LEARNING FROM JESUS’ FOOLS
Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on September 30, 2018 under 2018 |
Bethany Bible Church Sunday message; September 30, 2018 from 1 Corinthians 4:6-13
Theme: The cure for divisive pride among Christ’s people is to learn to imitate the Christ-like lowliness of His greatest servants.
(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).
At the end of 1 Corinthians 4, he writes his closing comments about this problem. We come to these very serious words in verses 6-13;
Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up on behalf of one against the other. For who makes you differ from another? And what do you have that you did not receive? Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? You are already full! You are already rich! You have reigned as kings without us—and indeed I could wish you did reign, that we also might reign with you! For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, but we are dishonored! To the present hour we both hunger and thirst, and we are poorly clothed, and beaten, and homeless. And we labor, working with our own hands. Being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat. We have been made as the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things until now (1 Corinthians 4:9-13).
Tough words, aren’t they? If I were to want to encourage a young man to enter into the pastoral ministry, I might not be inclined to take him to this passage! They are not only hard words for us to read, but they were probably hard words for the Corinthians themselves to hear.
But I hope you won’t mind if I continue to read to the end of the chapter. I believe that what Paul went on to say helps us to put verses 9-13 into a proper frame;
I do not write these things to shame you, but as my beloved children, I warn you. For though you might have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you do not have many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel. Therefore I urge you, imitate me. For this reason, I have sent Timothy to you, who is my beloved and faithful son in the Lord, who will remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach everywhere in every church. Now some are puffed up, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you shortly, if the Lord wills, and I will know, not the word of those who are puffed up, but the power. For the kingdom of God is not in word but in power. What do you want? Shall I come to you with a rod, or in love and a spirit of gentleness? (vv. 14-21).
These words from Paul, then, were not written out of a desire to somehow protect his own position or his own reputation. Nor were they meant to put anyone down. Rather, they constituted an important spiritual warning. The pride that motivated the Corinthians to ‘pick and choose’ their favorite teachers—and to elevate some and despise the others—and to thus divide themselves into groups and factions according to their own worldly estimations—was having the dangerous spiritual effect of closing their hearts up to the instruction that God was giving them through the teachers that He did indeed give them.
And just as a loving father would do, Paul urges his dear erring fellow Christians to look at his own life and ‘imitate’ him. He wanted them to carefully consider the lowliness and humility that he himself expressed toward them, and that he and the other apostles experienced in Christ; and he urged them to follow his example—all so that they would set aside their pride, and would humbly receive the things that God was giving them through His appointed servants to them.
If they didn’t do this, it may indeed be that they would have the ‘celebrity-teachers’ they wanted—and they may indeed have had the divisions among themselves that flattered their own sense of pride. But in the process, they would have lost the blessing and instruction that God wanted to give them through the ‘less-than-celebrity’ teachers He actually gave to them, and they would have failed to be the witness in this world that their Lord wanted them to be.
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As we have gone through our study of 1 Corinthians, I have shared with you how I believe that this was an important problem for Paul to deal with. Out of all the problems that the Corinthian church had, he was led by the Holy Spirit to deal with this one first. He, in fact, spent almost four whole chapters of his letter dealing with it—more than he spent on any other problem that the Corinthian church faced. And that was because this problem was a strategic problem to deal with. If they didn’t get over their prideful worldliness and sinful divisiveness, they would not be able to hear any of the rest of the things that the Holy Spirit wanted him to say in Paul’s letter.
And I would say that the same thing is true for you and me, dear brothers and sisters in Christ. When I felt led to take us through a study of this letter, I began doing so with a sense of trepidation. There are some very hard subjects being dealt with in this letter—things that many folks in our church family may not like to hear. As I have said before; if you don’t like they way Chapters 1-4 have stepped on our toes, you ain’t seen nothing yet!
The things that Paul will go on to speak of are things that we absolutely must hear—many of them things in diametric contradiction to this world’s most cherished cultural beliefs and moral patterns and practices. They go against the grain of what this world is telling us, on every side, to believe and do. And unless we have it settled in our hearts right now that we will humble ourselves before the Holy Spirit—that we will not argue with His instruction from the word; and that we will stay unified in God’s word and not will divide ourselves into ‘this camp’ or ‘that camp’; and that we will not set ourselves up as the judges of what we will or will not hear from whom; and that we will not evaluate things on the basis of the wisdom and style and fashion and philosophy of this world—then we will not be able to hear and receive what God wants us to know and do about them.
So I plead with you, dear brothers and sisters; let’s heed together what our elder brother Paul shows us in some of these closing words in this first section of 1 Corinthians—in 1 Corinthians 4:9-13. I believe he shows us that the cure for divisive pride among Christ’s people is to learn to imitate the Christ-like lowliness of His greatest servants—Paul himself most certainly being one of them.
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Now; after spending some time in this passage, I believe the best way for us to approach it is in a reverse order. Let’s let the arguments that he presents in the latter portions of this passage build up for us the affirmation that he makes at the beginning.
Starting with verses 11-13, let’s look at how Paul shows us that …
1. OUR LORD’S MOST FAITHFUL SERVANTS WERE OFTEN VERY LOWLY.
When the Holy Spirit called Paul to a place of ministry for the Lord Jesus Christ, it was at a time when he was known as Saul—and when he was a notable, up-and-coming Pharisee. Pharisees were considered ‘high class’ in ancient Jewish culture. And Paul—back in his ‘Saul’ days—was gaining a significant reputation as a scholar and as a fervent and fearsome defender of Judaism. He was trained by one of the best teachers of the day; and he was definitely a rising star on the Judaistic horizon.
But after he was confronted by Jesus on the road to Damascus, God called a humble Christian named Ananias to go and lay hands on Paul, and to appoint him to the ministry of the gospel. And God told Ananias;
“Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear My name before Gentiles, kings, and the children of Israel. For I will show him how many things he must suffer for My name’s sake” (Acts 9:15-16).
And truly—what a great many things it was that Paul indeed did suffer for the name of Christ! He describes what the situation was like for himself and the other apostles in 1 Corinthians 4:11-13. He said that—“To the present hour”; that is, write up to the time that he was writing to them—he and the others were habitually hungry, and thirsty, and poorly clothed, and regularly beaten, and in a homeless condition. How’s that for a recommendation to the ministry? How far it all was from the prospects ‘young Saul the Pharisee’ had looked forward to when he began his course of theological study!
What’s more, in spite of all his great learning and specialized training, he and the others had to take on extra jobs to support themselves in their work in the ministry—the most important and consequential work the world has ever known! They had to labor with their own hands—and even at a time when, according to historians, common manual labor was looked down upon and despised in ancient Greek culture. Paul and the others were often mistreated; and for the cause of the gospel, they had to learn to endure it graciously. “Being reviled,” Paul writes, “we bless; being persecuted, we endure; being defamed, we entreat.” They did not come to their own defense—even though they most certainly could have done so very powerfully. They suffered the indignity of an almost perpetual shame and dishonor in the sight of this world.
And in fact, look at what he says in verse 13; “We have been made as the filth of the world …;” and the word that Paul uses here is the word you would use to describe the kind of dirt and dust and fuzzies that you sweep into the dustpan when you sweep a dirty floor. As far as the evaluation of this world goes, that was all that he and the other apostles were—just filth swept up off the floor. He also went on to say that they had become as “the offscouring of all things …” Do you ever cook dinner in a cast iron frying pan? After dinner, you have to take something and scrape the leavings off the pan and dump them into the trash. And that’s what Paul said he and the other apostles were in the estimation of this world—the offscouring of all things “until now”. And this was the evaluation, in this world, of the most notable and honorable and greatest servants that our Lord Jesus ever gave to His glorious church!
When I read these words of Paul, I often also think of what he wrote near the end of 2 Corinthians. He wrote to defend himself against the highly-esteemed, worldly-celebrated false teachers of the time; and he gave his own credentials in contrast to them. He said;
Are they Hebrews? So am I. Are they Israelites? So am I. Are they the seed of Abraham? So am I. Are they ministers of Christ?—I speak as a fool—I am more: in labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequently, in deaths often. From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeys often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and toil, in sleeplessness often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness—besides the other things, what comes upon me daily: my deep concern for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am not weak? Who is made to stumble, and I do not burn with indignation? If I must boast, I will boast in the things which concern my infirmity. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is blessed forever, knows that I am not lying. In Damascus the governor, under Aretas the king, was guarding the city of the Damascenes with a garrison, desiring to arrest me; but I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and escaped from his hands (2 Corinthians 11:22-33).
Some resume; eh? How’d you like to be introduced that way at the local Rotary Club meeting? But that was the lowly and humble condition—in the eyes of this world—that characterized our Lord’s most faithful and fruitful servants.
How wrongly—how very wrongly—this world estimates things! How often it is that that which is highly esteemed in the eyes of this world is an abomination to God; and how often it is that those whom God highly honors are an abomination to the eyes of this world!
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Now; why does Paul go into detail in describing the humble condition of our Lord’s most esteemed servants? It wasn’t to merely evoke sympathy. Paul lays all this out in such a way that …
2. THEIR LOWLY EXAMPLE IS A REBUKE TO WORLDLY BOASTING.
Look again at what Paul wrote in verse 9. He said; “For I think that God has displayed us, the apostles, last, as men condemned to death; for we have been made a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.” Think of it! Does this world esteem prisoners who are condemned to death? Do the people of this world ever flock to their cell for wisdom and advice? Do the magazines publish articles on the latest fashions and styles from death row? Of course not! We don’t even like to talk about such people! And yet—in this world’s estimation—that’s what Paul said that he and his fellow apostles had been made out to be! And in fact, almost every one of the apostles laid down their lives in martyrdom for the gospel of Jesus Christ—Paul included!
When Paul says that he and the others “have been made a spectacle to the world”, he used the Greek word from which we get the English word “theater”. They were made into a “show” and “display” and a “gazing-stock” to this world—both to the angels of heaven and to the people of earth. What shame they suffered! What dishonor they experienced!
And yet; how did this compare with the Corinthians?—who were pridefully evaluating their teachers, and dividing themselves against one another? Paul goes on to write in verse 10, “We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are distinguished, but we are dishonored!” I believe that, in these words, Paul is speaking sarcastically in order to show how the humble condition of their true teachers was a rebuke to the self-confident, worldly boasting of the Corinthian Christians.
Dear brothers and sisters; when we elevate ourselves according to this world’s standards of evaluation, we are acting in the opposite manner from our Lord. The Bible tells us that being the eternally exalted and glorified Son of God, our Lord emptied Himself of His glory and honor, took on full human nature to Himself, came into this world and died on a despised and shameful cross on our behalf. He is the one who told us, in John 15;
“If the world hates you, you know that it hated Me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. Remember the word that I said to you, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name’s sake, because they do not know Him who sent Me. If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. He who hates Me hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would have no sin; but now they have seen and also hated both Me and My Father. But this happened that the word might be fulfilled which is written in their law, ‘They hated Me without a cause’ (John 15:18-25.)
What a rebuke the humble condition of our Lord’s most honorable servants turns out to be to our worldly pride! What a rebuke our Lord Himself ought to be to all fleshly boasting!
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And to help us further repent of it, Paul also showed us how …
3. SUCH BOASTING COMES FROM IGNORING GOD’S GRACE.
In verse 7, Paul asked—in a rhetorical way; “For who makes you differ from another?” Certainly, it wasn’t the Lord Jesus. He made them all one in Himself—all of them equally needing to be saved from their sin; all of them equally being saved by faith in Jesus alone. If it wasn’t Jesus who was making them to differ from one another, then who was it?
Furthermore, Paul asks, “And what do you have that you did not receive?” Was there anything that they had that did not come to them as God’s free gift? Was there anything about which they could say, “Most of what I have was given to me by God’s grace; but not ‘this’ or ‘that’, because those are things I got by my own wisdom and strength and ingenuity”? Truth be told, there is nothing—absolutely nothing—that even the greatest of us have that was not given to us by the heavenly Father, from whom ‘every good gift and every perfect gift’ comes down to us.
This reminds us of the words we find in Ephesians 2—words that should take away every shred of our sense of self-sufficiency;
And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:1-10).
And so, in verse 7, Paul goes on to ask, “Now if you did indeed receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” How utterly ignorant of God’s grace it is for us to ever boast in ourselves or to elevate ourselves above one another!
But that’s what the Corinthian believers were doing. They felt themselves sufficient—in and of themselves—to sit in judgment over which teachers were best, or which preacher followed the right patterns, or which servant of the Lord emphasized the right things; and to thus divide themselves up from one another, and put some down who didn’t measure up to their standards. In verse 8, Paul writes—in a way that I believe was meant to be very sarcastic—“You are already full! You are already rich! You have reigned as kings without us—and indeed I could wish you did reign, that we also might reign with you!” It was as if to say, “My; how self-sufficient and wise you have all become! If you can make all these judgment calls so well, and can divide yourselves up into cliques so efficiently; then why in the world the Lord ever even need to give you teachers at all?”
I appreciate what one brother in the church pointed out to me the other day. He commented that this is a lot like our Lord’s words to the Laodicean church in Revelation 3:17; where He told them, “… you say, ‘I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing’—and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked …”
What a horrible thing in God’s household it is whenever we boast in ourselves and divide from one another! We completely forget how utterly needy we are—and how much we all equally depend upon God’s grace through Jesus Christ for all that we are and have!
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All of this, then, brings us to the affirmation Paul made at the beginning of this passage; that …
4. THEREFORE, WE MUST LEARN NOT TO BE PUFFED-UP AGAINST ONE ANOTHER.
Paul wrote, in verse 6, “Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up on behalf of one against the other.” He used himself and Apollos in this argument—not because they themselves were actually divided from each other, but because everyone else was dividing from each other over them.
What were Paul and Apollos? They were nothing more, ultimately, than the servants of Jesus Christ through whom the Corinthians had believed. One of them sowed the seed of the word, the other of them watered the garden so that the word might grow. But it was God alone who gave the growth. All the credit goes to God. None of it belongs to the servants.
From this world’s standpoint, these honorable servants of God were mere fools—’fools for Christ’s sake’, as Paul puts it in verse 10. And unless we imitate them—and humble ourselves in such a way as to set aside all of our self-exalting wisdom and pride, and willingly be thought of as ‘fools’ in the eyes of this world—then we will not be able to hear or heed what God has to say to us through His word. We will not be able to benefit from the teachers that God gives us to share that word with us. We will not be ‘teachable’; and thus be enabled to be the witnesses in this world that our Lord wants us to be.
Let’s, then, have the humility to learn from the Lord’s faithful servants—even those humble pastors and teachers and preachers that God has placed in our lives—pastors, teachers, and preachers that the world thinks of as ‘foolish’. Let’s take to heart what the apostle Paul taught us in 1 Corinthians 3:18-23;
Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness”; and again, “The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.” Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come—all are yours. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s (1 Corinthians 3:18-23.)
If we will faithfully learn to imitate the Christ-like lowliness of our Lord’s greatest servants—one among whom was our dear brother Paul—then we will have gone a long way toward being cured of the sinful pride that sets us apart one from another, and that robs us of the blessings that God gives to us from one another.
EA
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