Verses 1 through 7 of 1 Corinthians 4.
The apostle explains to us the qualities that are required for successful Christian leadership.
We can write about it there and say that these are the qualities that God wants in our lives
as his servants, all of us.
Those qualities are faithfulness, patience, and humility.
The apostle reminds us in verse 5 that the day of judgment is coming and when that day
arrives all of us will stand before the Lord to give account of ourselves of the deeds
done in our bodies.
Long before the world is going to be given up to God's faithful servants at the judgment
seat of Christ and following that then we'll eventually come to kingdom and we will reign
with our Lord.
Our responsibility then, it would seem, from the teaching of the world will partly be based
upon how faithfully we have served our Lord here in this life.
Now the thing about the Corinthian church is that they felt like they were already in
the living.
At least they acted that way.
And as Paul continues writing with them, beginning in verse 8, he approaches them with some fairly
caustic language.
He says, �Now you are full.
Now we are rich.
You have reigned as kings without us.� And then he says, �I read to God you did reign,
that we also might reign with you.� What he was saying in verse 8 was no compliment.
This was an exalted opinion they had of themselves.
And he writes with sarcasm in verse 9, �For I think that God hath set forth us, the apostles,
last as it were appointed to death.
For we are made a spectacle unto the world, both to angels and to men.� You may notice
a little different phrase in the last part of that verse and that's a better wondering
of it I think.
�We are made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.
We are fools for Christ's sake, but we are wise in Christ.
We are weak, but we are strong.
We are honorable, but we are despised.
Even in this poor little eye, we are hungry and thirsty and are naked and are buffeted
and have no certain dwelling place.
And Lord, we're working with our own hands.
Being reviled, we bless.
Being persecuted, we endure it.
Being defamed, we entreat.
We are made as the filth of the world and are the off scouring of all things under this
day.� We'll come back to that word in a moment, off scouring.
He says, �I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons, I warn you.
For those who have 10,000 instructors in Christ, yet have you not many fathers.
For in Christ Jesus, I have begotten you through the gospel.
Therefore, I beseech you, you followers of me.
For this cause have I sent unto you Timothy, who is my beloved son and faithful in the
Lord, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which are in Christ, as I teach
everywhere in every church.
Now, some of you, rather now some, are puffed up as though I would not come to you.
But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord will, and will know not the speech of them
who are puffed up, but the power.
For the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power.
What will you?
Shall I come unto you with a rod?
Or in love, and in the spirit of meekness?
The apostle Paul writes to this church as their father, their spiritual father.
What a lovely end up thought in a moment.
He writes to them to correct them from the way that they were living and the way that
they were thinking.
I want you to notice how he deals with them as his children.
In verse 8, he rebukes them because of their pride.
In verses 9 through 13, he reminds them of his example and the example of the other apostles,
the example of humility.
Then beginning in verse 14, through the end of the chapter, he warns them that discipline
may be necessary.
Does that sound familiar to you parents?
Do you ever have to rebuke your children for anything?
Do you ever have to remind your children of the example that you're trying to set before them?
Do you ever have to give a stiff warning that a spanking may be coming?
Sure, parents have these responsibilities and all of us have experienced this.
And that's what Paul is doing to his spiritual family and parents.
He has treated them as children because he is their spiritual father.
Now notice with me these three approaches that Paul uses to correct them.
First, his rebuke of their pride.
As we have said, it borders on sarcasm, as Paul says in verse 8.
It is a cutting remark.
It's caustic.
It must have bared them.
Because you see, they brag about how full they were and how rich they were.
They were living like kings.
And Paul says, I sure wish that were true.
Because then we could wane too.
The Corinthians thought that they had arrived.
You see, they thought that they had it all together.
That they were completely mistaken.
They were wrong about their own evaluation of themselves.
Remember earlier in a few verses before this, Paul said, I don't even judge my own self.
Not that I know anything against myself, but I'm not qualified to be judged of myself.
But the Corinthians allowed me to judge themselves.
And they thought they were in pretty good shape.
And Paul says, I've got news for you.
The Lord Jesus did something very similar to another church that was located in that part of the world in the early days.
The church of Laodicea in Asia Minor.
Would you turn with me to his remarks to them in Revelation chapter 3?
As the believers in Laodicea looked at themselves, they thought everything was pretty cool in their church.
Everything was alright.
They had it together.
And so Jesus sent them a letter.
He dictated it to John the apostle in the Isle of Patmos.
And he said, now John, I want you to deliver this letter to the church at Laodicea.
And say that the faithful and true witness of God, the early men, the beginning and the creation of God, has sent this letter to them.
And this is what the Lord Jesus put on the dictating equipment.
I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot.
I know that thou work cold or hot.
So then because thou work warm and neither cold nor hot, I will spill thee out of my mouth.
Because thou sayest, now here is the Laodicean evaluation of the Roman situation.
I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing.
That's what they thought about themselves.
They said, we've got everything we need.
We've increased with goods, our offerings are coming in, all our needs are being met.
It's really neat.
We don't need anything.
Jesus says to them, you don't know that you are wretched and miserable, poor, blind and naked.
That leaves them without a whole lot.
That they are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, they don't have very much they can brag about, as Jesus sees them.
And then the Lord says, I cancel thee to buy of me gold, right in the fire.
That thou mayest be rich and of white wine, that thou mayest be close, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear.
And that thine eyes were sad, that thou mayest see.
And then he says, as many as I love, I rebuke.
Unchastened.
Be zealous therefore, unrepent.
You see, that's essentially what Paul says to the Corinthian church.
They had a similar evaluation of themselves.
And Paul writes to them with sarcasm to cause them to feel rebuke from his pen.
And the Lord Jesus says, as many as I love, I rebuke.
Have you ever felt that the Lord's rebuke?
It can come in a lot of ways.
When we feel the Lord's rebuke and we sense his chastening hand upon us, we actually should rejoice because it means that we are His.
He says, as many as I love, I rebuke.
The Lord Jesus loves us so much that He's willing to make us feel sad for a while so that our lives can be corrected.
I may be talking to someone today who's in that very situation.
You think everything's all together, and man, you're heading in the right direction.
You have neither anything.
But down deep in your heart, you're as empty and cold and miserable as you could possibly be.
How well we can put on our fronts and come to church and smile and appear pleasant and use the right words,
and nobody knows what's down inside our hearts except the Lord Jesus.
Now, tell you what, if you belong to Him, He has ways of bringing that to the surface.
We can't get away with it.
He doesn't want us to because it's no good if we do.
There are times when we rebuke our children because we love them, and we know if they continue in a certain direction,
they're going to be miserable adults.
The Lord does the same for us, and I'm glad He does.
We don't know how the Corinthians responded when they first heard those remarks by Paul.
Eventually, they repented.
But at this point, it probably burned them.
They were all stumped on their toes here, and they needed it.
Then the apostle moves ahead as he writes, and he points them to his example, beginning in verse 9.
He says, I think that God has set forth for us the apostles last as it were appointed to death.
It's going to be a difficult thing to get a hold of unless you understand what Paul is illustrating.
In those days when a Roman general had had a great victory, he was honored by a victory march when he returned home.
He would be placed upon his steed and would lead the whole procession into the city.
Behind him would come his victorious soldiers, and they would march with great pride.
Obviously, they had won.
But behind those soldiers were often prisoners of war.
They came last in the procession.
Why? Because they were mocked by the crowds.
They were despised and spit upon.
Many times they were ultimately taken to the Coliseum and there they were tortured or given to the wild animals for sport and game by the citizens of that city.
Paul says, we, the apostles, are appointed by God last in the procession.
The place of humility that we are despised.
He says, we are made a spectacle to the world.
That word is translated in Hebrews 10 as gazing stock.
It comes into our English as the word theater.
It refers to the people who were gazed at with laughing and mocking and who were despised.
He says, we are made a spectacle to the universe, to the angels, the spirit realm, and to men.
He proceeds by saying, we are fools for Christ's sake.
It doesn't mean that Paul was limited foolish, but he was accounted as a fool by the world.
And he was counted a fool by some of the Corinthians.
Paul was not ashamed of that name because it was for Christ's sake.
He says, you are wise though in Christ.
And once again, this was not meant to be a compliment.
He was not speaking the truth here.
In fact, they were the foolish ones.
He says, you think you are wise.
He says, we are weak, but you consider yourselves to be strong.
He says, you are honorable.
There's nobody who spits at you.
But he says, we are spit upon.
We are despised.
And then he points to the lifestyle of the apostles.
You can go back to the Book of Acts and see some of these things illustrated in the narrative there.
He says, to this present hour, in other words, right to the point I'm writing this letter to you,
we are hungry, we thirst, we are naked.
By that he means we are poor to close, not that they're running around without clothes on.
He says, we are poor to close, and we are buffeted, the thought is we are unsettled.
We are chased from one city to another often, in other words.
And we have no certain dwelling place.
There was no home for Paul.
He had a home church in Antioch.
But there was no home.
There was no place where Paul could say, well now I'm going to retire and go home.
Because you see, God had appointed him to be an apostle.
He says, we labor, working together with our own hands.
And Paul did that, didn't he?
He had a reason.
He explains that in his next letter to the Corinthians, that we have.
He says, being deviled, we give out blessing.
Being persecuted, we put up with it, we endure it.
We are defamed and yet we entreat.
We don't respond in like manner.
And then he says, we are as the filth of the world.
Whereas the filth, the refuse, the garbage, if you please, of the world.
And he says, we are the off scouring of all things to this day.
Now there is a good old English word, off scouring.
When I say a good word, it is a good word.
It's fallen out of usage in our day.
But what this word in the original really is, is that which is scoured off of something.
It refers to dirt.
By which is to, has no use, to be thrown away.
It means to light around the lid of a jar, not what you have left over, that you wash off.
He says, that's what we're like.
The apostle Paul points the Corinthians to his example of humility.
Both physically, he suffered abuse.
Socially, he was defamed.
I want to ask you a question.
Are we willing to know this kind of humility?
I ask myself a question.
Are we willing to be humble to a point?
What is that point? That's the point of pride.
In our society, it's a very popular thing to be a Christian.
If you and I dare come to the point of being a committed Christian,
who is willing to confront the darkness of the world,
we find that we are no longer very popular.
And that is the crying need of our hour, isn't it?
We have it up to here with people who want to play church.
The crying need in our world is for Christians who mean business.
I was talking yesterday with a physician in our area who attends another church.
He was saying, up until five years ago, I was content to play church.
He said, Pastor, I don't want to play church anymore.
Phew! I thank God for that.
Now there is a beloved physician, Dr. Beluk, example.
That's the kind of engineers and homemakers, teachers, businessmen, policemen, firemen, plumbers, what we need.
People who are willing to lay it all on the line,
and who are willing to endure being a spectacle if necessary,
are willing to take the shame and the abuse that the world will heap upon every person who dares to live godly in Christ Jesus.
The apostle points these Corinthians to his own example, and he contrasts himself and the other apostles with the way they were living.
Then the apostle Paul, beginning in verse 14, begins to warn them.
He says, now I am not writing these things to shame you.
He says, as my beloved sons, I warn you. Paul again reminds him that he loves them here.
He says, you have maybe 10,000 instructors in Christ, but you don't have that many fathers. You've only got one.
The word instructors here really means a guardian.
Now a guardian has authority.
A guardian is one who has responsibility.
And there were those who had authority and responsibility and current, they're leaders.
Paul says, you may not have 10,000 of them, but you've only got one person who is your spiritual father.
He says, here in Jesus Christ, I have begotten you through the gospel.
Now Paul is not bragging here that he's done something of his own power.
He is not saying, I caused you to be born again.
I heard a lady come up to me one time, she said, pastor, I want you to know that it was you that saved me.
And I stood back and I thought, my, that was an amazing feat. I can't even save myself. I know what she meant.
And I thank God that through the minister of the word that I had that she came to know Christ.
Paul is not saying, I saved you people.
He is saying, in Jesus Christ, I have begotten you again through the gospel.
This ties together beautifully with what Peter says, maybe you want to turn there, 1 Peter 1, 23.
He uses the same thought of being born again. He says, being born again not of corruptible seed,
but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever.
How are we saved? A person cannot be saved apart from the implantation of the revelation of God, the word of God.
It is the word of God that is living, never changing, that is powerful.
And when it is planted into lives, it has the potential to cause a birth.
Paul had preached the gospel to those people.
And there were many of them who had responded by this time and who had been saved, had been born again.
And Paul is saying, I am the one that God has used to plant the seed in your hearts.
And through that you have been born again. Earlier he called himself a farmer who planted seed.
Here he calls himself a father who has planted the seed for the new birth.
And his concern is that they follow his example.
He says, because I am your father, verse 16, I beseech you, be ye followers of me.
Now the word followers means imitators. In the original language it means a mimic.
He says, be an imitator of my lifestyle, of the way that I live. Children do that naturally, don't they?
A good friend of mine used to say often, children don't create problems, they reveal them.
And how do they reveal them? They reveal them by imitating mom and dad.
You watch a youngster long enough and eventually you see the parent and the child.
Because children naturally imitate us.
We, our parents, realize that, and I don't know about you, I sometimes quake in my boots when I realize it.
Sometimes when I am the harshest on my children it is because I am seeing myself in them and I don't like what I see.
And you have to be very careful about that, by the way.
The Paul Sir Paul was not saying he was perfect, he was saying I am headed in the right direction.
So he says, follow me.
Imitate me.
Move this road and get out of the lifestyle that you are in now.
You are proud and insolent and think you have got everything handled.
He says, actually you don't.
So he says, follow me.
It is a rare man who could say that and yet all of us should be able to say it to some extent.
Because frankly folks, there are people who aren't following us whether we know it or not.
It begins right in the home but it goes beyond that.
I talked with a lady several weeks ago who came into the office who as far as I know does not know the Lord of Savior.
Who works with and lives near some of the people who attend this church.
And there has been a problem to come up in the relationship which is not important in my illustration.
The thing I do want to illustrate is this.
She said to me, I have watched so and so and I know that she has something and I want it.
There are people who are watching you and following you whether you realize it or not.
Therefore we better make sure that we are going in the right direction.
I know one of us here is attained.
But hopefully we are moving in the direction God wants us to be moving.
And as people follow us then they will be moving in the right direction also.
Paul was sending a personal representative to them.
He says, I'm sending Timothy to you.
He's my beloved son also just like you are.
And he's faithful in the Lord and he's going to bring you into remembrance of my ways which are in Christ.
The reason he could say what he did in verse 16 is because he can say what he does in verse 17.
He says, the followers of me, my ways are in Christ.
And then he says, I teach this in all the churches.
In verse 18 he warns them that personal discipline may be necessary.
Look what he says.
Some of you are puffed up.
Can you picture there is of a balloon being puffed up, blown up.
What happens eventually?
It can only take so much air and eventually the pressure inside is going outside the pot.
Paul is warning them that if they continue to be puffed up there's going to be an explosion down the road.
Some of you know what I mean.
That can happen to us.
And we're a lot of pride to build up and build up and build up.
Eventually there is an explosion and a disaster.
Paul says now some are puffed up as though I will not come to you.
But he says I will come to you shortly if the Lord will.
Let me throw this in three.
I like what Paul says, if the Lord will.
Even a person who had the position of an apostle was submitted to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
Paul planned out his schedule but he always put down below it now if the Lord will.
This is what I'm going to do.
I like that.
And he says I'm going to know not the speech of those who are proud but I'm going to know the power in their lives.
Talk is cheap.
He says I want to see some results.
I want to see the change in life.
I want to see the fruit.
Verse 20 he says the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.
When he talks about the kingdom of God here he's not talking about the future coming kingdom.
He's talking about the kingdom of God that is here right now within his people.
God's rule in your life and in mine.
And he says God's rule in our lives is not in the words we use but it's in the power that's in us.
We who have been raised in the time in the evangelical church know all the right words don't we?
We learn the language from listening to others.
We sing it in our hymnal.
There are times when we talk and we sing far beyond anything we've experienced.
There is a danger in that because ultimately we've come to see and think that we're actually there when we're not.
The kingdom of God you see is not in the way that we talk. It's not in the words we use.
It's in what power there is in our lives.
I ask myself as I ask you the question today how much power is there in your Christian life?
That's the heart of it.
The last three days I attended a seminar at another church in the Twin Cities.
And for the first time in my life I have begun to understand what victory we have in Jesus Christ.
I don't know what's taking place in my life. I feel like a new person here before you this morning.
I am set free inside in a way that I cannot define to you.
I just know it feels awful good.
It goes beyond feeling.
As soon as I'm able to assimilate some of the things that I've learned myself and get them a little more deeply in my life and practice,
I want to begin teaching you some of the things that I have learned about the power of God that lives in us.
The kind of power that I believe Paul is talking about here.
Some of you know what I'm talking about because you've been to that seminar where you've read books where a similar truth is revealed.
I'm not talking about a charismatic experience.
I'm not talking about a second blessing.
I'm talking about just beginning to learn how to appropriate the power of God that is in us.
Paul says talk is cheap and all of us know a lot about talk, but what about the reality?
And as I look through those last verses, I am able to sense a number of principles of discipline that are important for us in our homes.
This is Father's Day and while I recognize this is not exactly a spiritual holiday,
it is an important day because we rightly remember to honor our earthly fathers on this day.
God has commanded that we honor our fathers and mothers.
He doesn't mean just one day in May and one day in June either.
But I'm glad for this day and I'd like to speak right now especially to fathers.
Mothers may listen in and kids, you can listen also.
Because what I want to talk about will affect your life, hopefully.
If not now, someday when you're a mother or father.
It seems to me that we see eight principles of discipline for our families in what Paul says in verses 14 to 21.
There may be more here. I don't think there are less.
I see eight of them.
I'd like to share this with you quickly.
Our time is about gone.
I don't have time to illustrate them as I'd like to do.
But I think you'll be able to pick up and think about what I'm saying.
And hopefully we can all begin putting more of these into practice in our families.
Principle number one is in verse 14.
Warning, preceded action.
Before Paul actually brought the rod of discipline that he threatened,
he warned them that it was coming.
He really did that with our kids.
It doesn't do any good to get angry and all gone out of shape and slap them up the side of the face to discipline them.
We have to warn them that what they're doing is wrong.
And tell them that discipline may be necessary, but a warning must precede action.
Principle number two, again in verse 14.
All discipline must be based on love.
Not out of fear.
If my children feared me and trembled in my presence, it would break my heart.
And there have been times when I have disciplined them in anger and they have trembled.
And it's shameful.
All discipline needs to be done in the sphere of love.
So that they know that we are not rejecting them,
that we cannot allow the behavior to continue that they're involved in.
Principle number three, verse 16.
An example must always accompany correction.
There are children who have gone off the deep end and some who have committed suicide
because they see mom and dad living one way and telling them to live another way.
That destroys a child.
If you want to destroy your child more quickly than any other way, that was the way to do it.
Give your child one set of standards to live by and then you ignore them and live some other way.
Principle number four, verse 17.
It's helpful when discipline can be reinforced by a third party.
It would be grandpa or grandma or the pastor or Aunt Susie, whoever it may be.
It's helpful when discipline can be enforced by a third party, not immediately related to the situation.
Timothy was going to come and would reinforce for all of us trying to get across to these people.
We enjoy having our children stay overnight with our grandparents
because we know that they're going to be reinforced in the same principles we have tried to teach them in our own home.
Country-wise, I want to be careful not to expose my children
to that which is going to teach them the opposite of what I'm trying to teach them.
A lot could be said on this subject, but let's go into verse 17 and get to principle number five.
The demands made were not arbitrary, but they were firm-croused.
In our discipline, we need to be careful that we are discipling on the basis of principle and not personal whim.
Verse 17, principle number six, reminders are often needed in discipline.
We cannot feel that we've told our children something once that that is going to last until they graduate from college and get in their own home.
You know that. We have to continually remind them of the important principles of life.
Verse 17, principle number seven, we need to consistently apply discipline.
Now, if there's any word that's tough, it's that word consistent.
Somebody said consistency is a virtue of the gods.
Well, it should also be a virtue of parents as much as we can with the help of God.
Paul says, I teach the same thing I'm telling you in all the churches.
I'm not laying before you something I don't tell everybody else.
Consistency must be applied to each child.
In verse 21, I think it's good to force the child to make a decision and to be responsible for the outcome.
Paul said, what do you want me to do?
Are you going to force me to spank you with a rod or may I come to you with meekness and in love and gentleness?
The decision is yours. Do you want to be disciplined or are you going to obey?
When children are left with that question and they realize that discipline does have to come, that it's their decision, they've brought it upon themselves.
Now, I wish I could stand before you and say these are eight principles that perfectly apply to my family.
I'll tell you what, I want to set this as a goal and I hope that others of you fathers and mothers will join me in seeking to inculcate into our home and to our discipline the principles of the Word of God relating to the correcting of our children.
Now for all of us as we bring this service to a close, I want to return to this one primary thought.
Is God's rule in my life and in your life one that is verbal only or is it one that's real?
There's nobody who knows better than my wife and my children or your husband and your children.
They know perfectly well because you see there are a lot of things that are hidden inside us that nobody ever sees but God.
Is the kingdom of God in your life real or is it fake?
That's probably right.
Father in heaven, I want to thank you this morning for your word.
All of us find ourselves short in some area as we come to this examination and discipline.
It may be that there are some of us here today walking in pride thinking we are rich and full and have needed nothing and our need is to be humbled.
We need to repent.
Give us grace that we may do that.
And then Father I pray for all of us that your rule in our lives may be one that is genuine and real.
Deliver us from masquerades.
Teach us to live transparently so that what we say is what we are.
So that your power may be revealed in our lives.
I pray this in Jesus' name, Amen.
We're going to sing together 386 in conclusion, My Jesus, I love thee.
We have in the past couple of months been using a prayer room as our invitation.
Frankly we do not like the way that it's worked. It does not work well. We're going to change that beginning this morning.
And our invitation is to come forward if you have a spiritual need.
It takes a lot more courage to do that but I believe that it will help make the decision firm and that's important.
What the Lord Jesus tells us in private is important to be made known publicly and this is one way that we can do that.
Now maybe that you're here today and you've never trusted Christ as your Savior.
I will not close this service without saying to you that your greatest need is to receive the Lord Jesus Christ and to be burned into his family by faith.
I'm not talking about something you work to do. It's just the opposite. You simply receive it. It's great.
And if you've never received that free gift of eternal life, we invite you to slip out from where you are and to come here this morning so we can help you.
If you're a Christian already but you've been living a lie, the kingdom of God is not reality in your life and today you want to publicly commit yourself to the Lordship of Jesus Christ,
we invite you to come as well. We want to make this an opportunity for God to bring to a culmination what he has been saying to you today, this week, maybe for months.
Will you make the decision today? I hope you will. Let's stand, please, and sing together.
My Jesus, I love thee.