God is Faithful

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1 Corinthians 1:1–9 NIV

1 Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes, 2 To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours: 3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. 4 I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5 For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge—6 God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. 7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8 He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

On this Thanksgiving weekend I want to draw our attention to what we call the Thanksgiving section of 1 Corinthians. Most of Paul’s letters have a thanksgiving section and when read carefully they tell us a lot about what to expect in the letter itself.

I thought it appropriate to listen to what Paul thanks God for as he writes to this rather problematic congregation in Corinth. And as we hear Paul’s thanksgiving we too can thank God for how we experience his grace given us in our congregation today.

And here’s where I want to begin. I want to begin by observing Paul’s ...

1. God-centered focus.

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Going right back to v.1, Paul’s own identity is firstly and most importantly rooted in God’s calling. “Paul, called to be an apostle of Jesus Christ.”

Imagine if all of us thought of ourselves in the same way. Sarah, called to be an elementary school teacher of Jesus Christ. Steven, called to be a construction worker of the Lord Jesus. Peter, or Mary, called to be a painter, a banker, a therapist....a mother, a father,....you get my sense.... of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Paul roots his calling and identity in God and reminds the Corinthian church to they too are those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people.... so, there, a God-centered focus....

And this God-centered focus continues, doesn’t it?

“I thank God for you”…why? because of....

his grace given you in Christ

for how he has enriched you in every way

for the spiritual gifts you have received in abundance

for God’s preserving grace that will keep them firm

and for the fellowship they have with God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

This God-centered focus that we observe brings us to a first lesson that we can infer from our text.

The fundamental identity of who we are as persons, should always be found in our relationship to God. OR stated another way, our central identity is found in our relationship with God.

Think about the messages that we hear everyday and in all kinds of different ways:

advertisers want us to think of our life in relation to the things we have....

beer commercials want us to think of our life in relation to good looking friends and exciting parties

clothing and cosmetic companies want us to think about our lives in relation to our appearance and our beauty

social media companies want us to think about our lives in relation to how many friends or followers we have.

and many parts of our society want us to think about our lives in relation to our careers or how well to do we are.

Now, that’s not to say these parts of our lives are not important. But in our text, and throughout the Bible generally, we are called back to first principles....what matters most, and how we ought to think about the fullness of our lives, is that we BELONG TO GOD....our central identity is found in our relationship with God.

So, that’s the first thing we notice about our passage; “Paul’s God-centered focus”

The second thing we notice is how Paul thanks the Lord for:

2. God’s generous provision.

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He thanks the Lord for “his grace given in Christ Jesus”.... he is thankful for how the Corinthians have been enriched by God in every way...

Now when Paul is writing the Corinthian church, undoubtedly he has specific things in mind when he thinks of this grace and this enrichment.....we’ll see that in a moment.... But on this Thanksgiving weekend, we do well to pause and consider our own thankfulness for God’s grace and enrichment.

I want to take us out of this text specifically for a moment and share with you something that I was struck by this week. It was something I read in a large book that I’m making my way through called, “Biblical Critical Theory: How the Bible’s Unfolding Story Makes Sense of Modern Life and Culture.” You might think with a title like that this would be a rather dull book....but actually quite the opposite. I’m only 100 pages into it, over 600 total, but in one of the early chapters the author talks about the Bible’s account of creation found in Gen. 1. Now I’ve read that chapter hundreds of times and so have you, but he shared something that for me was not new, but freshly presented.

Gen. 1 starts with the phrase, “in the beginning God”.....what the Bible does is something that is utterly unique. The Bible says that before anything existed, there was God. It presents God as being completely distinct and separate from the created world. He in no way is dependent on the material world, he in no way is bound to the material world, in fact he is its Source....whereas the Cosmos had a beginning....God always was, and is and will be. God as Creator is distinct from creation.

Why is this important? Well, there are a number of reasons why but in the book that I just mentioned the author, Christopher Watkins, mentions one that caught my attention. He writes we live in a gratuitous universe. What he means by that is this: the universe is not necessary, God did not have to create it, he did not create it to satisfy something that was incomplete in him…he does not need the universe in order to fulfill himself in some way. And that means neither the universe NOR US are necessary.

Listen to what Watkins says....” “It is through grace that a Christian is born again, but it is also through grace that the universe is born in the first place.” Watkins (BCT, p. 60)

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Now you might say, Andrew, that’s not that fresh....well let me expand..... in ancient philosophy, like in the writings of Aristotle and others, God is presented as first cause or Unmoved mover. And the argument, very simply, goes like this....our world exists, something that exists cannot come out of nothing, so there must be God or First Cause. In that way of thinking God is NECESSARY. He’s necessary because we have this world, and it had to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is God.

But the Bible says there is something even more fundamental about God. And I like how one writer gets at this; he says, “the core of the doctrine of creation is not the fact that the world came into existence, but that it did not need to.” (BCT, Terry Eagleton, p. 60) Everything about God’s creative work is pure gift!

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Our most basic posture of living in relation to God is that of “Praise and Thanksgiving”. That’s the opposite of most all the world’s religions. In many of them we are in a battering relationship with god or the gods.... we sacrifice something that the god wants and then we hope to get some benefit from them. It’s a kind of trading relationship. I give you give...... and you know what, it’s not really all that different than how many people live their lives even in our secular culture. We’re taught that we are producers and consumers. We produce in order to consume....we work in order to get.... take away any idea of a god, or of the supernatural..... I give, I get.... the more I sacrifice, the harder I work, the more I can consumer, the fancier the clothes I can buy..... you don’t need to have any sense of god or gods..... perhaps for that person its THE MARKET that you offer yourself to..... that broad, ambiguous umbrella term..... if the MARKET is happy, then your life will be better.... there is no need for the basic posture of “praise and thanksgiving”

But it’s altogether different when we recognize all the graces God has given us....and all the ways in which he has enriched our lives. When we appreciate that the very act of creating did NOT need to take place but only came about because of God’s self-giving love, his abundant generosity and his gracious hospitality....then our lives will have the most basic posture of “praise and thanksgiving”..... the air that I breath, the home that I live in, the care of a friend, the sweetness of a strawberry, the beauty of a waterfall, the melody of a song bird, etc.etc.....

Paul writes.....and now we are coming back from that tangent that I mentioned.... “I thank God for every grace we have been given and for how God has enriched us in every way....”

And so today with Paul we thank God for his generous provision.... as we are reminded of how so much in our lives is at its most basic level PURE GIFT.

That brings us to a third part of Paul’s thanksgiving for the Corinthian church....he gives thanks for:

3. God’s generous supply of spiritual equipment

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Here’s what we mean by that....now Paul is getting at some of the things he is going to be addressing in the letter more specifically…some of them we’ve already encountered.

We already know that many of the new believers in Corinth came out of a background that idolized wisdom.... remember their fascination with cleverly crafted rhetoric as a sign of spiritual maturity? Paul reminds them that through the Holy Spirit they have already been enriched with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge....he’ll write more about that in chapters 12-14....he goes on to say you do not lack any spiritual gift! God has graciously given you the Corinthian church all the spiritual equipment that it needs in order to live out its calling until the Lord Jesus Christ returns....

Let me try to make this as practical as possible....

First we must notice that the “YOU” in this passage are all the plural you, not the singular you.....that’s important...... In Chapter 12 Paul will use the analogy of a human body to describe the church....just like that human body has all kinds of different parts that must work together and that support each other....so it is with you the church..... God has given this body a generous supply of spiritual equipment....so that together we can live out our callings until the Lord returns or calls us home.

example of Florence Vegt asking for prayer....

many times in the life of a Christian....I can’t do this alone....you never have to....God has given you a generously supplied family who will walk with you no matter what....

we need to remind ourselves of this especially in a culture that praises radical individualism...

we need each other for guidance.....for financial support..... for encouragement.....for prayer....

maybe your a very new Christian..... God brings you into a family that can mentor, teach, encourage, model....

And so in this way Paul reminds us to give THANKS to God for His generous supply of spiritual equipment.

The final thing that we read Paul giving thanks for is what I’m going to call:

4. God’s glorious guarantee

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Now, we don’t find the language of “guarantee” explicitly in our text, but I’m drawing our attention to the phrase, “God will keep you firm”. The original word in the Greek is a legal technical term for guaranteeing something or for furnishing security. (BAGD).

God is with you, God is for you, God is upholding you to the very end. As we trust him, as we commit to him, we can be certain that God carries us to the finish line.

This promise to keep us firm to the end is a tremendous assurance of the Christian faith. When a person has been adopted into the family of God....when God declares them to be one of his children…he also declares that he will keep them to the very end. Paul says, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord....

On the basis of what Jesus has done for us, removing our sin from us as far as the east is from the west, and declaring us holy and righteous, we are blameless in the sight of God.

Listen to what Paul writes in Romans 8: 33-34

Romans 8:33–34 NIV

33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.

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[Remember this as we gather around the Lord’s Table together this morning.]

“Our hope is rooted in the fact that we serve a God more relentless than even our own sin; a God who is patient and kind and who flat out will not let us go.  So through it all, through the horrible Corinthian mess and through far less dramatic messes in places like our various congregations, the love of God keeps getting sent out, keeps getting received.” (Hozee, Scott) https://cepreaching.org/commentary/2017-11-27/1-corinthians-13-9/)

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This is the glorious guarantee for God for us.

God-centered focus.

God’s generous provision.

God’s generous supply of spiritual equipment.

God’s glorious guarantee....

[Invite congregation to think of something they can begin this week that will help them express a life of praise and thanksgiving]