Thrive: Growing In God

Me

I wonder if any of you are like me...love/hate with deployment.

What I LOVE about deployment

Love contributing to the mission, knowing that I’m making a difference

Love the routines of deployment. I go to work, eat, work out, sleep, do it all again the next day.

Love that meals and lodging are FREE, and that I have a never ending supply of coffee!!!

LOVE meeting new people

What I DON’T Like about deployment

Takes time to know my role in the mission.

I like consistency and structure! I was raised in the military! I joined for a reason.

Routines, my CHECKLISTS, my work schedules, the people I’m working with.

Texts to Haywood on the way to Ali Al Salem

I DON’T Like the first two stages of the four stages of group development: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing

I don’t want that sort of emotional or mental expenditure of time for forming or storming!

Personally, I miss my family

Funny: My wife is a beautiful woman and I MISS her…UNDERSTAND…I really, really, miss her.

Every disagreement feels bigger because of the distance.

I miss being able to watch a ballgame live, and at a normal hour!

What I really don’t like, is how early deployment can affect me spiritually

In the past I’ve worshipped less because it just didn’t “feel like home.”

Always a temptation to read the Bible a little less

To pray less

And then guilt sets in

What I ultimately don’t like about deployment...

Is that I don’t feel grounded, solid, STRONG!

At least in early stages, I feel sort of weak. Maybe a little wobbly.

I wonder if YOU can identify with that at all.

Your issues may not be just like mine, but I wonder if maybe you’ve felt the effects of being at lest a little off your game.

You don’t exactly have a battle rhythm yet.

And you’re actually sick of hearing phrases like “battle rhythm” nearly 24/7.

Some of you are active, trying to work with Guard and Reserve.

Some of you are Guard and Reserve trying to work with these active jerkfaces!

You have the roommates, no privacy.

Maybe you wonder where God is when you aren’t feeling so strong.

Good news! In today’s lesson, Paul describes a time when he felt that way, too!

Scripture

1 Corinthians 2:1–5 ESV

And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling, and my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God.

Context

Context: Paul is writing to the Corinthian Church in about AD 55…20 years after Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection and ascension.

Paul planted the church in Corinth and Acts 18 describes the difficulty of the experience

Acts 18:6–9 ESV

And when they opposed and reviled him, he shook out his garments and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.” And he left there and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God. His house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized. And the Lord said to Paul one night in a vision, “Do not be afraid, but go on speaking and do not be silent,

Paul and the other apostles were a lot like us

They were constantly going to new places to do new things, and they had to deal with far more hostile conditions than most of us are currently experiencing.

List of all the issues Paul deals with in 1 Corinthians...

Rival leaders, Incest, Divorce and remarriage, Christians suing Christians, Idolatry, Chaos in worship, Inequality in the church, Denial of the bodily resurrection of Jesus

There’s a lot that isn’t good here.

And YET!

Paul opens the letter, “To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those SANCTIFIED in Jesus Christ...

SANCTIFIED…present tense...

How can Paul be so firm in the face of such moral lapse?

These aren’t saints in the way we tend to think of them!

Good, moral, wholesome people who have repented of their sin and decided to live in the newness of life in Christ

Nope…In fact, many of them are living in a way that is more debased than the culture around them.

Which is a fourth century priest, John Chrysostom, put it this way:

John Chrysostom - But what is Sanctification? [Paul] reminds the Corinthians of their own uncleanness, from which [Jesus] had freed them; and so persuades them to lowliness of mind; for not by their own good deeds, but by the loving-kindness of God, had they been sanctified.

If Paul, John Chrysostom, and the church are going to make such bold claims, the authority has to be greater than internal morality. Has to be more than good deeds...

Paul grounds that authority in Christ’s crucifixion

1 Corinthians 2:2 ESV

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Jesus Christ and him crucified…That doesn’t sound very authoritative

I spent the better part of 30 years saying that the foundation of my faith wasn’t the crucifixion

“I WORSHIP A JESUS WHO ROSE FROM THE DEAD!”

Guess I thought I was smarter than Paul who chose to know nothing BUT the crucifixion.

What I realize now is that my understanding of the cross was all wrong

I tended to identify the cross as defeat!

The cross of Christ is VICTORY

The cross is not what our sin DID to Jesus

The cross is what Jesus CHOSE to OVERCOME our sin

For those of us who celebrate, in a few weeks Lent begins

Holy week seminary story…"I put him on the cross!”

Professor Mike Pasquarello...”You do not have the authority to tell your Heavenly Father or Jesus what to do. They do it, and you receive what they choose to do for you.”

In addition: It wasn’t AFTER Jesus died that he was victorious. He was victorious ON THE CROSS.

What is that victory?

Something I noticed for the first time a while back about the two criminals who were crucified with Jesus...

Luke 23:32 ESV

Two others, who were criminals, were led away to be put to death with him.

Matthew 27:44 adds an important detail about the criminals, or robbers

Matthew 27:44 ESV

And the robbers who were crucified with him also reviled him in the same way.

Two criminals are crucified with Jesus

Two criminals revile, or curse Jesus

But one of them eventually changes, doesn’t he?

Luke 23:34 ESV

And Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” And they cast lots to divide his garments.

Question: In that moment of forgiveness, is Jesus winning or losing? Victory or defeat?

THAT very forgiveness is victory because even a cross could not kill the love and forgiveness of God

And then in verses 39-43…we see the response...

Luke 23:39–43 ESV

One of the criminals who were hanged railed at him, saying, “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we are receiving the due reward of our deeds; but this man has done nothing wrong.” And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Jesus’s greatest accomplishment on the cross, in my opinion, isn’t His death.

It’s that He continued to love, and to forgive even in his greatest moments of agony.

Jesus won because he could still forgive and love the very people responsible for his death!

The cross is the POWER of God’s forgiveness for the criminal.

The cross is the POWER of Paul’s ministry when he feels fearful, and he’s trembling

The cross is where salvation was accomplished, and sanctification was declared.

So, when Paul goes to Corinth and preaches forgiveness, it is a fact. Not a maybe.

When Paul calls that sinful Corinthian church sanctified, it is fact.

He’s calling them BACK to an established identity, not calling them to establish the identity for themselves.

Christ’s forgiveness. Christ’s sanctification. Christ’s call.

Why this way rather than waiting for you?

Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

When Paul was fearful and trembling, he kept preaching the cross and it led people to repentance.

When those people fell away, he went back to the cross because he knew it was the love and forgiveness they had forgottewn

They fell in love with themselves again, rather than loving and forgiving others

It is this same cross that is YOUR strength when you are in a foreign country, in a foreign environment...

The victory of the cross is where Jesus overcomes whatever difficulty you may have in deployment

Difficult transition in the workplace

A harsh word toward your spouse, your friends, your family

The victory of the cross reminds you that when you stumble, that the declaration of forgiveness and your sanctification are still fact.

Not because you are so good. Because God is so good.

So, church, take the power of the cross with you this week.

Remember Jesus’ power to love and forgive in every circumstances.

Take it to the workplace

To your phone calls home

Allow that some love, forgiveness, and strength to mark this day, your week, this deployment, and for all eternity.

You ARE loved. You ARE forgiven. You ARE a saint of the most high God.

Not a maybe

Not because your feelings, your actions, or your preferences say its so.

It’s because God declares it through the victory of the cross, and God’s promises are eternal.

Amen