Introduction:
Cell #1— I Corinthians 4 is on page 872 of the Bible in your pew.
1. There are stories in history that really catch our attention, but sometimes they are more than interesting, they make important points that can also teach us significant lessons. There’s a story of two paddleboats that left Memphis about the same time, travelling down the Mississippi River to New Orleans. As they travelled side by side, sailors from one vessel made a few remarks about the snail’s pace of the other. Words were exchanged. Challenges were made. And the race began. Competition became vicious as the two boats roared through the Deep South. One boat began falling behind. Not enough fuel. There had been plenty of coal for the trip, but not enough for a race. As the boat dropped back, an enterprising young sailor took some of the ship's cargo and tossed it into the ovens. When the sailors saw that the supplies burned as well as the coal, they fuelled their boat with the material they had been assigned to transport. They ended up winning the race, but they arrived in New Orleans without the cargo they were hired to transport.
2. The Corinthians are a lot like the crew of the ship that burned it’s cargo. They got distracted by what really didn’t matter and ignored what really counted. It’s very easy to make the same mistake ourselves, to get really focused on things that don’t count while at the same time ignoring the things that do.
3. Let’s read 1 Corinthians 4 together.
1 So look at Apollos & me as mere servants of Christ who have been put in charge of ex-plaining God’s mysteries.
2 Now, a person who is put in charge as a manager must be faithful.
3 As for me, it matters very little how I might be evaluated by you or by any human au-thority. I don’t even trust my own judgment on this point.
4 My conscience is clear, but that doesn’t prove I’m right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me & decide.
5 So don’t make judgments about anyone ahead of time—before the Lord returns. For he will bring our darkest secrets to light & will reveal our private motives. Then God will give to each one whatever praise is due.
6 Dear brothers & sisters, I have used Apollos & myself to illustrate what I’ve been saying. If you pay attention to what I have quoted from the Scriptures, you won’t be proud of one of your leaders at the expense of another.
7 For what gives you the right to make such a judgment? What do you have that God hasn’t given you? And if everything you have is from God, why boast as though it were not a gift?
8 You think you already have everything you need. You think you are already rich. You have begun to reign in God’s kingdom without us! I wish you really were reigning al-ready, for then we would be reigning with you.
9 Instead, I sometimes think God has put us apostles on display, like prisoners of war at the end of a victor’s parade, condemned to die. We have become a spectacle to the entire world—to people & angels alike.
10 Our dedication to Christ makes us look like fools, but you claim to be so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are so powerful! You are honored, but we are ridiculed.
11 Even now we go hungry & thirsty, & we don’t have enough clothes to keep warm. We are often beaten & have no home.
12 We work wearily with our own hands to earn our living. We bless those who curse us. We are patient with those who abuse us.
13 We appeal gently when evil things are said about us. Yet we are treated like the world’s garbage, like everybody’s trash—right up to the present moment.
14 I’m not writing these things to shame you, but to warn you as my beloved children.
15 For even if you had 10,000 others to teach you about Christ, you have only one spir-itual father. For I became your father in Christ Jesus when I preached the Good News to you.
16 So I urge you to imitate me.
17 That’s why I have sent Timothy, my beloved & faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you of how I follow Christ Jesus, just as I teach in all the churches wherever I go.
18 Some of you have become arrogant, thinking I will not visit you again.
19 But I will come—& soon—if the Lord lets me, & then I’ll find out whether these arrogant people just give pretentious speeches or whether they really have God’s power.
20 For the Kingdom of God is not just a lot of talk; it is living by God’s power.
21 Which do you choose? Should I come with a rod to punish you, or should I come with love & a gentle spirit?
4. Let’s pray and then we’ll begin our study.
Prayer
Cell #2—
I. We All Ultimately ANSWER TO GOD 4:1-5
1. Ministers are servants of the church family & the community, but even more fundamental they are servants of Christ. The word “servant” in verse 1 describes the rowers in the bottom of a ship that moved the ship. The rowers followed the directions of the owner to move the ship forward.
2. You will notice in verse 2 that Paul talks about a manager taking charge. The number one responsibility of the manager is to be faithful to his boss. A manager may not please everyone; he may not even please his co-workers; but if he pleases his boss and looks out for his interest he is a good manager. So, the main issue wasn’t whether Paul was popular. The question wasn’t whether Apollos was a better preacher than Paul? The main issue was whether Paul was the person God intended him to be.
Cell #3—
“We are the person others think we are and the person we think we are; but ultimately we are the person God Knows We Are.” (3)
3. In the most profound sense, it was irrelevant whether Paul’s ministry was condemned or applauded by others since he wasn’t commissioned by hu-mans. Paul was convinced that God’s assessment alone was what really counted. Paul didn’t get upset when others criticized him; he knew that God’s judgment was what really mattered.
4. For Paul, the judgment he awaited was not from others, but from God on the day when he would answer to Him. Paul believed God would settle things properly. One pastor suggested that there were two reasons and these make sense for us to understand today.
1) First only God knows all the circumstances. He knows the struggles a man has; he knows our secrets; he knows what a person may have sunk to or the heights someone may climb to.
2) Only God knows all the motives. Sometimes that that look really good are done for really selfish reasons & sometimes things which appear bad aren’t. God alone knows what’s going on & has the right to judge. I couldn’t help but think of the situation going on in Ferguson. A lot of people have been rioting & destroying property without knowing all the facts. There are a lot of facts to still come out. People on both sides of what’s gone on need to step back because they don’t know all the facts. We need to understand that we don’t know all the facts either when it comes to judging. Paul says we ultimately answer to God. Here’s the point…
Cell #4—
Our rewards will ultimately come From God not from Someone Else. (4-5)
6. There is no point in human history when all the evidence will be available. There was no time in the ministries of Paul & Apollos when all the hidden things were known. As the prophet Jeremiah had pointed out centuries ear-lier, no one is capable of knowing the depths of the human heart. The apostle Paul agreed & said that the motives of others, including himself and Apollos, will never be fully known until they are examined in the pure light of God’s glory.
7. The more you know the Bible & the more you know Christian history the more you become aware that the work of God is borne along by millions of obscure & forgotten Christians that serve the Lord. The centuries will herald Billy Graham & canonize Mother Teresa, but they never know about untold millions of believers who quietly serve God. But God won’t forget. He knows what a vital part those of us who are unknown play in carrying out His purposes.
8. Clarence Jordan was a man of unusual abilities & commitment. He had two Ph.D.s; one in agriculture & another in Bible languages. He was so gifted he could have chosen to do anything he wanted. He chose to serve the poor. In the 1940s, he founded a farm in Americus, Georgia, & called it Koinonia Farm. It was a community for poor whites & blacks. As you might guess, the idea didn’t go over well in the Deep South of the 1940s. The town people tried everything to stop Clarence. They tried boycotting him, & slashing the workers’ tires when they came to town. Over & over, for 14 years, they tried to stop him. Finally, in 1954, the Ku Klux Klan decided to get rid of him once & for all. They came one night with guns & torches & set fire to every building on Koinonia Farm but Clarence’s home, which they riddled with bullets. They chased off all the families but one black family that refused to leave. Clarence recognized the voices of the Klansmen, some of who were church people. One Klansman was a local newspaper reporter. The next day, the reporter came out to see what remained of the farm. The rubble was smoldering, but he found Clarence in the field, hoeing & planting. “I heard the awful news,” he said to Clarence, “& I came out to do a story on the tragedy of your farm closing.” Clarence just kept on hoeing & planting. The reporter kept poking trying to get this quietly determined man to get angry. Instead of packing, Clarence was planting. Finally, the reporter said in a haughty voice, “Well, Dr. Jordan, you got two of them Ph.D.s & you’ve put 14 years into this farm, & there’s nothing left of it at all. Just how successful do you think you’ve been?” Clarence stopped, turned toward the reporter & said quietly but firmly, “About as successful as the cross. Sir, I don’t think you understand us. What we are about is not success but faithfulness. We’re staying. Good day.” Beginning that day, Clarence & his companions rebuilt Koinonia & the farm is still going strong to this day. (Tim Hansel, Holy Sweat, p. 188-189)
TS— And that brings us to the second point of this morning’s sermon…
Cell #5—
II. We All Ultimately SERVE THE LORD 4:6-13
1. Each group in Corinth was tearing down the other in order to build up their side. Their motives weren’t spiritual. They were promoting division in the church by being partisan and selfish.
2. Because they were at odds with one another Paul used their divided loyalties to illustrate their divisions. The groups weren’t to boast about the preachers they were following because each preacher was simply a servant who suffered for the same message of salvation in Jesus Christ. They were proud and judgmental & it wasn’t a good thing. I think the great Christian leader C S Lewis got it right when he said.
Cell #6—
A proud person is always looking down on things and people; but as long as you’re looking down, you aren’t Looking Up. (6-7, Adapted from C. S. Lewis)
3. When we get so caught up in our sides and in getting our way, we aren’t looking up to God, we are merely looking down on others and that never works out well. The NLT translates the opening phrase of verse 7 this way, “For what gives you the right to make such a judgment?” They were acting like they were better than those with whom they disagreed. Paul said, “What do you have that God hasn’t given you?” Here is kind of the point. A young pastor once said to a friend, “Please pray that I will stay humble.” His friend replied, “What do you have to be proud about?” Spiritually speaking, every good thing we have is from God and we will ultimately answer to Him and everyone else will answer to Him as well.
4. The famous theologian Gordon Fee put it this way “…the English equivalent to such rhetoric would be, who in the world do you think you are anyway, what kind of self-delusion is it that allows you to put yourself in a position to judge another person’s servant?” (Gordon Fee)
5. Look at verse 8. They thought they had all they wanted, but they were wrong. They thought of themselves as kings in need of nothing when in fact they were as needy as the foolish king in story of The Emperor’s New Clothes, who foolishly paraded naked before his subjects.
6. While some Corinthian believers lived like they were kings, the apostles had been passed up for such honor. How odd that the apostles, who had been called to share the gospel around the world, weren’t reigning as kings but were instead prisoners . . . condemned to die . . . a spectacle. For almost all of the apostles, that was in fact what happened. James, the son of Zebedee, was the first to be martyred in Acts 12:2. According to tradition, Peter was crucified upside down. John was exiled. Paul was put to death by Nero, & Andrew was crucified in Achaia, near Corinth. While these immature Christians thought they were on top of the world, their spiritual leaders were facing a life of suffering for the sake of the gospel.
7. Paul compared their pride, their self-satisfaction, their feeling of superiority with the life that an apostle. He chose a vivid picture. When a Roman gen-eral won a great victory he was allowed to parade his victorious army through the streets of the city with all the trophies he had captured; the procession was called a Triumph. But at the end there came a little group of captives who were doomed to death; they were being taken to the arena to fight with the beasts & so die. The Corinthians in their blatant pride were like the conquering general displaying the trophies of his prowess; the apostles were like the little group of captives doomed to die.
8. Although the Corinthians were wise in their own eyes, they were spiritually foolish. The way to be spiritually wise is to be sold out to God. I love the words of missionary martyr Jim Elliot: “He is no fool who gives what he can-not keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
9. In verse 12 Paul described how he responded to the abuse people heaped upon him. Paul was blessed those who cursed him. The apostles were pa-tient with those who abused them. By God’s grace they didn’t retaliate. Paul sought to respond in love. How could he respond the way he did?
Cell #7—
“What life does to us depends primarily on what is already Inside of Us.” (9-12, Unknown)
10. That was why these godly men could respond the way they did. They had the power of God inside of them. The other Christians in Corinth wanted the honor that comes from being godly, without actually being godly. But these men were the real thing. The world saw them as no more than garbage because they didn’t meet the world’s standards of success. Most believers today want lives of comfort but few of us are serious enough about God to become spiritually mature. It wasn’t a cost the Corinthians were willing to pay and many Christians today aren’t either. But that brings us to the final point this morning.
Cell #8—
III. We All Ultimately RELY ON GOD 4:14-21
1. If we’re going to be the kind of people God wants us to be it’s only going to happen as we rely upon Him. We’ll look more at that in a minute, but let’s first look at how Paul begins this section.
2. Paul was challenging them but he was doing it out of love. Paul’s purpose in writing this sharp challenge wasn’t primarily simply to shame the Corinthians but to get them to consider what needed go change. His goal was to bring about a change of heart. Because he loved them so much he wanted them to make the progress they needed to make.
3. Paul acknowledged that the Corinthians had others who were interested in their spiritual growth, but Paul’s interest was a bit different. Paul emphati-cally emphasized that he alone had the right to be seen as their father in the faith. Paul’s claim was based on the fact that he brought the message of salvation to them originally.
4. Paul wants them to follow his example in verse 16. The word imitate is lit-erally "mimics." He wasn’t exalting himself. Little children learn first and foremost by their parent’s example. Then Paul says an amazing thing. In effect he says, “I call upon my children to take after their father.” It is so seldom that a father can say that. For the most part it is too often true that a father's hope & prayer is that a son will turn out to be all that he has never succeeded in being.
Cell #9—
We are to be the people God wants us to be to such an extent that we can say with Paul, Follow My Example. (16)
5. It takes both example & instruction to bring a child to maturity. Paul sent Timothy to remind the church of things he had taught them. The contrast in this paragraph is between speech & power, words & deeds. The arrogant Corinthians had no problem "talking big," the way children often do; but they didn’t back up their talk with their "walk." Their religion was primarily words. Paul was prepared to back up his "talk" with power by what he did.
6. Being a big talker is one thing, but living by God's power is quite another. Some people talk a lot about faith, but that's all it is—talk. They know all the right words, but their lives don't reflect God's power. Paul says that the Kingdom of God isn’t just fancy talk, it’s to be lived. There is a big difference between knowing the right words & living them out.
Cell #10—
Our commitment to God isn’t demonstrated by us Talking About God it’s demon-strated by us Living for God and that’s done with God’s Power. (19-20)
7. A faithful parent must discipline their children. It isn’t enough to teach them & be an example for them; we must also correct them when they don’t obey. Paul preferred to come with meekness & deal gently with their sin, but their attitude made this difficult. They were puffed up—& proud of their disobedience!
8. The God of Scripture is clearly presented as a God who is slow to anger & who abounds in steadfast love. Nevertheless, the Bible never presents him as a permissive parent with undisciplined children. Paul was aware of the importance of corporal punishment for disobedient children. He was, spirit-ually speaking, threatening the disobedient Corinthians with a spanking if they don’t accept his parental authority over them in the Lord.
9. On the other hand, if they do respond to Paul’s instructions & acknowledge Paul’s authority, then he can come to them with a gentle spirit. It is note-worthy that this section ends in two questions. Paul puts the choice before the Corinthians & allows them to participate in what kind of response Paul will need to have when he gets to Corinth.
Conclusion:
1. The overall problem Paul dealt with in this section of his letter to the Corinthians we the problem of thinking they had their act much more together than they did. It’s only when we realize how messed up we can be that we learn to admit our mistakes and learn from them.
2. Allow me to conclude with a story. Skip looked at the group of suspicious stockholders & wondered what he could do to convince them to follow him. He was 35, but looked 13 & was 3rd generation rich. He could tell they thought he would be a disastrous leader. He decided to tell them the following story. His first job was drawing electrical engineering plans for a boat building company. The drawings had to be perfect because if the wires weren’t properly run before the fiberglass form was poured, it could cost the company a million dollars. At 25, Skip already had two master’s degrees & he had been on boats his entire life. He thought drawing boat plans a bit beneath him. Very early one morning he got a call at home from a minimum wage worker asking him if he was sure the plans were right! He was furious & cursed the man out. He told him to pour the fiberglass. An hour later the worker’s supervisor woke him up again asking if he was sure the drawings were right. He was even less patient with the supervisor. It wasn’t until a 3rd call came from the company president that he got out of bed & down to the site. He knew his drawings were good and really thought everyone questioning his work was an idiot. He found the minimum wage worker looking at the plans with his head cocked to one side. He began to explain… & then he realized what was wrong. Skip, being left handed, had switched the starboard & port sides of the boat. In other words, right was left & left was right. He got humble real quick. The next day Skip found on his desk a pair of tennis shoes in a box for future reference. Just in case he got mixed up again the company gave him a red left shoe for the port side & a green right shoe for starboard side. Skip told the stockholders that those shoes are a treasured possession, they don’t just help him to remember port and starboard, they help him remember that he needs to listen even when he thinks he’s right. As he held the shoebox up with one red shoe and one green shoe the stockholders relaxed. If the young man had learned to deal with his arrogance, he would probably do fine running the company too.
3. Sometimes the biggest step in dealing with a problem is simply acknowledging that we sometimes get it wrong, that we may need to reconsider what we are doing and go a different direction. That was true for the Corinthians & it’s true for Christians today. Sometimes the first step to getting where God wants us to go is acknowledging that we’re currently headed in the wrong direction. If that describes you this morning, then it’s time to admit to God you’re wrong and commit to going His direction. Would you do that this morning? Let’s pray!
1 Warren Wiersbe, Be Wise: 1 Corinthians, (Colorado Springs, CO: Cook Communications) 2001.
2 John Walvoord, Roy Zuck, The Bible Knowledge Commentary: 1 Corinthians, (Colorado Springs, CO: Chariot Victor) 1983.
3 Jack Cottrell, Tony Ash, Richard Oster Jr., The College Press NIV Commentary: 1 Corinthians, (Joplin, MO: College Press) 1995.
4 William Baker, Ralph Martin, Carl Toney, Philip Comfort, The Cornerstone Commentary: 1 Corinthians, (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale) 2009.
5 Frank Gaebelein, The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: 1 Corinthians, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan) 1981.
6 Bruce Barton, Greg Asimakoupoulos, Jonathan Farrar, Linda Taylor, Dave Veerman, Neil Wilson, Life Application Bible Commentary: 1 Corinthians, (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale) 1999.
7 William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible: 1 Corinthians, (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster) 1975.
8 Ed Sasnett, Fools for Christ, (Norman, OK: Baptist, Sermon Central) 2009.
9 Jerry Shirley, I Only Work on Sundays, (Decatur, IL: Baptist, Sermon Central) 2009.
10 Chris Appleby, Weakness or Power, (Surrey Hills, Australia, Anglican, Sermon Central) 2003.
