Happy New Year, church.
I'm so glad to be here.
Be back in the pulpit and I'm glad to see most of you back.
There's many people sick today.
And we all gave each other gifts of sickness over the Christmas
season.
Who here knows somebody that's sick right now?
Yeah, all over the room.
So yeah, we definitely want to pray for everybody.
If you're a Bibleist, the first Corinthians chapter 3
is where we're going to be today.
And we're going to have a great time together.
I love the music we sing.
God has done great things.
And He is doing great things.
And He will hold us fast.
And I'm so grateful for that.
First Corinthians chapter number 3,
I received something that you may have received in the mail
yesterday.
And it was an invitation to the gym.
Anybody else get something like that in the mail
or have you been advertised about the gym?
OK, they just sent it to unhealthy, chubby people
apparently.
I got one.
And don't worry, I didn't give in.
I didn't go join, although I'm kind of thinking about it.
Maybe going public with a sermon that I might need to do that
would be a good thing for me.
I don't know.
But this time of year is a good time for Jim to advertise
because full confession, who ate too much over the Christmas
season?
Who ate too much?
OK, who ate too much from Thanksgiving till now?
OK, who plans on eating too much in the future?
OK.
Yeah, it's confession time.
The busyness is so amazing this time of year,
the busyness of the Christmas season.
I think December 1st through December 25th for me
is the busiest four weeks of the year.
There's just so much that goes on.
And then it comes to a screeching halt for a couple weeks.
We went down to see my family.
It seemed slower, but it was still kind of busy, wasn't it,
babe?
But we had a good time with our family.
And this time of year, I'm always thinking,
it's the contrasting of all of the busyness and maybe
all the eating and all of the fun and the festivities that
happened at the beginning during the holiday season
to then the fresh slate of a new calendar and a new year
and the time that you've got to kind of think about,
what am I doing with my life?
Where am I going?
What are my habits?
What are my goals?
How do I feel physically?
How do I feel spiritually, emotionally, mentally?
These are good things to think about.
Someone once said the unexamined life is not worth living.
And I think it's a good thing for us to take stock
and to take a stewardship, take thought of our stewardship
of all the things that we have.
You know, none of us own anything.
None of us own anything.
Everything that we have is God's.
And He's given it to us.
By the way, there are no U-Hauls connected to herces.
You can't take it with you, right?
You can't send it ahead.
That's another sermon, but you can't take it with you.
And in today's sermon, and I thought this was just
in the Lord's timing of everything,
pretty amazing about how the preaching count,
I'm not this smart, okay?
I'll just be honest with you.
I'm not that smart to make this happen.
But we ended the last portion that we talked about
the week before Family Day, which is the week before
Thanksgiving, and since then we've done other things
in the preaching calendar.
We have been walking through first Corinthians,
and we're gonna continue to do that.
It's gonna take us a long time.
But you guys plan on coming, right?
And I plan on being here.
So let's just study the Bible, right?
It's easier than me making stuff up.
You don't wanna hear what I have going on up here, okay?
But in our text for today, Paul says,
moreover, it's required in stewards that a man be found
faithful.
He says before that, but a man so account of us
as of the ministers of Christ and stewards
of the mysteries of God.
And so Paul is talking here about stewardship,
and he's pointing to a stewardship that's greater
than a stewardship of our mere bodies,
greater than a stewardship of our stuff, of our money,
of our relationships even.
He says when it comes to leaders, and I would say
when it comes to people who are Christ followers,
that you and I have a stewardship,
and in the stewardship he's talking about here,
he literally calls stewards of the mysteries of God.
You see that in verse one?
Stewards of the mysteries of God.
Now in the Bible, when the Bible talks about a mystery,
especially in the New Testament,
it's not talking about a mystery like Shaggy and Scooby
and those pesky teenagers, okay?
You guys know what I'm talking about?
He's not talking about the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew
or Perry Mason, okay?
He's talking, those are some old school references.
Did you guys like that?
That's just what came to mind.
I didn't write any of that down.
I'm getting older, okay.
He's talking about a mystery in this way,
something that was previously not revealed
that's now being revealed, okay?
Something that was previously unrevealed or hinted at,
but is now being revealed.
And the thing that Paul is saying
that he is a steward of the mysteries of is this,
that he has been given this thing called the gospel,
that Jesus Christ died on the cross,
he was buried and he rose again from the dead.
This is something that was pointed to in the Old Testament
by things like the sacrificial system,
by prophecies like saying Isaiah,
where he says that for his stripes,
we would be healed,
that there would be the suffering servant that would come.
Yeah, the government would be on his shoulder,
but he would also be put to death
and make his grave with the wicked
and with the rich in his death,
but then he would see his seed,
he would prolong his days and the Lord would make that to happen,
the zeal of the Lord to perform this.
That was all things that we're talking about this Jesus
that was coming,
and now that had actually happened in real history,
Christ had been risen and resurrected,
and because of that, the whole world needs to know
what's now being revealed,
that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God,
that he died on the cross and he rose from the dead,
so that all of us could be saved,
who's as thankful for that?
And we have a stewardship of that message.
And if you were to go back through the last couple of chapters
of Corinthians,
Paul calls this the wisdom of God.
The wisdom of God, he puts into two words,
and it's this,
do you guys remember what the two words are?
Dude, this section right here,
somebody in there was paying attention,
because that was back in November,
you were on it,
it's Christ crucified,
what's the wisdom of God?
Christ crucified.
Christ crucified, he says,
in fact, go with me in your Bibles,
I'll just catch you up and remember
what he was talking about.
Back in 1 Corinthians chapter one,
verse 18, he says,
for the preaching of the cross is to them that perish,
what?
Foolishness,
but unto us which are saved,
it is the power of God.
For it is written,
I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,
I will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent,
where is the wise,
where is the scribe,
where is the disputer of this world?
hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
There's a way of thinking that says,
for you to make it,
you gotta pull yourself up by your bootstraps.
For you to make it out of this,
for you to make it into whatever happens after this life,
you gotta live right,
you gotta do right,
you gotta work right.
Every religion says,
do a bunch of good works,
and if you do a bunch of good works,
however they define those good works,
one day you'll make it to a good place, right?
That's kind of the thing.
What he's saying is,
it's not that at all.
You're not good.
I'm not good.
Someone had to pay for us
and Christ was slaughtered on the cross,
and his righteousness was put to our account,
so that we can be made right with God, right?
So it's not about what we do,
it's about what he did,
it's already done.
Now to a lot of people who say,
so your hope is in a Jewish carpenter
that lived 2,000 years ago
that was martyred by the Romans.
Yes!
And if it sounds stupid, oh well,
I'll be a fool for Jesus,
because he died for us.
So that's the foolishness of God
that he's talking about.
What seems foolish to the world
is actually the wisdom of God.
What's the wisdom of God?
It's Christ crucified.
But Paul has this problem with the Corinthians, right?
And there's a lot of problems.
In fact, today I was talking to Ms. Jeannie,
we were looking for,
she's got a friend that's looking for a church,
and we were looking up churches in this particular area,
and there was this church
that was titled Corinthian Baptist Church.
And I was like, man,
have they read those books?
Have they read those books?
That's a messed up church.
Maybe they were just saying, yeah, we're messed up too.
That's what our name's gonna be, messed up church.
If you guys want to be the pastor
in the name of the church of Corinthian Baptist Church,
I'll be like, I'll be your pastor,
but we gotta change the name, okay?
Because this church is a messed up church,
as you're gonna see even more.
They were fighting, there was division in this church.
And so Paul's talking about the wisdom of God
and it's in and around this whole conversation
that he's having about the division
that was going on in this church.
And he says that in chapter one, verse 10,
where he says,
I beseech you, brethren, by the name of the Lord Jesus Christ,
that you all speak the same thing,
and that there be no divisions among you,
but that you be perfectly joined together
in the same mind and in the same judgment,
for it has been declared unto me of you, my brethren,
by them which are the house of Chloe,
that there are contentions among you.
Now this I say that every one of you sayeth,
there's a bunch of fighting going on among you,
and this is the fighting, and this is what it's around.
How do you guys remember what I'm talking about?
This is the fighting, some of you are saying,
I'm of Paul, I'm on team Paul, he's the best.
And we don't like you guys who are of team Apollos.
And the Apollos people are like, Paul, yeah, he's great,
but Apollos, he's the man, and you guys are dumb, right?
There's like this contention, this division over these people.
He says, some of you are saying, I'm of Paul,
I'm of Apollos, I'm of Cephas,
and then there's an ultra spiritual, I'm of Christ.
And then he asks this question, is Christ divided?
Was Paul crucified for you?
Were you baptized in the name of Paul?
He says basically no.
For Christ sent me verse 17, not to baptize,
but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words,
or not with man's wisdom,
lest the cross of Christ should be made in effect.
I'm gonna use God's wisdom, that's what he's saying.
So this is a divided church,
and he, in these first couple of chapters,
as we get into chapter three into today's text,
he's saying, you guys are divided, you're acting,
even though you've bought into the gospel,
even though you've accepted Christ as your savior,
even though you are in Christ, you are acting like
immature children fighting over who your leaders are.
If you want my proof on that, go to chapter three.
I'm skipping a lot, but we already preached all this.
Check out the podcast, go to chapter three, verse one.
And I, brethren, he says, verse one,
could not speak unto you as unto spiritual,
but as unto carnal, even as unto babes in Christ.
I have fed you with milk and not with meat.
For hitherto you were not able to bear it,
neither now are you able, what's he saying?
I wanna give you grown up things,
but I can't give you grown up things to help you grow
because you're still acting like babies.
I wanna give you a T-bone, but you gotta be on formula.
I wanna give you meat and taters,
but you're still on mama's milk
because you're not acting like adults.
Well, what's the evidence of that?
But why are you saying we're immature?
Verse three, for you are yet carnal,
for whereas there is among you envying and strife
and divisions, are you not carnal and walk as men?
For one saith, I'm of Paul, and another I'm of Apollos.
Are you not yet carnal?
Who then is Paul?
Who is Apollos, but ministers by whom you believed,
even as the Lord gave to every man?
And then he says this, I have planted Apollos watered,
but God gave the increase.
What is he saying?
Any leader that you have that helps you
is a leader that's been given to you by God.
And anything that leader does that helps you,
it's helping you because God empowers them to do it.
And anything that is true to that leader saying
is truth that belongs to God and not exclusively
to that leader.
What he tries to say in the rest of chapter three is,
we owe everything to God.
God's the one that does everything, not man.
God uses leaders to steward what he gives them
to make a difference in people's lives.
Does that make sense?
That's what he's saying.
And so you're not better than me,
and I'm not better than you.
You are not more loved by God than I am,
and I'm not more loved by God than you are.
God loved the whole world so much
that he gave his only begotten son.
That's the issue.
And so he's talking about these leaders.
And he talks about them like a harvest.
We're just catching us up from where we've been.
He's been talking about the church like a harvest.
How is the church grown?
He says, I've planted, Apollo says water,
but God gives the increase.
He then talks about the church like a building, right?
If you look down to verse 10,
according to the grace of God,
which is given unto me as a wise master builder,
I have laid the foundation and another buildeth thereon,
but let every man take heed how he buildeth thereon.
And then he talks about his God's temple, verse down 16.
Know that you're the temple of God
and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you.
Who's excited about the fact
that the spirit of God lives in us, right?
So this is all of God.
It's God's spirit, it's God's work.
God inhabits them and how they live matters.
And God will hold them accountable to that.
So he's dealing here with their arguing
and their division over these human leaders
as evidence of their immaturity.
He tells them that all of this is really God,
that God's wisdom is important,
that Christ crucified is what has made a difference
in their lives.
Paul and Apollos are nothing but ministers of God.
And this is the context in which he gives today
what we're gonna look at is three behaviors
about how we should relate to
and think through God's wisdom through leaders in the church.
That's kind of where he's talking about.
And I think there's, here's kind of what I wanna talk
to you about today.
Just like leaders in the church, teachers, Sunday school
leaders, deacons, elders, pastors,
those of us who have those leadership positions,
we have a stewardship but you have a stewardship too.
Okay, point to who has a stewardship.
That's all of us, right.
And so we all have a stewardship of the things
that God's given us, the ministries that God's given us,
the spiritual gifts that God's given us,
the opportunities that God has given to us.
And so how should we act according to that?
How do we act with leaders in our life
in a way that conforms to God's wisdom
in dealing with this?
So here's what we have.
We should relate to leaders through the filter
of God's wisdom with these three behaviors.
I think this will get clear as we move forward.
First, number one, we judge leaders,
we judge leaders according to God's wisdom.
Not our own wisdom, God's wisdom.
Are you with me?
Okay, let's look at verse 18.
Let no man deceive himself.
If any man among you seem it to be wise in this world,
let him become a fool that he may be wise.
Now, you may wonder why did you go
from chapter 18 in Pichatech that goes all the way
to chapter four, verse five?
I wanna show you three things.
Number verse 18, let no man deceive himself.
You see that?
Then you have verse number four,
verse number four, let a man so account of us.
Let me get back to my notes here.
In verse 18, let no man, then verse 21,
therefore let no man glory in men.
Verse 18, let no man deceive himself.
Verse 21, let no man glory in men.
Verse chapter four, verse one, let a man so account of us.
So two times he says, don't do it this way,
rather do it this way.
You see that?
Let no man, verse 18, deceive himself.
Verse 21, therefore let no man glory in men.
Chapter four, verse one, let a man so account of us.
So these are three commands, two negative, one positive.
When we get to chapter four, he says,
let no man deceive himself.
Don't be deceived about how you think about human leaders.
Human leaders don't need to be thought of
as possessing some unique capacity
or some wisdom in and of themselves.
If the leader's doing what God wants,
then he's saying and doing what God has given him to say,
using the gifts and abilities that God has given him to do.
He says, don't be deceived.
If anyone, you think that you're wise in the world,
let him become a fool that he may be wise.
Their wisdom, if it's of the world, is really foolishness.
Their foolishness is the foolishness of God.
If that's really wisdom.
And then Paul goes on in verse 19 to quote,
he does two quotes here, you see this?
Verse 19, for the wisdom of the world
is foolishness with God, for it is written,
he taketh the wise in their own craftiness.
This is from Job 513.
He's saying he taketh the wise in their own craftiness,
meaning this, God knows how man thinks.
God knows what you're thinking right now.
God can see the mind and God can see the heart.
And so when he says he's taking the wise
in their own craftiness, here's what he's saying.
God's not stumped by any of us.
God's word and God's will is not thwarted by any man.
God's wisdom is what saves, not man's.
God is gonna be the one that builds this church, not man.
That's what it's saying.
He goes on in verse 20, and again,
the Lord knoweth the thoughts of the wise,
that they are vain.
God knows what we think, and he's ultimately the judge of it.
And those who are esteemed in our culture,
as the wisest among us, have dumb thoughts.
They don't always think right.
Compared to the wisdom of God, they're vain, they're empty.
The point of this text is this,
we should discern leaders in our lives
according to God's wisdom and not man's wisdom.
We should see them in light of God's perspective.
We should love them.
We should care for them.
We should be thankful for them,
but we should not venerate them as we do God himself.
We should understand their own capacity for sin and error.
Listen, when I preach, hold me accountable
to what God's word says.
If it's my opinion, I'm gonna try to tell you
it's my opinion.
If it does say it the Lord, I wanna say that.
Does that make sense?
I am accountable to him.
We are speaking God's word and God's wisdom
with God's name enabling,
and if that's happening, then we should listen.
We should be, how many of you guys have heard this term?
We should be Berean in our evaluation of teachers
in the church.
How many of you guys have heard someone say
you should be like the Bereans?
Do you know where that comes from?
Look in Acts chapter 17, it'll be on the screen.
Acts 17, 10 through 12.
This is what it says.
And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas
by night unto Berea, who coming thither
went into the synagogue of the Jews.
They were more noble than those in Thessalonica.
Well, why were they noble?
In that they received the word with alreadiness of mind,
here it is, and searched the scriptures.
What is it?
Daily, whether those things were so.
I love that.
These people would listen to the preaching
and teaching of God's word, and they would receive it,
but then they would back it up.
They would go read the scriptures,
and how often did it say daily?
Hey, listen, as we start the new year,
I want you to know this.
I personally, as a teacher, are Sunday school teachers,
are Sunday night preachers, Myles and Corey,
and those who give the scripture,
we feed you when you show up, but it ain't enough food for you.
You need to be in God's word every day, every day.
If you try to eat once a week,
it's not gonna go well for you.
You need to eat every, every day.
So he says, they searched the scripture daily,
whether those things were so, verse 12,
therefore many of them believed also of honorable women,
which were Greeks and of the men, not a few.
What a testimony, right?
They heard from Paul, but they saw,
but they saw if what he said matched God's wisdom,
and it transformed them.
So here's the first point.
We judge leaders according to God's wisdom.
We judge us according to God's wisdom,
but let's make it personal to us.
We should judge ourselves according to what?
God's wisdom, God's wisdom.
Remember that the passage today started with this phrase,
let no man deceive themselves.
Let no man deceive themselves.
You know who you're most prone to believe lies from?
You.
You guys are like, what?
I'm lying to me?
Yes.
Sometimes you tell yourself stuff that's not true.
Sometimes the hardest things to see
are things in the mirror.
Okay, and so we need to look in the mirror of God's word
and assess ourselves by God's wisdom.
Here's my question, are you ready?
Are you growing in the wisdom of God,
or are you self-deceived?
Are you growing in the wisdom of God?
Are you talking about me?
Yeah, I'm talking about you.
You, you.
Are you growing in God's word,
or are you self-deceived?
That's a good question.
Okay, number two, here we go.
We use leaders to learn God's wisdom.
Look at verse 21.
Here's what he says.
Therefore, let no man glory in men.
Let no man glory in men.
The problem in this church is that they were dividing.
Part of the reason they were dividing
was that they were gloriaing in certain leaders.
They were holding up certain leaders.
And once they chose the leader that they liked,
they put them at division with the other people.
And so what Paul says is, hey, this is all about God.
This is all about God.
So don't glory in men.
This was exactly the problem that they had.
He goes on to say this.
Now this is maybe the most exciting phrase
in the whole passage.
Are you ready?
I want you to think about this,
and then if you think about this
and it makes you excited, I want you to say amen.
There may be like a delay in how quickly you say amen.
But here it is.
For all things are yours.
Wow.
For all things are yours.
What is he saying?
He's saying the things that you have access to in Christ,
everybody else does too.
The thing that you so admire about Paul and Apollos
and Cephas, those things are the things
you have access to also.
The point he's making is the wisdom of God
is available for everybody.
I know I do this all the time, but seriously,
you're not excited?
You have everything you need.
You have, if you are in Christ,
you have everything you need to live a life
that God, that glorifies God, that honors God,
that brings him glory, that fulfills his purpose
for you and your life.
You have everything you need.
You're lacking nothing.
We have the Bible.
God wrote a book.
It's really good.
You should read it daily.
It's really good.
And he's giving you a spirit, the author of this book
to live inside of you.
This is an incredible thing.
He says, all things are yours,
whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, what does that mean?
What is he saying? These are yours? He's saying,
God literally gave these leaders
so that you could get his wisdom and you can grow.
That's awesome.
There's a sense in which that when God,
this isn't in the notes, Steve, don't get worried.
Ephesians 4.
Chapter, this I want to be on the screen,
so you gotta look at it.
You have a Bible?
Paper Bible, digital Bible?
Look, Ephesians 4.
Look at verse 7.
But every one of us is given grace
according to the measure of the gift of Christ.
Wherefore he saith, when he ascended upon high,
he led captivity captive and gave gifts to men.
Okay, you guys have gifts from God.
Verse 9.
Now that he ascended, what is it now?
But also that he descended, first and the lower parts
of the earth, he that descended is the same.
Also that ascended up far into the heavens,
that he might fill all things.
And he gave some apostles, and he gave some prophets,
and he gave some evangelists,
and he gave some pastors and teachers.
How many times do you see the word give there, or gave?
Right?
Verse 7.
Every one of us is given grace.
Verse 11.
And he gave, and he gave apostles, prophets,
evangelists, pastors and teachers, why?
For the perfecting or the equipping of the saints.
Hey, who in here saved?
If you're saved raise your hand.
Okay, if you're saved, you're a saint.
You have been set apart, you're a sanctified one.
And God gave apostles and prophets and evangelists
and pastors and teachers, why?
For the perfecting of the saints.
You have been given the people who wrote
the Old Testament and the New Testament,
and evangelists and pastors and teachers
that minister now so that you can grow.
So that you can be equipped, right?
For the perfecting of the saints, why?
For the work of the ministry, for the edifying
of the body of Christ.
What's the point? He goes on to say so that you won't be
undiscerning, so that you won't be tempted to believe wrong.
You'll always believe the right thing,
you'll know the right thing, and you'll be able to do
the right thing.
God has given us gifts back to our text.
Back to our text.
He says, verse 22, all things are yours.
You've been given Paul and Paul is in Cephas.
He goes on, or the world, or life.
Who's grateful to be alive?
Man, I'm so grateful.
Death, what happens when we die if we're in Christ?
Heaven!
For me to live as Christ in a die is gain.
If you're in Christ, death is a good thing.
We're sad about those who left last year,
but we haven't lost them, we know where they are.
Death has given us, and things present.
Things to come.
If you're in Christ, you've got an incredible feeling
of life, and you're in Christ,
come, if you're in Christ, you've got an incredible future.
It doesn't mean everything's gonna be perfect,
but you've got an incredible future.
All are yours, and ye are Christ,
and Christ is God's.
We're owned by God.
We're owned by Christ.
Christ is given by God, God has sinned wisdom,
his wisdom into the world.
So think about all that God's given to us.
The word of God, the spirit of God, the church of God,
the leaders that are in our churches,
this incredible present reality,
and an incredible, incredible future.
We belong to God in Christ.
All of it is ours.
So we don't have to divide over leaders.
God's leaders are valuable because of God's wisdom, no more.
At their best, they flesh out and make clear the wisdom of God
to those who are willing to hear it, to watch it, and to learn it.
But the wisdom isn't available to them in some unique way.
Human leaders can be wrong.
I can be wrong.
Certainly I can be wrong in the way that I live.
I can be wrong in what I teach.
We all have to submit to the authority of the word of God.
In the book of Acts, there were some believers from Berea,
like I said, who were more noble because they searched the scriptures,
and that's what we need to do.
And the ultimate test of whether we are wise
is if we don't just hear the wisdom of God
but if we seek to live it out.
Godly, wise leaders can help us learn God's wisdom.
And we can be thankful for them, but we should not divide over them
or put them in a place of authority over the scriptures.
So here's the next point of application.
Are you ready?
The first one was, are you self-deceived
or are you growing in wisdom?
Here's number two.
Are you growing in the wisdom of God through the leaders in your life?
And all that God has given you to grow?
Or are you stagnant?
Hey, I hope for you that 2025 just presents a new opportunity
for you to grow in Christ.
For you to be everything that God has called you to be.
For you, hey, and if you're not saved, you need to get saved.
If you don't know Christ as your savior,
you need to go from death to life, right?
Jesus Christ crucified is your only hope.
You need to put it, put your faith in Him.
And we want to help you do that.
And if you are in Christ, hey, let's turn up the notch on your growth.
Like, you have everything you need to grow.
Let's grow.
Let's be what God wants us to be and do what He wants us to do.
Here's number three.
Number three, last one.
How do we relate through these three filters?
Number three, we view leaders as stewards of God's wisdom.
This is kind of what we talked about already.
Verse one, let a man so account of us
as the ministers of Christ
and stewards of the mysteries of God.
A steward doesn't own what they manage.
They just manage what they've been stewarded.
A steward doesn't own what they manage.
A steward is simply responsible for what they manage.
Godly leaders are not better or more loved by God than anybody else.
They just have a stewardship that is something to be taken by God.
That is something to be taken very seriously.
We don't give them credit for what only God can do.
We do give them honor for their task.
The mysteries of God here speaks, like I said before,
of the things God has planned all along but has recently revealed.
God was using Paul and Apollos and Peter specifically
to reveal truths about the wisdom of God Christ crucified
that had been previously unrevealed.
That puts the right perspective of them in mind.
This is an honorable and important task
and the task here is described as stewardship.
Paul talks about this with Timothy in 1 Timothy 1 verse 17.
He says this,
let the elders that rule well,
by the way, that's an interesting thing.
Elders speaks to maturity.
Ruling speaks to bishops being a bishopric,
administrating different words for the same office.
Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor,
especially they who labor in the Word and doctrine.
For the scripture to say it,
I shall not muzzle the ox that tread at the corn,
and the labor is worthy of his reward.
Against an elder, receive not an accusation,
but before two or three witnesses.
Again, I bring this up because, yes, it is good to honor,
but it's wrong to worship those who are in leadership.
It's wrong to do that.
What are they?
They are no more than what he says in verse 2,
they are stewards.
And in verse 2 it says,
a steward is required,
what's required in stewards verse 2,
that they be found faithful.
A steward must be found faithful.
And so this means that they have managed what they have been given well.
This may seem self-serving,
but I hope you know my heart in this.
I want to be faithful in my ministry here.
I want Corey and Miles and their roles here to be faithful.
And I want our Sunday school teachers
who preach the Word of God in their classes,
I want them to be faithful.
Would you pray for your leaders?
Will you please pray for us that we would stay faithful?
What do you mean?
What does it mean to be faithful in this stewardship of the mysteries of God?
Faithful in its proclamation.
We proclaim the wisdom of God,
and we have to do that.
It would be unfaithful not to proclaim it, who agrees?
It would be unfaithful to keep it to ourselves.
It would also be unfaithful to say something of it that's not true.
And so that's proclamation, we got to be faithful in purity.
The wisdom of God must be obeyed.
We must not expect people to do what we are unwilling to do ourselves.
Our lives must match our message.
In perseverance, the stewardship of the mysteries of God is not something you take off and put on.
Listen, all of us, if you're a Christian in here, you've been given the gospel,
you've been given gifts, right?
And that doesn't go away.
We have from now to the end of our lives to steward that.
This is not a sprint we're doing.
This is a marathon.
And somebody handed you the baton, don't drop it.
Are you with me?
Hand it off to somebody else.
So you got to be faithful.
Perseverance, proclamation, purity, perseverance, protection.
We must make sure to protect the faith once delivered to the saints.
We do this by making sure we don't change it and we give it away.
It's like that baton that's been handed to us.
We take care not to drop it, but we also take care not to keep it to ourselves.
We hand it off to the next person.
Do you get it?
And this truth that I'm telling you today is not just for pastors, deacons,
and Sunday school teachers and D-group leaders.
This is for every believer in Christ.
You and I have a stewardship of the mysteries of God.
This is for parents and grandparents.
This is for neighbors and friends.
This level of stewardship may be different in that not everyone has the same platform
or the same gifting, but any stewardship of God's word and God's wisdom is important.
Who agrees with me?
Of the things that any one of us manage.
This stewardship of the mysteries of the gospel is the most important thing we manage.
You believe that?
I hope you do.
This is why Paul goes on to say, verse 3, we are coming to the end.
He says this,
But with me it's a very small thing that I should be judged of you.
Or of man's judgment.
Yea, I judge not my own self.
For I know nothing by myself.
What's Paul saying?
If other people are judging me, this is what Paul is saying.
I'm saying me as in Paul.
If you are judging me,
You can say good things when I'm not doing real good.
And you can say bad things when I'm not doing too bad.
You don't have all the information is what Paul is saying.
So, human evaluation isn't perfect.
Who agrees?
Aren't you glad that everything somebody said about you isn't true?
Right?
Sometimes you are giving credit for things you didn't do and blame for things you didn't do too.
What Paul is saying is for me to be judged by you is a small thing.
You don't know my heart, brain, what I have been given.
Who knows that?
God does.
He said I don't have the right to judge my own self.
What is he saying?
For me to be like, I'm good.
Yea, I'm fine.
I'm fine. Everything is fine.
Right?
And to do that outside of the wisdom of God, Paul says, again, let no man deceive yourself.
Do you get it?
He says, verse 4,
For I know nothing by myself yet am I not hereby justified,
But he that judges me is the Lord.
Human scrutiny from what a human can know done by human wisdom is not the way that we will ultimately be judged.
We ought to be thankful for the wisdom that comes from our leaders as it conforms to God's wisdom.
We ought to be thankful to God for what God does to them, but we should not divide over them.
Why?
Because ultimately we answer to God.
We answer to God.
And so Paul goes on and says in verse 5,
Therefore judge nothing before the time until the Lord comes who will bring to light the hidden things of darkness
and will make manifest the counsel of the hearts and then shall every man have praise of God.
Who judges right way?
God does.
If you make your life,
If you perform your life for an audience of one,
for him,
that's the right way to live.
Not to be judged by everybody else.
There's coming a day where it will be clear to the Lord and to us, men's behaviors and motives.
We will be scrutinized by the Lord.
One commentator said this about that verse.
These refer to the inner motives, the inner thoughts and attitudes which only God can know.
Since final rewards will be based not on just outward service, but on inward devotion,
only God can give each the praise that they deserve.
And so, let's apply that to our lives.
We can let the wisdom of the word of God help us to rightly discern our hearts now
and submit ourselves to its authority now and allow that work integrity in and through us.
Or we can not submit ourselves to that and we can be found discouraged and disappointed in that day.
There's coming a day when your hearts and thoughts and intents will be displayed.
My mom used to say it this way and it scared me a lot.
Be sure your sin will find you out.
What do you know, mom?
She didn't know.
God did.
There is now therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, but our works will be revealed and rewarded.
We will suffer loss when we don't live right.
So when we think about human leaders, we should be thankful for their ministry wrought by the grace of God.
They are stewards of that wisdom.
We should respond to God's wisdom as they lead us with it.
So here is the question, third question.
How are you doing at stewarding God's wisdom?
How are you doing at stewarding the mysteries of God?
Why did God give you this?
To read it.
That's it.
Why did God give you this?
To look nice on your shelf?
Why did God give you this?
He wants you to read it.
You know what a privilege we have to have this?
This is the word of God.
Hundreds of years this was chained to the pulpit.
You didn't have a copy, right?
You just will tell you what it says.
And they were wrong.
You know what a privilege?
We should read this.
But we shouldn't just read it.
We should put it in our hearts, right?
That we may not sin against God.
But then it's not just enough to get into our hearts.
What gets in our hearts needs to come out our mouths.
And with our feet and our hands we got to live it out.
And it's not just for you.
This is a baton that's been handed to you.
The gospel has been given to you.
You know it. You're in Christ.
Now it's something to give to others.
There are people at your job and in your school
and at your neighborhood.
The people that you shop with that need to know about Christ.
They need to see you live it out.
The only Bible some ever read is the Bible that we live out in our lives.
And so how are you doing at stewarding the mysteries of God?
What's the wisdom of God?
Christ crucified.
If any man be in Christ he is a new creature.
The old is gone. The new has come.
How are you doing at stewarding it?
We judge leaders according to God's wisdom.
How are you doing at God's wisdom?
Are you self-deceived?
Are you growing in God's wisdom?
We use leaders to learn God's wisdom.
And we view leaders as stewards of God's wisdom.
How are you doing at stewarding God's wisdom?
Would you back here to close your eyes?
Let me just morning.