ, to save men. This does have implications for the style of communication, since the context is about not following those who use eloquent or impressive technique. The gospel is the power of God to salvation, so stop exalting one gospel-sayer over another.

this announcement…meets men’s hearts square on, in a direct clash, that it aims to reverse them completely, to set them going in the very opposite direction. It intends to convert, to turn them completely around; nothing less. (Lenski)

We cannot keep up a pretense of high status and be saved by the cross.

This offends men who act as if they were judges. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles. Christ did do miracles and signs, and He told men to believe His works (John 10:37), but He did not do them because He needed to prove something to doubters. Skeptics don’t get to judge Jesus. Those who are perishing do not determine the standards of evidence or get to tell Him what will satisfy them. They are on the scale being weighed, not the ones using the scale. Jews wanted displays of power so that they could be associated with power. The Greeks, the cultured ones, wanted logical first principles and systems of proofs developed out in branches. In our day, men call it science, with all the unspoken philosophy underneath it. For Jews and Greeks the word of the cross was unacceptable.

But proof can’t produce faith in Christ, proof is seen by faith. Wisdom can’t produce faith, faith opens eyes to wisdom.

We preach Christ crucified is an acceptable translation, but based on how the phrase is structured, a better translation would be “we preach a crucified Christ.” Men have expectations for what a Messiah will be and do. The Jews certainly did and they had Scripture to support their expectations. But they didn’t read all of the passages, especially the ones about a Suffering Servant, about the unimpressive one wounded for transgressions. They wanted a Christ, but not a crucified one.

This is akin to proclaiming as good news that the victor has been vanquished, the market has collapsed, or the holiday has been cancelled. It is only our familiarity that dulls the strangeness of Paul’s message for us. (Ciampa & Rosner)

To the Jews a crucified Christ was a stumbling block, a scandal (σκάνδαλον), an offense, an obstacle. This was monstrous. No way was salvation this way. Someone hung on a tree was cursed (Deuteronomy 21:23); the Christ couldn’t be cursed. We can hear these persons saying, “My God wouldn’t crucify His own Son. This is cosmic child abuse!” To the Gentiles a crucified Christ was folly, madness. This is the kind of hate speech that people shouldn’t have to listen to.

But to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. Called is the effective work of God to draw men to Himself. The Corinthians were “called to be saints” (verse 2), they were “called into the fellowship of [God’s] Son” (verse 9). God initiates and makes the gospel effective. The word of the cross then is God’s power and wisdom. No sign ever atoned for man’s sin, Jesus on the cross did. No syllogism ever resulted in God’s grace to man, Jesus on the cross did.

Verse 25 summarizes this great reversal of appearances. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. The problem with this translation is it makes it seem as if “foolishness” and “weakness” of God are, or could be, attributes of God. It’s not easy to translate the phrases, but some awkwardness might be beneficial. We could say, “the thing of foolishness of God” and “the thing of weakness of God” as in this “thing” God’s done. You called it God’s pawn, but it beat your queen.

The word of the cross is the power of God to us who are being saved:

Therefore, preachers of the gospel should not attempt to use worldly methods to manipulate men to believe, nor should they seek to be seen as impressive by their audience. The cross is the determinative killer of status. And since the message of the cross offends, we cannot plan or program a way to cater to the self (in the preacher or the hearer), the very thing the cross destroys.

Therefore, a crowd could be good or bad. A crowd that loves the wisdom of the world is not good even if they use Jesus’ name and call themselves a church. A crowd of those humbled by the cross, gathered to worship Jesus not themselves, is good. And also, the fact that there is no crowd does not necessarily mean that the cross is being proclaimed. It could mean that you’re talking about Jesus but being a jerk.

Therefore, as for the “audience,” those who listen to gospel preaching and still demand signs and/or wisdom demonstrate that they are perishing. The gospel, and God’s wisdom, and the death of Jesus Christ, are not subjects for debate. The cross is not for consumers. Any attempt to trim the message in order to make it more acceptable to human wisdom will be destroyed by God; the center can’t be trimmed. The cross is not trying to make you feel better about yourself. The cross devastates your natural feelings so that you can have life.

Therefore, divisions in the church based on preference for preachers of the gospel is inconsistent with the pretense shattering work of the cross. Paul wrote about this because of the divisions in Corinth. By way of application, this is why I’m “a” pastor, why all our elders are pastors, why we promote the plurality of overseers. All are yours (see 1 Corinthians 3:22).

Therefore, if you want to know God, you must know the cross. The cross is where God reveals and saves. Any theology or religious system of thought that does not include the cross is defective and destructive.

Therefore, you cannot love the cross and love yourself, not the way the world wants you to. Christianity is not about Christ boosting your ego. The cross blows away powdered sugar pretenses and transforms us. The fact that when we think about the cross we don’t think about terror but rather God’s love and wisdom proves its power. That same power is at work in all of us who believe.

I believe it was in John Calvin’s rough draft of the Institutes that he wrote, “The human heart is a celebrity factory.” He changed “celebrity” to “idol” in the final edition (okay, there’s not actually any evidence of this), but in some cultures the two are not that dissimilar.

The Corinthians had some identity problems, namely, they had begun to identify themselves with particular leaders and with impressive styles of communication. Paul was genuinely thankful for them, as he told them in the previous paragraph (1 Corinthians 1:4-9). He saw signs of grace among them and said that the testimony of Christ was confirmed among them. He reminded them of their identity as saints, as sons of God, as those in the fellowship of the Lord Jesus Christ. But they had factions—smaller divided cliques—in the fellowship.

Starting in verse 10 Paul moves from the greeting and epistolary pleasantries to the first, if not the main, problem among the believers in Corinth. They were quarreling which was causing divisions. Their squabbles showed that they did not have the understanding they thought they did. They did not understand the very center of the gospel, the cross of Christ, and how the word of the cross doesn’t belong with disunity, especially disunity based on who’s preaching or how they preach the word of the cross.

Whether or not disunity among the Christians in Corinth is the main problem, it is the first problem that Paul addresses. Paul had heard reports of side-taking and starts by addressing it straight on. Unlike so many of this other letters that begin with doctrine and hinge on a “therefore” into application, he heads directly into exhortation, and this section continues through chapter four.

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Appeal (ESV) is just not strong enough. Perhaps you’ve heard someone mention the Greek word: parakalō. Something such as “urge” (HCSB) or “exhort” (NASB) is better. As someone who knows them and will give an account for them, this is what he wants from them.

We’ll see the nature of the exhortation (verse 10), the context/need for the exhortation (verses 11-12), and the crux/nub of the exhortation (verses 13-17)

He addresses them with affection as his spiritual family, brothers and sisters (later he will address them as a father, 4:14-15), and he addresses them with representative authority by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom he has now mentioned by name for the tenth time in ten verses.

There are three goals that stand together like a three-legged stool. Paul exhorts:

The first and third are positive pursuits, the middle is the negative way to put it, and all of them belong to the same responsibility.

We don’t yet know why Paul is concerned about this other than unity being a primary desire of Jesus for His people (think John 17:11, 21). To agree is to “say the same thing,” not in uniformity (which might be say the same things, as in, each and every word) but rather harmony. “They are to be like a chorus singing from the same page of music, not like a cat’s concert with each howling his or her own cacophonous tune” (Garland). They were not doing this (see verses 11-12); they all had their own jingle.

Division is the Greek word schismata from which our English word “schism” derives. If we read ahead into chapter 11 we will see there “there must needs be factions among you,” and Paul was for dividing from false teachers. So we’ll have to see what he means here.

To be united in the same mind and the same judgment is to be mended together, to share perspective and standards.

Paul is not urging them to unity because he just finished a great weekend of fellowship with some brothers and it was “like the precious oil on the head, running down on the beard” (Psalm 133:1-2). Rather, he exhorts them to unity For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. We don’t know exactly who Chloe is, but the Corinthians knew well enough that Paul didn’t have to say more. Chloe seems to be a woman’s name, and “the ones of Chloe” could mean her family, or more likely her servants. Presumably she lived in Corinth or in Ephesus and did business in both cities, and presumably she was a widow since households were usually associated with the father (Ciampa & Rosner). Regardless, more than one witness reported, “informed” (NASB), “made clear” (Thiselton), a more official word rather than hearsay, let alone slander, that there is quarreling. There was a present reality of strife.

Then he explains the sort of discord and competition. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.”

Note that, at least at this point, this is an ego problem among the followers not an ego rivalry among the leaders. In verse 17 Paul transitions to talk about the sort of preaching and ministry that belong with the “word of the cross,” and that extends into what leaders should be like. But in context the people who need to understand the true nature of cross-centered ministry are the Corinthians.

This is who thought they were more spiritual. It’s not just a battle of yard signs in a political campaign, it’s supremacy arguments at the church potluck.

They had started to sort themselves into groups based on something about a particular leader. Some were “of Paul,” but this wasn’t his doing or desire. He consciously worked against anyone putting the wrong sort of dependence on their association with him. He was like a brother and like a father to the Corinthians, they should listen to him as one who had responsibility for them. He did desire their loyalty, but not to the exclusion of appreciating other Christian teachers.

Others were “of Apollos,” a man who had skills in interpretation and in communication (see Acts 18:24), who “powerfully refuted the Jews in public, showing by the Scriptures that the Christ was Jesus” in Corinth (Acts 18:28). Like Paul, Apollos himself didn’t seem to be responsible for the false allegiances and Paul never disapproves of anything Apollos himself did or taught. Paul mentions Apollos numerous times in the next couple chapters, and even says that he wanted to send Apollos back to them in chapter 16:12. There was nothing wrong with Apollos’ teaching or doctrine or motives, though some claimed him as their favorite celebrity.

Still others were “of Cephas,” the Aramaic name for Peter. It’s possible that Peter spent some time in Corinth, but it’s neither verified or necessary. It’s just as possible that some of the Christians in Corinth were saved under Peter’s ministry elsewhere and then brought a Petrine mindset with them.

The fourth group were those “of Christ.” There are a couple different interpretations of this. Some believe that this is actually the right group; and it’s true, we are Christ’s (1 Corinthians 3:23). So this could be the correct way for us all to speak against the party spirit among the first groups. But the sentence structure is the same; there is no contrast between this and the first three statements. It is better to understand this as another divisive group. They were the “no creed but Christ” group, which is, as you know, a creed. It is possible to be divisively uppity in only Jesus’ name.

In the corners we have:

There were four names but one problem.

It’s possible that there weren’t actually four separate Facebook groups who each had their own logo. Perhaps Paul was pointing out with irony that there is no “I” in exaggerated sarcasm. But the factions were developing according to their favorites.

Some factions are necessary (again, 1 Corinthians 11:19). Unity is not more important than theology.

All of these groups claimed to be the superior “spirituals.” All of these groups identified themselves against the other groups. All of these groups were within the church. All of these groups held largely the same beliefs, though beliefs probably weren’t the most important thing to them. All of these groups had taken some external thing (i.e., personality, leadership/communication style) and competed over it. All of these groups needed the exhortation.

The exhortation to harmony centers on the cross. The cross, and the preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified, kills all self-promotion and status-seeking and group-positioning.

Paul starts the gospel rationale for unity with three questions ab absurdo. These are obviously ridiculous questions that characterized the way the Corinthians were acting. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? Without doubt the second and third questions expect a negative answer. I think the first question does as well. He’s not saying that they “successfully” divided Christ, Paul’s saying, “Are you guys for real?”

He uses himself as the example, rather than Apollos or Peter, to say why allegiance to a man only goes so far. There is no redemptive sacrifice outside of Christ. For that matter, there are no rituals performed by man that mean more than Christ.

He picks up on the baptism piece, perhaps because some of the divisions were based on who performed the ordinance. But the divisions can’t have entirely been based upon that because the Paul group would have been very small, and the Christ group even smaller, as in zero. But who performs the baptism is a good example of an improper allegiance.

I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. It is an usual thing to give thanks for, since the Great Commission includes baptizing disciples into identity with Christ. Paul’s point here is that it’s possible to place the wrong emphasis on who did the baptizing.

Verse 16 is an interesting parenthesis. As Paul dictated the letter, he remembers, or is reminded, that I did also baptize the household of Stephanus. Stephanus was with him as he wrote the letter (16:17), and instead of editing the letter, Paul leaves it as an addition, which also serves in it’s own way to highlight how few he himself had baptized. We don’t know how many were in the household, and we certainly cannot prove that there were any infants.

The final sentence of the paragraph is the crux of the exhortation. It explains why disunity is so wrong, it explains why who baptized you is less important, and it explains why gospel ministry and ministers ought not seek preeminence or be put on pedestals by listeners.

For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

The problem is not with baptism. Paul did baptize. The problem is with dividing according to who performed the external ritual. Baptism is good as it identifies us with Christ, but that should bring about unity in the body.

Paul’s main work as an apostle was to preach the gospel. It’s one Greek word, euaggelizesthai, “herald good news.” Isaiah 40:9 describes this same sort of work.

Though there was a “Paul” brand, not everyone thought his speech was impressive. This is where he begins to transition, a more specific digression in order to make a bigger point, into what the gospel does. The gospel itself is not “impressive” in terms of its philosophical or rhetorical display. Those who preach the gospel cannot expect to win the approval of those who want to be impressed in the ways natural men would be impressed. The gospel is not impressive, but it is “the power of God to salvation.”

Eloquent wisdom introduces his subject at least through the beginning of chapter 2, and it connects to celebrity followings because shows of speech were the expected way to get an audience and approval. The gospel is not about approval (even though the doctrine can be adorned by a certain sort of life). Clever communication may manipulate but it can’t save.

The idea of the cross of Christ being emptied of its power is both impossible and contemptible. A human being cannot ruin what Christ accomplished through His death and resurrection, but a human being can ignore it, downplay it, turn others to trust something other than it. That is what a certain kind of Rhetoric does, and the next part of the letter attacks it.

to treat the gospel of the cross of Christ as a vehicle for promoting self-esteem, self-fulfillment, and self-assertion turns it upside down and “empties” it of all that it offers and demands. (Thiselton)

Preachers shouldn’t want ratings for themselves but repentance from their hearers.

We are regularly trying to persuade others about something. Paul worked to persuade others to be reconciled to Christ. Later in this letter he will write that he’s become all things to all men in order that he might win some. But living in obedience to the Lord, and teaching in a way that brings attention to Him more than on the teaching, and caring enough about those you’re speaking to is appropriate, even necessary rhetoric.

The cross empowers harmony. Empower: make (someone) stronger and more confident.

Division and manipulation are both inconsistent in light of the gospel. The word of the cross kills the pride of man, no need for rivalry. The word of the cross is the power of God, no need for rhetoric.

If personality issues in the church can be used for sake of spiritual divisions, then of course preferences and doctrinal interpretations can be made into spiritual factions.

Also, names are not necessary sectarian. Does a label make something more clear or does a label turn the focus off of the thing itself? What does the label feed, humility or pride? Trust in Christ or trust in the talker?

let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. (1 Corinthians 3:21–23)

For us, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, Spurgeon, Kuyper, Sproul, MacArthur, Piper, they are all ours.

Disunity may not be the worst sin, and it likely isn't the main problem in Corinth. So why talk about it first and for so long? Because disunity fails the litmus test for how the word of the cross has been taken to heart. Imagine a clothesline hung between the word of the cross (chapter 1) and the letter's pinnacle about resurrection (chapter 15) on which the details hang. Disunity shows that the line is down and the clothes are piled in the dirt.

We are in the fellowship of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord (1:9). We should act like a unit. A church is a battle division of disciples, it should not be divided disciples battling each other.

To read the opening of Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth for the first time without going on to read the rest of the letter, it would not be unreasonable to think that the apostle was in a cheerful mood when he began to write or that he had recently heard a report that the Corinthian Christians were really walking in a manner pleasing to the Lord. These first thoughts initially appear that positive.

To read the beginning of this letter a second time, after having finished reading the rest of the letter, it would not be difficult to argue that Paul’s positivity was inconsistent with the true state of things in Corinth, perhaps he was even in a state of delusion. Maybe worse, Paul was using a rhetorical device merely to draw them close enough for a verbal beating.

But having the gift of our own copies of this letter, as well as the gift of other letters from Paul to different churches for sake of comparison, and having opportunity to observe what he says and what he doesn’t say in light of what he’s about to say, I believe we should read these initial greetings and expressions of gratitude as pastoral and provocative. We ought also read them as a pattern for our own responses to fellow Christians, especially those who are less saintly in practice than we deem thanks-worthy.

For all of their personality-driven division (chapters 1-4), misapplied sense of purity (chapter 5, maybe chapter 7 as well), self-centered pursuit of spiritual knowledge and gifts (chapters 12-14), and their conformity to worldly, even idolatrous, values (chapter 6, 8-9), Paul sees signs of grace among them. The very existence of a church in Corinth calls for songs of loudest praise to the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is not blowing sunshine at them, he is giving thanks to God the Father and His Son in front of them.

As he greets them and gives thanks to God for them, he reminds them of what they’ve been given. These are God-givens that identify them, grace-givens that set a trajectory for the rest of the letter.

There are two main thoughts in verses 1-9: the greeting in verses 1-3 and the gratitude in verses 4-9. Once we look at those I’ll summarize a list of all the things that were given to them that identify them.

This letter, and the relationship between the man writing the letter and the group reading the letter, are far beyond the human horizon. The formula of “From whom, To whom, Hello,” is a standard way to start a first-century letter, but that is the only part of these first three verses that is ordinary.

The letter is from the apostle Paul. Technically, he is dictating as he makes clear in chapter 16:21. Sosthenes may be the one scratching pen on papyrus, but an amanuensis usually wasn’t considered a sender. Sosthenes may have been the “ruler of the synagogue” in Corinth from Acts 18:17. He was known by those in Corinth as our brother. But the letter is from Paul.

The letter is to the Christian church in Corinth. Corinth was a city in Greece but politically and culturally Roman. They had been a church for two to three years by the time Paul writes.

But Paul only wrote because of God. The church in Corinth existed because of God. The greeting itself is not boilerplate filler, the greeting is because of God.

Paul had been called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus. Paul had other intentions on the Damascus Road, malicious to Christ and murderous to Christians (see Acts 11). God changed Paul’s direction, giving him a heart that believed and loved Christ then appointing him to service for the gospel of Christ. God ordained Paul for this responsibility.

The people he was writing to were those sanctified in Christ Jesus. The use of sanctification here doesn’t refer to the practical outworking of faith after conversion but rather to having already been set apart by God. This sort of sanctification was a present state, their current identity, based on God’s election. Utensils in the temple were sanctified. Animals for sacrifice were sanctified. All those in Christ were dedicated to God. So they were called to be saints, ordained to be “holy ones,” a noun form of the word for “sanctified.”

Against the precious and proud attitude the Corinthians seemed to have developed, Paul connects them with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Saints are worshippers. That’s what it means to call upon the name of [the] Lord. This is how you know a Christian. “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). You can’t know someone else’s heart, but you can hear who they depend on. Who do they trust enough to call on in the day of trouble? God called them and they called on God.

These “callers” are everywhere. “[T]he church in Corinth is not a self-contained autonomous entity: they are not a self-sufficient community; they are not the only pebble on the beach” (Thiselton).

The salutation proper in verse 3 is different from Greek (usually Chairein = “Greetings”) and Jewish (usually Shalom = “Peace”) patterns. More than that, it only makes sense because of God. Grace is God’s powerful blessing and peace is one of the results, an objective reality and a cause of subjective joy. It is only as good as it comes from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now that is a “Hello.”

In all but one of his letters Paul includes thanksgiving to God. (The only letter in which he does not make any mention of thanks for the readers is Galatians.) As usual his gratitude is thick and sticky in this paragraph, but it is not his usual reasons.

There is no mention of the Corinthians’ faith, love, or works (see for comparison his thanks to God for the Colossians 1:3-4 and Thessalonians 1:2-3). There is no mention of anything God has done through the Corinthians, only what God has done for them and given to them (note also the passive verbs: “was given,” “were enriched,” “was confirmed,” He “will sustain you,” “were called”). As in the greeting, God is key, and even more specifically, Christ is key, referenced by name in all six verses.

Paul writes I give thanks to my God always for you, not that he is praying every waking moment but that he is thankful every time he thinks about them. Thanks was his habit. He put on his thanks shirt every time he saw it in the drawer. He gives thanks for the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus. He’s about to describe some more specific ways that this grace was visible.

Verse 5 begins the series of graces. First Paul observes that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge. This is deep and wide. To be enriched means that their account was full, the bottom line was heavy. This wealth also came in diversified assets, in every way, all speech, all knowledge.

These are great riches. They are not as great as faith and hope and love and good works, but they are great. What stands out most, though, is not what Paul doesn’t list, it’s that he lists the very gifts the Corinthians were abusing.

The church in Corinth was “puffed up” with their knowledge. They lusted after the kind of knowledge that would impress, or at least be acceptable to, the world. They acted as if knowledge was something they achieved rather than something given to them. Likewise, their relationship with speech was precarious. They identified themselves with the best speakers, and they wanted to be identified with what they considered to be the most impressive speaking gifts. They would have crossed the bridge to hell and back if they could have spoken “with the tongues of angels.”

Yet Paul acknowledges God’s grace to them even in these misunderstood and misspent riches. The presence of the gifts made it so that, as verse 6 states, the testimony of Christ was confirmed among them. He will dig up the dirt with an apostolic backhoe, but there is a bone, it’s just buried deep.

Verse 7 reveals a result of their enriched condition, and a second evidence of grace. They had hope.

God enriched the Christians 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 in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He repeats their identity as those who are gifted by God (that they had the gifts not necessarily for how they were using them) and adds that they are also those who are waiting for God. There is a future expectation in the revealing of our Lord also referred to as the day of our Lord. They were identified with an eschatological hope. They will get to the end, they will “make it” ἕως τέλους.

What stands out, though, is that Paul expected that they would do more than “survive.” Paul did not draft a letter that started with this thanks before he heard about their problems and then scrapped the rest of the letter yet still left this unrelated thanks piece. He knew all about their issues and he believed that God would sustain them and sanctify them completely, that they would be guiltless, irreproachable, unimpeachable by the time Christ returned. This crew would not be bedraggled but without blemish when presented to Christ.

This is more than a third gift of grace, though it is that. It is also a corroboration of their future hope.

God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

God’s faithfulness, His dependability, reliability, trustworthiness is a favorite theme of the Old Testament. He can do things, and He does do what He says He will. He says He will save those whom He saved and is saving. He says He will glorify those whom He justified and is sanctifying. He is the Author of salvation and will finish writing the story. This is the kind of thing that gets Him doxologies:

Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy, to the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion, and authority, before all time and now and forever, Amen. (James 24-25)

James wrote those lines, but Paul had his own versions. And rather than at the end of this letter to the Corinthians, he begins with a benediction, and it is indeed a good word.

The final identifier reminds us of what we get in our salvation. This faithful God has called into the fellowship of his Son. What God wants from us, or better with us, is not understanding of truth. Knowledge is good and necessary but not the end; at least a certain kind of knowledge will pass away (1 Corinthians 13:8). What God wants from us is not words of worship or witness. Words are good and necessary but not sufficient; even prophecy will pass away (also 1 For 13:8). God calls us to a further end than being right about Him or being representatives for Him. God calls us into fellowship. He brings us not just to heaven but to Himself (see 1 Peter 3:18). His Spirit not only regenerates He indwells us. The Son of God’s love loves us, the Spirit produces the fruit of love in us, and we are brought to share the life and love of the Triune God.

This also means that we are part of the fellowship of the Son with all the rest of those called to saints who aren’t acting like saints at the moment. We don’t just share company, we are a company. It means we may be blessed by a particular teacher but we can’t separate from those who are blessed by another teacher. It means that spiritual gifts are good as they build up the rest of the body. If they build up Me, I am found working against fellowship rather than identifying with it.

In these first verses we see identifying givens. The Christians in Corinth were:

That’s seventeen. None of these identifiers were deserved due to something in them. “What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?” (1 Corinthians 4:7)

Of course Paul saw their problems. Fifteen and more than a half more chapters address the problems. But he, and they, had all kinds of reasons to be thankful for the existence of a church in Corinth and the signs of grace among them.

It does not require grace to see another person’s problems. It does not require grace to see how someone is abusing their gifts and wish that they’d never received them (or decide not to give them anything more for them to abuse). It also doesn’t require grace to ignore their issues; that’s selfish in a different way.

This introduction to 1 Corinthians should cause us to:

I have been saying for a while that I think one of the biggest blind spots for so many Bible-toting, truth-loving, theology-lauding churches is that they don’t read much other than the New Testament epistles. And Psalms. Even then, they read thew songs like letters.

On one hand it makes sense. We are the church, the church is a New Testament organism, and all of the epistles were written to churches or to leaders of churches or to people who were members in a church. Acts is about the formation of churches, and Revelation starts with some churches, but if we want to know about what the church should believe and how the church should behave we have tailor-made theological and practical instruction in the epistles.

That said, at least in the bites of evangelical pie that I’ve tasted, it’s been too heavy on the epistle salt and too light on the psalms sugar and history flour and wisdom butter and prophetic baking soda. Salt is good, tasty even, but not all by itself.

So I’ve been working to study and mediate on and even teach outside of the epistles for almost a decade. I’ve put my fork in to an epistle here and there, but I haven’t put a big piece on my plate, our our plate, for a while.

It’s time for a slice of epistolary pie. And, as I’ll introduce this morning and we’ll see throughout our study, 1 Corinthians is a letter for such a time as this. This first—century letter from the apostle Paul to the Christians in Corinth, Greece, is full of gospel encouragement, instruction, and admonition. These believing people had a crazy amount of problems, though it’s kind of amazing grace that they didn’t have even more problems than they did. Corinth was one of the least conservative cities in the Roman Empire and all of the Christians would have been new converts and first-generation believers. Next to Rome, the existence of a church in Corinth demonstrates the transforming power of the gospel, even as Paul wrote to them about some addition breaks from the world’s mould that were necessary. Too much of the world was in the church, but by God’s grace there was a church.

This will be good for us to go through. It will be good for those younger believers among us who haven’t spent a lot of time in the letters. It will be good for all of us who live in the world while trying to not be of the world. Our culture does not have complete overlap with that in Corinth, but it is not hard to see so much modern and/or post-modern worldliness among Christians today. And it will be especially good for those of us pursuing a Kuyperian Dispensationalist way of life. Being a Kuyperian isn’t an automatic disinfectant for compromise, for impurity, for greed, for conflict, and for worldliness. Of course being a Dispensationalist has done a lot for separatism but not necessarily to make sanctified and savory salt. 1 Corinthians will help us to know what it looks like to live God-wise, world-foolish image-bearers waiting for the return of our Lord, Jesus Christ.

So let’s begin our study of this epistolary pie and keep our Kuyperian ice cream, too.

A letter is more personal than a treatise or a memo, even if it is a group letter, an open letter. Knowing a little about who wrote the letter and who received the letter can help us understand the contents of the letter.

The city of Corinth is in Greece. It sits on the isthmus with harbors to both the east (heading toward Asia) and the west (heading toward Italy). Imagine two floating frisbees, one north and the other south, connected by a popsicle stick; Corinth was on the stick. The area known as the Peloponnese was on the bottom. A road called the diolkos built around the 6th-5th century BC ran from one coast to the other a little less than four miles long, and sometimes ships would be carried on skids across the isthmus instead of sailing around the long, and potentially dangerous route. Herodotus described the region’s place in the Persian War 492-479 and Thucydides did the same for the Peloponnesian War 431-404 BC. Corinth was a crossroads geographically and historically.

It was sacked by a Roman general, Lucius Mummius, in 146 BC, and was mostly of no consequence for a century until Julius Caesar had it rebuilt as a colony of Rome in 44 BC, partly to extend the Empire and partly to get some of the poor and restless out of Rome. He sent “freedmen” and army veterans to inhabit the city. While there were some Jews who settled there as well (cf. 1 Corinthians 7:18) including Priscilla and Aquila, the city had a Roman and not Greek culture. The government, the official language (Latin), the culture was predominantly Roman by the time Paul got to it.

The city was known for business and trade and arts more than philosophy (compared to Athens less than 50 miles to the east). It was a place for entrepreneurs, a place where a man could work hard to make money and attempt to climb the ladder of social standing.

When in a Roman colony do as the Romans, which meant business and stepping on others to succeed and talking heads talking for money about what worked not necessarily what was true, or at least about what would earn them a following.

To say that the culture was Roman rather than Grecian is not to say that it was irreligious. Politics and economics were tied to worship, even if just nominally; they had gods for everything. Inscriptions dating to the first-century have been found for all the usual suspects of gods: Apollo, Aphrodite/Venus, Athena, Dionysus, Aretmis, Hera, Hermes/Mercury, Jupiter, Poseidon, Zeus and more.

Typically, the more gods you worshipped the better; as they say, don’t keep all your idols in one basket. Of course these gods didn’t all get along with each other and fought for preeminence. Men always become like who or what they worship, and doing whatever it took to win preeminence was the way of the gods.

Magisterial worship was also central feature of life in the Empire. It was okay to worship whatever gods you wanted as long as you acknowledged the the Emperor was the one you really didn’t want to offend. The Emperor required his pinch of incense because he considered himself divine. Paying high taxes to the government may feel like extortion, paying high homage to Caesar as god is certain idolatry. The “Lord” Jesus was a threatening title, and the gospel was an incompatible message with their mindset.

[1 Corinthians is a] letter written to a Christian community situated in a city dominated by a worldview, aspirations, impulses, conventions, and symbolism that were antithetical to the cross of Christ …. (David Garland)

“The church of God that is in Corinth” is how Paul addressed them. It’s the second thing he says after identifying who was writing the letter. From the beginning Paul identifies them as God’s. They are the church that is God’s, a people living in the city but defined by a relationship to God and to each other that is much bigger than the city.

According to Acts 18:1-17 Paul arrived in Corinth on what we refer to as his second missionary journey. It was an obvious strategic target for preaching the gospel. The city was large and there were always people coming in and out, for business or for the Isthmian games or because you had to go through Corinth to get through Greece.

Paul did business in Corinth and was able to support himself financially by his leather-making work. Visitors needed tents for their stay, maybe captains needed new masts for their ships.

Paul arrived around March in AD 50 and didn’t leave until September 51, an 18 month stay. The gospel work was fruitful among those of both higher and lower classes. “De Vos estimates that the church membership was on the order of one hundred” (cited by Garland).

When Paul left Corinth he went to Ephesus where he ministered for three years and maintained back and forth communication the church in Corinth. He refers to a previous letter that he sent them (5:9), as well as to a letter that they sent him (7:1). This canonical letter which we call “1 Corinthians” was prompted either by their letter, or the reports from Chloe’s people (1:11), or by the arrival of friends mentioned at the end (16:17-18), or by all of the above.

Paul wrote 1 Corinthians after Pentecost, so in the Spring, of AD 54 before visiting them later and then writing a “harsh” letter, followed by what we have as 2 Corinthians. There are at least four letters, and maybe more. All of the letters were written to address problems, and there are a lot in this one.

Before introducing some of the major themes that Paul addresses in 1 Corinthians, I do want to say again that it is amazing grace that they didn’t have even more problems. The first two epistles in the New Testament are written to two of the most categorically worldly cities in the first century. And every city in the mid-first century, including every city in Israel, had only just recently heard about the gospel of salvation in Jesus. The Jews had the law and covenants and prophets, which should have been an advantage, but Jesus came to them and they didn’t receive Him. Those outside of Israel had a polytheistic cocktail of confusion and death. The wisdom of the world is as bright as the bottom of a refrigerator in a sunken ship at 11 PM on a cloudy night.

Those who heard Paul preach were hearing something unlike anything else they had ever heard. He didn’t come with rhetorical flair like the traveling orators and philosophical peddlers. Of course many people thought that Paul’s message was “foolish.” How can a “god” let himself be crucified by those he supposedly created and that be good news? How can a dead god do good for me? But to those who believed, the “word of the cross is the power of God.”

The church of God in Corinth experienced that power of God. They had been called into the fellowship of God and His Son. They had received the grace of God in Christ Jesus. They had every reason to be hopeful about the revealing of the Lord Jesus on the last day.

The problem was that the believers in Corinth were hard to distinguish from everyone else in Corinth. By God’s plan, the church is in the world. It is not the same when the world is in the church. Whether they were returning to the habits and practices of their pre-Christian days (again, which all of them had), or whether they were conforming to the mindset and values of their non-Christian neighbors because it was easier or because it was pragmatic, the church was too comfortable with the worldly way of doing things. As one commentator put it, “The Corinthians were simply trying to be Christians with a minimal amount of social and theological disturbance” (Lyle Vander Broek cited in Ciampa and Rosner).

For example,

They had wisdom problems, relationship problems—both between the sexes and within the body, and worship problems.

These first-generation Christians were not very mature; they were only two to three year-old believers. They had all sorts of messes in their thinking and practice. And yet Paul gave thanks to God for them and the obvious signs of grace among them, even if in seed form. Paul also expressed great confidence that the gospel would indeed transform them and enable them to live in Corinth in light of the cross.

Paul wasn’t marketing a new program and the gospel wasn’t a commodity for consumers (Thiselton). Because of “the word of the cross” they would not be the same. They are “those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1:2). They are a spiritual family, brothers in Christ (1:10), sons of God and known by God (8:3).

In Christ they could be united, they could be righteous, they could love, they could be steadfast, immovable, and always abounding in the work of the Lord because Christ was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

So they needed instruction on:

Too much of the world was in the church. What’s our excuse? We have so much more than the Corinthian church, including the letters written to them for our instruction (1 Corinthians 10:11).

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

OK, this is the first epistle we're going to do. And before we start, Sean mentioned, I guess, a couple weeks ago, the thought that the young people in our church really have not had a heavy dose of epistolary teaching.

And it really hit me when I started thinking about it, because around our house, we're always talking about Bible things and those subjects, but I did realize that maybe all those kids and all that life hadn't heard what the parents and the grandparents had heard. I got saved at 37 and the guy that brought me the gospel only let me listen to two different preachers and he took me to Radio Shack and we set up a recording thing with a timer and the tapes in it and I could only record two radio programs and I had to listen to those tapes as I drove around LA. And by the time I made it out to Grace Community Church for the first time I had already listened to every sermon that MacArthur had preached because it just I got it all coming and then I joined their lending library and and all that kind of stuff.

That was an amazing thing to me that you could hear those people like that. We live in a day and age where all you got to do is open up your computer, get on the internet, and you can hear the greatest teachers of the past 50 years. You can hear Martin Lloyd Jones. His trust has given out all his stuff. I mean, it just goes on and on and on. So it really is a sign of neglect if you haven't at least heard those things. The other thing that Sean mentions a lot, and it's really interesting when you start thinking about it, is the Bible does not command you to read the Bible. It says to listen and to hear and that kind of thing.

We live in an age where you just, like we have the ESV version. All you need to do is subscribe to the thing, and on your phone or wherever you do it, right there, you know, you can listen to it, push the button, and the guy will read it for you. And thank goodness for that guy when we were going through Genesis, or I never would have known how to say most of those names. But anyway, it's very out there for us. And as busy as we are, and as many of us as do things with earbuds in our ear, I really commend you to listen to these things quite a few times. John MacArthur says before he preaches anything, he at least reads it for a month every day.

And it is fascinating how on the 10th or 12th time, you think, I know everything about this I need to know. I don't need to hear it again. And on that next time, you go, oh, I really didn't notice that phrase or the way that puts that together. And that can cause you to be one of those preachers that the first word is a six sermon series. I'm not sure that's the best way to teach the body. I really like the idea of teaching thought groups or paragraphs. You can teach subjects and go down those rabbit trails and build them out. But to get the flow of the letter that was written to people, you should at least teach a paragraph or maybe even a chapter.

We had a guy that taught through a book of the New Testament on Sundays, like Ephesians. He taught it. It was interesting because what you did, you came away with an outline and the key points to hang the thoughts on. And especially if you knew it well, you realized, huh, he sees that as the key thing. So I commend you guys to listen to these things because we don't teach them a lot. And because we meet once, and I do think our liturgy is way more powerful than having Sunday schools and another teaching and another teaching and another teaching. And what we do here is ingraining the proper behavior way better than all the teaching I've experienced in my Christian life, just by our liturgy, having communion together, fellowship together, and the living it out.

And I think this epistle really talks about the living it out. I'll start off by reading it, and we can go from there. So let's read it right now. Now, this is just the first chapter of 1 John, only 10 verses. First John 1, 1 through 10. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which he have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testified to it, and proclaimed to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us.

And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be made complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. There's an amazing collection of three paragraphs there that say a whole bunch of stuff. First thing, this epistle is not written to any individual church or an individual. John does not pick out, hey, Saul over in Pergamum or whatever, I'm sending these letters. None of that. It's a general statement to the churches in Asia Minor.

Most historians and individuals that study this, John went to Ephesus in his later age. He was probably around 90 when he wrote this. At an advanced age in Ephesus. And he wrote this from Ephesus to the churches in Asia Minor. And the interesting thing is, we're at 80, 90 to 95. And this is the last living apostle. And he is giving apostolic authority to all these words that he's saying. And we'll see that as we go through this. One church father, Papias, called John the living and abiding voice. All kinds of church fathers testify that this book was written by John, the same one who wrote the Gospel and the book of Revelation.

Revelation was not written by the time he wrote this book, but they credit John with writing this. And as you're gonna see, I'm gonna show you other passages that John wrote in different parts of the Bible. And you're going to see it's like, whoa, he's like repeating the same thing again. And we did study the Gospel of John already. That was our first go through in a book here. The other thing is that you need to know is that this is considered to be a polemic against Gnosticism, which was influenced as a thought that you worship your intellect. And it was influenced by Plato. And they basically advocated that a dualistic situation that everything in the flesh is evil and everything with the spirit is good.

So spiritual things are only fuzzy thoughts and the fleshly things or real things are all bad. Basically, what does that do? That denies Jesus' humanity. And he takes it full bore on in the first paragraph. So that's kind of the background why it was written It's a really straightforward and very easy. The Greek is simple. It's the first book that you work on translating when you take Greek. Back in the day when I took it, it was before we had computers and we had our thick dictionaries, and you had to parse the words and all this stuff. And so the methodology was to make a photocopy of your Greek New Testament and then blow the thing up to like 300 percent and then you take scissors and trim the line out and get glue stick and glue it on a piece of paper line by line and then you had to translate by hand underneath it and then parse each word above the word.

And the notebooks for 1st John are, I think I have eight of them that are inch and a have notebooks with, you know, line paper with all these things stuck on there. But it really reinforced some of the things that I'm going to say about, you know, if we confess, if we say we have no sin, those things. When you see certain tenses, it answers a lot of the questions that people get really irritated about when they read First John or they get very convicted and say, how can I possibly be a Christian, you know? I think bad thoughts, what's happening? Oh no. So John takes care of that, and it's plain in the word here as we study it.

One of the other things I was going to do, I'm not going to sing it, but the people that argue about who wrote this book, I have a favorite blues song that was done by Sun House, and it's called John the Revelator. And it's just like a cotton field chant. And he says, who's that writing John the Revelator? And he does that three times. And then he said, he wrote the book of the seven seals. And then he talks about the gospel of John and the other verses. It's really a cool thing. And you can see it on YouTube and see him singing it. He's an interesting dude back in the 1960s. He was probably 85 or 90 when he was doing it then.

So anyway, so we start off now in the first paragraph that says, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, which we looked upon, and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. What's the that? Is that a person, or is that a thing, Or is that a thought? It's interesting, right? Because it says, that which was from the beginning, comma, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testified to it, and proclaimed to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and made manifest to us.

That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that your joy may be complete. So that that which was from the beginning, Most commentators say is the whole gospel package. All right? I don't know how you can really separate the gospel package from Christ, right? He was the one from the beginning. In John 1, in the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And when you get to 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen his glory, glory as the only son from the Father full of grace and truth.

So the gospel is there, but what John is saying, it was brought to us by a real person that we saw, that we touched, and then knew concerning the word of life, made manifest to us as he proclaimed it to you, the eternal life, which was with the Father and made manifest to us. So he's proclaiming that Christ is that person and claiming he was fully human. It wasn't some spiritual apparition that the apostles saw. This was a real person that was human and God together. And that's clearly what starts him off. And he's writing this again to these people just flat out. He just right into the middle of it right away. Jonathan mentioned this morning, what would happen if you lived in Corinth and you were a new Christian and all of a sudden you get this letter from Paul, 1 Corinthians, 16 chapters all written out, you know, and everybody's going, what did Paul say? What did Paul say? You know, and you all get together and the guy starts reading and you go, oh man, he's talking about me. I shouldn't have moved in with, you know, that person. I shouldn't have done this. Oh, no.

John is like talking to all the churches in Asia and declaring to them, don't forget where the gospel comes from and that he was everything that was needed. So the thing that you see in 1 John 1, then you see in John 1, okay? So what I just read was 1 John 1, 1 through 4, But listen to 1 John 1, 1 through 14, and see how it's so similar. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him there was not anything that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of the men. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness, to bear witness about the light that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to bear witness about the light. The true light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world and the world was made through him and yet the world did not know him. He came to his own and his own people did not receive him.

him. But to all who did receive him, who believe in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor will of the flesh, nor will of man, but of God. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth." The phrases and the wording and the Hebrewisms in John's writing are amazing. When you study Hebrew, he phrases words and arranges them in the order that Hebrews thought. And he speaks very simple Greek, very straight ahead stuff. The writer of Hebrews can give you a headache. Peter can make you nuts trying to do the Greek there. But this stuff is just straight ahead, no real problems going on with it.

it. So right away we see John is really hammering home the humanity of Jesus. And the interesting thing in verse 4 where it says, and we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. Now here he is at 90, 95 AD. Christ was probably crucified around 30 AD. So were 60 years after the crucifixion, and after the time when John, in John 17, shows what Jesus prayed for in John 17. When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all flesh to give eternal life to all those, all to all whom you have given him.

And this is the eternal life, that they know you, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. He is praying for this to happen and John shows that our joy is complete and Jesus' prayer is answered. And in John 17, 13, after going through more praying, prays for the apostles first, then he prays for us and all of that. And in John 1713, he says, but now I'm coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. John repeating in 1 John 1.4, in the fourth verse, and we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

That's really incredible how all of it keeps tying together, it loops in. It's kind of like the Bible does this all the time as you read it. You know, what's the matter with these old people in the Old Testament? They do this and they keep doing it over. Don't they get it? You know, and then you go, duh, that's what I'm doing every day. And, but it is amazing how when it's repeated, how the message gets further ingrained. I mean, it's just, that's part of learning, but it's amazing how it connects in the Bible with documents that were spread all over Asia, written by these guys, and how it all ties together and loops together miraculously.

So that's the first paragraph, and the big thing is the humanity of Jesus. This is a real thing that we Apostles touched, lived with, saw.

This is our testimony that we were there, two people that there might have been some still alive at that time, but probably not many in that day and age. To live to 90 or so would be a big deal in the first century. Then in John 1, 5 through 7, the second paragraph, he says, this is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. Now these are the kind of verses where immediately He tells us all how wonderful it is, our joy is complete, Jesus has done it all, I saw Him, He's the real deal. And then the next thing, God is in the light, no darkness at all. And If we say we have fellowship and while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

Well, how many of you guys walked in darkness last week? Yeah, okay. All hands right. But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus' Son cleanses us from all sin. And here's where the present active indicative comes in. All these walking things, living things, hearing, all of those things are present active and indicative where you are doing these things continually without ceasing. And did you walk in the darkness without ceasing all week? Probably not. If you're here, I would doubt it. Now did you have a bad week and do maybe more than 50%? Maybe.

What happens? His blood cleanses you from that and as we're gonna see later on Confess and get yourself right get up and walk again That's the joy of this and as you do that more and more and more He will conform you to his image. That's another part of this book. That's why I chose it Maybe I'll close with that story, but well we won't go there right now, but But so the thing when you see this thing, you know, if you have any darkness, if you say you have no sin and all that, that's continuous action that's happening all the time. And while you are out of fellowship, you haven't lost your salvation, but you are definitely out of fellowship and you need to be in fellowship with one another and his blood will cleanse you back into it.

John repeated the same message in John 3, the Gospel of John 3, 19-21. And this is the judgment, that the light came into the world and people loved darkness rather than light, for their deeds were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his deeds have been carried out in God." So there's always that tagline in there, there is hope, turn from your sin, you know, turn or burn, you know, we like that, the Baptist like that. But the thing is, there's always hope even for the most wicked.

That's another thing to remember when you're meeting people and all of that. Being a presuppositionalist, I don't beat them over the head, but I do pray for that question that allows me to expose some of that. It is amazing that if God has chosen you, he will open your eyes and make that happen. Romans 13, 11 through 14 speaks about the same thing. Now we have a different writer, Paul. Interesting, huh? Gee, Paul might have known some of this stuff. Besides this, you know the time that the hour has come for you to wake from sleep, for salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. The night is far gone, the day is at hand.

So then, let us cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light. let us walk properly, as in the daytime, not in orgies and drunkenness, not in sexual immorality, in sensuality, not in quarreling and jealousy, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to gratify its desires." Talking to the Romans, the same thing, starts off, you know, Romans 1 is classic, right? I mean, you can't get away from it if you're reading it and paying attention. And yet now he's talking deeper into the letter that the night is far gone, the day is at hand, so then let us cast off the work of darkness, put on the armor of light, let us walk properly in the daytime.

So the same kind of message being preached. In 1 John he just compresses it all down to just super simple stuff. Then in John 1, 8 through 10, which finishes the chapter, very short chapter, And I'm saving my time because there's longer chapters in this book and then I may keep you here all night. But the first chapter is just straight ahead stuff. I mean, it's pretty basic. It's clear. I think a child can understand what's being said. So in 1 John 1, I mean, 8 through 10, it says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves. How many people? I don't sin. I've never done anything really bad. I never murdered anybody. Those are all the stupid examples. But you get people, I have actually talked with people, some Methodist sects, S-E-C-T-S, they actually believe in personal holiness, that you can reach a point where you don't sin. As you mature in the faith, you're going to get to a place where you don't sin. I actually was in a Bible study with a guy back in the late 80s at a chemical plant that I serviced.

And he would every week bring it up that he didn't sin. And it was a crazy Bible study. We had this Methodist guy, I had a Calvary Chapel guy that he was a Mexican gang member that got saved. He was a mechanic in this plant. And I mean, he really got saved. And he would go after this guy, what you gonna do with his verse right here? We say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And they'd really get up, they'd really go after it. And I would sit there just smiling, because I didn't have to say anything. They just would go after it all the time. And it was fascinating. The guy finally quit the group, the Methodist guy.

You people just don't understand because you haven't been sanctified enough. I thought, oh my. So anyway, but the other guy, Johnny, he really understood. and he went after him. And I do need to go down a rabbit trail here. Johnny was part of Calvary Chapel, and we met probably, it was probably two and a half years, once a week, and it's the classic story of when you first get saved. Well, of course I chose Jesus. I walked the aisle, you know, all of that. And then he started like about a year and three months into it. Man, I keep reading these verses where Jesus says, I chose you and God does this. And he says, I'm not so sure I really chose.

I think God changed me and then I chose. So I think God did it. And I said, yeah, that's right. But you realize you're gonna have trouble in Calvary Chapel. And he said, oh no, man, Raul Reese is my pastor. I don't know if you guys ever listen to Raul Reese on the radio, but he was a character. So I said, well, John, go ask him. So he asked him, and they had asked Johnny to become a deacon. And he went in and told him what he thought, that God chose him. And they said, if you believe that, you can't be a deacon here.

They were really anti-Calvinists in those days. And he came back and he said, what am I going to do? And I told him, I said, find a good church. But he was such a character, and he was so strong, that he kept going back. And finally, Reese took him out to lunch and told him, he said, I understand what's happening to you. You're reading your Bible. You're seeing all this. Same thing's happening to me, but we can't say it. Because the church's doctrine is that we are Arminian in our doctrine in that thing. And he said, well, that's no good. We need to go meet with Chuck. Chuck Smith at the time was still alive. He's the guy that started Calvary Chapel.

And Raul told him, no, no, we're not coming from East LA down to Laguna or wherever the headquarters was. And we're not going to argue with Chuck. And so Johnny, he didn't know what to do. And what happened? He then got transfer, or he had to work a night shift for like six months. Then I came back and when I came back, he found me. He said, Dave, I'm back. I'm back on the day shift. We need to meet some more. But he said, I quit going to that church, and I go to a church now that teaches the Bible. It's really good. And it was interesting because a lot of people that I saw coming to Grace Community Church, they come after they go to different churches around, and they claim to teach the Bible.

And the people then start getting interested, and they read it, and they start studying it, and they come back and ask questions and stuff. And then they find out, oh, those people don't want to get that deep into it. So they have to go find a place where they really teach the Bible and love it and want to talk about it. And the issue becomes, you can become very proudful and answer all those Bible questions and forget the part about the fellowship in 1 John. And that's why I think 1 John is so good. There's a lot of doctrine underneath it, but basically it's relation. Our relation to God, our relation to each other, our relation to the world, which a lot of times back in the day when I was learning all this Bible stuff, I could fire off the answers and I have a unique gift to be able to tell people things that are insulting with a smile and they don't punch me.

And, but the, it's still you get in a situation where I know the answer to that. What's the matter with these people? And this kind of book keeps bringing you back no stupid, it's you, you're doing the same thing they are. So even the little kid that doesn't understand the doctrine, most of the time the little kids really get it and they're broken and they will ask for forgiveness right away. And then I often tell new fathers, the time when your kid comes to you and has to ask you for forgiveness, or I mean you have to ask your three year old kid for forgiveness what you said to him, that's the time when you really get this whole thing.

Because that relationship with that, if it's not tight, you can't move ahead. So anyway, that's 1 John 8 through 10. And the famous verse, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, I would assume most of us have heard about confess. It means to say the same thing that God says about it. I just kind of did bad. I didn't do whatever. You want to homologous say the same thing that God says about that sin. And at that point, now you're on track. And the thing to always remember when you're confessing your sin, let's see, what are you doing? You're talking to God.

Let me think about this. God created all of this, and he knows every thought before you even think it, like he doesn't know what you're doing, right? It really is, It's very satisfying and relaxing and it just gives you a great peace to know God knows, right? And it's just not a throwaway thing. So whatever it is that you're not right, fumble it out. It doesn't matter. He knows your heart. You're trying to tell him your heart and get it right and walk on, you know, get back in the light. Matthew 19, 16 through 22, Jesus confronts a guy that just couldn't get this. And behold, a man came to him saying, teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?

And he said to him, why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. If you would enter life and keep the commandments, he said to him, Which ones? And Jesus said, You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, honor your father and mother, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. The young man said to him, All these things I have kept, what do I still lack? Jesus said to him, if you would be perfect, go sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven and come follow me. When the young man heard this, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions. And then the next thing is the camel, or put a camel through the eye of the needle.

So the deal is, does that tell us we all got to be communists to come to the Lord? No. Jesus knew exactly the guy's sin was the covetousness that he held his possessions. Now, does everybody have that problem? No. Some people hold their possessions lightly, understand who gave it to him, and can give it away or whatever happens. So don't be tricked by those things. It's all very straightforward. Now comes a little more subtle point that I want to make, and this one is really aimed at our young people and those of us that are doing omnibus and collecting all this stuff that we're doing in the school. You can collect a lot of wisdom and have a lot of funky facts in your almanac, and think that you're pretty sharp, and you can create your own philosophy, And you can get trapped into thinking, hey, I'm really doing okay.

I got a lot of information, I'm trucking right along, things are good, and I don't really need to confess my stuff and really think about the basics of the gospel anymore. At that point, I think Colossians 2, 8 through 13 falls to you. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy an empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. If you're not basing all the stuff in Christ, you're going to get zinged off. And it really is fascinating, the articles. I haven't read the one on philosophy, but the one on, oh, shoot, I can't remember.

It was last year. But it was the same kind of thing. to guard against and have that Christian world view as you read these things and as you study your field. You can become a fascinating mechanical engineer and a really good one. But if you're not seeing it with the right Christian view, you can get puffed up and think that you really got it all figured out. And you will fall. God will smack you up the side of the head if you're one of his. For in him, Christ, who we're supposed to be according to, the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. Remember, bodily dwelling? Remember the first part of 1 John chapter 1 was proving he was a real person with a real body, not some spirit, not some philosophy.

Dwells bodily. And you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In Him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands by putting off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having then buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God who raised Him from the dead.

you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him having forgiven us all our trespasses." So Paul says exactly what John says in 8 through 10. Paul needs, what have we got here, 8 through 13 verses, five verses, and John says it in two verses. But Paul then, he's speaking to a more continental crowd maybe who is, you know, in Colossae thinking about Greek things or whatever. So bottom line, those are ten verses that start this off, I want to commend everybody to listen to the the epistles that we're studying, listen to it a couple times between each one of us teaching it, because it is kind of bizarre the way we're going to do this, because the next guy is going to do the first chapter is, and then we're going to hear another one and another one, and then we'll get back to chapter two.

And I don't want us to be in the routine where then I have to reintroduce what I said this time, we want to move on to the next chapter because certain of these chapters are going to be much longer and it will be more talking about what does this verse say. I think it's real clear once you understand the present act, even Dick and even John, that that's a continuous action that most of the stuff that most people get all panicked about, well I sinned yesterday so therefore I lost my salvation, that goes away because you realize you're not in a continuous habit of that. And if you are stuck in a sin, don't let that drag you down either. How, if a guy sins against you, how often do we have to forgive him? Because this comes up in discipleship all the time. You've got some guy that's lived like a major pagan for 20 years and you start to disciple him and you're expecting, well he's gonna give that up. Well he gives it up and then pretty soon he stumbles back again. What's his problem? His problem is

he needs to confess his sin, ask for forgiveness, get up and move to the right, upwards and to the right, right? Another little ratchet up the ladder. Don't worry about me coming perfect. It's probably not going to happen. You're just going to get closer and closer all the time. So don't let those things drag you down. And the thing that I think that The other part to this, of going through the epistles like this and our congregation, like I said with the liturgy, is the fellowship we have is really sweet and I think supernatural. I think that as we get to know each other more and we live our lives together, you end up sanding off the rough edges and realizing, oh, the thing I want to argue about is not all that important and this is more important and we need to have fellowship before we can really even talk about things on a different plane.

So you need to live with your wife in an understanding way. You need to treat your children properly. And when you do, it's amazing, that fellowship, how that little person can give you great wisdom sometimes, even though you might have been around for a lot longer than they have. And there are times when you can give them great wisdom. But you know, most of the time that, you know, eh, I've forgotten more about that than you'll never know, probably doesn't work, you know. But it's fascinating to just live your life, confess up, walking in the spirit, and you will fulfill, I believe, what John wants you to do in John, First John.

And it really is amazing when you think that this guy, God allowed him to live that long, talk to all those people, and then end up by writing the book of Revelation as a prisoner on Patmos, most people think. And you think all of that he's gone through knowing that all those other guys he lived with knowing about Paul being murdered in the 60s. Really, yeah, not 1960. I knew of Paul back in the 60s.

But it's fascinating when you try to put yourself in their place and understand these are real people that God used to give us this book. And what an incredible testimony it is to give us the guidebook for our life and yet sometimes we can worship the book so strongly instead of doing what it says. And that's when you get accused of the paper pope kind of thing. Don't go down that trail because God is God and this is God's word.

We don't need any intermediary but that's the criticism we have. So bottom line, live it, love it, and love one another. So let's pray and we're done. Father, we thank you for what you gave us in 1 John. We thank you what you gave us in the New Testament and in your word. And then I am continually reminded at this stage of my life to thank you for your spirit that continually can teach us things that we thought we knew and can teach us in a new and different way all the time and allow us to have new discoveries each day until you bring us to you and the great promise that you give us in chapter 3 of this epistle that you are conforming us to the image of your son is just mind-boggling. Help us not become proud of that but to strive for that in the proper way. And we thank you that you're always there to listen to us and of course we thank you most of all for your Son Jesus Christ in whose name we pray. Amen.

A popular book in Christian circles came out earlier this year titled The Benedict Option. It’s a book that observes many of our current cultural problems in the West, our moral failings and fallings as a society. We have serious issues at every level: individual, family, church, city, nation. Things are bad and seem to be getting worse as people become less connected to each other, to history, and to God.

The Benedict Option is named after St. Benedict who organized a system of rules for monks. Benedict emphasized order both for the soul and for living together in community. The author of the book urges Christians to get out of the public fight, which he says the conservatives have basically lost anyway, and focus on building our churches and schools and other institutions so that when the modern experiment against reality collapses we’ll have survived. He claims that as long as we have religious liberty we should us it to make sure that we are strong.

I’ve read or listened to a variety of responses to the Benedict Option. On one side are those who want a more prophetic, aggressive, warlike fight to take over culture; one called it the Boniface Option after St. Boniface who cut down a idol with an axe in front of a hostile crowd. On the other side are those who don’t think we have any other cultural responsibility than to evangelize. Maybe we could call this the Bunker Option. Groups such as the church, family, schools, are just platforms to speak the gospel. These groups exist, and fine, but we need not worry about building them.

Our current series, The Kuyperian Dispensationalist, is an attempt to both understand the cultural questions and to provide an answer. What are we here on earth to do? What are Christians saved for? As Premillennial Dispensationalists we not only see culture getting worse in ebbs and flows over centuries, we also see that darkness hates the light and will put up a serious fight until the end. We aren’t surprised by apostasy and idolatry, by unbelief and immorality. But what are we supposed to do? Run away and hide? Just stick it out until the rapture?

Throughout history most Dispensationalists have retreated, and we haven’t done much in our caves except complain (it’s like the Archie Bunker Option). The Benedict Option at least encourages us to build, even if it’s more of a compound tucked away from trouble. But we’ve seen that this is a failure to read the parts of the Bible where God says that His creation is good, it’s a gift, and that we’re to receive it with thanks and stewardship and industry. He made the world and all who love Him will hate the things of earth in one way so that they will be better image-bearers on earth for His glory. We believe His Word, His Son, and expect the fruit of our faith to be abundant and obvious in public view. The fruit of faith will provoke others—the Jews, especially in the end-to jealously. They will want what we have from God in Christ.

Let’s call this the Blessed Option. From our faith we worship the Lord and seek His blessing on our obedience and good works. His blessings may not always be how we would define them. Blessings include wisdom gleaned from trouble, joy in pain, as well as things such as profit and increasing influence. But others will see our God-given blessings and want in.

This will be the last message in the series for now. Lord willing we’ll start 1 Corinthians next Sunday. But my heart still burns, like the hearts of the disciples on the road to Emmaus, as it did at the beginning of the series. This Bible reading and Bible obeying project is one that connects truths, orients perspective, and motivates our work. It is an eschatology with train tracks that don’t run out.

As a refresher, “Kuyperian” refers to a Christian who acknowledges that Jesus created all things and that He cares about all that He created. A Kuyperian mindset seeks to honor Christ in studying theology and in building swing sets, in walking in the Spirit while walking down the halls of Congress, or to the voting booth. A disciple of Christ isn’t defined as much by what he does as much as Who he does those things for.

Abraham Kuyper loved Jesus and confessed that Jesus is Lord so much that he stopped being a pastor and got into publishing and politics. He started a daily newspaper and edited a monthly magazine. He energized Christian education at the grammar and secondary level, then helped to found a university where the students were free to study and steward every thumb’s width in creation. He saw Calvinistic soteriology and raised it with the implications of Calvinistic cosmology.

Kuyper himself was not a Dispy. No one is perfect. But he read the Bible right in many areas and obeyed with indefatigable obsession, he just didn’t do it with the intention to make the Jews jealous. That’s what we mean by the term “Dispensationalist.” Our type of Dispy is close to a certain type of Covy in that we don’t believe that there are two ways of salvation or that there are two totally separate peoples of God. All the elect, Jew and Gentile, are part of His people.

We also believe that there is still something special and unique about the nation of Israel. Before Christ, salvation came through faith in the coming Jewish Messiah. After Christ, salvation comes through a Jew, Jesus, but does not depend on a man changing his passport Israeli colors. Americans, Russians, Canadians, Netherlanders, Germans, and more believe as part of the church. Israelites who believe are also part of the church.

But there is coming a day when the fulness of the Gentiles will “come in,” that is, be converted to Christ, and then “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26). There are national promises of salvation and blessing that remain to be fulfilled (per the New Covenant promise in Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31). That’s what makes us Dispies.

We Kuyperian Dispensationalists believe God intends to make the Jews jealous through God’s fruitful blessing on our faith. Those blessings will be on earth and not just in our prayer closets. We are the means of God’s ends, like a cue ball breaking the rack and sending balls all over the table.

Some more things need to be said.

We are interested in imitating Kuyper as he imitated Christ. Paul commanded the Corinthians to imitate him (1 Corinthians 11:1), and the author of Hebrews commands: “remember your leaders those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith” (Hebrews 13:7). Kuyper is not a savior, but he loved the Savior and wore himself out in service for the Savior. That must be considered.

We make disciples of Christ, not disciples of Kuyper. I don’t tell any of my unbelieving neighbors that they need to “ask Kuyper into their hearts.” And at the same time, it may very well be that my neighbors observe something different about our family that I know grows out of a viewpoint and motivation I learned from considering Kuyper’s faith and way of life.

We are preoccupied with the future today. I’ve read that as a description about leaders: a leader is preoccupied with the future, that a great leader rallies others to a better future. This future focus is a New Testament norm, a pattern established in the Old Testament.

The farmer tills and sows and waters and weeds as he looks to the harvest. The Christian trusts and suffers and worships as he looks to the harvest. Jesus is coming again. The faithful servants in the parable knew that their master was returning soon so they invested (Matthew 25:14-30). Faith, hope, expectation, these fill our hearts with reason for daily deaths.

What we believe will happen later affects what we will do now. Too many Christians, especially the Dispy types, have undervalued earthly relationships and responsibilities, forfeiting their own joy and an obvious way of provoking jealousy.

We are concerned about enculturating the next generation, about edifying one another, about encouraging healthy marriages and families. But this is not only for ourselves, it is for the life of the world. We do it because we already have and we want more of God’s blessing.

In Genesis 1 God blessed Adam and Eve before He gave them their mandate (Genesis 1:28). He blessed them for sake of their marriage and mission of fruitfulness and filling and forming the earth. They were blessed by Him.

In the Psalms the Israelites received and requested more of God’s blessing. The first word in Psalms is “blessed,” describing the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked but delights in the law of the Lord and yields fruit like a tree in season. The Lord’s blessings came in the form of good harvests and in victory over, or at least protection from, enemies. Blessings sometimes looked like gold and sometimes like gladness and sometimes both. Blessings came in the form of a wise and righteous king as well as in judgment on transgressors. Blessing included land, livestock, and eating the fruit of one’s labor. Blessing came in the form of peace of heart, peace with God, peace among brothers. Blessings included forgiveness and feasts. Blessing came in the form of temple worship and in the form of kids all around the dinner table.

The earth has yielded its increase;

Fear of God extends on earth as God blesses His people.

We rightly acknowledge that we have been blessed “in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 1:3). We know that a man can have every temporal good on earth that he thinks he wants and still not have joy (Ecclesiastes 6:1-6); as Doug Wilson illustrated, he has a warehouse of canned peaches and no can opener. But Jesus taught that the blessed are blessed with earthly as well as eternal good.

In Matthew 5, the opening of Jesus’ sermon, the blessed will inherit the earth, they get comfort, they get satisfaction, they get fellowship with God. The blessed believe, they worship, they repent, they long for righteousness. And these blessed ones are salt.

You are the salt of the earth, but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trampled under people’s feet. (Matthew 5:13)

Salt is not merely a preserving agent keeping a culture from extreme decay. Salt is a flavoring agent. Jesus Himself explains what He means by it. Salt makes savory. Salt tastes good and makes one thirsty, it makes the mouth water. The blessed are the salt of the earth.

These blessed ones are light.

You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. (Matthew 5:14–16)

This is not only the light of righteousness, but the light of reality. Light reveals what was hidden, in some cases exposing the guilty and in other cases enabling enjoyment. Note how the light is equal to “good works,” not clever criticisms and certainly not complaints.

Good works are often simple: a cup of cold water given in Jesus’ name, or as in the case of widow who has “a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work” (1 Timothy 5:10). It could include so many things; there are endless thumbs-widths to use. Light is productive. And the blessed cause others to see something about the Blesser.

How can we seek God’s blessing in such a way that others will be the right sort of jealous? How can we profit so as to make others recognize the true source of the profit? How can we count it all joy in trials so that others will recognize the giver in heaven? How can we succeed, or suffer, in such a way as to make Jesus look good?

We need to get better at boasting in the God of blessing.

In God we have boasted continually,

as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.” (1 Corinthians 1:31, a quote of Jeremiah 9:23-24)

We are #blessed.

When we think about making the Jews jealous, it’s difficult to imagine a culture of people who have endured in persecution and who have stewarded material gain so well as they. It’s not just about the blessing of prosperity and peace, but also of patience through pain and persecution. Christians ought to be worshiping God in such a way that He blesses us so that Israel will see what they are missing in Christ.

This will happen according to Romans 11. This is God’s purpose for us. We are the means of this part of the eschaton according to God’s promises. This is the Blessed Option.

A Kuyperian Dispy will look like our Covy brothers in many ways. For that matter, we will look like those with common grace in success or endurance. But we will be able to explain it.

It starts with faith in Christ and worship of God in Christ through the Spirit. God opposes the proud. God also blesses the humble.

The church does not run this. The church gathers to worship God and the leaders equip Christians to go into their spheres. A culture of Christians seeking to honor Jesus as Lord is bigger than the church.

This takes time. It takes daily deaths. We may not see the fulness of the blessing harvest. But if you knew that today’s dying would grow fruit you wanted tomorrow, you’d certainly do it. So we live by faith.

We are preoccupied with the future and optimistic about history to come, that God will bless us and use the light of our good works for sake of glorifying His name among the nations. Certain things around us will get darker in jealous response to our blessings. Good and evil are not a pie with inverse proportion; they can both increase. This is already happening as unbelieving men want the fruit without the work of farming. Yet by God’s plan the Blessed Option will eventually work the right sort of jealousy among the Jews. Our overflowing buckets of blessing will be a witness to the nations.

You are in the story now. You may or may not be intentional, frustrated, lazy, underperforming, complaining, or on the cusp of a blessing breakthrough. Jesus is Lord, and He has called us all to be dependent on Him for His jealousy-producing blessing.

Automated transcript of the sermon audio, generated with OpenAI Whisper (small.en). It has not been checked against the recording and may contain errors, especially in names and Scripture references.

For this morning, though, we have the joy of in obedience, what God has said, gathering for corporate worship on the first day of the week. It's the Lord's day. This is something that the world doesn't understand. It certainly looks peaceable enough. And as we continue to be shaped, they think that we're just a bunch of peace-loving Christians. And that is true. But what we do and what we're transformed into on a week-to-week basis is a very real threat to a very real enemy. So we pick up our handle of the battering ram of worship and we take another swing even today. As we do so, we remember together, our help is in the name of the Lord.

Who made heaven and earth. And now the Lord says, "'He who formed me from the womb to be his servant, "'to bring Jacob back to him, "'and that Israel might be gathered to him, "'for I am honored in the eyes of the Lord, "'and my God has become my strength.'" He says, "'It is too light a thing that you should be my servant "'to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel, I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth. Father, you are about a marvelous work here and now. We cannot fully understand it. It is certainly not from the mind of men, but there's also no mistaking that as we have gathered and as we continue to gather, we continue to be conformed into the image of the one that we behold.

And this is a plan for the blessing of the world and the redemption of Israel. And our worship is a vital part of it. Shape us again, according to your will, as we assemble in your name this morning. We ask this in Christ's name, amen. We talk about a Christian worldview and what it looks like to live that out. I suppose there's at least a temptation to downplay the need for clear gospel presentations. So we think that it's all about the testimony and not about the words.

After all, it's all about our testimony, right? Well, too often we act as though our ethical living, or by that we can escape having to talk to people about the gospel. But that's an attitude that's consistent with being ashamed of the gospel. We give evidence of that since we don't want to talk about it. We have no problem trying to live like Christians, we're just afraid to speak. Well, to be sure, our testimony is, of course, it's very, very important, don't get me wrong. What we do and how we do it point to our loves. But when our robust testimony makes unbelievers curious enough to finally ask for a reason for the hope that we have, what will we say?

The Apostle Peter wrote to an afflicted Christian audience that was under the rule of Emperor Nero, and he anticipated this question. When he was calling them to live righteously, to submit to ungodly authority and the rest, then it would naturally beg the question from observers, how do you do it?

He knew that when Christians endure suffering with joy, it makes a watching world curious. He said in 1 Peter chapter 3 verses 14 to 16, but even if you should suffer for righteousness sake, you'll be blessed. Have no fear of them nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy. Always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. Yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience so that when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame. Well, the same is true of our lives in this world. They're full of trouble and our joy in spite of, and through these troubles, troubles should make observers curious, should make them ask questions.

Well, the reality is that many of us aren't being asked. And when we are asked, many of us don't have anything to say. Perhaps you find yourself in that position this morning, the position of either never having been asked about your joy, or when you were, maybe you, in fact, had nothing to say. And if that's the case, then there's good reason to repent. And there's full forgiveness in Christ. But if that does bring to mind particular sins that you need to confess before the Lord, this is the time in our liturgy when we get to do just that. If you want to and you are able, you're invited at this time to kneel. And in just a moment, I will close us.

Let's pray. Father, we are lazy by nature. We use all sorts of fancy theological reasons to excuse this laziness, or to excuse our fear of men. We go with the cultural flow. We look a lot like the world with our lifestyles, and so there's really no reason for our unbelieving neighbors to wonder about our joy. And if by your grace we do have a lifestyle that causes them to wonder, too often we have nothing to say. Please forgive our faithlessness. Give us a love for the gospel such that it would come out not only in our actions, but also from our mouths. And by your spirit, may we have not only the words to say, but the desire to say them and the reason to do so.

We thank you for forgiving us, and we ask for this forgiveness in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's stand together. Our promise of forgiveness, our reminder of what God has done for us this morning comes from Romans chapter five, verses nine and 10, and it reads, Since therefore we have now been justified by His blood, much more shall we be saved by Him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled shall we be saved by His life. We're saved by the life of Christ. And that gives us plenty of reason to continue to sing together. So let's do that.

Today's scripture reading is Romans 11, 1 through 32. Romans 11, 1 through 32. I ask then, has God rejected his people? By no means. For I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people, whom he foreknew. Do you not know that the scripture says of Elijah how he appealed to God against Israel? Lord, they have killed your prophets. They have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life. But what is God's reply to him? I have kept for myself 7,000 men who have not bowed the knee to Baal. So too, at the present time, there is a remnant chosen by grace.

But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace would no longer be grace. What then? Israel failed to obtain what it is seeking. The elect obtained it, but the rest were hardened. As it is written, God gave them a spirit of stupor, eyes that would not see and ears that would not hear, down to this very day. And David says, let their table become a snare and a trap, a stumbling block and a retribution for them. Let their eyes be darkened so they cannot see and bend their backs forever. So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means. Rather, through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles so as to make Israel jealous.

Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean? Now I am speaking to you Gentiles in as much then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles. I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. For if their rejection means the reconciliation the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? If the dough offered as first fruits is holy, so is the whole lump, and if the root is holy, so are the branches. But if some of the branches were broken off, and you, although a wild olive shoot, were grafted in among the others, and now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree, do not be arrogant toward the branches. If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root supports you. Then you will say, branches were broken off so that I might be grafted in. That is true.

They were broken off because of their unbelief, but you stand fast through faith. So do not become proud, but stand in awe. For if God did not spare the natural branches, neither will he spare you. Note then the kindness and the severity of God, severity towards those who have fallen, but God's kindness to you, provided you continue in his kindness. Otherwise you too will be cut off. And even they, if they do not continue in their unbelief, will be grafted in, for God has the power to graft them in again. For if you were cut from what is by nature a wild olive tree and grafted, contrary to nature, into a cultivated olive tree, how much more will these, the natural branches, be grafted back to their own olive tree?

Unless you be wise in your own conceits, I want you to understand this mystery, brothers. A partial hardening has come upon Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. And in this way, all Israel will be saved, as it is written. The deliverer will come from Zion. He will banish ungodliness from Jacob. And this will be my covenant with them when I take away their sins. As regards the gospel, they are enemies of God for your sake, but as regards election, they are beloved for the sake of their forefathers, for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. Just as you were at one time disobedient to God, but now have received mercy because of their disobedience.

So they too have now been disobedient in order that by mercy shown to you they also may now receive mercy, for God is consigned all to disobedience that may have mercy on all. Let's pray. Father, reading through that passage, you as a Gentile feel very fortunate. It's amazing that you gave the tiny nation Israel to be the light unto the world, and Yet by your plan, they disobeyed, causing the gospel to be given to us outside of Israel. Help us never to forget that great gift you had given us. Help us to understand that and not be proud in it, but to be sharing in it and to bring all men to you. We think of our government in this day and all the craziness that's in the world.

Help those leaders that know you be good witnesses and stand for the truth. Help them be able to make wise decisions for our country and for our world. And help each and every one of us to be the citizens you would have us be in the blessing that we have to live in a country where we can be part of our government. We thank you for the men in our congregation that serve in the military, Ben Hackbarth and Dan Wibemeyer. We thank you for the men in our congregation, the fathers, husbands, and young men that are growing up to be such. We thank you for the women in our congregation, the mothers, the grandmothers, the young women that are growing up.

Help each one of these people, the young people, the old people, all of us to operate as a great family for you and to understand our roles and to act out on them in a way that honors you in everything that we do. We think of the personal people now in our congregation and friends of ours that need your help especially. We pray for Sue Cooper as she needs some wisdom and all the affairs that she has on Bob's homegoing to take care of and we do pray that she get the apartment that she wants and that that would go through this week and we just thank you that that you're a God that knows those things and can help us all.

We think of Debbie Wold as she begins her immune therapy this week, and we'd ask that you would continue with the good news with her, but I would still continue to ask that you would cure her completely and not even need these treatments. But we do think that we pray that you would use that. We also pray for Rhonda Luce, a friend of our congregation, that her ongoing treatment would be successful. We thank you that Cheryl Wimmerweier has been put on the proper medication for her high blood pressure and her pregnancy and that it would work and things would be all right in that department. We think of a friend of our congregation, Travis Upson, as he's recovering from a major back surgery and an infection that is on his spine that they would be able to take care of that and bring him back to full health.

We thank you for the new babies that have come into our congregation. We think of Sergio and Anastasia with the birth of Verena, and Josh and Sherri Newsma and the birth of Theodore. And that new life is just a joy to us in all the new life we have in our congregation and the little squeals and stuff we hear are a pleasure to us to know that another generation is hearing your gospel. We also thank you that Grant Weinberg was able to find a job and the skills that he wants to demonstrate and help him to be an honor for you in that new job as he starts this week. We think of our outreach, we think of our school that will be starting up here soon in September, and we think of the Children's Law Center and all the people that they put out of the foster homes into real homes.

we think of Sanjeev and Shansi Thomas in India in the Good Shepherd's Home as they raised those young women to be those witnesses for you in India. We also want to pray for the churches that are preaching the gospel all over the world today and help us to understand we are not the only ones but give them strength and give us strength to proclaim your word and all truth to the people that are there. So we thank you for all these things and we pray these in your son's name, Jesus Christ, amen. Father it is remarkable that you have given us your word and you have given us instruction as to how we are to live. We submit ourselves yet again to it and even as this morning it'll be more thematic and systematizing some things that you have said in various parts of scripture. May our attitude be the same, that is, we pray that you'd help us to lay aside our pride and our own prejudice against it because it does not harmonize with how men naturally think and instead cause us to correct our own thinking by your grace and your spirit's help and align it

then with what you have revealed to us. Help us not to overstep our bounds. Help us not to overreach or try to speak presumptuously about things that you have not spoken clearly about, but where you have given us instruction, we pray that you would help us to have an increased appetite for it and a clearer desire to know it. So give me grace as I try to introduce clarity and not obscurity, even in the time we have together now. We pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Well, if you're visiting with us this morning, you may or may not be aware that I am not Shawn Higgins. I am not the typical teaching pastor or the one who under normal circumstances gives the announcements or the charge at confession time.

And I sort of pity you if you are visiting with us because you're stepping in right in the middle of things. And I joked with Dave this morning, it's kind of like flipping to the middle of an instruction manual and expecting to be able to make sense of the first half. There is a context to this, and so if I'm using some terms that you may or that you may not know, I would commend to you the previous week's Sunday morning messages from our current study related to Kiparian dispensationalism. Hopefully, as I do work through some of those terms, it will be review for all of you. But if not, I will try to give a short treatment of them.

Four summers ago, in July of 2013, I preached a message entitled Happy Dispensationalism, or Living to Make the Jews Jealous. Now, our current Sunday morning series related to Kuyperian Dispensationalism and particularly Shawn's message from last Sunday related to the provocative fruit of faith, well, that justifies a revisiting of this theme. Although I thought it fitting in the summer of 2013, now looking back, I can at least call it untimely. I actually listened to that message again this week, and my own message made a lot more sense in Lyda Shawn's talks the last couple of weeks. That's the way the spirit works from time to time.

But regardless, I do think that it is more fitting in light of Shawn's recent messages. I don't have time to re-preach it this morning, but I'm going to borrow from it a little bit. I would commend to you at the risk of sounding self-serving, that you listen to that message because it gives a fuller treatment of Romans 11 versus 11 through 15, then I can give this morning and it's absolutely loaded. If you've been paying attention the last few weeks, it ought to make a lot of sense. But I don't have time to re-preach it this morning while still being able to cover what I believe still needs to be said about Kuyperian dispensationalism.

So it's worth taking a look at or listen. But for now I do tend to, as I mentioned, borrow a few pieces from it. Last week, Sean argued that the aim of faithful dispensationalism should be the same as that of the Apostle Paul, to make the Jews jealous. The aim of a faithful dispensationalist should be the same as that of the Apostle Paul, to make the Jews jealous, and to then drive them to embrace their Messiah. He also argued convincingly that what we've called Kuyperian living is the best way then to accomplish that goal. The term Kyperian comes from the name of the Dutch statesman, theologian, pastor, journalist extraordinaire, Abraham Kuyper.

This is a working definition of a Kyperian. A Kyperian is a Christian who acknowledges Christ's lordship over every thumbs width in creation. As you're probably aware, dispensationalism is the teaching that God relates to men in different ways, under different dispensations, or different windows of time. It's not really hard to understand. God clearly dealt with Adam and Eve differently than he dealt before the fall, than he did after the fall, and that represents a dispensational difference. But important to dispensational theology is the distinction between the Church and Israel. That contrasts with covenant theology, which maintains there's one people of God. The Old Testament promises to Israel have their fulfillment in Christ. They remain according to covenant theologians, then no unfulfilled promises to national or ethnic Israel. But dispensationalists rightly observe that many of God's promises to the Jews quite simply remain unfulfilled. And though it's not God's fault, it's clearly by his design. There's a seeming human contradiction there.

It's hard for us to comprehend those of paradoxes. God promised to bless the nations through Abraham and that he has done, the reality is if Israel would have obeyed God's commands all the way through from the beginning to now and been faithful to him, they would have brought the salvation to the nations. But they did not obey and the salvation to the nations has come in a different way but still through Israel. They were not faithful and now God is chastening his people having rejected them temporarily. And we'll see that this morning. Paul teaches that through the trespass of the Jews, Dave read that, through the trespass of the Jews, salvation has come to the Gentiles.

But whereas the previous Jews were, previously the Jews were to be light to the nations, right now it's as though the Gentiles are functioning as a light to the Jews. Additionally, while dispensationalists come in a variety of stripes and colors, most if not all believe that our current dispensation, the church age, will end with the removal of the church from the earth. We call that the rapture. The tribulation and the great tribulation will follow. Some believe that the rapture will come between those two, but those do represent different dispensations. And the return of Christ in the millennial kingdom will follow that. So dispensationalists are by default, anyway, pre-millennial, pre-millennial. They believe that Jesus' second coming will come prior to, before, pre the millennial reign. His second coming will be pre-millennial. That's what that means. That also necessarily means in a very real sense the worst is still ahead. Christians don't need to fear the future to be sure because we know the end of the story.

But the reality is that many dispensationalists don't act like this. Many are fearful. Either they're fearful of what's to come, and that's evidenced by much of what Christians have produced in cinema and in literature. Rapture fiction scare tactics to scare people into the kingdom. We're fearful of what's to come, or we're fearful at least that time will run out before we get a chance to evangelize everybody. A happy dispensationalist then is one who actually finds a way to be happy while adhering to dispensational theology. And there are precious few of them and that ought not to be the case. To some, that term dispensational, so happy dispensational, it sounds like an oxymoron, it makes about as much sense as a gregarious hermit.

But as we study the words and the example, so what he said and what he did of the Apostle Paul, we see an example of happy dispensationalism. He wouldn't have used those terms any more than he would have called himself a Calvinist, because Calvin came along 1500 years later, but we should still try to be like him. Paul speaks clearly of ethnic Israel, of which he's one, proudly, of the tribe of Benjamin. He speaks of the people of Israel as a distinct group with a promising future. And he joyfully and actively evangelizes the Gentiles in obedience to what Christ has said. And so while I grant that happy dispensationalists are rare, that ought not to be the case.

Because, and this is pretty simple, but dispensationalism rightly applied should be marked by a joy-filled optimism and a winsome lifestyle because the gospel, the church, and even Gentile Christians will be instruments that God uses to draw Israel back to himself and to usher in the millennial kingdom here on earth. Let me say that again. Dispensationalism rightly applied should be marked by joy-filled optimism and a winsome lifestyle because the gospel, the church and even Gentile Christians will be instruments that God will use to draw Israel back to Himself and to usher in the Millennial Kingdom here on earth.

Now Kuyperian dispensationalism is a step further still and it offers a rationale and a worldview for going about our lives with joy, intentionality, and a goal of the salvation of the Jews. So at a minimum, Kuyperian dispensationalists ought to be happy because they're dispensational. But the Kuyperian piece is how we relate to the world. And this morning I'd like to make three cases regarding Kuyperian dispensationalism. I'll rattle them off now, but I'll revisit them one by one. First, Kiparian dispensationalism offers the greatest avenue for the jealousy of the Jews. Second, Kiparian dispensationalism offers the greatest means for the salvation of souls.

And third, Kiparian dispensationalism offers the greatest means for the blessing of the world. Jealousy of the Jews, salvation of souls, blessing for the world. Let's get right to it then. First, Kipirian dispensationalism offers the greatest avenue for the jealousy of the Jews, a drum that Paul repeatedly bangs throughout Romans 9-11, which are there for a reason, is that God is working out a great plan according to His sovereign will and His goodness, and that He is doing it according to His good pleasure. That's not ours. That's not our pleasure. God's ways are above our ways, and the man who tries to climb inside the mind of God is bound to be blown away or have his mind boggled.

Paul anticipates some pushback from a supposed interlocutor in chapter 9, and he issues a rebuke. Why does he still find fault? Well, who are you to answer back to God? We can't. We can't suppose to be able to understand what goes on in the secret councils of the Trinity. One of the impressive themes of all of history, though, is man's awareness of his eternality. And he's constantly about the work of trying to save himself. God's written eternity and his law on men's hearts. And so even those pre-gospel pagans, those who worship multiple gods, they knew that there was more to them than just physical substance. They knew that there was more to come after death than just oblivion.

The earliest writings that we have in all of history show that men worship. John Calvin called the heart of man an idol factory. Men worship. It's what they do. They have always known that there is something greater than themselves and they're more than just physical beings. And so when they try and try and try to appease their gods, the objects of their worship, and every god and every effort of salvation devised by men then falls short. Your efforts don't even satisfy intellectually, let alone actually. And that's what's so compelling about the gospel, is it doesn't just offer intellectual satisfaction, it offers actual satisfaction for God's holiness and wrath.

And it is not the sort of thing that men come up with. Paul recognizes that, which is part of why he anticipates the pushback in chapter 9. He knows that if men were to write the story, it would look a lot like making sacrifices of a hundred cattle to Zeus. It would look a lot like making a certain number of pilgrimages to be able to check that box for ourselves. Some sort of works-based righteousness would have to be enough, not the gospel. It is not the sort of thing that men come up with. What we have instead is that the one God, the triune God of all of creation, initiates and completes salvation, sending His only Son to become Savior of the world, to become the very sacrifice that men could not provide, dying a substitutionary death for them, a death on behalf of them.

That's not the sort of thing men come up with. And you know what else men don't come up with? sort of plan that we see in scripture for God to bless and prosper and save the Jews. It goes like this. God gives his word and his favor to his chosen race, the Hebrews, the nation of Israel. Their charge is to be a light to the nation, a mouthpiece for God, proclaiming the greatness and glory of God to the world. In their prosperity they become hard-hearted and independent. chases them and uses the Gentiles to do this, that their hearts may become inclined to him once again. We see this pattern repeatedly in the Old Testament, but in the New Testament we see it again with a particular goal in view. That is the salvation of the nations.

The plan is to bring salvation to the Gentiles, to bless them like crazy, make the Jews jealous of those blessings in order that the Jews would in turn embrace their Messiah. Now I don't know about you, but I wouldn't have drawn it up like that. So one of the most compelling things for dispensationalism is that it harmonizes with how God works. He comes up with these plans for redemption that don't square with human reasoning. That is like Him. God is active in the hardening of the hearts of the Jews right now in order that the the Gentiles might be grafted in in their full number. Dave read the passage about the olive branches being broken off in order that the olive branch of the Gentiles might be grafted in.

It was by Israel's rejection of Jesus and the gospel that salvation has come to the Gentiles. We see in Romans 9 to 11 that God hardened the hearts of the Jews so that they could not believe. And why would he do that? Well, we know that as a result of this hardening, the Jews rejected and killed Jesus. And what happened at the cross? It's good news. Full atonement for the sins of the elect and the redemption of elect Israel and Gentiles alike. Full atonement. Because if Christ had not gone to the cross, which of course wouldn't have happened without the hardening of Israel, then nobody would have been redeemed. Jew or Gentile alike.

That's a mysterious plan that could only come from the mind of God, only possibly, and yet here we are in the church age, in the middle of it all, watching it unfold. So literally through, says Paul in Romans 11, 11, through the Jews trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles and the pattern repeats itself. In Acts, when the apostles would go to new towns and cities to share the gospel, they would go first to the synagogues, taking the message first of those who have an awareness of God's law and the prophecies of becoming Messiah, and then afterward, they would take the message to the Gentiles. Eventually at one point in Antioch, Paul stared down contrary and unbelieving Jews.

And he said this in Acts 13, 46 to 47. It was necessary that the word of God be spoken first to you since you thrust to the side and judge yourselves unworthy of eternal life, behold, we're turning to the Gentiles. For so the Lord has commanded us saying, I've made you a light for the Gentiles that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth. Paul is quoting from Isaiah 49, verse 6, which we read this morning in our call to worship, one of my very favorite passages. He's claiming that as his own right there, his own immediate New Testament task is to go preach the word to the Gentiles. But God says in Isaiah 49, 6, it is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel.

I will make you as a light for the nations that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." So, I love that because God is saying, quite literally, redeeming Israel as small potatoes. It's significant. We like potatoes. They're significant potatoes, but that's not enough. I intend for salvation to go to the world. Clearly, saving the Gentiles then is not a New Testament idea. Some people think that it is, or the mystery of the New Testament is that the Gentiles get salvation. It's always been the plan for God to save Jews and Gentiles alike. So saving the Gentiles is not some plan B, even if it is plan A too.

It's always been God's attention to redeem a people for himself from every tongue and tribe and nation. It's never been his plan to only redeem Israel. So if Israel were to have been obedient in the Old Testament, they would have brought the word of God, His oracles to the world. But God ordained their disobedience as a means by which Christ would go to the cross and for now Israel remains in a stumbling state. If you've ever watched a toddler walk around, we know that stumbling is not the same thing as entirely falling permanently. They are under the understandable chastisement of God. This too is a means by which God can affect a greater salvation for both Jews and Gentiles.

So Sean concluded last week's message with the following. Our purpose is to, by faith prudently and persistently, provoke jealousy among elect Israel by how we seek and steward God's blessings. That's the big perspective and driving passion of a Kuyperian dispensationalist. So seeking and stewarding the blessings of God with faithfulness in the various fears is not just Kuyperian, it's faithful.

the surest avenue to God's blessing to the Gentiles and the subsequent jealousy of the Jews. They'll see us being blessed in all these different areas of life and rightly want in. By now I hope that it's evident that there's a good kind of jealousy. Not all jealousy is evil or else God would be evil. He is himself jealous. When we want the sorts of things that we are supposed to want then jealousy can be righteous. That's a good thing. Even if it's something that somebody else has. When someone else is blessed for his faithfulness, it is God's design that I would see that and that I'd want to share in the blessings that he enjoys. That's quite a different thing from envy. And the envious person wants what his neighbor has instead of his neighbor having it. So if my neighbor has a Ferrari and I want his Ferrari, that means I want for him not to have the Ferrari. But if we're talking about the blessing of God, there's plenty of blessing to go around.

And because one person has it, I can be jealous of that because God wants me to want his blessing. And we should want the Jews to want the Gentile blessings that we're enjoying as we assemble right now. This is not a largely Jewish congregation. If there's any Jews in here, we're in the vast minority. This is a Gentile blessing that we want for the Jews to want because that gets us closer and I get ahead of myself. But Kiparian dispensationalism does offer the greatest avenue for the jealousy of the Jews. Second, Kiparian dispensationalism offers the greatest means for the salvation of souls. Now, precious few dispensationalists have been Kiparian.

Generally speaking, we're just too busy trying to get people saved to actually care more than we absolutely necessarily have to about all that soul poison around us, like education, politics, law, business, commerce, right down to classifying the varieties of maple trees in our green belt. So the right blend of grass seed for your front lawn so that it can withstand foot traffic while also growing in only three hours of daylight. Like it's all going to burn, right? There's dispensational list, but most of us are too focused on, Well, we're focused on just the spiritual things, missing the point that all of these things are good gifts from God, and the rest just clutters us up.

Well, in fact, nobody cares more about these things that I just mentioned than the one who gave them to us. Nobody cares more about all this than God, who has given good gifts to his people for their enjoyment and for our flourishing. However, many dispensationalists have been at least suspicious of these things because they're temporal and they don't necessarily have to do with the gospel presentation. We go to In-N-Out Burger with a clear conscience because they put John 3.16 on the inside of the bottom of their cup. But it does beg the question. I'm much fonder of what's inside the cup. I mean, I really like it.

Is that bad? Doesn't mean I like Coke more than I like Scripture, don't mistake. Why did God give us these things? Why did God give us these things? Was it just to be a test to us? I'm going to test them to see if they'll love those things more than they love me. I mean, is that why you give your daughter a doll? Do you give your daughter a doll to test her? She's three, and I'm going to see if she loves that thing more than me. We'll find out real quick. Or perhaps it's because you like to see her happy. Or fathers? Fathers are forgiving things because our Heavenly Father does the same. So that's one of the things that dads are for.

Maybe you want to see your children blessed and happy. Maybe you actually want to see them enjoy the gifts that you give because that delights your heart. Well, don't mistake, when we love the gifts more than the giver, we sin, and it's not the fault of the giver. But when we rightly enjoy the gifts that God gives with thankfulness and joy, we do bring Him great honor. And we might just cause the unbelieving world to want what we have. For my part, I am completely convinced that Christians living according to what God has said, taking interest and dominion as far as Christ's lordship extends, will bring great blessing to the world, resulting in human flourishing, and it will save far more souls than any army of door-to-door evangelists could ever dream of.

So if we're really concerned about the salvation of souls, we must take care of how we live. By all means, polish up your Gospel presentation, read your Josh McDowell and Lee Strobel apologetics books, do it for pity's sake, be ready, preach and proclaim to any who will listen, but don't expect for them to ask for it or to want the great blessings that you have unless you're living a blessed life. Unless you're living like you're actually blessed. And I'm not talking about pretenses or show, I'm talking about acting like what we are. That is children of the victorious king. The Christian life is all about becoming what we already are.

Positionally we are righteous because of Christ's imputed righteousness given to us. So sanctification is both positional and progressive. It is practical. Over time, we become more and more like what we already are. Church, you're blessed. You are blessed because you've been given Christ's righteousness. You've been given the green light to go take dominion in all corners of Christ's domain and faithfulness to what he has said to do. With a clear conscience and with a view to evangelize the world and make the Jews jealous. If that language makes you nervous, then make the Gentiles jealous so that they could want what you have.

The end is the same. Christians have all the motivation in the world that they need to evangelize the Gentiles. God has always intended to bless the world and redeem sinners from every tongue, tribe, and nation. I mentioned that already. In Romans 11, Paul says as much. Now I'm going to read a short portion. If you haven't turned there already, you can. Dave read this this morning. I'll start in the second half of verse 11. Through their trespass, salvation has come to the Gentiles. He's talking about the Jews. Salvation has come to the Gentiles so as to make Israel jealous. Jews, Gentiles, Jews. Now if their trespass means riches for the world, and if their failure means riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their full inclusion mean?

Jump down to verse 15. If their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead? In these verses, Paul is saying he speaks lesser to the greater. It's as if he's saying to the Gentiles, If you thought you had it good now, you wait till the Jews get saved, and then watch what happens. Paul repeats that the trespass and the failure of the Jews means riches for the world. God used their sin as the instrument by which he would extend a greater grace and salvation to the Gentiles, and he's not done yet. Though God is blessing the Gentiles now, and though we enjoy fellowship with him, by the Spirit and through the grace of Christ, this isn't the end.

The blessings that we enjoy now ought to make the Jews jealous and cause them to praise God and embrace Christ. This is the plan that God has put in motion to bless the nations and in turn draw his people, Israel back to himself. And what can we anticipate when that happens? What's Paul actually referring to this so great? God has determined an elect number of Jews. He has chosen a number of Jews who will be saved before he returns. Now, there's no doubt that many of those will be saved during the tribulation, but evangelistic efforts now will help us to get to that number that He has predetermined. And what happens then?

Well, when the last Jew, just like the last Gentile, has been brought into the kingdom, well, then Christ will come again. The second coming of Jesus signifies the culmination of human history, and history does point us in that direction. And when Christ comes again, the church age will be complete, as will our task of serving as a light to the Jews. The full inclusion of the Jews will be complete as well, and we will reign with Christ his bride as his bride for 1,000 years. And that's only the start of eternity. And even that is not all. What's the particular blessing that Paul is talking about here, that Gentiles will enjoy once the Jews are redeemed?

Verse 15 says, what will their acceptance mean, but life from the dead? Well, when the Jews are brought in, they'll enjoy life from the dead, and which I believe to be bodily resurrection. That will be a time also when on the earth, we'll enjoy part of what Revelation calls the first resurrection of Revelation 20. The bodily resurrection of the righteous, to life rather than judgment. So the first resurrection, if you ever read that term. It's the good kind, not the bad kind. Hence the term then life from the dead. So when the fullness of the Jews are saved, we'll have resurrection bodies.

We'll be with Christ and we'll enjoy sweet fellowship with Gentile and Jewish Christians alike, and that's something, of course, we look forward to. So it would seem then that every Gentile ought eagerly to anticipate the salvation of the Jews. We should want to see them come to faith in Christ in full number. We should. But we should also know that with every Gentile soul that comes to faith in Jesus Christ, there is possibly, hopefully, a Jew who would be made jealous at the thought of Gentiles partaking in certain promises of God before Israel. So with every soul that you evangelize, you're helping to accomplish this telos, this end.

Jews, to make them jealous. Fantastic. Gentiles to make the Jews jealous. And that is in order that God's plan would be complete, he would return. Now, Kyperian dispensationalism involves faithful, deliberate, intentional Christian living in all spheres in order not only to make the Jews jealous, but to leaven the culture with the gospel and its influence in order that the full number of elect souls would come to faith in Christ. Hyperion dispensationalism involves faithful, deliberate, intentional Christian living in all spheres in order not only to make the Jews jealous but to leaven the culture with the gospel and its influence in order that the full number of elect souls would come to faith in Christ.

But it's a fair question to ask, does it offer the greatest blessing or benefit for our culture. So is it the best one? Well, that brings us to our final point. Number three is that Kipurian dispensationalism offers the greatest means for the blessing of the world. The jealousy of the Jews, the salvation of souls, the blessing of the world. When Christians live deliberately in our different spheres, everyone benefits. Do you get that? When Christians live with intentionality and obedience wherever they operate in the arts, sciences, politics, wherever. Education circles, you know, your own cul-de-sac. When you are living with intentionality, everyone benefits. When unbelievers live like believers, everyone benefits to a degree. When things go haywire is when When unbelievers, not so surprisingly, live like unbelievers.

They often do so at the expense of others. They exploit others. This gross selfishness everywhere from the toddler nursery to Wall Street is evident. When lose, I win, you lose, business transactions become the norm. While Chiperians love and embrace the win-win transaction, I win, you win. What we're supposed to do? Like good. That's the way it's supposed to be. Where Christians have been faithful in the various thumbs widths of creation, there's a big middle class in clean drinking water. Look at history. And the formula is not complicated. Kyperian dispensationalists have a reason and a rationale to do what God has said to do everywhere, and that is our aim.

And when we do, the result is blessing for the world. And we live by the instruction manual written by the designer and manufacturer of the cosmos. God made all of this and he gave us this to show us how to operate in it. And the world is trying to operate in this without his word. You know those old Mercedes Benz diesel sedans? There was a lot of them on the road in the 80s. Actually, my point is that there's a lot of them on the road even still. They would operate for a long, long time, half a million miles as long as you put the right fuel in them. If you didn't operate those Mercedes according to the instructions, they wouldn't last that long.

What we see in our culture today is a host of people trying to operate without the use of the instruction manual. And when men are left to themselves, it is to their destruction. And we're not just talking about throwing a rod. It's worse than that. Likewise, so when Christians are faithful, when Christians are faithful in the various spheres that are filled with people operating according to what God has said, watch out. It is very, isn't it exciting to think about what that would look like? What would it look like if, because the rapture might happen tomorrow, because we are operating in such a way as to bring about a righteous jealousy of our Jewish neighbors, or we're trying to invoke curiosity on the part of our unbelieving Gentile neighbors So we live with intentionality in our workplaces, in our homes.

When you're in line at Safeway, whatever it is you're doing, if we actually did that, it would change the world. But what we've seen too much is a view of all, at all of those things as being a necessary filler so we can get to Sunday mornings and fund the pastors. Not by God's design. It's exciting to imagine a culture where the various spheres are filled with people who are just doing what they're supposed to do and operating according to what God has said and that is the sum and substance of Kyperian dispensationalism. While not itself a long-term goal, one close-up goal for Kyperian dispensationalists is in fact to be happy.

And additionally, we do want to do what God has said so the blessings that follow will be abundant and unmistakable, with provocative fruit that is the sort of fruit that will provoke others to ask about it. And we have to ask ourselves the obvious, while door-to-door soul-winning campaigns are good and noble, don't get me wrong, sharing the gospel is a good thing to do, is it enough? Are you compelled by the testimony of somebody you meet for the first time? Sometimes, not often. For those campaigns, it is likely to cause an unbelieving audience to scratch its head in wonderment, as much as a full-orbed, joy-filled, optimistic lifestyle, gratefully enjoying all of God's good gifts in all the spheres where He places us.

Of those two options, which one is more likely to inspire jealousy in unbelieving Jews or Gentiles? Our Paulist gospel presentations are good. the Gospel. Love it. We need to have something to say when they ask, but if we ever expect for them to ask, or if we wish to make the Jews jealous, we also need a deep-seated joy and an optimism born out of our confidence in God's sovereign goodness and our knowledge of the outcome of this grand drama. Happy dispensationalists are cheerfully aware that each soul saved brings us closer to Christ for turn. Hyperion dispensationalists are excited about involvement everywhere that Christ is Lord because we know that God will use us to bring Gentiles to faith in Christ and for that salvation to in turn make jealous his people Israel.

May our lives showcase grace, mercy, loving kindness, and joy so that the Gentiles and Jews alike should want what we have. Let's pray. Father, it is easy for us to just stop listening when somebody mentions eschatology, because these things divide. We acknowledge that they are secondary issues. They are not gospel primary issues. They're in-house discussions that Christians have. They're not what determines who's a Christian and who is not. And yet, they have profound implications and profound application. In the end, our testimony and behavior may look very, very similar, whether we identify as dispensational or covenantal or what, but our motive and our rationale for doing what we do may look different.

But Father, in the end, we do want for you to be honored in our lives. Sharpen our vision and strengthen our resolve, so that we could represent you well in this world.

That is our eager desire and cause us to repent where we have been lazy, where we have been ineffective due to our own slothfulness or faithlessness change us. And use your word and use the worship of you and your spirit to do it one little bit at a time again today. We pray in Christ's name. Amen. Please stand. We're gonna invite forward our musicians once again and this is the time in our service where we corporately bring forward our gifts and offerings that too is an act of worship and just like we sing songs together we do this together and let's do both we'll we'll sing there is a fountain while we bring forward our offering. Now comes the time where all of us is a family of God it'll get to celebrate what Jesus has done for us And I think it's fascinating that the subject of eschatology sometimes can be divisive, but the thing is, tomorrow is in the eschatos.

So how are we going to live tomorrow? Not a thousand years from now, not five days from now, but how are we going to live in the next hour? That's the future. That's the study of the future. How we live. And that's why the blending of that Kyperian thought with the, I think, correct interpretation of the dispensations that God has put out there, but you have that idea that God, the Lord Himself, over all, He's over what you're going to do when you leave this building, what we're going to do next, He's over that I forgot Sue Cooper in the prayer. It's not like these are just accidents. They don't just happen. They happen for a purpose and we need to recognize those things and be joyful in them and to enjoy the process.

Another series that Sean did on Ecclesiastes and the interesting thing is if you just think about it you're in this process whether you want to be or not. And sometimes it's not fun. Sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it's joyful. Sometimes it's just grinding one foot in front of the other. But to live that life in such a way that honors our Lord, people that don't know Him will look upon that with great jealousy. The neighboring book, just simple things like, you know, helping the guy with his trash can or, I don't know, whatever, giving him a ride. All of those things are that cold cup of water to the person and thirst.

Why do it? Because you're concerned for our community and for him and for those souls out there. So as our body lives our life together, I think that it has a great influence. We elders feel that one of the things that does that is the order of our service, that we confess every week, that we listen to the word, that we have communion every week. And there's a great thing that's grinding away ever so slowly and ever so finely, I think, on the souls that attend here, is that we are becoming closer. We are learning more and more and becoming what God promises he will make us to be, that he will conform us to the image of his son.

So we do this in celebration of that. And it's a great thing that we do. And it's also a celebration that we are Christians with all of those Christians across the world that worship in lots of different ways, lots of different languages, all those things. But the unity of the gospel brings us together and will join us together one day in one great family. So we here at TEC see that all of those have been baptized into one body by faith as those who have repented of their sin and put their faith in Christ are able to partake in this communion. We don't have what's called a closed communion for members only. The way we do it is when they start singing the song, we stand up and we come down the center aisle.

We have juice in the one container that's marked with a J. The other containers are wine. Then we file back around, get your seats, and then we're ready to do it all together when we get done with that. So let's proceed with our community. Now comes the time in the service where I give you the charge. Go out and conquer. I think we, most of us, my age anyway, We saw, you get saved, you get saved, hide in your bunker and all of that. And that's what I was taught as a young man. And it didn't take very well. I didn't get saved till I was 37. And at that point, I realized I had professed, but I really wasn't living what I should have been doing.

God had not reached down and changed me. When he did that, I realized, oh my goodness, This affects my family, it affects my business, it affects what I do with my time, all of that. And when you start to farm that into your life, especially halfway through your life, it causes some radical changes.

What I love about what we're trying to do is impregnate this right from the get go, right from the time the child comes into your family, the people come into our congregation, we live it out, We help each other along in this. So understand the power that you have through God's Spirit to live this out. And you are a unique way that will live it out unlike any of the rest of us. Each one of us is that tool that God uses to make the Jews jealous, okay? So here's the benediction, Romans 11, 33 through 36. Oh, the depth of the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How unsearchable are His judgments and how unscrutable His ways.

For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been His counselor, or who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid. For from Him and through Him and to Him, all things to Him be glory forever and ever. Amen.

Why do we do what we do? This is a question for individuals and for groups, for me and for us. Every person does what he most wants to do, whether or not he thinks in those terms or is conscious of his intentions. We all have wants, we all have reasons, we all make choices how we will spend our resources (time, money, skills, interests, etc.). And what we believe about God’s plan for the future will shape what we believe about God’s will for today.

In history, most Dispensationalists have considered their lives, and the world, to be in a sort of throw-away category. We say catechesis matters, our lives not so much. Our lives are a vapor, as James wrote, but Dispensationalists tend to apply that to the worth of one’s life rather than the duration of it. Compared to eternity our lives on earth don’t last very long. That doesn’t make our lives here less valuable. It’s actually the opposite.

A Dispensationalist sings about how this world is not his home, he’s just a passing through, and he sings how the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of Christ’s glory and grace. A Dispensationalist runs everything through the comparative grid rather than the integrated grid (categories Joe Rigney described in his book, The Things of Earth). Compared to Jesus everything else is worthless, “there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you” (Psalm 73:25), but we have trouble comprehending that Jesus gave worth to what He made for us. We tend to be best at building Dispensational Bible colleges as well as walls between Denominations. We are good at seeing and criticizing and condemning sin in the culture. We major on strident apologetics and urgent evangelism and rapture fiction. We believe that Israel is still significant in God’s plans and promises, and we expect that God will work all that out on the other side of the globe. We’ll wait here, at home, in our prayer closets, and Jesus will be back to make things right at any moment.

The part about Israel is good (the rest not so much). There are great promises of God to His elect people in the Old Testament. He made great and unbreakable covenants with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We looked specifically at the New Covenant promises to “the household of Israel,” promises to give them a new heart and the indwelling Spirit, as well as to return them to the land of their forefathers (Jeremiah 31:31-40; Ezekiel 36:22-32). Then we saw Paul’s long section of confidence in Romans 9-11. God chose the nation of Israel for Himself, He chose to save many within the nation. He also purposed for many to reject His Son for time, before He will save all of them in the future. God is faithful. He will finish what He started. While the fullness of Gentiles are grafted into salvation in Christ, the ethnic people of Israel will also be grafted back in. This what it means to be a Dispensationalist.

What does that have to do with being a Kuyperian? We took a couple weeks to consider the adjective “Kuyperian” as a nickname for a way of looking at all the world as a good gift from God. Not anything that was made was not made by Him. He sustains it, and He’s interested in it. He also made image-bearers to reflect His interests, and commissioned them to steward and build and subdue the earth. Marriage and family, medicine and technology, a father’s labor and a mother’s labor, are all ways to glorify God, not things that keep us from glorifying Him. Any created thing could become an idol, but so can Bible reading and religious service. Lots of religious people go to hell.

A Kuyperian is a Christian who acknowledges Christ’s lordship over every thumb’s-width in creation. Earthly callings are God’s idea. Presenting our bodies as living sacrifices is His choice for our response to His mercies (Romans 12:1). If the Lord wanted excellent thinkers He could have made computers. Instead He gave us brains and blood and bodies and thumbs.

Most Kuyperian-minded Christians have not been Dispensationalists. Most Dispensationalists have not been Kuyperian. There are verses for both, so there are blind spots to watch for on both sides. Whether or not one uses the labels, both truths are Bible truths.

Do they go together or do we just try to hold them both? God says them, we believe them, we can’t explain them further. He’s sovereign, we’re responsible, He’ll have to figure out how it works.

Perhaps the truths are like holding two sixteen pound bowling balls, one in the left hand and one in the right. There have been some Christians who believe and live like this, most of whom probably couldn’t explain it, but they do it. We shouldn’t drop either ball, but they don’t really have much to do with each other.

That’s not the case. Kuyperianism is more like the cue ball that breaks the Dispensational rack, sending balls into pockets all around the table. Kuyperianism is the key that touches all the right parts of the eschatological lock, opening the door on the timeline of God’s plan. It’s not just that they could go together, they must. How so?

There is a key word used three times in Romans 10-11, a word that’s part prophecy, part observation, part motivation. The word is jealous.

We almost always take jealousy to be a sin, and usually it is. It is feeling of envy to be in someone else’s shoes, wanting to have what they have. The desire itself is not wrong, it depends on what you want and why you want it.

In Romans 10 Paul addressed why so many of his kinsmen did not confess that Jesus is Lord and in his explanation he quoted the second half of Deuteronomy 32:21.

But I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says,

“I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation;

In Deuteronomy God warned Israel, under the name of “Jeshurun,” that they “grew fat, stout, and sleek; then…forsook God who made” them and “scoffed at the Rock of…salvation” (32:15). They “forgot the God who gave (them) birth” (32:18). God responded with jealousy for the glory of His name. He values it so much—as He should—that He reacts when His name isn’t honored, so He was going to make them jealous. That is the first part of the verse Paul quoted in Romans 10:19.

They have made me jealous with what is no god;

They gave worship due to Him to other gods, so God would give blessings offered to them to other peoples. He was going to give blessings to “those who are no people,” a people the Jews looked down on, in order to cause the Jews to want the good from God they could have had.

Paul stitches the jealous thread again in the next chapter.

So I ask, did they stumble in order that they might fall? By no means! Rather, through their trespass salvation has come to the Gentiles, so as to make Israel jealous. (Romans 11:11)

“Stumble” refers to their rejection of salvation in Jesus. In God’s plan, Israel’s rejection led to salvation and “riches for the world…riches for the Gentiles” (Romans 11:12). God extended His grace in forgiveness and in fruitfulness. “Riches” are blessing, good gifts from above, eternal and temporal, spiritual and physical. These riches “make Israel jealous.”

Making Jews jealous was a major motivation for Paul’s ministry.

Now I am speaking to you Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them. (Romans 11:13–14)

Provoking jealousy was not an afterthought, it was his aim. Paul didn’t merely look back and realize an unintended consequence, he looked around for ways to increase the provocation effect. “I magnify,” the word is δοξάζω, “I glorify.” Salvation and blessing among the Gentiles provoked the right sort of envy in the elect in Israel. Paul maximized his blessing-bling to “save some” of the remnant in his day, but there will be a large-scale application in the end when the fulness of Gentiles come in so that “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:25-26).

Is this our aim and what are we magnifying in order to hit the target?

We will not aim to make Jews jealous if we don’t think that Jews are still part of God’s plan. We will not be motivated to provoke them, or confident that God will give us the required blessings for it, if we think that His promises to Israel have been redefined. This is a Dispensational aim and a Dispensational assurance.

We also will not aim to make Jews jealous if we think that our lives are throw-away, that everything we do will “burn,” that we should hide out in the basement reading our Bibles, lamenting the 6 o’clock news and latest ISIS attack. We will not provoke the elect by our whimpering waiting for the rapture helicopter out of hell on earth. Provocative jealousy is a Kuyperian end requiring Kuyperian energy.

It ought to be our aim to make an entire nation—and our neighbors, too—jealous with what God has give us. What is it we want them to see?

Many a Christian has gone to heaven like a lottery ball, maybe bouncing off the other balls before being raptured up into the tube alone. They ought instead to be like cue balls, heading for other balls on purpose. Did there need to be Gentile cue balls? No. Is that how God runs the table? Yes.

Christians are saved by faith alone, so a Christian could theoretically believe and it not be obvious. But James said that works come out of living faith (James 2:18-26). Paul aimed at the “obedience of faith” (Romans 1:5; 16:26). God has prepared beforehand good works for those with faith to walk in (Ephesians 2:8-10). Faith has fruit in sanctification, faith has Spirit-produced fruit. Faith follows God with feet and fingers. Faith fights.

Church, where is our fruit? Where is our fight? The author of Hebrews talked about those “who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the power of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, were made strong out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight” (Hebrews 11:33–34). Because Jesus is Lord we marry and raise kids and bake cupcakes and attend City Council meetings and tweet against abortion and hire employees and drink wine at parties. These are merely a sample of the fruitful blessings God gives to those who believe.

This is not a new “prosperity gospel.” By faith we also suffer in joy and endure with perseverance by God’s blessing. Again in Hebrews, others through faith “were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated— of whom the world was not worthy” (Hebrews 11:35–38). Our confident losing by faith may be even more provocative to the Jews. “It has been granted to (us) that for the sake of Christ (we) should not only believe in Him but also suffer for His sake” (Philippians 1:29). When we are not frightened, it is a sign of winning (Philippians 1:28).

A Kuyperian Dispensationalist is a Christian who acknowledges Jesus as Lord in everything he does on earth in order to make the Jews jealous of God’s blessing so that all Israel would believe and be saved. We live by faith, more than conquerers even when we’re killed, bringing life from our sacrificial deaths. Informed by our Bible reading and study, we look for the the Word to yield its fruit in season, making us without a withering leaf, prospering us unlike the wind-driven chaff. Our meditation on His Word should produce provocative fruit.

This cannot be done individually, but it must be done by persons of faith. One celebrity getting saved isn’t meant to do what the church in Christ does: produce much fruit. Because Jesus is Lord and we seek to honor Him in our culture maybe we will rebuild America in His name, or maybe we will thrive in Post-America in His name. This project isn’t tied to America’s future, but it is a project for the public square as well.

The next stage in God’s plan will not happen by magic. He has planned for us to be the means of provoking jealousy. He has given us riches, and we’re to magnify them to make the Jews jealous.

This is a reason for everything! It is a unified explanation of humanity and history, and it is a motivation for our intentional and joyful contribution. The foundation of our fruit-seeking is that God created us as His image-bearers. We can also see that fruit-bearing according to God’s blessing is good for humanity to flourish. But provocative fruit is the promised future. Our labor in the Lord is not in vain. Whether we plant or water, He gives growth, He gives new hearts, He makes attractive.

For too long we’ve been hanging out in our Baptistic bunkers and basements as bumps-on-a-log. We are good at talking about the cultural battle, not sure what we’d do if we won. We run in one direction: away, never toward. We’re complaining, combative, complacent Christians. Who wants more of that?

Can or would we accomplish this provocation haphazardly? God does use the foolish to do His work. But how much more so if we believe His Word and obey Him and honor Christ as Lord in our spheres? Parenting, economics, education, science, art? We do not retreat. Our purpose is to, by faith, prudently and persistently provoke jealousy among elect Israel by how we seek and steward God’s blessings. This is the big perspective and driving passion of a Kuyperian Dispensationalist.

The series is going great so far. There have been numerous conversations provoked, and brothers are treating disagreeing brothers as brothers, even if one brother temporarily thinks the other brother is an idiot, which is as brothers do. It is good to drag our thinking through Bible verses, and also to put our thinking out in public for examination and sharpening. We are not snowflakes who need trigger warnings and safe spaces. We are living sacrifices of God who come to the Word for it to cut us up into acceptable pieces. We want to please God, and that means submitting our thoughts to His.

That’s is what the series is for, to put on the table what we believe God wants us to believe and do. As a church, we are a theological mutt, holding and practicing some things in tension because we think that’s what Scripture teaches even if that means we don’t conform neatly into one denominational branch. And, for what it’s worth, when I say that all the elders believe this, I’m not saying it to distance ourselves or draw a line in the sand across which everyone else must come in order to keep fellowship. The main reason I say it is to make myself feel better that I am not the only crazy one. I vividly recall a meeting the elders had some five years ago at Carl’s Jr. when we crossed the threshold, knowing that we were headed in a different direction than any of us had preciously traveled. This series is an attempt to explain why, and sure, it’d be great to persuade a throng to see these connections. We’re getting close to being done with the series, but the crescendo is still coming.

We’ve asked, What is a Kuyperian? A Kuyperian is a Christian who acknowledges God’s sovereignty over, and interest in, both spiritual and physical life. Christ is Lord who gives grace for salvation and who gives purpose for work. “Kuyperian” is just a tag for that way of looking at the world. For the last couple weeks we’ve been working on What is a Dispensationalist? Based on a certain approach to Bible reading, a Dispensationalist acknowledges similarities, overlap, and differences between the Church and the nation of Israel. We considered the New Covenant promises in Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36 last week, promises of new hearts to the household of Israel and also a return to the land of their fathers. I said that the New Testament itself does not allow us to read Gentiles into that promise in a way that makes the Jews irrelevant. That’s what I want to show this morning.

Before getting to that, though, I want to deal with a phrase that is approaching the level of misreading that “judge not” in Matthew 7 gets. The phrase is found a couple places in Paul’s letters, including Galatians 3:27-29.

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise. (Galatians 3:27–29)

What is Paul’s concern here? It is how to be justified with God. By faith in Jesus we are part of God’s family. Everyone who is in Christ is Christ’s by faith, not according to nationality, economic status, or gender. And praise the Lord! Amen! Yet it is a category mistake to say that because everyone is saved the same way that they are the same in every way. Male and female are God-ordained, biological categories of sex that are not flattened by faith into androgyny. Both can believe. Slave and free are a different sort of category, a civil identification. It is a category that a man could cross, but not by default because of being “in Christ.” So also whether one is a Jew or a Greek depends on one’s parents. God can be your Father regardless of your father. But that doesn’t negate who your earthly father is and what belongs to you because of it. We are not gender, economic, or national egalitarians.

In Christ we have great things, great promises. As the Lord told Abram, all the families of the world would be blessed in him, and all of us who believe are receiving that blessing.

Paul wrote about this good news and these promises received by faith in the first half of his letter to the Romans. He demonstrated that Gentiles and Jews were guilty, that Christ’s work enabled Jews first and also Gentiles to be declared righteous in Christ.

What promises! There is no condemnation for those in Christ! His righteousness is credited to our account. Sin and the law no longer have dominion over us! We have peace with God and access to His throne of grace! All things work together for good to those He calls! All who are justified will be glorified! Be it physical suffering and death, nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!

These are astounding promises that depend on God, not us. All we do is receive them by faith and reckon them to be true. We are conquerors through Him who loved us, and it would be an obvious transition from the end of Romans 8:39 to Romans 12:1 - “therefore,” present our bodies as living sacrifices. The doctrine of the gospel of righteousness in chapters 1-8 leads to a life of righteousness in chapter 12 and following. But there are three chapters in between, chapters about Israel, election, a remnant, hardening, Gentiles, grafting, and it all ends in a doxology. Why? They are a vindication of God’s righteousness to fulfill His promises.

Let’s ask some questions in order see how the exposition leads to exaltation.

Answer: *the reason Paul wrote Romas 9-11 is to vindicate God’s faithfulness to His word to Israel*.

The gospel promises are fantastic. They are worth living for and dying for. But a thoughtful reader of Romans would necessarily wonder 1) Why have so many Jews rejected Jesus? and 2) Has God changes His mind about the promises to the Jews? Because if God’s previous promises are revoked or redefined, then how can we trust that the gospel promises won’t be?

These chapters are dealing with the accusation against God that His word failed (Romans 9:6). Paul said it did not fail. But what is that word about? It’s about Paul’s “kinsmen according to the flesh.”

They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises. To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen. (Romans 9:4–5)

Chapter 10 begins wth Paul’s desire for “them,” his national kinsmen, to be saved. Chapter 11 begins with the question: “Has God rejected His people?” And the answer is No, because Paul himself is a believing Israelite, not just that he is a believer.

The presence of these chapters assumes that certain promises to Israel have not yet been fulfilled. Does this mean that God has failed. No. The argument now continues about a future fulfillment of His word, not a redefined fulfillment.

Answer: Paul demonstrates God’s electing work among Israelites and distinguishes them from elect Gentiles.

In Romans 9:6, “it is not as though the word of God has failed. For not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel, and not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring.” God chooses. He chose Isaac, not Ishmael; Jacob, not Esau. Romans 9 is famously about God’s sovereignty in election.

But note that “Israel” is still within Israel. That is, those chosen to receive the promises of Israel are still physical, ethnic descendants of Jacob. Paul does not say that true Israel are the elect whoever they are. At the end of chapter 9 Paul maintains the distinction: “he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles” (v.24). Gentiles “attained” righteousness (v.30), they were not “my people” but now are called “sons of the living God” (v.26). Israel did not succeed in reaching the law (v.31).

But nowhere does it say that Gentile believers are now Jews or the “new” Jews or the “true” Jews, though it does say that God has redeemed them. There are two categories: spiritual calling and national calling. National election does not equal spiritual election, but that doesn’t mean that national election means nothing in any way.

Answer: Paul continues his argument about Israel because their rejection is part of God’s long plan, not a change to the plan.

If the answer to God’s faithfulness is that He always meant “Israel” to be the elect believers of any nationality, then 1) Would the Jews themselves swallow that interpretation? and, more significantly, 2) Why are chapters 10 and 11 still necessary? Paul maintains both that elect Jews and Gentiles are part of God’s people and that the Jews are still God’s elect nation. There is sharing and there is distinction.

There is something different about Israel’s rejection of Christ. It’s different because they should have known better. They had God’s law and should not have been ignorant of the righteousness that comes from Him. When the gospel was proclaimed they should have recognized the Lord. He is the “Lord of all,” so anyone who calls on Him will be saved (Romans 10:12). But the fact that Jews did not call on Him stands out because they had the Scripture already.

Their rejection is also different because it was foretold in the Scripture. The Lord revealed in Deuteronomy (32:21) and in Isaiah (65:1; 29:10) and through David (Psalm 69:22-23) that they would reject:

as it is written,

And David says,

They are a disobedient nation (Romans 10:21) by plan. There are others, from other nations, who received.

Which gets back to, “I ask then, has God rejected his people?” (Romans 11:1) If “Israel” meant all believers, the church, then this question is nonsensical. To ask the question at all requires a distinction between Jews and Gentiles.

Answer: A remnant matters because the nation of Israel still matters.

Paul was the first example of how God has not rejected His people entirely. “I myself am an Israelite, a descendent of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin” (Romans 11:1). He was an Israel-Israelite. A Gentile-Israelite is not a thing.

Then Paul shows the principle at work during Elijah’s days. Elijah thought that he was alone, but the Lord said that He had kept 7,000 for himself (11:2-5). “So too at the present time there is a remnant chosen by grace” (11:6). This is, again, a remnant of believing Jews. Gentiles believe, but they are not in the “remnant.”

There is currently an elect remnant, identifiable by their faith in Jesus among the physical offspring of Israel.

Answer: This phrase in Romans 11:25 only makes sense if there is a distinction between Gentiles and Jews.

Lest you be wise in your own sight, I do not want you to be unaware of this mystery, brothers: a partial hardening has come upon Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in. (Romans 11:25)

The distinction is not worship of a different God, a different definition of righteousness, or a different means of receiving it. Salvation is by faith for all. Chapter 11 describes how Gentiles are grafted into God’s people (11:17-24), in one way. But Gentile ingrafting does not eliminate God’s purpose for Israel, a purpose that still remains, a promise that hasn’t been fulfilled yet. We’re grafted in and still called “wild” (11:24). There is a remnant now, most are rejecting. We know that the fulness of the Gentiles has not come in because all Israel has not been saved yet.

God is faithful to His promises and will include Israel again, and it will be a “full inclusion” (11:12). Israel will accept Christ (11:15). Natural branches—Israel, not wild branch Gentiles—will be “grafted back into their own olive tree” (11:24).

This is the “covenant,” to banish ungodliness from Jacob (a.k.a., Israel), to take away their sins (Romans 11:26-27, quoting Isaiah 59:20-21; 27:9). The New Covenant to the household of Israel, to ethnic Israel, to the nation of Israel, will be completely fulfilled in the future.

For now, God planned for Israel to reject Jesus, but the “gifts and calling of God are irrevocable” (11:29). God planned for Israel to “stumble” (11:11), to “trespass” (11:11), and He planned that “for a time,” a time we are in, to extend salvation and riches of the world (11:12). But that is not the end! God planned their disobedience to show us mercy and He planned to show us mercy to keep expanding until “all Israel will be saved” before the new heavens and the new earth. That is, a generation of Israelites will see what we have and God will use that to grant them repentance and faith as a nation. This is what makes a Dispensationalist.

This is not primarily about U.S. (or any other non-Israel government’s) foreign policy. This is not about military support or financial support. It certainly does not allow for anti-Semitism. Their current disobedience is no more a hindrance to God’s mercy than our past disobedience (Romans 11:28-31).

Romans 9-11 exist to bolster our confidence in the gospel. Not one word of God’s promises fails. These chapters do have much encouragement for Gentiles. We are in God’s plan, part of His people, those who “now share in the nourishing root of the olive tree” (11:17). But don't argue for what the Gentiles get to have, if you are unable to explain why the Jews will get what God promised them. This “dispensation” is less of a parenthesis and more of an extension and a springboard to the final chapter of history.

We are now ready to see what a Kuyperian Dispensationalist is next Lord’s day.

What it should cause us to do now is to sharpen our exclamation points! Who would have planned this?! How can hardening lead to softening?! How can distinctions be both dismantled and defended?! By the wisdom and grace to the glory of God.

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!

“For who has known the mind of the Lord,

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen. (Romans 11:33–36)