Sean: Now see, that's the beauty of standing firm in faith. It is an act of resistance. It is a refusal to submit. It is a flint faced, martyr like commitment, but not to press forward, not to take ground, but rather to remain, to stand firm. You don't have to be very clever to do it.
You just stand there on the ground God has set you on.
Caleb: The following message was recorded at King's Tree Church. May the spirit use it to help you see, savor, and sing the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ.
Sean: Heavenly father, we thank you for scripture. We thank you for all of it. We thank you that you've given us the ability, the means, and the tools to study it, to know what it says, and and then by your spirit, understanding that, doing it. And so we pray that would be the case this morning. And pray that as I'm the vessel through which you're bringing a sermon today, you would give me blessing to portray that, and that we would do well to heed and follow what your word says this morning.
And we pray it in Jesus name. Amen. So final chapter, final sermon in first Corinthians this morning. Paul has covered a lot of ground in the book, in the letter of first Corinthians, the letter that he wrote to this church. In chapters one through four, he addressed the divisions in the church that happened because there's different leaders and the church was thinking that different leaders had different levels of effectiveness in their ministry, and so they rallied around these different leaders.
Paul corrected them. He said, no. It's God who ultimately judges the effectiveness of our ministry on the final day. And rather than bickering, we ought rather to strive together as fellow servants of Christ. In chapter five, Paul called the church to sexual purity as we have been purified and cleansed by Christ.
In chapter six, Paul revealed that the church had been going to lawsuits with each other over matters of money and business. He tells them they need to be wise enough to deal with that within the church, and to take it before unbelievers is shameful to the church. It's better to simply be cheated than to doing something like that. And then in six, he also combats, continues to combat the sexual immorality in the church, arguing that our bodies are eternal, and they are unified to Christ's own body and therefore we ought to be glorifying, honoring God in our bodies. In chapter seven, Paul dealt largely with being content to live in Christ in whatever life situation he has placed you in.
And then in eight through 10, Paul deals with the finer points of living as people with differing convictions and differing conscience while all being free in Christ. Now Paul's personal conviction was to drop any freedom that he thought might put a stumbling block in the way of the gospel, but he also cautioned the Corinthians that the exercise of their freedoms didn't accidentally lead them into idolatry. That was chapter 10, which brought him to 11 where he dealt with the proper way to have and to conduct the Lord's Supper. That's done communally together. He also addressed the Corinthian congregation's marriage problems they had in the church, stating that wives need to be submissive to their head, which is their husband, and that husbands need to be submissive to their head, who is Christ.
That brought us right into 12 through 14 where Paul talks about the spiritual gifts. That these gifts are of a variety of gifts given to a variety, everyone in the church, but all governed by the same spirit, all for the purpose of building up the body of Christ. He mentioned that love was more important than all these gifts put together, however, because love is eternal. And he ended by saying that these gifts, when practiced, they need to be understood, they need to be intelligible in order to actually be effective in building up the body of Christ. Then we headed right into chapter 15 where Paul talks about the resurrection of Jesus Christ's body and that ours will be like his.
His resurrection leads to our resurrection. And now here we are in 16. If you read through 16, you're gonna see it's a bit different than the other chapters we've gone through because this is the ending. This is the closing of a letter. And in the epistles, the closing of the letter gets a bit less formal.
There's less focused teaching going on here. You're commonly gonna hear comments about travel plans from the author or various greetings or maybe a personal request or two. For instance, in all of 16 today, we hear Paul mention that the Corinthians need to be saving up money on the first day of every week to give to him so he can send it to needy believers in Jerusalem. We hear Paul mention that it's his plan, his hope to spend the winter there in Corinth. He says that he's sending Timothy to them.
Apollos wasn't up for the journey quite yet, but he's hoping to make it soon. And he says to honor Stephanus as one of the first converts in Corinthians there. So kind of some housekeeping things. But there's there's two verses particularly that stood out to me as very important, very applicable for King Street Church and also for all the American church at large. And that's what I'm gonna preach on this morning.
So verses thirteen and fourteen, let me read them to you along with twelve and fifteen afterwards. See if they kind of jump out at you as they jumped out at me as I was reading this. So 12 says, now concerning our brother Apollos, I strongly urged him to visit you with the other brothers, but it was not at all his will to come now. He will come when he has opportunity. 13.
Be watchful. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men. Be strong. Let all that you do be done in love.
15. Now I urge you brothers, you know that the household of Stephanus were the first converts in Achaia, and that they have devoted themselves to the service of the saints, be subject to such as these. Did you notice the kind of shift in tone there? This impassioned warning of encouragement that Paul gives to the church is kind of thrown in the middle there. Now why does he do that?
Interestingly enough, I actually think this is just part of Paul's own personality. Remember, when the Holy Spirit writes scripture through people, it's a 100% inspired. It's a 100% true, but God uses the author's own personality, own experience, own mindset when writing the scripture. Right? You can see that very clearly, especially in the the book of Psalms.
God doesn't brainwash authors of scripture. Rather, he uses the people they are to write infallibly. And as you read through the New Testament, this final warning seems kind of like a polished thing to do. And he did it not only in his writings, he also did it personally. This is interesting.
In in the book of Acts, when he is leaving Ephesians for the last time, he's on the shores, he's talking to the elders there in the church of Ephesus, he's saying goodbye, he's not gonna see them again. In the middle of his goodbye, he breaks out and says to them, pay careful attention to yourselves and to all the flock in which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers to take care of the church of God, which he obtained by his own blood. I know that after my departure fierce wolves will come in among you not sparing the flock. See he gives that one final word of warning before he leaves. And then he does something similar in his letter to the Romans in chapter 16.
The last chapter there he says, I appeal to you brothers to watch out for those who cause division and create obstacles contrary to the doctrine that you have been taught. Avoid them. Still another warning there about division. At the end of Ephesians chapter six, he says, keep alert. At the end of first Thessalonians, he says, let us not sleep like others do, but let us awake.
Let us keep awake and be sober. At the end of Colossians, he says, continue steadfastly in prayer. Be watchful in it. So you kinda see this pattern where Paul just can't help himself. He gives kinda one final warning before he signs off.
Now being familiar with kind of a variety of those other ones, let's read once more our passage. You can see how it just kind of fits into the way Paul does things here. Be watchful. Stand firm in the faith. Act like men.
Be strong. And let all that you do be done in love. So why does Paul think it necessary to do this, to end with this call to vigilance, with this warning? I think the answer to that is pretty simple. It's because as churches, we need that.
We need warnings We exist in the midst of a hostile world. We're in enemy territory. The course of this world follows the prince of the power of the air. We know that in Ephesians two. The Christian life is not one free of threats.
It's one that's full of threats. And so we actually need some warnings. The Holy Spirit often has Paul closing with a bit of warning, and I don't think we're really used to warnings so much today. They're they're kind of undesirable, and we would like to maybe ignore them at times. So seeing as we have on this morning, let's let's take it to heart and see what we can learn from this.
So how does he start? He says, be watchful. As a church, we are to be watchful people. Now what does that mean? What are we watching for?
Well, broadly used, the term doesn't mean watching for anything particularly, but rather maintaining a posture of watchfulness, staying awake and being clear headed and having a sober mind. You're you're paying attention. You're alert. You're in tune of what's happening around you and inside yourself as well. You're not just letting life happen around you, but you're aware.
You're engaged. You're switched on considering what is going on in your life. To help fill out your understanding of this word watchful, it's the opposite of sleep. And your mind is shut off and you're unaware. In fact, the Greek word for watchful comes directly from the word awake.
It's just modified slightly to mean having been awakened. Now usually this word watchful, when used in scripture, occurs in in two different ways. Very, very often, it's used with regards to being watchful concerning Christ's second coming. In fact, Jesus uses the exact word in our passage in Matthew twenty four forty two when he says, stay awake for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. Therefore, you must also be ready for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
So you kind of get a sense of that anticipation, that clear headed alertness the church is called to there. Now when Jesus speaks of of watchfulness there, he's not saying, make sure you get ready sometime before this happens. Right? That's not the point. The point is to always be ready because you have no idea when this is going to happen.
He says, I'm coming back, church, so be watchful and always be ready. Don't let Jesus come back and find you distracted with something that he hasn't prioritized. Okay. And though Paul doesn't mention explicitly Christ's second coming here, he does use this word watchful immediately after a lengthy chapter on the resurrection on Christ's second coming. So no doubt he's at least calling to mind some of that end of times return of Christ type meaning when he warns us to be watchful.
Part of being a Christian and being watchful is having on the front burner of our head the thought, Jesus is returning. I may see him at any moment. I don't wanna be ashamed of what I'm doing when I suddenly see him. But there's another element to watchfulness here. Believe Paul is calling us to simultaneously, and that is the warning to be watchful of false teaching, of sin, of evil, of deceit, of the forces of darkness looking to penetrate into and rip apart the church.
That form of the word watchful is used by Peter. First Peter four eight says this, be sober minded, be watchful. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour. Resist him firm in your faith. Notice that same switched on sober minded alertness there.
We're still paying attention, but now it's it's not focused towards Christ's return. The the specific focus here is paying attention, being watchful for the impending disastrous sin and deceit and corruption Satan would have us fall into. We're told here to be awakened to the fact that our lives are are not just an affair of of flesh and blood, but the principalities, powers, forces of spiritual wickedness in high places working and warring against us. And we need to be awakened to that. Now I really believe this watchfulness Paul calls us to is an area where we are not doing very well.
We do a poor job. And at least I know that I am. I don't feel that watchfulness personally. It's hard to maintain a weary watchfulness when you don't feel threatened. Right?
The guards on the wall, they're gonna slowly stop watching carefully if there hasn't been an invasion for a while. Right? Not feeling threatened leads to sleep. You don't fall asleep when you feel there's an impending threat about you. And sleep really is the opposite of this wakefulness.
And over the past hundred years or so, I think it's been easy for Christians to live as Christians but also be asleep. Because again, we haven't felt much of a threat. Like the disciples on the Mount Of Olives to whom Jesus said, stay awake, same word, and pray that you might not fall into temptation, I think perhaps we have fallen asleep. We've fallen asleep not only to the impending return of Christ and to live in a way so as not to be ashamed when he appears, but also and especially to the catastrophic spiritual power of the enemies we face and the life destroying effects of sin. The bitterness holding in your heart or this reluctance to forgive, it isn't just the way things are.
It isn't just living as a as a person. It's an infiltration of the enemy that you're supposed to be watching out for. The habits in your life that are opposed to God. Selfishness, refusal to forgive, pride, pornography, or quickness to take offense and hold a grudge. We're not supposed to just accept those as normal parts of life.
Unchallenged sin is proof that we are sleeping. But when sleeping, things just happen to you. Right? You have no control. When you're awake, you do things.
You watch out for things. Being awake is being aware of the places in your life where Satan's tempting you and shoring those walls up, reaching out to others for help. It's seeing the evil of the culture and how it's ingressing into your home or your life, and then cutting off those avenues. That's being awake. It's noticing relationships in your life that are crumbling, maybe from neglect, maybe from something else, and building to work those back up.
And make no mistake, the world really does want you asleep. The world wants you sedated and amused and entertained and not thinking and not aware. It wants the opposite of what we're called to here. And that's the entire point of the of the format of social media. The endless streaming of videos, the endless scrolling to different clips, or scrolling of different products, or scrolling of projects you think you might do someday, or scrolling on a Facebook feed.
These things are designed from the ground up to capture you, to be addictive, that's what makes them profitable, and to put your spirit to sleep, and to make your mind not think or to think on the wrong sorts of things. Christians cannot live that sedated life. We need to be aware, and we need to be awake. We need to be noticing and wise to the schemes of Satan and of our own civil heart as they pop up around us. So to be awake.
Now what we're told to do separately or secondly is like the first. In fact, it's directly related to being watchful. Next, we're told to stand firm in the faith. Being watchful, being aware both of what is true and what is false, we then make that commitment to stand in the faith, what is true. What does that mean?
Well, it doesn't simply mean knowing truth about Jesus. Not simply that. It doesn't simply mean going to church. It doesn't simply mean being able to recite the gospel story. Right?
Because you can know the faith all day long without standing firm in the faith. Standing firm means you have that knowledge. You have this all encompassing worldview where Christ, the son of God, has come into the world to save sinners. You know and believe that you've been united to Christ and and to everyone else in the body of Christ, and you're called to live and love as his disciples. And then having that faith, you unapologetically and unwaveringly live like it's true.
There's there's an action here. You're not just thinking firm in the faith. You are standing firm in the faith, uncompromising, even if it gets you into trouble. So a great contextualized example of this for us might work this way. You know you have faith that God has created male and female in the image of God.
You have faith and know that the sexes are different. They're complementary. They're fixed realities by God's ordination. Okay. You're awake to the fact that the Western culture right now is in rebellions against that fundamental truth.
And so being awake to that threat, you now intentionally stand firm in the faith, living and speaking in ways that acknowledge the reality of male and female as God as God has created them. And you don't cave to social pressures. You speak truthfully and plainly about men and women. You don't submit to the world's pressures to lie to ourselves or to others about male and female. Right?
You don't go and use their terminology. You don't go inside their arena to to think. You speak what is true if it makes you or someone else feel uncomfortable. Now see, that's the beauty of standing firm in faith. It is an act of resistance.
It is a refusal to submit. It is a flint faced, martyr like commitment, but not to press forward, not to take ground, but rather to remain, to stand firm. You don't have to be very clever to do it. You just stand there on the ground God has set you on. That's the awesome thing about God's truth, which is all truth, is you don't have to advance.
You don't have to be clever. You don't have to be a leader. You don't have to strategize. You just plant your feet and stand there. And no matter what, you don't move.
Maybe you'll look like the good guy one day, and you'll look like the bad guy the next day. You know why? It's because you're standing still, and all these cultural opinions are moving around you. Think of David. He's a great example of this.
Goes up, prays in his window. No problem. The next day, literally the next day, it's now illegal to do. And he'll get thrown to the lions. What does he do?
That law means nothing to Daniel. He's gonna stand firm in his faith. It's what he's always done. He's not gonna change that now because some law changed. So he goes up and says, I guess I'll feed the lions and pray in my window.
He does the same thing over again. He stands firm in his faith, and he does get thrown to the lions. I mean, he happened to be delivered, which is wonderful, but didn't necessarily have to go that way. Many early Christians were not delivered. The government tried to control what they say and told them to say that Caesar is Lord.
Just that sentence, say Caesar is Lord and you won't die. Christian says, no. We can't say that. We're gonna stand firm in our faith. And so they they died in droves.
That is what it looks like to stand firm in the faith. So be awake, be watchful, knowing that Jesus is on his way, knowing that evil is afoot in the world and in our lives, and knowing these things, stand firm in the faith. Now let's think about it. What does it take to do that? What do you need to stand firm?
In that moment, that moment, when a person or an organization or your own heart demands you do something Jesus would not have you do, To to maybe lie to make someone else look better or make yourself look better. When there's pressure and you're told to lie just using a preferred gender pronoun so that you don't offend someone else and make them feel weird or make yourself feel weird. Or when you're tempted to it's easier to just to to feign agreement with someone's stance as opposed to Christ because you'd you'd just rather not have to defend your faith right there and then. What do you need in those moments to stand firm? You need some guts.
You need some courage. You need some bravery to actually maintain that stance in the faith. And so that's what comes next in Paul's list for us. He says, act like a man and be strong. I pair those two together because they are often, almost always, paired together in the Old Testament, undoubtedly where Paul is borrowing this phrase from.
You see a lot in the Old Testament, often translated as have courage or play the man, and it's always combined with with being strong. Now that's the only time it's used in the New Testament, but it's used at some some very pivotal texts in the Old Testament where Paul's borrowing it from here. So we're gonna go take a brief look at those to help us understand what Paul is thinking when he inserted this phrase. One of the classic places we see it, very important text, Deuteronomy 31. Here's Moses, all the people of Israel.
He's led them right to the edge of the promised land. Now he's handing it over to Joshua. Joshua has to lead all of Israel into this foreign occupied land full of hostility and idols, and he's gonna have to have battle after battle. Moses says to him, be strong and courageous. That's our word.
Act like a man. Do not fear or be in dread of them, for it is the Lord your God who goes with you. Again, this is the phrase we're really familiar with, probably most of us, at the beginning of of Joshua. In in chapter one, you hear over and over again, be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened.
Joshua then charges Israel in chapter 10 with the same charge before they go and fight. This is what David says in first Corinthians nineteen thirteen to his son Solomon before he takes over the whole kingdom. And from these these uses, we can glean two things at least that Paul meant to bring into play here. One, the commandment always comes just before decisive action is needed. There's clarity on what needs to be done.
You know, Israel needs to go into the promised land or there's a battle coming or you're about to rule the kingdom. There's this massively challenging impending task ahead. You know what it is. And then that's when this command pops up. This is this is the stuff needed just before obedient steps are taken.
It's what causes you to stick yourself to a hard task and see it through to completion. That's why it's translated courage and paired with strength. And notice here, it's not a boastful kind of courage for its own sake. It's very utilitarian. It's for the sake of bringing about action.
This this manful, courageous, strong, brave determination is meant to be acted upon when the time is right. So that's one way it leads to action. But secondly, almost in every instance of the use of this word, God also gives a negative exhortation. Paul doesn't include it here, but it's in almost all the verses that he has referenced by using the term. God also says, he says, be courageous and strong.
Then he also goes and says, do not be afraid. This occurs with strong and courageous in first Chronicles twenty two thirteen and second Chronicles thirty two seventeen, all the passages we talked about in Joshua and in Deuteronomy 31. So why are they paired together? It's because they have opposite effects. While courage strengthens and leads to decisive action, the strongest forms of fear have a paralytic and inactive effect.
Courage causes you to charge. Fear causes you to cower. Courage empowers the limbs. Fear makes them numb and unusable. The word act like a man or courage leads to decisive obedience to the Lord, whereas fear leads to a complete paralysis.
The highest form of fear does not cause you to flee, but rather drops you straight to the ground in a submissive cowering posture with the the mindset, do whatever. Take whatever. I can't resist you. Just do whatever you want. That's what fear does, which, by the way, is why we are commanded to fear God and nothing else.
Dropping down like a dead man and submitting utterly and totally is the right posture before God. But he's the only one who that's the right posture before. He's the only one who deserves that face down cowering fear and submission. Not another person, not an organization, not a government, not a demon, and not an angel. The submission of fear is for God alone and for everything else, there's courage.
And so this second to last exhortation in Paul's warning is a call that the church have that manly quality, that sort of courage, that sort of strength that empowers us to act, to do something, to obey, to take that unmoving stand of faith. But there's one more. Lastly, Paul masterfully binds up and clarifies all these commands with a call to the greatest commandment. He says, let all that you do be done in love. Now notice the all encompassing nature here.
That's the point of let all that you be done. So this means that the watchfulness, the standing firm, the manful courage and strength, all of that needs to be done saturated in love. Of course, there should be no surprise here. Pastor Christopher's been teaching on a first John for a while, and and we've learned that loving others as Christ loved us is the way Christians conduct all of their lives. Right?
By now, we should know that love is not one of the many things we do, but but rather love is the characteristic throughout all things we do. That's that's John's message. And Paul is, of course, saying the same thing here. God tells us to do all things in love. But the exhortation comes at a particularly interesting time.
It catches you a little bit off guard. It comes after such stringent military type language. You know, just think of a person characterized by watchfulness, standing firm, and demonstrating a strong and a and a manly courage. You think about that person, loving might not be the first thing that springs to mind to describe that person. So how do we balance the military charge towards courage and standing boldly?
How do I balance that with love? Well, that is a trick question because there is no balance necessary at all. That's the point of let all that you do be done in love. Love isn't a balancing act. Never has been.
It never will be. All and whatever we are called to do as Christians, the subset of love. It is filed underneath the category of love if done rightly. And again, as we've been taught from first John, this love can look a variety of different ways in a variety of different situations. One day, I encourage a brother in Christ.
The next day, I'm calling out his sin. One day, I'm helping a coworker with a ride or in some other way. The next day, I'm taking a firm stance against that coworker's godless beliefs. Done rightly, all are equally done in love. Now the problem is that many of us likely have an idea of love that's tainted by the world.
We see love and disagreement, and then we put those into different categories. We see love in an unyielding, confident, courageous into different categories. We we see love and we think about it as yielding and submissive qualities, forgetting that it was also from love that Jesus overturned tables and drove out money changers, forgetting that it was also loving when Paul called out Peter and embarrassed him in front of the entire church for his hypocrisy. That's in Galatians two fourteen. We forget that God is love, and yet both in the old and new testament, God judges.
Ananias and Sapphira and also Achan falling down into the hole that God made under him because he stole the spoils of Jericho. So it's not that you act from love when you submit to someone, and then you act unlovingly when you refuse to submit to someone. It's not that you automatically are loving when you agree with someone and are unloving when you disagree with them. You may be very unloving in agreeing with someone if you're furthering their sin or simply doing so because you're afraid. All things are to be done from love.
That includes the helping and the hurting, the giving and the refusing to give, the submitting and the refusing to submit. Love does not mean compromise. Love doesn't mean weakness. Love means obeying God. And, yes, it is patient.
It is kind. It does not boast. It is not rude. It is not arrogant. It does not insist on its own way, but also it is watchful.
It is ready to stand firm and demonstrate a strong courage. So then in closing, here is all places love is the guiding ethic. That essence of God, that that character that leads Christ himself to boldly submit to God the father and die on the cross. That courageous love that hunts down its enemies to show them mercy. That perfect embodiment of action and trust, striving and submission that we see Christ live on the cross, that is the characteristic and and the motivation by which and through which we are called to do all things.
So there is Paul's warning to us. How do we heed it? How do we respond to this? Well, let's let's take that warning. Let's let's wake up if we need to.
If we're asleep, then we need to wake up. If we're maybe drifting asleep, maybe we need to rouse ourselves a bit. As Christians, we are not called to live on autopilot, not called to go lollygagging through life. We're called to be awake, watchful, aware, assessing the situation for spiritual threats to ourselves and to our families, to our church communities. We're called to be vigilant.
We may see Christ any day. We don't want to be caught neglecting our duty, and that happens. And we want to make this a pattern of our lives. Make it a pattern of your life to stay awake, to stay aware, to think on what is true, to not get distracted. And then having discerned threats or areas of importance in life, stand firm in the truth there.
Know what is true. And then live like it's true. We don't change our view for an individual, for a group, for an institution, for a government. That's not being polite. That's being uncourageous.
That's not listening to God. We need to be like Daniel, standing in the faith. The rules change. It doesn't mean anything to him. He's still gonna stand in the faith.
God is way up here. His faith is way up here. Everything else that happens is way down here. Does not affect the way he acts. He goes right up to that window, fully aware that he will be thrown to the lions for doing so.
He stood in the faith. And remember, truth doesn't need to be created. Truth doesn't need to be reinvented or adapted to a situation. It just needs to be stood on. That's all you need to do.
And there's resistance that comes from forces that do not want you standing on the truth. And so we end up needing courage to do this. We need to be strong and act like men. We need to see what needs to be done. And fear would make us limp or passive to the anti Christian pressures of this world, but we need to see what needs to be done and seeing it go and do it.
And then finally, let all these things and everything else you do be done in love. A love for God, a love for others, evidenced by an obedience to God, as we've heard from first John. A true love like God's that can both mend and tear, build up and break down, submit or resist. So let let Paul's warning to the Corinthian church be also a warning to us at King Street this morning. And by God's grace, let us live according to this truth and heed the warning.
Let me pray for us. Father, we need these things and we need to know that we need these things, and we need the ability to do these things. We need you, like we sang. I mean, we are just we are so dependent on you for all of this, not only for the knowledge of what is true, but also for the ability to make it happen. So Lord, we we submit ourselves to you, and and we want to have that that posture of fear before you saying do whatever and take and give.
You're in control. Help us to do that. That will lead us to love. That will lead us to being watchful. That will lead us to standing firm and being courageous.
So, father, we know what to do. Help us know better, and help us to do these things as a result of your holy spirit working within us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.
Caleb: Thank you for listening to this message from King's Tree Church in Sabina, Ohio. To see more of the beauty of God in the crucified and risen Jesus Christ, come worship with us on Sundays at 10AM or visit our website at kingstreechurch.org.