INTRODUCTION
Pastor Ben has invited us all to read the New Testament together across 2016, and he’s committed that he would preach every Sunday from a passage we’ve read the week before. So, this past week – if you’ve been following the Reading Plan on our website, in our Worship Bulletins, or as a part of the Closer Walk devotional – you know that we finished reading Paul’s letter to the Romans, and have begun reading his letter First Corinthians.
Romans ended with St. Paul encouraging us to live our lives for Christ and to not let the differences we have with our fellow Christians make us proud. That is, if we worship God one way and others worship God another way, we shouldn’t spend all of our time trying to get everyone to worship the way we do. No, Paul writes, we should honor the differences between us and strive not to hurt other’s faith by the things we do. It’s about Christians living in relationship with God through Christ that matters, Paul proclaims, it’s not about all Christians living out their relationship with Christ the same ways I do (or you do, or we do). We should spend more time making sure we are faithful as we follow Christ, and less time judging whether or not everyone else is faithful as they follow Christ. We should spend more time making sure the church is reaching out to and serving the needs of others and those who are new to Christ, and less time making sure the church is the way we want it and serving our own needs.
And after a rather lengthy goodbye, Paul ends his letter to the Romans reminding us all of the goal of his efforts and all of our efforts in preaching and carrying out the work and service of the gospel: The goal is to have God’s people living in obedient-relationship with God the Father through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ empowered by the Holy Spirit!
We also read the first two chapters of First Corinthians, and that’s where Ben’s going to be preaching from this morning:
1 CORINTHIANS 1:18-31 [NLTse]
The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God. 19 As the Scriptures say,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent.”
20 So where does this leave the philosophers, the scholars, and the world’s brilliant debaters? God has made the wisdom of this world look foolish. 21 Since God in His wisdom saw to it that the world would never know Him through human wisdom, He has used our foolish preaching to save those who believe. 22 It is foolish to the Jews, who ask for signs from Heaven. And it is foolish to the Greeks, who seek human wisdom. 23 So when we preach that Christ was crucified, the Jews are offended and the Gentiles say it’s all nonsense.
24 But to those called by God to salvation, both Jews and Gentiles, Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength.
26 Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. 27 Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And He chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful. 28 God chose things despised by the world, things counted as nothing at all, and used them to bring to nothing what the world considers important. 29 As a result, no one can ever boast in the presence of God.
30 God has united you with Christ Jesus. For our benefit God made Him to be wisdom itself. Christ made us right with God; He made us pure and holy, and He freed us from sin. 31 Therefore, as the Scriptures say, “If you want to boast, boast only about the Lord.”
SERMON
Doug has finished up our reading and study through Romans, so let me introduce our reading and study through First Corinthians. The apostle Paul first established a fellowship of Christians in Corinth during what’s called his u “Second Missionary Journey,” a mission trip Paul went on to check on the Christian fellowships he had planted during his “First Missionary Journey.” And during that second trip he traveled farther and planted more.
After traveling through what was then called “Asia” but is now called “Turkey” (where his existing church-plants were located), Paul traveled to Greece and began for the first time preaching and ministering there. Northern Greece in Paul’s day was called Macedonia, and Paul established two Christian fellowships there: One in Philippi and the other in Thessalonica. But some of the Jews whom Paul was preaching to in Thessalonica were so offended by the gospel that they ran Paul out of town and stoned him nearly to death.
After only a brief time to recover, Paul fled from Thessalonica to another Macedonian city called Berea, before having to flee again to the southern part of Greece called Achaia. In Achaia, Paul traveled through and preached in famous Athens, before finally arriving in Corinth. But Paul was not well when he arrived in Corinth. He was still recovering and badly shaken by his near-death in Thessalonica. And in chapter 2 of First Corinthians, Paul reminds them how, “I came to you in weakness—timid and trembling.” His proclamation of the gospel didn’t come to the Corinthians through boldness or cleverness because he was injured and beaten-down at the time. But the Holy Spirit used his simple preaching about the cross. And as Paul trusted in and obeyed God, the Holy Spirit empowered Paul – even with his injuries and frailty – to work miracles and to do wonders that validated his message.
First Corinthians is actually Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian Christians, and he writes because of the many troubles the Corinthian church was facing: Church splits, sexual immorality among the members, forbidding women to lead in the church, different spiritual gifts making different groups proud, and some denying the resurrection of the dead while others teaching that the resurrection had already occurred. The Corinthian fellowship was a pretty messed up church. (And we thought these kinds of headlines only happened in our modern day!)
With that as an introduction, let me take us back to the opening words of this letter. As he does in most of his letters, in verse 3 Paul prays for the Corinthian believers, “May God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.” He follows-up that blessing in verse 4, saying, “I always thank my God for you and for the gracious gifts He has given you, now that you belong to Christ Jesus.” To which, a couple verses later in 7, he adds, “Now you have every spiritual gift you need as you eagerly wait for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
I draw our attention to these verses because of the picture they paint about God’s grace: We need God’s grace, and so Paul asks God to bless them with His grace; and yet, we’ve been given God’s grace, even as Paul thanks God for the grace that has already been given them; and, we have and exist in a state of God’s grace, in which we live as we wait for Jesus’ return in the future, empowered with every gift from God we need to accomplish His work here in the world.
So, what is grace? Like the picture before us has been showing: u Grace is God’s great big gift to us of salvation, taking away our sins and giving us Jesus’ Own righteous. And grace is also the little gifts God gives us, the ways the Holy Spirit makes us more and more like Jesus in our Christian character and moral qualities over time, and the spiritual gifts the Holy Spirit empowers us with to speak the words of God and do the works of God when He calls and needs us to. And grace is also the state of these things: Us “resurrection people” live in God’s grace; it’s like our air to us, just like we don’t think about breathing nor our lungs taking the needed nutrients out of the oxygen we breathe in, likewise we Christians don’t tend to think about applying to our moral defects the grace that is ours in Christ, nor do we tend to think about reaching out to Him for the grace required in our moments of need. No, we live in grace, and so we, Christians, find that we grow in Christian character without trying. The Holy Spirit does the work in us as we live for and enjoy our relationship with Him. And we don’t have to try and stir-up the special abilities we need to accomplish what God calls us to do in a given situation. The abilities are just “there” when we need them, the Holy Spirit empowering us at all the right moments, even when we don’t realize He’s at work.
You might be wondering, “If our salvation is by the grace of God, then how can He judge those who don’t believe in Christ? They can’t believe in Him apart from His grace, right?” You might be wondering, “If our faithfulness in any given situation is by the grace of God, then how can He blame us when we deny Him or don’t do what He wants? Isn’t it His fault for not granting us the grace we needed in that moment?” You might be wondering, “If this state of grace we live in is a gift of God’s grace and something we do not deserve and something we can-not ever deserve, then isn’t it God’s responsibility and not ours to bring people to this state of grace? Can’t we just mind our own business, keep Christ to ourselves, and let the Holy Spirit bring people to Jesus Himself?”
We didn’t look at this while we were reading through Romans together because we were celebrating Palm Sunday the week we read it, but St. Paul addresses these very questions in Romans chapter 9 when he’s acknowledging and mourning for the many Jews who were going to be damned because they had not trusted Jesus as their Savior. By the Holy Spirit, Paul writes, “Why does God blame people for not responding [to Christ]? Haven’t they simply done what He makes them do?” (It’s Paul’s version of the same questions we’ve been asking.) And Paul answers these logical questions with this logical argument. He responds,
“When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn’t he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into? In the same way, even though God has the right to show His anger and His power, He is very patient with those on whom His anger falls, who are destined for destruction. He does this to make the riches of His glory shine even brighter on those to whom He shows mercy, who were prepared in advance for glory.” (9:21-23)
The Word of God is telling us that God has created some human beings who will go to Hell in order to show those human beings who will go to Heaven just how glorious and merciful and wonder-filled He is! And, although that makes me sad to think of it, haven’t we all experienced the truth of it? Isn’t it when we look at those around us who have no hope that we realize how glorious and merciful and wonder-filled is the hope we have in Christ? Isn’t it when we look at those around us who have no peace that we realize how glorious and merciful and wonder-filled is the peace we have in Christ? Isn’t it when we look at those around us who have no joy that we realize how glorious and merciful and wonder-filled is the joy we have in Christ?
And so, the question might come into your head, “That means that God is choosing people around us to send to Hell?” All I can tell you is that before you let yourself start thinking about that and letting the thought of it pollute your soul, remember that God is good, that God is love. We are speaking of great mysteries here since we also read in the Scriptures that God desires not even one human being to perish and go to eternal death! You and I do not and can-not fully understand these things, so we must not let our hearts and minds be polluted with the confusion and malice that such thoughts can inspire, or we will stop sharing God’s goodness with those around us. And then how will they hear the good news? And then how will they believe and trust in Christ? And then how will God’s grace be shown in them when they are saved?
No, such questions and temptations to think ill of our Father is all the devil trying to tempt us back in the Garden of Eden again. We human beings always want to be in control: Making our own choices, controlling our own destinies. But the Scripture makes clear that God alone is in sovereign-control, even over the lives and salvation of human beings! “It is by grace we have been saved,” Paul writes to the Ephesian-Christians. We’ve had nothing to do with our salvation, so we cannot “boast” about it because we’ve had no part to play in it!
No, the great news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is that you and I can rest in our salvation knowing that it’s not up to us! God is the One Who began the work in us. He called us to Himself! So, whether we’re having a good, obedient day or a bad, selfish day, we can be at peace knowing that u God is the One, not you or me, Who will bring this work in us (and in our friends and in our loved ones and in those we’ve been given compassion for) to completion! Your and my part is to seek Him earnestly, to love Him wholeheartedly, to cooperate with Him fully, and to surrender our will and plans over to Him daily. And yet even then, trusting that it is His Spirit energizing us to want to work for and to do the work for all that pleases Him.
As Doug read at the beginning, it was God Who had united the Corinthian believers to Christ. The only boasting they could do about their salvation, and about the abilities and giftedness God gave them, and about the life of hope, peace, and joy they were living was to boast in the Lord! The Lord can and does call us to live with Him and live for Him is because all we have is the result of God’s grace. All we are is the result of God’s grace.
The Lord calls us to tithe – giving 10% of our income to His work through the church – so that He can keep doing through the church for others what He first used the church to do for us. He calls us to give even more than the 10%-tithe sometimes when He has especially blessed us or when He is doing an extra-special work requiring our special support. We can do that because all we have and all we are is on account of His grace.
He calls us to be serving – using our abilities and expertise – in and around the church to bless the people of the congregation as a whole and, again, to enable the church to do for still others what it has already been doing for us. And we can do that because all we have and all we are is on account of His grace.
Of course, He calls us to love Him and enjoy Him and to share Him with our family members and friends. He calls us to live for Him and to draw near to Him and to cry out to Him and to let Him comfort and guide us and encourage and direct us, not because He’s so demanding of what is ours, but because He’s been so generous in sharing with us what is His by His grace!
My brothers and sisters in Christ: It is God Himself Who has united us with Christ Jesus. Jesus Christ made us right with God; He made us pure and holy, and He freed us from sin. None of it has been our doing. From start to finish, it’s all been God’s gift; it’s all been grace.