Sermon Tone Analysis

Please remain standing with me in honor of God's word.

I've let a man so consider us as Servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God moreover.

It is required in stewards.

That one be found faithful.

But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by a human Court.

In fact, I do not even judge myself for I know of nothing against myself yet.

I am not justified by this but he who judges me is the Lord there for judge nothing before the time until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness and reveal the council's of the heart.

Then each one's praise will come from God. Amen, thank you.

Lord.

Be blessed by the reading and hearing of his word this morning.

Please be seated.

Our title today is praise comes from God. Praise comes from God and we will be in the passage.

That was just read 1st Corinthians 4. Let's begin with prayer.

Father it is a blessing.

To be together with the body of Christ.

Father we come to your precious holy word and we recognize that your word is the food that nourishes our spiritual lives.

And sometimes we come here after a week of trial a week of difficulty and we need the fuel the energy that your word is going to give us.

We need the encouragement of the body of Christ.

We need one another And I pray that the day your word would go forth with power, but it would not be my thoughts are my opinions, but that it would be your Holy Spirit communicating a truth of your word to your people.

May you speak through me with passion boldness and Clarity today in Jesus precious name.

Amen.

There is a principle that has played out in history countless times.

Here is the principle those who praise you today may see if your deaf tomorrow are worn face that right one day Jesus rides into Jerusalem Rosanna blessed.

Is he who comes in the name of the Lord hosanna in the highest right and not very long later those same people are shouting crucify him crucify him.

In the French Revolution, there were many of the committee members who sat on this committee and condemn thousands to death by the guillotine Guillotine.

Sorry only to later be condemned themselves.

As Believers in Christ a choice lies before us.

Will we live for the temporary Praise of men or the Eternal Praise of God and chapter 4 section of the book and since it has been quite a while since we were in 1st Corinthians, I want to remind us of a few things in your bulletin.

You have an inserted that is our a outline of the book of 1st Corinthians that we are going to be using.

Call is riding Judas Church in Corinth because they have a need for Unity.

And so we have titled our kind of examination of this book unity in the local church has Paul exhorts them to pursue unit easy deals with Doctrine.

He deals with what we believe and then he deals with our practice in the behavior that is driven by our beliefs.

Chapters 1 through 6 deal with the doctrine and practice necessary for Unity and then chapter 7 to 16 confront and correct.

The disunity that is present in the Corinthian Church and so far in our study that has started a see it started in about May or June of last year and we have made it all the way through three hole and fire chapters.

I know that is shocking because we're moving so swiftly through this book, but Will be okay.

Alright.

Okay, that's a little bit sarcastic there I go.

I take it very slow my as as you are aware.

Alright voice chapter 3 and 4 deal with the necessity of a unified vocation and weave in chapter 3. We look at the nature of our calling and now in chapter 4 we come to what we titled the nucleus of concentration and what that means.

Is that polish dealing in this chapter with what should be the central focus of the Christian Life.

How do we want to behave as Servants of Christ?

That's what Paul is kind of dealing with here in chapter 4 and we mentioned at the beginning that this is a corrective letter.

This is a letter of Correction and its tone of Correction.

You're going to see it increased in chapter 4 and then he's going to be hitting them full force as we go into the later portions of the book chapter 3 ends with Paul's declaration that we belong to Christ.

And so because we belong to Christ, what does that mean?

Right as possessions of Jesus Christ were called to live for his glory when we stand before the Judgment seat of Christ.

Every believer will receive praise from God In this passage.

Paul calls us to three responsibilities for which we will receive praise and so for blessing in this life and praise in the life to come we need to fulfill three responsibilities responsibilities number one.

Praise for the faithful Steward praise for the faithful Steward.

That's what we're going to see here in verses 1 and 2. Have you ever been entrusted with something precious?

Children, I believe or one of the most precious things we can ever be given.

And so here is a picture of each one of our children after they were born.

We have Joseph at the top and then Abby Lizzie and Andrew said that she was however, if you were a parent you will know with me that being a parent does not automatically make you great at it.

Just having children doesn't automatically make you a wonderful parent.

It is a process of making mistakes and learning from them and the other day Jess and I were laughing about a mistake married very early on in pregnancy.

See Joseph had just been born and we went to the store for the first time and we got out of the car and we started walking to the to the store and we took a couple of steps and realized we had forgotten something very important.

Joseph was still in the car.

We hadn't had to take someone else with us before right now.

It only took a couple steps.

Time we turned around and we got them and everything was fine.

We have been entrusted by God as Christians with something precious and were called to be faithful stewards of that responsibility until if we're going to be faithful stewards of our responsibility.

There are two keys to doing that number one to be a faithful Steward.

You must first become a steward.

Does that make sense?

I'm ready with me.

If you want to be a faithful Steward.

You have to first become a Stewart.

1st Corinthians chapter 4 verse 1 little man.

So consider us as Servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

You cannot be a faithful Steward until you have first become a steward to be a steward one entrusted with the mysteries of God.

We must be trustworthy.

How do we become trustworthy?

How do we demonstrate that?

We're worthy of that trust.

We do it through service for Christ Paul list in this verse two separate things.

He said this is how people should know us as Servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God call list this as primary we want to be known as Servants of Christ and this is really fascinating to me that Paul would say that he let people consider us who sings this is how we want to be known.

A servant of Christ Paul does not want to be known as an apostle.

He does not want to be known as the church planter or the missionary or the elder or the pastor.

He says this is how I want to be known as the servant of Christ.

When people think of us passes the first thing they should think is that that person serves Jesus.

But that begs the question, what does it mean to be a servant of Christ the word translated servant here is a very fascinating word because it was you it's referencing wood called under rollers and what that meant was in Roman times you had a ship that was road with orbs and those servants would sit in the bottom of the ship and they would hold a row they were hold and or right for the ship and they would all rode together.

Now the thing about being an hour is you have no idea where the ship is going.

You have no control over where it is headed.

The only responsibility you have is this Keep running.

If you ever seen the movie Ben-Hur as some great scenes of rowing that has the word that Paul is using when he says this is how I want to be considered a man under rower.

I'm the guy in the bottom of the boat pulling on the or okay.

See if you are a under rower you row as the master directs.

In order to be a servant you have to have a master who is our Master Paul just told us he says we are Servants of Christ preaching on the Mars Hill.

He mentioned that it is in Christ that we live and move and have our being See we belong to Jesus.

We have been purchased by the blood of Christ.

We are his and if we are to be good servants, we must meet three requirements.

If you are going to be a good servant, there's three things that you need to do.

First a servant must obey.

A servant must obey we can't realistically claim to be Servants of Jesus Christ if we don't obey him.

Look at what Jesus said in John 14 verse 15.

He said if you love me keep my Commandments.

If you love me keep my Commandments, what is this mean obedience is required of a servant if you're going to be a good under rower you need to row as your master the captain of the ship tells you to Rome.

Obedience does not mean that it's always going to be easy last week on Valentine's Day.

We saw that God commanded us to love our enemies and do good to them.

That's not easy scripture tells us to consider others better than ourselves were called to avoid the appearance of evil to flee sexual immorality to shine as lights in a world of Darkness to resist the devil and many more thing.