Episode Transcript
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Though we know that the flash wages
war against the spirit in us, it
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is a losing war. You have
conquered, you have won the victory you
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have promised us. You have promised
us a sure salvation. You have also
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opened our ears and allowed us to
hear things that we previously stuffed our ears
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against. You soften our hearts that
we might receive your truth. You help
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us to see your work and to
put our faith in it, faith that
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we might have eternal life and have
it abundantly in you. We asked that
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you would do that again this morning
as we come to your word and First
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Corinthians. Bless us, Lord,
help us to hear, to hear rightly
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and to obey. We pray this
in Jesus name. Amen. Sure remain
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able to remain standing, please do. Let's turn our attention to First Corinthians,
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Chapter Sixteen, versus one through four. First Corinthians Sixteen, as we
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continue reading and preaching through this book, versus one through four. Now,
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concerning the collection for the saints,
as I directed the churches of Glacia,
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so you also are to do.
On the first day of every week,
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each of you is to put something
aside and store it up as he may
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prosper so that there will be no
collecting when I come. When I arrive,
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I will send those whom you accredit
by letter to carry your gift or
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do to Jerusalem. If it seems
advisable that I should go also, they
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will accompany me. May God bless
his word to us. You may be
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seated. So in this passage,
Paul gives some instructions to the Corinthians on
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the collection of some money and how
to collect that money from among themselves,
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that he might take that money or
have other people take it to Jerusalem,
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unto the saints or that are there. That instruction that he's given to collect
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that money. He says he's also
given to Glacia, and we know that
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he's given to other churches as well. I don't know exactly how this would
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have worked, but I imagine that
it would have been quite a big deal
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to be in Jerusalem the day that
all of this money with this great entourage
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of people from these churches far outside
of Jerusalem, from places that are known
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for Paganism and idolatry, and yet
here are coming brothers and sisters in Christ
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bearing gifts from places like Corinth,
the Roman colony glacian and elsewhere. You
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imagine being there on that day when, in your poverty, poverty and need,
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your brothers and sisters arrived with money, and potentially lots of money,
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because this was coming from a lot
of churches going to care for a very
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large need. What a beautiful sight
that would have been, how encouraging that
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would have been, both for those
receiving and for those who were giving as
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can you imagine being a part of
of that group? Maybe the Apostle Paul
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there with you, maybe others,
maybe people you'd heard of, preachers you'd
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you'd been helped by people, you'd
been discipled by people coming into Jerusalem,
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and here you are, a fulfillment
of those promises to Abraham. You are
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the gentile nations coming in to Jerusalem, bringing these gifts, supplying needs,
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all in this great one, this
great one body that the Lord Jesus is
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put together, no longer a dividing
wall between Jew and gentile, but each
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calling each other brother an amazing,
amazing thing, and that's in that context,
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in that hope, that Paul gives
this command. It's about something much
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more than just collecting money. It's
about the life of the Church it's about
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Christ, who is alive and is
living in us. It's a command that's
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grounded in these values that I've been
mentioning more and more lately. For faith,
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good order, generous love, firm
faith. They had to trust that
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Jesus was the head of the Church
and that these apostles instructions were true.
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They had to trust that the Kingdom
of God wasn't about eating and drinking and
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storing up wealth, but it was
about Christ and the victory he was bringing
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about, something beyond this world,
even though it was being experienced in some
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ways already. It was a faith
given that Christ, what Christ had already
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done in them, the love that
he had shown them, could also be
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shown to others. It was faith
that Jesus would take care of them and
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ups through them. This faith in
a passage like Philippi nineteen and my God
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will supply every need of yours according
to his riches, in glory, in
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Christ, Jesus. They were trusting
Jesus and the unity that they had by
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the spirit of God with each other. We also see good order here right.
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Clearly, Paul did not want them
to be unprepared. He's very explicit
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about that. The work was important
and they needed to be organized about it.
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It wasn't to be haphazard. Even
though it was to come from the
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heart, willingly and cheerfully, it
was still to be done with good order.
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Good order wasn't opposed to firm faith
or generous love. It flowed out
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of faith and it provided a context
for the other. They were able to
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be more generous by having a good
order. They were able to show more
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and witness more to the love of
Christ by doing things in this organized way.
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And so he says in verse two. As each of you are able
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and prospered, on the first day
of each week, give some that there
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will be no collecting when I come. And, of course, this generous
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love all the the Paul wants them
not just to give, not just to
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meet a need, but really he's
wanting them to love one another. Notice
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how all are called to participate in
this. It's not just the rich out
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of their wealth, it's not just
the super spiritual, but everyone out of
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their love, because ultimately it's not
just about getting a need met, maybe
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even more so, it's about meeting
others in love, about seeing the work
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of Christ and the body experiencing that
participating it and enjoying in it. But
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in order to make for this to
make sense, it's important that you understand
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some things about the nature of the
church, about the nature of Christ and
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his work among us, because in
our world there are lies that are commonly
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told and often believed that undermine these
things, that really get in our way.
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If we believe them, it causes
us to doubt the goodness of Paul's
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command. It cause us to doubt
our obligation to care for one another and
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the household of faith. So this
morning what I'd like to do is we
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think about this command, we consider
these lies and address them. There's three
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I want to address. The first
is that the human body doesn't matter,
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the second is that you don't have
any obligations to anyone else and the third
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lie is that this world is all
there is. So first, the human
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body doesn't matter. Of course,
in some ways we're kind of obsessed in
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our culture about the human body.
We can turn it into idol and idol
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and often do. But there's another
lie in our society that teaches the exact
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opposite. The world is contradictory.
What can I say? And the opposite
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lie that it teaches is that the
human body doesn't matter. There's all kinds
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of ways, many, many ways
in which this is manifested. Here are
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few in which the lie that the
body doesn't matter comes across and is taught
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and has expressed. Denying the importance
of biology or engender the murder of children
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not yet born, pornography and all
other kinds of abuse, of sex,
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work aholism and minimizing the importance of
rest, thoughtless use and trust and technology
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and technical solutions to solve all human
problems, cold heartedness against the poor and
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failure to provide for them, whether
it's the mentally ill or migrants or foster
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kids or elderly, all groups that
are routinely neglected by people in a very
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wealthy country. Each of these,
in some way or another, minimizes the
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value of human bodies. But we
should know better, especially as Christians.
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Let's think about that for a moment. With regard to the nature of the
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church, some people will say that
the church is a spiritual organism, and
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that is actually very, very true, but that doesn't mean it is an
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abstract organism or it doesn't have a
physical component to it. We are born
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of the spirit of God. We
are united by the spirit it. We
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produce the fruits of the spirit.
In the same way that when you hear
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the word Christ, you call yourself
a Christian, you'd be wise to call
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yourself spiritual and think of the spirit
capitals. Spiritual very often means, and
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we should often think of it as
meaning of the Holy Spirit, and that
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means something more than just not physical. Indeed, we have bodies and these
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bodies are a part of that spiritual
reality. Remember just last week when we
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read in First Corinthians fifteen, or
maybe it was two weeks ago, that
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the body is sown, a natural
body and is raised a spiritual body.
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It's still a body, right,
it's not not a body. It is
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a body, a true body,
a human body, but a spiritual one,
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made, raised from the dead by
the by the spirit of God,
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into that, into a life that
he gives us and produces. And that
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spiritual life doesn't just come at the
end in our glorification, because, as
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Paul tells us, and glaciers,
the fruits of the spirit are being produced
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even now and they are manifested in
very visible, physical, tangible ways.
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Patience is seen in the mother's relaxed
face as she waits for her four year
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old to tie her shoes or not. All right, I'm kindness is felt
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when someone who's new to church is
offered a handshake, a smile and a
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warm welcome. It's felt, it's
failed it, it's felt at seeing.
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Love is tasted when a meal gets
dropped off, dropped off when life is
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just a little extra tough. The
fruits of the spirit get expressed through and
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in our bodies. There's a reason
that Paul speaks to us and he tells
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us don't use your bodies as instruments
for unrighteousness, but as instruments for God.
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Now, our bodies in this life
aren't any, aren't everything, but
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they are still important to God and
his plan. This world will sometimes tell
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us that your bodies are just electrical
impulses, they are meaningless shells, they
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are any part of who you are
as a person. But that's not true.
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Just as much as Jesus's body was
a part of him and his person,
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in his human nature, it is
for US consider the humanity of Christ
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for a moment. Was that a
throw away thing, a meaningless shell and
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empty, unimportant thing? Was Jesus
Body just electrical impulses and that's all there
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was to him. That's why he
became incarnate. Of course, not consider
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the ointment, the perfume that was
poured on him as an act of worship
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that he recognized and blessed and called
good. Consider his sweat that turned to
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blood in a moment of great trial
and stressed before his body was crucified for
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our sins. Consider that Joseph of
Arimathea, when he went to bury the
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Lord. The scriptures say that he
was seeking the Kingdom of God. And
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of course it's Jesus who gave of
himself and is healing power so frequently to
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other people, healing and restoring their
bodies, even in this life, in
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all kinds of ways. So what
I'm saying in pointing all this out about
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the body of Christ, his actual
physical body, and our bodies as well
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as that, when we are united
to Kim, I'm not saying that we
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become some sort of weird transformer human
body monster right that roves the earth.
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That's not what I'm saying when I
say that the church is a physical body.
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But I am saying is that the
spiritual organism that is the church gets
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expressed in physical tangible ways through our
actual bodies, and this is important when
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we think about the needs of others. They're hunger, their shelter, their
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clothing, when we think about the
needs that they have, some very great,
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some small, we never want to
look at these things and say,
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well, that isn't spiritual, that
isn't important, because it's important to the
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Lord he call, he cares for
us in our physical bodies, even unto
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and and including the Resurrection, and
he calls us to do that for others
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as well. Our bodies aren't meaningless. Our bodies aren't just a shell.
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Our bodies aren't just electrics, electric
impulses or whatever. Our bodies are made
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to be in the image of God. They have value and importance both here
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and now and in the life to
come, and it's in that, it's
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in the work of Christ and thinking
about the resurrection, that Paul can then
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call these saints to think about others
and their needs. The second lie I
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want to mention and point our attention
to that we might recognize it and not
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follow it, is that is this
you have no obligations to anyone else.
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This is a lie. In other
places of scripture, Paul does tell us
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that we are supposed to work with
our own hands to provide for ourselves and
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others. The scriptures say you don't
work, you don't eat. Paul says
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that a man who doesn't take care
of his own family is worse than an
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unbeliever. Listen to this from Ephesians
for twenty eight. Let the thee no
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longer steal, but rather let him
labor, doing honest work with his own
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hands so that he may have something
to share with anyone in need. So
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there is a call to responsibility as
individuals. God had made work, and
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work is good, even though it's
frustrated and made difficult, it's good and
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he uses it to provide for us. We ought to be good workers and
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faithful workers, but it's not all
about just us and ourselves. Notice how
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he calls in Effesians for twenty eight. He calls us to Labor, doing
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honest work with our hands so that
we may have something not only to provide
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for ourselves but to share with those
in need. And right away you see
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this, this idea of community happening. We have individual responsibility, but part
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of our individual responsibility is for others
as well, and there's a family of
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faith brought together in the Lord.
We have obligations to take care of one
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another. Here Acts Twenty thirty five. In all things, I've shown you
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that by working hard in this way, we must help the weak and remember
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the words of the Lord Jesus,
how he himself said it is more blessed
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to give than to receive. Hebrews
Thirteen sixteen. Do not neglect to do
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good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God.
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Glacian six to bear one another's burdens
and so fulfill the law of Christ.
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Romans twelve thirteen contribute to the needs
of the saints and seek to show
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hospitality. That words seek is even
stronger. It's like pursue right, run
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after pursue hospitality. So this is
one of the reasons Paul, this is
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one of the things that that Paul's
command is grounded in. It's why we
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work together to take care of the
physical needs of each other. It's why
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we pay our ministers, it's why
we pay to have shelter wall we meet.
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It's why we give to those and
we are aware in listening to those
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who are in need. Of course, each of us has a personal responsibility
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in our own lives. No one
can, no one can take that away
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from us and no, and we
can't give it to anyone else. But
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part of the personal responsibility that we
have is to care for others. Think
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of it again terms of the body, the body of Christ that he is
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put together. A hand should not
try to be afoot, right, but
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both the hand and the foot should
do their own work. But how do
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they do it in service to others, for the common good? If a
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hand tries to be afoot or refuses
to do its work as a hand,
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it hurts both itself and the body. When we look to Christ in his
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work, we see that because Christ
has done he has made us members of
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a body, members of one another, a theme Paul's brought up over and
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over again throughout First Corinthians. Because
of Jesus and his work for us on
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the Cross, we are united in
him into a kingdom, a community,
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a family. Before he saved us, we served ourselves only sure we were
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a part of a family. We
are part of a nation. We are
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part of a community in various ones, but broken ones, corrupt ones,
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falling apart ones. But now that
we belong to Christ, something new has
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happened. We belong to a body
that is eternal, a kingdom that cannot
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be shaken, a community that is
formed in union with him who does not
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die and is full of healing and
life. This is why Paul calls them,
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and us as well, to see
beyond ourselves, beyond even our own
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church. Notice how here are,
these Corinthians in this faraway place, are
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called to provide, along with other
churches and other people, for somewhere else.
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That's an amazing, amazing picture.
It's one reason we are presbyterians.
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We take care of ourselves and our
families, but in those times when we
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are unable to, we know that
the church is bigger than us and we
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know that we are part of something
that is bigger than us, so that
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as we are able to provide for
the needs of others, we do.
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When we first started as a church
plant here, other churches gave money to
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help pay for my salary, our
rent, the various things that we needed
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in the life of the church.
That was a huge blessing. We would
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not be here if it weren't for
the generosity of others who said we will
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help a new church intucson and as
we were able to establish and grow.
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Now, every year we are able
to donate money to our Presbyterian General Assembly,
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who then use those funds to provide
for other needy churches. Some of
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those churches are needy because they're small
and just starting, like we were.
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Some of those churches are spiritually mature, great, strong churches, but in
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financially impoverished areas. Some of those
churches are churches that have faced natural disasters
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or, as in the case of
Ukraine, war. And in both the
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giving and the receiving that we ourselves
have experienced here at covenant, we have
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found great blessing. We have also
found God at work, taking care of
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his people in their material needs and
their spiritual needs. In our hearts,
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he's been teaching us to love one
another as he first loved us, and
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that is a very great thing,
a very great gift. Lie that we
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are all in it for number one, just for ourselves, is not true.
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God has put us in both part
of his body to belong to one
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another and to love one another,
and in wonderful ways that we get to
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experience and ways that honor him and
reveal his work in US and in the
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world. That brings me to my
last point, the lie which will be
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disabused of, and that is that
the world is all there is. There
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is this idea that some people have
that if we just work hard enough,
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if we organize ourselves well enough,
if we press people enough, that we
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can eliminate suffering and poverty and hatred
and any other kind of brokenness that we
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experience in our world and even in
our church. And, as a result,
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those who have this vision and believe
this lie they get sometimes, we
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get sometimes very frustrated and angry when
we are unable to achieve these ends,
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when we look at our church and
when we look at our lives and we
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say there's still problems here. We're
not generous enough, we're not loving enough,
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there are people who are hurting,
there are people who are suffering and
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we're not doing every thing we can. No sure, if we're not doing
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what we need to do, we
probably should get a little angry about that
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and and work harder. But the
point is that we can never believe that
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simply by working harder or organizing better
or even loving more, that we will
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be able to accomplish this kind of
utopia here and now. We cannot,
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in our own power and in our
own strength, eliminate suffering and death and
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poverty and struggle. Partly God uses
these things to sanctify us. It's one
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of the reasons we are here in
this world now, is so that he
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might perfect us and grow us and
purify us through these struggles and as we
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struggle and more and along side one
another. But this lie persists and it's
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taught frequently in our society if we
just do more, if we just try
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harder, that we will be able
to achieve well, heaven, but this
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is not right. One easy way
to prove this is the constant failure of
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humanity to achieve this. Thousands and
thousands and thousands of years of people working
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and working and working to achieve this. Poems and songs and manifestos and Kingdoms
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and all kinds of things have been
built and tried. Power Hour has been
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exercised, great armies have been raised
to what end? To No end,
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to a vain end. And if
the years and years of human life on
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this earth aren't enough to prove it, you can just look at your own
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life. How close are you to
perfection by just trying harder and doing more?
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Are you just one step away from
finally ridding all of yourself of sin
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if you just organized your calendar a
little better or saved a little more money,
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or we're a little nicer to your
neighbors. The problems deeper than that.
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It's much deeper than that. It's
important to note this, not just
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because we're afraid of authoritarianism or something
like that, although those are real concerns,
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but it's important because we don't want
to fall under the judgment of the
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Authority, the king of Kings.
You need examples of this. Look at
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the Tower of Babel, for example. Humanity working together, achieving, in
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its own strength, some sort of
unified vision, all to come crumbling down
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under the hand of God. You
can think of Psalm to the the the
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wicked getting together and murmuring, whispering
one another about how they'll break apart the
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bonds between the Lord and his anointed. One scripture says he will smash them
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to pieces like with a rod hit
the vessel. You can think of Nebuchadnezzar
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standing on his his porte, looking
out over his kingdom, amazed that all
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that he is accomplished, and a
great kingdom it was, to find himself
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eating the grass, just a little
bit later, humbled under the hand of
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all mighty God. You can think
of the Roman Empire, you can,
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we could go on and on and
on and see humanity in some ways coming
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to its to these pinnacles, to
these moments where there is a measure of
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peace and strength and wealth and honor
and these sorts of things that are proclaimed
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of the Lord and revelation five,
but yes, barely so, all hanging
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on by a thread and ultimately easily
crushed under the hand of God, the
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true King. These examples teach us
that happiness, greatness, Utopia, heaven,
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these things can only be achieved in
God alone, and they can't be
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achieved by our own obedience, because
our obedience stinks, our lives don't work,
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we're full of brokenness and dissension,
we lie and break and hurt each
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other all of the time. The
only way that a kingdom that cannot be
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shaken can be established is by the
hands of God. The only way that
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we can risk get a kingdom that
is strong enough, that is perfect enough,
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that is glorious enough to match the
Lord and all his promises, is
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to simply be given it as a
gift. There's no way to earn it,
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there's no way to achieve it,
and the lie that says this world
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is all there is. Just strive
a little harder, hope a little more,
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you will be able to eliminate these
things that cause us to suffer.
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It's very shortsighted and it always fails. The lives that we live, in
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caring for one another and in being
good neighbors in our world are not lived
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in order to establish heaven on earth, because we've already received heaven through Christ,
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our Savior, as we read earlier. We are already citizens of it
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and we as we wait for Christ's
return. We are not trying to build
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an unshakable kingdom. We have received
a kingdom that is unshakable, as Hebrews
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says. The lives we live are
not to create a heavenly society, although
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of course we want to better our
neighbors, we want our churches to be
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strong, we want to grow in
our own faith, but ultimately we do
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so through faith in our Lord,
who is great and powerful and rich and
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and loving. This means that all
of our false starts and sufferings and frustrations
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that we feel in this life will
one day come to an end, and
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that's good news. They will come
to an end because this world is not
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all that there is, because this
world is not all that there is,
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because God is giving to us something
more, something greater, something glorious.
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We can have hope, and not
just in the promise of those things,
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but in the guarantee of those things, which is Jesus's own blood shed on
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the cross, because of Jesus,
is sacrifice for sins. Our sins are
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forgiven because of the pouring out of
the Holy Spirit in our lives and his
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sanctifying work and, one day,
his glorifying work. We know that these
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things that we so desperately want we
will receive, but we receive them in
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him, not in this world and
not through the means and the things of
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this world. In fact, the
Lord Jesus turns all this on its head
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and teaches us that through suffering and
suffering alongside one another and helping one another,
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this is how we learn not to
trust in ourselves, but to trust
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in Christ alone, to trust in
Christ working through us. Remember, at
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the beginning of Corinthians, he says
not many of you are wise, not
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many of you are noble, not
many powerful. The Lord Jesus didn't enter
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into Jerusalem on that donkey and then
ride in and take over and then a
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point his apostles as great kings over
all the lands who then appointed all the
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nobles and the great people of the
world. That's not how the Kingdom of
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God came. The Kingdom of God
came through the Cross. The Kingdom of
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God came through suffering and persecution and
struggle and poverty and all kinds of difficulties.
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This doesn't mean that we shouldn't try
to alleviate suffering, it doesn't mean
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that we shouldn't love our brothers and
sisters and help them eat, as Paul
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calls us to do. But it
does do. But, but it does
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mean that as we do so,
we do so because of what Christ has
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done and trusting in him for what
he is doing and what he promises to
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do, not because we think that
we can just accomplish all these things on
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our own. In fact, we
trust him that in the midst of our
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suffering, in the midst of our
trials, he has not abandoned us,
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but he is working through them to
sanctify us. So when we give,
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which we must do, as we
are able to do, we fundaintily,
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do it out of a firm faith
in Christ, in Christ alone, in
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his work, in his kingdom,
in His grace. We do it in
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good order, because he has created
a body that is orderly and he desires
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for us to share that love in
great ways that testify to his goodness to
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us. And we do it with
a generous love, not being forced to
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or not scared that if we don't
do it, everything will come falling apart,
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but we do it trusting in the
Lord and out of generosity, knowing
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that he'll take care of us.
Who owns the cattle on a thousand hills,
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knows every hair on our head numbered? Who close the lilies of the
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field better than Solomon? Our Father
says, I got you, don't worry
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about it, I will take care
of you, and it's from that play,
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says his children, adopted because of
the work of Christ, that we
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can then give to others, generously
and loving let's pray that God would bless
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us in these things as well,
even as he blessed the Corinthians, the
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glacians and the people in Jerusalem.
Our heavenly father, we thank you for
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your work among us, your generosity
to us, your goodness to us.
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You, in all these things I
have made yourself and your graciousness so manifest.
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We see your work in our brothers
and sisters, we see your work
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in the church at this time,
we see your work in Christ and in
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your spirit working through us. We
ask, Lord, that, as you
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bring about in us a love for
one another that flows from a love for
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you, that flows from faith in
you and your love that first was given
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to us, that this love,
and which we abide and live and enjoy
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as receivers and givers of it,
would just be on display for the world
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to see, not so that we
might be praised, so that you might
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be praised, so that the love
of God, in Christ Jesus, Our
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Lord, that has been given to
us in the Gospel, would be proclaimed
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and others would see it and come
to you and give you all glory and
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honor and praise, and that they
too would receive that kingdom that is unshakable.
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Lord, we ask for forgiveness for
the love that we have failed to
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share, for our lack of generosity. Are Our hearts, which give sometimes,
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but give so with a sour face, sour heart, Lord, we
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confess that we are often selfish.
We confess that we don't care for others
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is as we ought to. We
confess trying to build our own kingdoms in
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replace of yours, of trusting in
ourselves rather than our power rather than yours.
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We asked that you would forgive us
these things and help us to set
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our minds more and more on Christ, that we might know him and receive
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all that he has to offer,
so that, instead of striving and struggling
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and fearing and dying, we might
enjoy your presence among us, your provision
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for us, and even the suffering
that we face and the trials that we
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face. We asked that we would
even enjoy those, rejoicing knowing that you
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are at work among us. Lord. We ask these things knowing that,
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Ye, it is your desire to
grant them. We ask them knowing that
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you have worked these things in US
and will continue to do so. We
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ask, Lord, these things in
faith, faith in you and in your
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promises to us. We praise you
for your love and we pray this in
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Jesus name. Amen.
