Episode Transcript
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And Your Gospel, as we have
been reminded of who we are in Jesus
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Christ, and that there is no
boasting in ourselves, but only in him
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alone. We ask that, as
we come to your word now in First
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Corinthians, that you would impress these
truths on our hearts, that you would
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sink the roots of those truths deep
down into our souls, that we would
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find ourselves to be steadfast in the
word of God and built up in it.
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Lord, we ask that you would
help us to be aware of our
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pride, to confess it and to
set that aside, that we might trust
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in you and in you alone,
and that your work might be done in
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us, according to the power of
Your Holy Spirit and the promises that have
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been delivered to us in Christ.
We pray this in his name. On
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men, please remainstanding, if you're
able, and let's turn our attention now
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to first Corinthians chapter three. I'll
read the whole chapter this morning, First
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Corinthians chapter three. But I,
brothers, could not address you as spiritual
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people, but as people of the
Flesh, as infants in Christ. I
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Fed you with milk, not solid
food, for you are not ready for
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it. And even now you are
not ready, for you are still of
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the flesh. For what? For? While there is jealousy and strife among
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you, are you not of the
flesh and behaving only in a human way?
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For when one says I follow Paul
and another I follow a police,
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are you not being merely human?
What, then, is Apollos? What
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is Paul Servants, through whom you
believed as the Lord assigned to each?
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I planted, apolous watered, but
God gave the growth. So neither he
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who plants nor he who waters is
anything but only God who gives the growth.
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He who plants and he who waters
are one, and each will receive
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his wages according to his Labor,
for we are God's fellow workers. You
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are God's field, God's building.
According to the grace of God given to
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me, like a skilled master builder, I laid a foundation and someone else
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is building upon it. Let each
one of the each one, take care
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how he builds upon it, for
no one can lay a foundation other than
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that which is laid, which is
Jesus Christ. Now, if any one
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builds on the foundation with gold,
silver, precious stones, wood, Hay
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Straw, each one's work will become
manifest, for the day will disclose it,
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because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what
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sort of work each one is done. If the work that anyone has built
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on the foundation survives, he will
receive a reward. If any one's work
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is build up, he will suffer
burned up, he will suffer loss,
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though he himself will be saved,
but only as through fire. Do you
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not know that you are God's Temple
and that God's spirit dwells in you?
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If any one destroys God's Temple,
God will destroy him, for God's Temple
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is holy and you are that temple. Let no one deceive himself. If
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any one amongst you thinks that he
is wise in this age, let him
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become a fool that he may become
wise, for the wisdom of this world
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is folly with God, for it
is written he catches the wise in their
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craftiness and again the Lord knows the
thoughts of the wise that they are futile.
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So let no one boast in men, for all things are yours,
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whether Paul or Apollos or Cephus,
or the world or life or death,
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or the present or the future,
all are yours, and you or Christ's
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and Christ is God's Amen. You
may be seated. There are many different
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things that we might consider from this
passage this morning. I want to focus
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on what I think is one of
the primary things that Paul wants to communicate
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to us, what God wants to
communicate to us, and that's that we
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shouldn't boast in ourselves, but we
should boast in the Lord and the Lord
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alone. This comes up in our
passage. It came up in our hymn
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that we sung a moment ago.
We called ourselves to poor contempt, on
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all our pride to a Lord Forbid. We saying that I should boast save
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in the cross of Christ alone.
Why is that? Why is that so
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important? This is what this passage
helps us to understand, and for very
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important reasons. Boast thing is essentially
taking confidence in something else, whether rightly
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or wrongly. Boasting is placing our
trust and are it's an expression, we
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might say, of a trust that
is placed, and we like to boast
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in all kinds of things. We
boast in things we have, we boast
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in things we say and the things
that we've done, in the things that
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we plan to do. Now some
boasting or pride, we might say,
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in a certain context makes sense as
long as it's limited and qualified. Right
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we explain to future employers that we
have done such and such a thing and
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so we are reliable to do another
thing that we might be asked, and
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that's appropriate. It's not that kind
of boasting and pride that Paul is talking
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about. He's talking about taking those
penultimate things, those little things, and
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turning them into our ultimate confidence,
taking this thing that you may have done
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or the thing you might have achieved
and turning that into your source of hope,
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your source of trust for this life
and for the next. And that
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boasting, that boasting and men,
that boasting and wisdom, that pride in
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ourselves, has no place, Paul
says, in the Christian life. Perhaps
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the strangest boasting of all from Christians
is when Christians boast in their Christianity.
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And that's what we'll think about together. From First Corinthians three, God will
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show us that this most important,
this most central all incompanisation aspect of our
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life, our faith in him.
There's no prop room for pride in that.
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We belong to the Lord. Because
of the Lord, we are God's
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building, we are God's field,
because of God, we ought not to
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boast in ourselves but in him,
and by removing our false boasting, the
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good news is that he also removes
the consequences of false boasting, so that
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we can glorify and enjoy God instead. So I want to begin by talking
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about the things that keep us from
confidence in the Lord. The thing that
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keeps us from confidence in God,
and the problem is selfdeception, or at
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least we can start here. The
problem that keeps us from confidence in God
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is we deceive ourselves. That's what
Paul says in verse eighteen. He says
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Lett no one deceive himself. That's
a funny thing, isn't it, to
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deceive yourself to know the truth and
then to trick yourself into believing a lie?
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It's really foolish, right. We
would say, well, why would
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anybody do that? But of course
we do it all the time. We
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trick ourselves end up believing things that
aren't true. Maybe you've true to yourself
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into buying a car that you couldn't
afford, or maybe you tricked yourself into
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marrying someone you knew you shouldn't,
or maybe you tricked yourself into lifting something
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that you knew you couldn't. Debt, bad marriages, bad backs. These
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are the results of US fooling ourselves, and we could pile up the examples.
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We like to pretend that we are
purely rational creatures and that if we
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just have the right facts, then
we will be motivated by the truth and
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we will go where the evidence leads. But the truth is were more often
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than not happy to ignore the facts
when we think that doing so will get
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us what we want. And sadly, amazingly, this applies even to our
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Christianity. This happens when people who
have been graciously adopted by the father,
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have been given the inheritance of his
only begotten Son, act as though all
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of that belongs to us because of
our greatness. We have been graciously adopted
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by God while we were still sinners, right. We read this just a
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moment ago Intophesians chapter two. While
you were dead in your trespasses and skin
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sins, God poured out this rich
love to to us. But we deceive
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ourselves. Let me give you three
examples, drawn from our passage, of
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how we do this. One way
we deceive ourselves and in begin to boast
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in man instead of God is we
replace our devotion to God with devotion to
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his servants. We replose devotion that
is due to God alone with devotion to
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his servants. Now, God's servants
are certainly important. They are worthy of
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our gratitude. We should honor them, imitate them, submit to them.
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They are those whom God is using
to bring about good things in our lives,
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to build us up, to strengthen
us. But we should never treat
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them as though they were God himself. They are only his servants. That's
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why Paul says in Verse Five.
What then is a paulace? What then,
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is Paul Servants through whom you have
believed? The author of Hebrews makes
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this point as well, in regard
to one of the greatest servants of God
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of all, Moses, right great, Great Moses, this great man of
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God who led peep, God's people
out from slavery and bondage under Pharaoh to
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freedom and life under God. But
what does Hebrews say about Moses, this
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one who climbed up the amount Sinai
and who, when he came down,
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his face shine with the glory of
God so brightly that people told him to
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cover it up? He was a
servant. Hebrew says he was a servant
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and though glorious, so glorious that
people shielded their eyes from him, it
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doesn't begin to compare with the glory
of Jesus. Hebrew says that, well,
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Moses was a servant in God's house, Jesus was a son, the
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Lord and Master of the House,
to whom the father had given all things.
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Well, that's true of Moses,
how much more so of Apollos and
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Paul and Cephas and others? We
can, of course, be devoted to
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people. Paul was devoted to the
Corinthians, the Corinthians were devoted to him.
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But we should never be devoted,
we should never give our love in
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such a way that only belongs to
God himself. When we do so,
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we begin to put our pride and
our trust in man instead of God.
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All of us, whether we are
great or small, are under God and
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under his authority. When we give
what is do to him alone, to
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his servants, we turn his Gospel
into law, we turn what is divine
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into what is human and we begin
to trust in ourselves, in man more
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than the savior of man. This
is one way, and we deceive ourselves
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when practical way in which we go
about trusting in man rather than God.
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A second way we do this is
by dividing God's servants against each other.
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So one way is by putting over
an undo devotion in them. Another is
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dividing them, or another way to
put it is dividing the Work of God,
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valuing some parts of his work and
not others. In that way,
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we stand over God. When the
people in Corinth stood over, in a
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sense, Paul and apolos and said
I like this one but not that one,
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what were they doing? They were
essentially saying I like this part of
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God's work and not that part of
God's work. I prefer this thing God
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is doing to that thing God is
doing. But is God's work divided?
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Are we in a position to stand
over what God does and choose what we
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would like and what we would not
like? Of course not. Paul says,
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I planted a Paulus watered, but
God gave the growth verse seven.
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So neither he who plants nor he
who waters is anything. It's God who
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gives the growth. We are God's
fellow workers. You are God's field,
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God's building. This doesn't mean that
servants don't exist. This doesn't mean that
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there aren't separate gifts, but it
does mean that they are all one under
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the one Lord. The Lord's work
is varied, and so our servants,
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Paul will go on to describe this, not only in relationship to him and
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other workers, but in relation to
Corinth and all churches, even ours,
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to each of you, that the
Lord has saved, He has poured out
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his Holy Spirit on you and has
given you particular gifts, capabilities, ways
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in which you are called to serve
him, and do serve him, and
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you ought not to despise it,
and others not to. Ought not to
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despise it, and we not ought
not to separate one of those gifts from
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the other and think of though one
is more important than another. God uses
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them all together like a body,
members of a body, hands, feet,
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eyes, ears, all working together, and that makes the body good.
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But it also points us to God, who makes the body good.
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Our Trust is in God. When
we deny that, when we die,
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divide up the body and we say
well, this part's more important than that.
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Cut off the feet, cut off
the hands, I don't want that
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here anymore, we are dividing up
the work of the Holy Spirit. Now
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this, of course, doesn't mean
that everything God's servants are do are perfect,
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but it does remind us that God
is the one who is ultimately at
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work. God is watching. Paul
talks about this some ways. As he
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begins to talk about the various ways
in which the servants work and versus ten
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through fifteen, he says people build
with different things, some of high quality,
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some of low quality, some of
bad quality, and all will be
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revealed. That's good news to us. If we are trusting in the Lord,
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if we're trusting in servants, then
we might find ourselves very wanting at
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the end of the day. We
might find ourselves we will find ourselves disappointed,
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frustrated, angry when God servants don't
act like God. But when we
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trust that God is doing his work, even with fallen people, we can
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know that we're safe. Even though
the tools are imperfect. The day will
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come, all will be revealed and
what we will find at the end of
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time is that the foundation in which
all has been laid is secured. This
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is what God wants us to remember, is that this work that the Corinthians
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were trying to divide up these people, that they were pitting eat against each
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other, against one another, they
were not to think of things this way.
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Instead, they were looked. They
were to look first and foremost to
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God and to his work. The
last thing that we ought to notice is
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that we boast in ourselves in giving
this divine devotion to servants of the divine
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we thought about that. We thought
about how we boast in ourselves by dividing
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God's work, by becoming a judge
over God's work. And finally, we
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boast in ourselves and we deceive ourselves
when we begin to think that we are
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our own making, as I've mentioned, as the scriptures say, we are
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God's work from God's tools. We
are God's field and God's Temple. Notice
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the way that God says this.
This is worrely wonderful. He says we
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are built on a foundation by his
servants. Verse Sixteen. Do you not
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know that you are God's Temple and
God's spirit dwells in you? Talks about
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our safety. Next, in verse
seventeen, he says if anyone destroys God's
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Temple, God will destroy him,
for God's Temple is holy and you are
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that temple. These things are,
of course, all connected because of how
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we are built and by whom we
are built. It tells us the kind
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of building we are. We are
a protected structure, a safe one,
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secure one, a holy one,
one, set apart for God to dwell
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in. This does not divide US
and teach us to put other people down.
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Our unity in the Lord, our
strength in the Lord, tells us
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to look to him and as we
do so, we are built up these
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kinds of Gospel truths. When he
tells us you are holy, you are
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secure, you are under my protection. They teach us to then to turn
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to other people and do it with
the dignity they deserve, the love they
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deserve. The opposite is, of
course, true. Selfdeception, brothers and
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sisters, is dangerous. When we
deceive ourselves and begin to think that we
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ourselves are worthy of a pride,
of being boast, of boasting in we
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can fall into great folly and Sara
a man who decides to do his own
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heart surgery because he watch something on
Youtube and he's just really confident that he
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can do it. Consider somebody who
tries to build a house without any plan
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or knowledge of how to build a
house and just look around their garage and
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start, you know, stapling tarps
to pieces of wood, and it's not
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going to end will, and it's
not just the way in which we build
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these things that will end in our
folly, but it's also, we have
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to say, the danger of offending
him, the giver of all of these
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things. When God offers this great
salvation to us, when he says,
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I will give you everything, I
will give you my spirit, I will
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build you up, I will make
you holy, I will protect you,
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I will keep you, I will
unite you, both in this life and
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in the life to come, and
we say, never mind, I've got
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it, I can do it on
my own, I can do it in
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my own way, I can staple
my wood together and build my own structure
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and you know, I will fill
myself with only spirit. This will not
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turn out well. The scriptures warn
us that when we despise the gifts of
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God, when we turn away from
the gifts of God and put our strength
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in our own pride, we will
fall. We will fall not only under
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the weight of our own foolishness,
but under the weight of God's wrath.
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Who is offered to us a so
great a salvation and then we reject of
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it? The antidote to these things
is given right here in our passage.
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Don't be self deceived, but instead
remember the truth that our being a taught
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here to remember and believe. But
the Holy Spirit speaks to us today to
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remember self deception, how pernicious the
flesh is, how prideful we can be,
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and to be on guard against it, on guard by holding fast to
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the very truths that God speaks to
us here. And what is the truth?
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The truth is that the Lord is
good and it's him who builds his
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church, and that foundation on which
he builds his church is Jesus Christ himself.
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When we try to build the church
out of our own righteousness and out
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of our own prides, it's like
building that foolish house. It's like building
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house on a foundation of sand.
The winds come and knock it down and
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it all falls apart. But we
build our foundation on the Cross, the
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Cross of Christ, on the righteousness
of Christ, we do have something strong
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and sure, even, as Paul
tells us, we know this from the
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cross. I think about this way. If we had some great thing to
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offer God, the building materials,
the skills of the builders, add all
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of these things up, why would
God send His only begotten Son to die?
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If we were perfectly capable of assembling
all of our righteousness, get righteousness
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together, constructing a holy temple fit
for God to dwell in. Why would
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Jesus have to suffer and die the
way that he did? He wouldn't.
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God would simply say get to work, we'd get to work and all would
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be well. Jesus had to die
because we were unable to do that.
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And in our inability, God still
loved us, and so, instead of
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judging us and pouring out his wrath
upon us for our pride and our rebelliousness
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and our idolatry, he instead poured
out his wrath on Jesus as a act
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of love toward us, and built
our hope not on our own righteousness but
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on his. Jesus died because we
needed God. God came into this world
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and took on human flesh because we
needed God. God offered himself as a
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sacrifice for our sin because that's what
we needed. God established our hope in
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Heaven on his righteousness alone, because
that's what we needed. That's why,
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when we look to the cross,
when we survey the Wondrous Cross, we
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throw contempt on all our pride and
trust only in Jesus. Christ alone.
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He died because we weren't worthy righteous
the people. He died because we were
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unworthy, unrighteous people who are in
need of His grace. And having died
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and having given us all things,
we can know that the foundation of our
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life now and the foundation of our
hope in the future rests not on me
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trying or you trying, but on
God accomplishing and finishing his work. Our
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Salvation rests on the foundation of the
forgiveness of our sins given by God himself.
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We stand in the presence of God. We dwell in the love of
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God because of his love toward us. And so let us not deceive ourselves
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and boast in our pride, but
instead give all glory to God, Father,
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son and Holy Spirit. Let us
not seek to build on any other
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foundation, to give Undo weight to
his servants, to divide them up,
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to trust in them or anything else. Let us not deceive ourselves, but
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instead know the truth and trust in
God alone. When we boast in ourselves,
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we undermine all our hope, but
we boast in the Lord, we
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find solidity and hope and joy forever. I'll praise pe to God. Let's
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pray our heavenly father we ask that
you would help us to remember these truths.
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Were so prone to self deception,
so prone to wandering away. We
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lose sight of who you are.
You, we lose sight of who we
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are, our security, our protection, of the love with which you have
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given to us. You have given
to us all things in Christ. We
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ask that you would help us to
keep our eyes on him, and to
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do so through the cross. As
we look at the cross, help us
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to remember that he, Jesus Christ, is not just a helper and aid,
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some kind of a side power that
comes into our lives and helps us
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get a little better, grow a
little more, but instead, O Lord,
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you are our Savior. You raise
us from death to life. You
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unstop our ears, which were at
once unable to hear and now can hear.
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You Open our eyes, which were
once unable to see, and allow
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us to see the very light of
the glory of God in the face of
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Jesus Christ. Lord, let us
put all of our rest and our hope
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in him and, as we do
so, by the power of your spirit,
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we ask that you would continue your
work in this world, of drawing
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in your people, of building up
your church, of placing one living stone
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on top of another and filling us
all with your presence, that we might
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glorify and enjoy you forever. As
those who have been built into this holy
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structure and built by your hands,
we pray this all in Jesus name.
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Amen.
