Prove It!

Paul’s closing message to the Corinthians

Last week we looked at the fact that one day things will change in the twinkling of an eye. We looked at the danger of trying to determine when Jesus is coming back. We know for sure that we must be prepared for Jesus to come back at any time. To try to determine the exact date and time is futile since even Jesus tells the disciples that that is for the Father in heaven to know. We don’t need to know when He is coming back. We just need to know that He is coming back and that we have to be ready. Being ready and getting ready are two completely different things. We have to make sure that we are ready. We run into that issue at the Wood household regularly. Dania and I will be ready to go, but others will still be putting their shoes on or grabbing something before they are ready to head out. It happens.

One time, I thought I was ready to go. Dania was out of town, this was when we lived in Newport News. It was a Sunday and I had the kids loaded up in the mini van. Lucy was about three or four years old at the time. We get to the church in time, Reagan and Mary roll out of the van and start heading into the church. I go to get Lucy out of her seat, look down, and see that she has no shoes on. I know I had put shoes on her before we left the house. Yet, in the time that I was taking to get everyone else ready and loaded up, she managed to get her shoes off, leave them in the house, and get herself in the car. I asked her “what happened to your shoes?” “I didn’t want to wear them.” I text Dania to tell her about the hilarity and her response is that I can just take her into the nursery and the ladies would understand it. I was too proud for that because I didn’t want the sweet old church ladies to say “Oh you know those dads”.

Jesus is coming back. We don’t know when, but we know it is going to happen. Today we are going to look at Paul’s final commands to the Corinthians before he closes the letter out. After this, we are going to move onto Galatians and see what Paul had to say to them. However, for the next two weeks Jim Collie is going to be filling the pulpit. So you’ll get to see him for the next two Sundays.

Today, though, we are going to wrap up First Corinthians. If you have your Bibles, please turn them to 1 Corinthians 16

1 Corinthians 16 CSB

Now about the collection for the saints: Do the same as I instructed the Galatian churches. On the first day of the week, each of you is to set something aside and save in keeping with how he is prospering, so that no collections will need to be made when I come. When I arrive, I will send with letters those you recommend to carry your gift to Jerusalem. If it is suitable for me to go as well, they will travel with me. I will come to you after I pass through Macedonia—for I will be traveling through Macedonia—and perhaps I will remain with you or even spend the winter, so that you may send me on my way wherever I go. I don’t want to see you now just in passing, since I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord allows. But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, because a wide door for effective ministry has opened for me—yet many oppose me. If Timothy comes, see that he has nothing to fear while with you, because he is doing the Lord’s work, just as I am. So let no one look down on him. Send him on his way in peace so that he can come to me, because I am expecting him with the brothers. Now about our brother Apollos: I strongly urged him to come to you with the brothers, but he was not at all willing to come now. However, he will come when he has an opportunity. Be alert, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong. Do everything in love. Brothers and sisters, you know the household of Stephanas: They are the firstfruits of Achaia and have devoted themselves to serving the saints. I urge you also to submit to such people, and to everyone who works and labors with them. I am delighted to have Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus present, because these men have made up for your absence. For they have refreshed my spirit and yours. Therefore recognize such people. The churches of Asia send you greetings. Aquila and Priscilla send you greetings warmly in the Lord, along with the church that meets in their home. All the brothers and sisters send you greetings. Greet one another with a holy kiss. This greeting is in my own hand—Paul. If anyone does not love the Lord, a curse be on him. Our Lord, come! The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you. My love be with all of you in Christ Jesus.

On the first glance, this probably looks like we are going to talk about the controversial subject of money. We are not going to do that so much today, but I did want to touch on what Paul is talking about here. We can infer that Paul is answering a question brought up in their last letter to him about funding and collection. From what we can see here, the church in Galatia takes up a weekly collection. They are taking this collection up to take back to Jerusalem. It is a question about what to do with the funding of the saints. However, if we look at the Greek, we would see that it is probably better translated as “God’s people” rather than the saints. The funds were collected to support the Christians in Jerusalem. Believe it or not, there were big differences between the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem and the Christians from the surrounding Mediterranean nations. There was a little bit of a bias between the two. There were cultural differences between the two. From what we can tell, Paul is using this charity as a way to kind of bridge the divide between the very law abiding Jewish Christians and the Hellenistic Christians that had no idea of the Law before becoming Christian. This support for the Jewish Christians is not contained to the church in Corinth, other churches are doing it as well. On top of that, some of them will be selected to go an take that collection to Jerusalem. So this has less to do with keeping the operation at Corinth going, and more to do with keeping the overall operation going.

We Support

I mentioned earlier, we don’t talk about money much at the church services and for one good reason, you all are very generous in your giving. I get regular correspondence from the BGAV, the North American Mission Board, and the International Mission Board sending thanks for your generosity in supporting missions throughout the nation, the rest of the world, and Virginia. It costs money to make these things happen and you all graciously give to make that happen. Even Jesus’s earthly ministry required some funding. We read that Mary Magdalene and some other women funded Jesus during His ministry in Luke 8: 1-3

Luke 8:1–3 CSB

Afterward he was traveling from one town and village to another, preaching and telling the good news of the kingdom of God. The Twelve were with him, and also some women who had been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses: Mary, called Magdalene (seven demons had come out of her); Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod’s steward; Susanna; and many others who were supporting them from their possessions.

So we see there that even God incarnate used funding to conduct His ministry and it was funded by His followers. We are in the process of doing some big renovations throughout the church and all of them come at a cost. That is why we established a new building fund to help start raising funding for those various projects. It is great to have a building to meet at and dream about expanding. I dream of the day when we have activities over here throughout the week and we have a large place for the kids to play at on our Bible study nights. We will get there if The LORD wills. God is in control and if that is what He wants, He will get us there. James 1:17

James 1:17 CSB

Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.

We all agree that everything we have has come from God, right? Sure, we may be the ones that did the physical labor, but who made it so that we could do that labor? Who worked it out so that we could have the jobs we have? We all know the answer to that, it’s God. Everything we have was given to us by Him. If that’s the case, some might think that it is silly to give back to God something that already belongs to Him. It seems redundant to give it back to God when He gave it to us. This is a broad, general statement, I know it’s not true for folks in this room. However, I do think that God delights when we give back to Him what He has given to us.

It reminds me of a little four year old boy that sees his father working with a hammer. That dad must really love that hammer because he is always using it to make stuff. Well, it’s coming around to Father’s day and the boy doesn’t have any money to give anything to his dad. So he takes this hammer, wraps it up, and gives it to the dad on Father’s Day. And how does the father react? He is thankful to his son. It was his property already, but he gives appreciation to his child for giving it back to him. That’s how I have to believe God sees it when we give His stuff back to Him. He puts it this way in Malachi 3:10

Malachi 3:10 CSB

Bring the full tenth into the storehouse so that there may be food in my house. Test me in this way,” says the Lord of Armies. “See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure.

So God promises a blessing to those that give. Unfortunately, today there are some people that will use that Scripture to fleece people. There’s a video of a pastor going around where they lock the doors to the church until they raise a certain level of money. That’s problematic, right? We should give because we want to give, not because we are being forced to.

So that is all we are going to say about giving. You guys are awesome and are appreciated by so many that receive your support. The gospel is being presented throughout the world right now because you have funded that. There is a person in China learning about Jesus because of funding that was sent from this place. That’s awesome! So give yourselves a pat on the back for all of the good things you are helping to happen around the world!

After giving his travel plans. From our vantage, we might think that there is some significance to the travel timeline that he is on. However, it is all based on the weather in the Mediterranean. I have been sailing through the Mediterranean in December and let me tell you, the seas get rough. I would not have wanted to be on a wooden boat in December at all. I am telling you, the swells were so bad that we had to strap ourselves into our racks, at one point the water was so high that our bridge went under water and knocked a life ring off. It was awesome! But scary. Now, that was on a big gray floaty thing that I was on.

When he gets done giving his travel itinerary, Paul then gives them practical guidance. Be alert, stand firm in the faith, act like a man, be strong. Your every action must be done with love.

Christian? Act Like It!

These people are all Christians and they are expected to act like it. We that are here claim to belong to Jesus and we must too act like it. Just like James says we have to be hearers and doers of the word. We can’t just say something and do the other. It does not work like that. They are going to come up against some problems, but they have to make sure that they are doing these things out of love and nothing else. To navigate through some of the hard times they are about to hit, they are going to have to do it out of love. That will be love for God and love for their fellow man.

The fact is there has to be some kind of action in the life of a believer. We have to be willing to stand up to injustices and not fall into the nasty things of this world. This last week we had our last Bible study of the school year. We finished up the book of Judges by going through chapters 19-21. There are some pretty terrible things going on in those chapters. This group of people that were delivered to the promised land by the LORD God Almighty, that had been freed from the oppressive Pharaoh, have had an utter and terrible descent into anarchy and moral decay. In chapter 19, we read about the sexual sin of the tribe of Benjamin. We read about a Levite that does not care about maintaining his standard as a Levite. When his concubine is abused on his way home and subsequently dies at the hand of her abusers, the Levite dismembers the woman and sends pieces to the 12 tribes of Judah. All the tribes except for Benjamin gather at Mizpah and they ask “How could this happen?”

They were disgusted by it, they were perplexed by it, and they decide to take up arms against the tribe of Benjamin because of what they have allowed to happen in their land. It seems crazy. Here’s the thing. They did not get there overnight. That descent into their moral depravity happened over a gradual period. There was a consistent step to get to the point where a woman could be brutalized by a group of Israelites, left for dead, and her husband to look at her body draped across the front of the door to the point where he just says “Get up, let’s go” and when he gets no response, he just throws her on the back of his donkey. That depravity didn’t happen overnight. It happened slowly over time. It’s like the frog in the tea pot. If you put the frog into hot water, it immediately jumps out because it’s hot and he knows it’s not good. However, if you put him in cool water and then slowly bring up the heat to a boil, he doesn’t notice the change until it is too late.

We see the same kind of things happening out here. People, people that call themselves Christians, have desensitized themselves to sin. Sin is everywhere. The point was made on Thursday night that we wonder how in the world these people got to this state, but we are no better off than they are. In fact, we might be worse off. There are all kinds of terrible atrocities that are being committed in the world. Yet not enough is being done about it. Why? I would dare say because we have become so desensitized to sin that some folks don’t even recognize it anymore. I think the same thing is happening today. I am old enough to remember when married couples were presented as having separate beds on television. Nowadays adultery is treated like something to be joked about on family friendly comedies. It didn’t happen overnight, just like it didn’t happen overnight in Israel. Judges 21:25

Judges 21:25 CSB

In those days there was no king in Israel; everyone did whatever seemed right to him.

That’s how they got there. They just did whatever they want. They relaxed the standards so much that there was an eventual breakdown and their behavior no longer resembled a holy and set apart people, but instead resembled the pagan nations around them. So when we see all of the atrocities in the world and wonder how can this have happened, we know exactly how this happened. It happened little by little, bit by bit.

So the question we have to ask ourselves is if when people look at us, do they see a holy and set apart person or someone of the world. That’s a tough question and it really can only be answered by God and ourselves. Do we go with what God wants regardless of what the world wants or do we kowtow and do what the world wants? Are we willing to stand up against the vile and nasty things we see in this world or are we going to indulge in them ourselves.

When we look at the time of exile, it is not the people that went along with their Babylonian captors that are remembered. Instead, it is the Israelites that chose to defy the kingdom and follow God first. Daniel is one such example. We have discussed the various things that he did to maintain his integrity and follow God’s commands. God delivered every time Daniel stood up for the LORD.

Don’t get me wrong, Daniel was a very productive member of society. He was trusted and was appointed as one of three administrators over the 120 satraps that the king had appointed. Daniel worked diligently and was blessed. He was not defiant. I assure you that if he had been defiant and not worked diligently, things would have been very different for him. Daniel 6:3-4

Daniel 6:3–4 CSB

Daniel distinguished himself above the administrators and satraps because he had an extraordinary spirit, so the king planned to set him over the whole realm. The administrators and satraps, therefore, kept trying to find a charge against Daniel regarding the kingdom. But they could find no charge or corruption, for he was trustworthy, and no negligence or corruption was found in him.

He was walking worthy. There was no corruption found in Daniel. They couldn’t find a charge to get him on. Do you know the only charge they could get him on was praying. The kind had set up an edict saying that no one was able to petition another person or any god for a thirty day period. Daniel did not adhere to this rule. He kept his regular prayer time and that is the one thing that these satraps and other administrators can get him on. They catch him praying and report it to the king. The king doesn’t want to do anything with it because he likes Daniel, but he’s given his word, so he has to do something. He orders that Daniel be thrown into the lion’s den. Daniel 6: 20-22

Daniel 6:20–22 CSB

When he reached the den, he cried out in anguish to Daniel. “Daniel, servant of the living God,” the king said, “has your God, whom you continually serve, been able to rescue you from the lions?” Then Daniel spoke with the king: “May the king live forever. My God sent his angel and shut the lions’ mouths; and they haven’t harmed me, for I was found innocent before him. And also before you, Your Majesty, I have not done harm.”

Daniel did what was right and he was spared from the lions in the den. Are we as Christians willing to step up and do the right thing even when others are not? That’s what Paul is getting at here. It is up to them to act like they truly believe in Jesus. They have to act like they are really Christians. If we are Christians, we should act like we are. This has been a problem for a long time. We have always been at odds with the world and the territories around us. Deuteronomy 31:6

Deuteronomy 31:6 CSB

Be strong and courageous; don’t be terrified or afraid of them. For the Lord your God is the one who will go with you; he will not leave you or abandon you.”