Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Opening Illustration: Thanksgiving & Black Friday

Few ideas are elusive to the modern Christian, as contentment.

We live in a society and in a time that has been designed to force discontentment on you.

Perhaps one of the most telling signs of a culture saturated in discontenment is that we have managed sandwich the holiday called Thanksgiving, a day when we are to look to God and just hold our hands out and thank him for his bounty in our lives.

We have sandwiched Thanksgiving between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, two days all about getting the best deals on produces and services that you don’t really need.

In fact as we head into Advent and into Christmas, all of the marketing will be aimed at developing in you a sense that you’re not really content.

But what would make you content is this product, or this service.

Christians, when we’re not intentional, can be suckered as much as the Pagan next door into a very discontented life, always desiring something we don’t have, always aspiring to circumstances different than what God has assigned.

Personal

If you will permit yourself to be honest, I suppose that you, like me, have areas of your life where you are not content.

What causes discontentment in you?

Are there unmet desires that seem to never quite go away?

Are there aspirations, things you want to achieve, that are always just around the coner?

When you envision your future, are there significant changes in your current circumstances that you hope if only those could be satisifed, then you might be able to rest, and just be content.

Context

Contentment is the theme that we wrestle through today.

Paul is continuing his primary theme from earlier the chapter.

If you recall, Paul has been writing about marriage, divorce, singleness, and sexuality.

One of the primary ideas of Paul’s argument from earlier in this chapter has been that we shouldn’t seek out to change our circumstances.

In other words, he has previously told the married—don’t try to change your circumstances and become divorced and think that is God’s design.

Likewise to the unmarried—Don’t think getting married is somehow more holy a calling or high a calling.

What the Apostle does in these few short verses is he strenghtens that idea by getting outside of the context of marriage to show that the principle is much more broadly a principle that applies to all areas of the Christian life.

Big Idea: Ground contentment in your calling, not you circumstances.

1 Corinthians 7:17-24 “17 Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.

This is my rule in all the churches.

18 Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised?

Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision.

Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised?

Let him not seek circumcision.

19 For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God.

20 Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.

21 Were you a bondservant when called?

Do not be concerned about it.

(But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity.)

22 For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord.

Likewise he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ.

23 You were bought with a price; do not become bondservants of men.

24 So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God.”

Move 1: The Rule—Lead the Life God Has Assigned You (17)

Paul begins with a rule of life for the Christian, a doctrine that ought to guide the heart and mind of every follower of Christ.

1 Corinthians 7:17 “17 Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him.

This is my rule in all the churches.”

Lead the Life

First, the phrase “lead the life” can be rendered “walk in this way.”

He is suggesting that all of life, everywhere you go, every activity you find yourself participating in, all of it will be blanketed through a single lens.

Walk in this way.

Lead your family in this way.

Buy the goods you need in this way.

Relate to others in this way.

Desire in this way.

Navigate hardships in this way.

Navigate your careers in this way.

Love your spouse in this way.

When he says “lead the life,” it is a reference to every part of our life, nothing is off limits.

The Lord Has Assigned

What is the way we are to lead our life?

It is according what God has assigned us?

Wherever you find yourself is where God has assigned you.

As we’ve alread seen, Paul is not saying that the Christian life is static and unchanging, frozen in time.

Paul is rooting this entire passage in the sovereignty of God.

We do not discuss and study God’s sovereignty quite to the degree we ought, and that is a failure of our day.

Perhaps we don’t relfect deeply enough on God’s sovereignty because it fights up against our modern sense of individualism.

But this verse teaches that God has assigned you your circumstances.

Your life is not an accident.

Paul’s point is that if you find yourself driven by a desire to change your circumstances, that drive may in fact be fighting against our sovereign God.

It is God you are discontent with not your circumstances.

In Which You were Called (8x)

In fact, Paul goes further by saying, “to which you have been called.”

That langauge of being “called” is repeated eight times in these seven verses.

What is a calling?

A calling is directive from God for how one ought to live in a certain sphere of their life.

One of the callings on my life is to preach the gospel.

Each of us have various callings on our life, but Paul uses the word here to connote your life’s circumstances—Wherever you find yourself, God put you there.

Part of a Christian’s attitude, whole perspective, is learning that we must let God be God.

One of the ways that we learn to let God be God and worship God as God, is by learning the art of contentment in all circumstances.

Paul’s First Example, Circumcision (18-20)

Out of that general rule, the Apostle then uses two examples to make his point, circumcision & slavery.

He begins with circumcision,

1 Corinthians 7:18-20 “18 Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised?

Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision.

Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised?

Let him not seek circumcision.

19 For neither circumcision counts for anything nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God.

20 Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called.”

Establish Circumcision and What It Meant

In our day, the cultural significance of circumcision is a bit lost, but in order to this passage we have to get into the mind of a person in the first century Church.

Circumcision of the men was a primary symbol of ethnic Judaism.

It separated Jews from non-Jews, Jews from Gentiles.

The word that is used in verse 18 for “uncircumcised” is actually historically a bit of a derogatory term used by Jews to describe non-Jews.

So for example David, when he fought against Goliath said,

1 Samuel 17:26 “26 ...who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?””

This identity marker would have elevated in their context because of the culture of bath houses and that sports and competition were typically done in the nude.

Which meant that, this wasn’t necessarily a private matter.

New person comes to the Church, within a few weeks, you’re going to know.

Do Not Seek Uncircumcision

He’s writing against discontentment.

He says, “If you were circumcised, let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision.”

This was actually something Jews who were trying to become unjewish would do, it was called epispasm.

It involved painfully hanging weights in order to stretch out skin.