Turning On the Lights for Thursday, September 12, 2024. 1 Corinthians part 4. Do not deceive yourself!
Good Morning my brothers and my sisters and welcome to part 4 of our look at the church in Corinth. We talk a little about pastoral callings and responsibilities and then get into 1 Corinthians 3 and 4 to discuss what the church is all about – spoiler – It’s all about JESUS.
I hope that this face-paced conversation challenges you and also strengthens your faith. May God bless you and keep you and we will see you in church!
This is a video recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, September 12, 2024. Watch here via the YouTube link!
This is an audio recorded copy of the FaceBook Live event of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, September 12, 2024. Listen here or through your favorite podcast app!
This is a transcript from the audio of this episode of Turning on the Lights! – Thursday, September 12, 2024
Hey, good morning. Good morning. My brothers and my sisters and what a beautiful morning it is. Look we’re getting ready to head down to the pavilion for our church picnic on Sunday. You’re invited. Yay. You’re here. Welcome to the Church Town Church of God. Welcome to turning on the lights. Well, we didn’t really turn on the lights, did we? I don’t think we need to in the hallway, but it is the name of the program. So there you go. We’re turning on the lights at the Church Town Church of God getting to work. Although I will not be working in the church today. Many of you know that my mowing day since my dear wonderful wife works all the time. It’s Thursday. That’s not a bad thing. It wasn’t a bad comment. Here’s my guitar. Boy. I took it for a tune up just in time. The nut was worn down and the strings were cracking and that needed a lot of fret work and adjustment. We don’t wanna mess with the tailor. Do we? That’s all I got for you. Have a good day everyone. No, I’m just kidding. I’ll get you on the tripod here and we will check things out. The fans are turning slowly in the directions that I want them to turn. I had to switch them up on Sunday because they were blue. It was chilly right. The mornings are chilly. So you there’s a different like when you wake up in summertime and it’s 80 and you go into an air conditioned room. You’re like oh relief but when you wake up and it’s fifty-five and you go into a room that’s the same temperature like sixty-six sixty-eight degrees. You’re like it’s cold. You know so it’s a different dynamic and it’s just your body playing tricks. So you just gotta mess with it a little bit. Gotta keep everybody happy as happy as you can. Good morning. Good morning. Forty-eight in Vermont. It’s only fifty-seven here. We’ve had a couple forty-eight forty-seven degree mornings here at the Parsonage last week but it’s progressively getting warmer now this week. So that’s it. It’s gonna be a beautiful day today too. I gotta get a chainsaw and saw up some wood and I’ve gotta get my mower out and do some mowing. It is my beautiful daughter’s birthday. So we’re gonna go visit her at work and there is a public sale across the street and they are going to be borrowing the parking lot for that and the church is getting a new refrigerator. So we got a delivery coming for that sometime before one o’clock. Busy day. It’s always a busy day here at the church again. If we had a class and like if I taught a pastoral class, I would say you need to be prepared for you know what is happening here or what happens at your church on a daily basis. We had an individual hospitalized yesterday along with all of the other church work type stuff and then writing devotions and preparing for Sunday and all of the physical things that you’re dealing with. I don’t know if like if you are the pastor of a small church, but you don’t live there. Maybe you don’t have the same dynamic, but I’m wondering how that even works because like I’m here and everything funnels through me immediately. Now I have a lot of help. don’t get me wrong, but because I’m here everything funnels through me immediately. So I don’t know. You know I would be very interested in talking about that and figuring that out. My mission is for those who are called to exercise their pastoral and teaching and expository preaching gifts to be able to do it for a long time. And I had to learn and am learning that as I move along through this journey that the Lord has put me on the past 13 years now and before that into the calling and into the education and seminary and all of those things and again, I just watch person after person after person leave church after church after church has nobody in the pulpit and you know selling empty properties not even calling them churches anymore in the denomination and in the region like what what’s going on certainly perhaps. The Lord is not calling as many to exercise those gifts. I don’t know he is sovereign perhaps, but perhaps those people are not exercising their calling not responding in kind to the Lord’s calling and there’s a reason for that. We’re wrapped up in economics. We’re wrapped up. We’re not trusting in the Lord. II could sit and tell you so many stories of this journey into ministry that every when it happened and I was about to leave an amazing career as teaching with all of that money and all of those benefits and and the climbing the ladder and all of that stuff and I was about to just walk away from that for as much money as I made less money less money than I made as a short order cook. It was impossible right. It seemed impossible. We had to live in our own home. We had to rent the parsonage we had to do. We just thought all of these things we have to we have to do all of these things to even make it remotely possible and the Lord said you’re not getting this at all. Trust me and we’re reading that we’re reading that through you know in church on Sunday now this Sunday, we’re gonna take a different tack cuz it’s the picnic, but we’ve been reading a lot from the gospels and a lot of Jesus’s message when he demonstrates his sovereignty over the physical over the spiritual over life itself is why do you not have any faith? Good morning, Sandy. Do you not know who I am? Have you not seen have you not witnessed? Have you not heard? Do you not believe? Kelly and I we learned that I won’t say the hard way because he was very gentle with us one impossible situation after another was resolved miraculously economic situations, logistical situations, church situations. When I first became the pastor here, it was craziness and the Lord just worked and he made happen what he wanted to happen. I’ll tell you a quick story you wanna hear a quick story just see this just one so we’re living we’re living in on Tangent Road in Boiling Springs in the old farmhouse where we live and we’re thinking we’re thinking we’ve got to live there because you know we’ve got to rent the parts and you’ve got to rent the rental. The church is in the red. We’ve gotta do all we can to gather as much money as we can. We’ve gotta have bake sales and we’ve gotta have yard sales and we’ve gotta have sub sales. We gotta keep the church all of this. Well, that’s not what the Lord wanted. We rented to an individual who turned out to be like the worst tenant ever and we knew that living over there in Boiling. We just felt it and we had confirmation from faithful church members who always said who said our pastors always live in the parsonage. I’m like well we can’t. Lord said, yeah, you can so he made that person to turn out to be the worst tenant ever wanted out of the one year lease and we said, okay, you’re gone and we will move in. We moved in and we had this house and we still had the mortgage and all these different things and we’re like what are we doing? And that he and so we went to sell our old farmhouse site as is we didn’t fix it up. We didn’t do anything as is. And the real estate agent came around the Lord had given me a figure that was the precise figure that we needed to sign off on all of the debt. The real estate agent came around and took a look at the house as is and went okay. Well, what are you thinking of selling it for like and I told her and she kind of laughed and rolled her eyes and I said that is what we’re going to list it for as is and she said okay, but don’t hold your breath that was in November. We had ice we had snow we had trees and limbs coming down all around the house. We get a call in January Brian, you’re not going to believe this. I said try me. She said somebody saw from Arizona saw your house online once a farmhouse fixer upper with a little bit of property and bought it sight unseen. For the exact amount that we had asked for things like that happened over and over again to make everything possible. Father, we pray that your word will be heard today will change hearts and minds. Your kingdom will grow in the name of Jesus. Amen. Hey next Tuesday, I’ll try to put up another little message, but next Tuesday, I’m not sure about turning on the lights at least in the morning because we have a Xfinity appointment somewhere between 730 and nine for an internet upgrade. So we’ve been working with that we’ve been you know, so that’s Tuesday now you gotta take it. If you don’t take it when they say you take it, then you’re out of luck. Hi Ryan. Hope you’re feeling better buddy. Oh my gosh. Everybody’s praying for Ryan. He’s not he’s not feeling well. Got some things going on. We pray for your good health Ryan. Your speedy recovery at the medicine’s work and that the Lord works inside your body in Jesus name. Amen. But you know Xfinity Comcast. Right that it’s like saying Voldemort like it’s the name that it will be unspoken. I tried to get help for my cable the other day because all I do is get these wacky lines like we I don’t know we probably what a $1000 a month for cable. I don’t know we get all these wacky lines. So I call like I always used to do 1-800 Comcast. You know you have to jump through 17 hoops to speak to a person. I never spoke to a person. I spoke to their AI assistant. So what I’m going to do is to take my cable box into the infinity store Xfinity store. So dealing with Voldemort isn’t easy. But next Tuesday, like I said, maybe we’ll do a later turning on the lights, but we’re getting an internet upgrade, which we hope overall will be a good thing. We need more bandwidth. We need more upload speed for all of the live streaming that we do. So we’re talking about first Corinthians. I’m talking about the pastorate. I’m talking about pastoral life and I have been for a little bit been throwing that into turning on the lights cuz why not one of the things that Paul teaches is that there isn’t a separation between those who exercise the gifts of teaching preaching like I said and leading and those who exercise every other gift that has been given to the church from administration to hospitality. There isn’t a separation there are there are delineations of responsibilities. But the idea that I’m in charge is an idea that is not valid. The idea that I Lord over individuals is not a valid idea. The idea is the concept is the teaching is that I am exercising gifts that have been given to me and they include a little bit of administration a whole lot of teaching and preaching and overseeing we see this word overseer overseer time and time again in scripture overseer and overseeing everything from pastoral care individuals who grow ill or individuals who need counseling pastoral care. You know what that is to internet installation. And what the point is like I’m working for the Lord just like we all are and we’re accountable to him first and we’re accountable to one another because we all know the truth of the word of God. Thus we can hold one another accountable for our behavior as well as for what we believe so that’s church. And we get a real flavor for that when we talk about when we look at the early church, we look at the home churches and we look at the way the letters were distributed and read and how people learned then what church looked like and sounded like and one of the things that Paul when we talked about on Tuesday is Paul says stop following the people of the church. All they’re just individuals me Apollos Timothy whomever it may be. We’re just people exercising the gifts that God has given us. So there are many times throughout scripture from you know John. We just read about you’re bowing down and worshiping Daniel and it get up. Don’t worship me. I’m just a person not not that people would worship me, but this the concept. Worship only God and that’s been the theme for the past month here at Churchtown. He alone is worthy. So that’s what Paul’s trying to get that he’s trying to get that information. He’s trying to straighten out the church and corn one of the things. One of the things that he teaches first right off the bat is that you can’t follow the wisdom of this world because God has turned everything upside down. Your faith in him will make you or have you witness and experience life differently. You may witness and experience miracles large and small you may witness and experience evil. You’re like whoa for the first time I recognize evil because now I know what good is. So he talks about that right off the bat. Get it out of your head that you’re sitting in a classroom. You’re in a congregation and congregation is completely different and it’s along the lines of what we described. He moves on to say one of the big problems that you’re having is that you’re following Apollo’s you’re following Paul you’re following these preachers. When all they should be doing is exercising the gifts that God gave them if they’re doing anything more, remember that you don’t Lord your power over individuals as secular leaders do. You’re a part of a congregation. We’re taught that in scripture. If they are, they’re being very very sinful. We see that all over the place today. All over the place today. Internet preachers and whatever whomever may want to be doing it. They want to be the master of their own kingdom. And that’s a problem. Paul’s teaching against that Paul saying you’re heading down that road. We don’t really have any indication that the teachers are beginning to behave that way, but the people are gravitating toward the teachers and saying, Oh yes, I thought, Oh no, I won’t follow. I won’t listen to any preaching over here. I follow Apollo’s only he’s like you’re going to you’re you’ve taken that step. Remember remember you take that one step. It’s like aiming an arrow. That’s what sin is about missing the target right. So you’re you’ve aimed a little bit over here just a little bit, but by the time you get to the target, you’re way off course, he says your your aim is off. Let me correct this first. So we talked about that now. I want to talk about this in 1st Corinthians. Chapter three beginning with verse sixteen. It’s about where we let off and now he’s going to see he talks about you don’t follow people anybody who who builds upon that the foundation based upon what people say anybody who builds a church and a foundation that it serves people right. That’s should not be shocking to you and that’s part of the greatest heresy greatest problem of the modern particularly modern evangelical churches is that we independently create churches with the intention of serving people you go what isn’t that support? No churches are created for serving God. God will serve the people through the church. It’s a little again. That’s a little part of that aiming right. We’re aiming differently. We’re building a church. We’re going to create this church. We’re going to plant this church and we’re going to serve people. It’s going to be all about people relationships family all about people. We’re going to give people everything that they need. Well, we should be creating planting building a church starting a church in order to worship God alone. Now you submit yourselves as followers of Christ unified by God’s Holy Spirit and you begin to discern what God would have for this church to do what is God’s will for this congregation. And it is like I said as I believe individuals are gifted, I believe collectively God gifts congregation who are bound by his Holy Spirit. I know for a fact that one of the gifts here at Church Town is intercessory prayer. It has been since the moment I stepped in here. It just is the is how God has designed and why he has brought these people together and it’s done nothing but blossom and grow and become something that it binds us together and we feel if and you’re allowed feel satisfaction because we’re living in God’s will and doing what he’s asking us to do. We’re praying and we’re praying a lot. So he says you gotta stop with all of that nonsense of the secular world and put your faith in God alone. God will serve the people of the congregation and God will serve anybody that the congregation is supposed to serve through him. Faith in him first, so we’re gonna pick up in verse 16. Don’t you realize that all of you together are the temple of God and that the spirit of God lives in you. So I’m not making it up. It’s right here. God will destroy anyone who destroys this temple for God’s temple is holy and you are that temple. I just gotta stop here because it speaks a lot to the battle of good and evil to the spiritual warfare that is constant and it the spiritual warfare is designed on the part of the opposer of God’s will to destroy the image bearer of God. Don’t you know as we are created in the image of God, the opposer of God’s will the satan would love to get a hold of that person before they ever hear the gospel and get him and just take him. They got him. Right the opposer of God’s will whether that person is a believer in or a follower of Christ or not will constantly seek ways to destroy that individual whether they’re just quote unquote image bearer or whether they are an adopted child of God constantly the satan seeks to destroy from the inside out or from the outside in in the womb or outside of the womb mentally physically emotionally destroy the image bearer of God and the child of God. This is something that is all throughout the scriptures taught to us and yet it is something good morning Dale. It is something that we are a little bit light on well. Maybe we’re a lot light and I will say not so much here at church town. We’re talking about what who we are what we believe why we believe it and understanding that we are engaged. This is not a cruise ship. This is a battleship. We are preparing every time that we gather together in his word in prayer in music and song and we’re worshiping him alone and seeking his will for our lives. We are aware that that is the strengthening that is the learning and the growing and the becoming that we may go learn become grow go and the warfare is constant. Don’t you know that you are the temple of God because you have the spirit of God in you. He’s speaking to the church professing followers of Jesus. This is of particular interest. I always say Satan has no interest in a dead person right a spiritually dead person. He’s already got that one Satan has no interest in a spiritually dead church. He’s got that one boy. Everything will seem hunky dory and fantastic in that church because there will never be any opposition to what you’re doing because you’re really not following God and Satan’s like yeah, God’s like please. Stop deceiving yourselves. That’s where the title this morning. If you think that you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise for the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the scriptures say he traps the wise in the snare of their own cleverness and again the Lord knows the thoughts of the wise he knows they are hear me now worthless. So don’t boast about following a particular human leader for everything belongs to you, whether Paul or Apollos or Peter or the world or life or death and the present and the future everything belongs to you and but you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God. When you are in dwelled by God’s Holy Spirit, you are become a member of the kingdom of God. Your inheritance is given to you partially now fully upon his return. You have everything because you have Christ. You are in Christ and Christ being God is in God and there you go. There is that message that Jesus constantly goes back to in his teachings. Why don’t you believe? Why don’t you have faith? He actually calls his disciples and several occasions a noun, which basically translates to little faiths and usually you’ll see that you of little faith. He’s actually calling them little faiths. You little faiths kind of faithless. He says you faithless generation. How long must I endure you? Wow the humanity the deity it’s overwhelming and part of what is overwhelming is how he teaches and he teaches and he lives and he ministers and he does. And we want more and we want more and we want what we want. Christ is not enough. Well, Paul is saying Christ is enough for the church. Christ is enough for the church because Christ is the foundation of the church. Remember that from the beginning the gospel is the foundation of the church. The truth the message Christ lived Christ died Christ rose again. When you gather if you do nothing but preach Christ in him crucified and risen, you’ve done your job for the day grow. And he says that he says you should really go back and get back on spiritual milk because you are lost. You’re losing yourselves morning. Andrea. Let us know how you’re doing. Chapter four so look at Apollos and me as mere servants of Christ. That’s what I had said before about pastors of churches leaders elders overseers who have been put in charge of explaining God’s mysteries. Now a person who is put in charge as a manager must be faithful as for me. It matters very little how I might be evaluated by you or by any human authority. I don’t even trust my own judgment on this point. My conscious is clear, but that doesn’t prove I’m right. It is the Lord himself who will examine me and decide who. On the one hand, you say, okay, well, he’s got a lot of faith in God. I do not seek to be judged by the people of this world. On the other hand, you hear the weight of that responsibility because who will he be judged by who will I be judged by who will any teacher proclaimer of the word be judged by God. We are servants of Christ to be sure we are exercising our gifts in the congregation like we’re every congregational member is called to exercise their gifts, but like I said there is delineation of responsibility and purpose and if I’ve been given the gift of expository preaching if I’ve been given the gift of teaching if I’ve been given the gift of leading and pastoral care, that’s a responsibility. That I am answerable to only to God. Now may he hold me accountable through the individuals of the congregation absolutely if I’m getting off on the wrong path, if I am preaching something that is not true, if I am acting and behaving erratically and wrongly and incorrectly and immorally his rebuke may come in the form of the congregation or individuals in the congregation. But ultimately that final breath I take. The judgment will be well done or not. Now as you move every follower of Christ, guess what you’re responsible for the same thing. I’m just speaking from my perspective. You can look at your perspective and speak from your perspective because the same truth is true of you. Remember the bags of silver. How many bags of silver have you been given and what are you doing with them? Because when the master returns and that is when he either returns while we’re still here or whether you see him after your last breath. Question is what have you done with your bags of silver? Have you done well or not? Have you followed God’s will or not? Really boils down right? Have you lived in your giftings and tried to honor God with the gifts that he’s given you or not? Alright final little passage cuz this is what I said that my perspective right when I talk about the responsibility that I feel and I have because this is what Paul says as for me, I can’t speak for you. You listening you watching right now you listening on the podcast. I can’t speak for you. You need to get in the mirror and speak for you. What are you doing with what you’ve been given? How are you living up to the responsibilities that the Lord has laid on you? Primary responsibility following him so don’t make judgments about anyone ahead of time before the Lord returns for he will bring our darkest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives. Then God will give to each one whatever praise is do dear brothers and sisters. I have used to Paul and myself to illustrate what I have been saying if you pay attention to what I have quoted from the scriptures, you won’t be proud of one of your leaders at the expense of another for what gives you the right to make such a judgment. What do you have that God hasn’t given you and if everything you have is of God? Why boast as though it were not a gift? Faith submission understanding. You think you already have everything you need you think you are already rich. You have begun to reign in God’s kingdom without us. I wish you really were raining already for them. We would be raining with you instead. I sometimes think God has put us apostles on display like prisoners of war at the end of a victor’s parade condemned to die. We have become a spectacle to the entire world to people and angels alike our dedication to Christ makes us look like fools, but you claim to be wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are now but you excuse me. We are weak, but you are now, but you are so powerful. The lines run together on the I really can read, but it’s a hump of the page. We are weak, but you are so powerful. you are honored, but we are ridiculed even now we go hungry and thirsty and we don’t have enough clothes to keep warm. We are often beaten and have no home. We work weirdly with our own hands to earn our living. We bless those who curse us. We are patient with those who abuse us. We appeal gently when evil things are said about us. Yet we are treated like the world’s garbage like everybody’s trash right up to the present moment. So you wanna be a pastor be a pastor, they said it’ll be fun, they said, but again Paul is speaking from his perspective and that’s not necessarily my perspective either. Although those responsibilities do fall upon me if I am in a position that is a very hostile environment Daniel right and King Nebuchadnezzar. Are you going to cave? Are you going to give in? Are you not going to live as a Christian? Are you not going to share the gospel? I’m called to do that no matter what from being ridiculed and looking like a fool to being beaten and enslaved, whatever the case may be. Right so that’s part of that calling and guess what as a child of God you are too. Good stuff today. Good stuff. Right yeah once you and that we started saying what can we do to prevent people who actually have this calling from just not answering not responding in kind or from dropping out quitting quitting the race. One of the things that we can do is tell the truth. And we can say your strength will come from the Lord. Although you will feel as though the world is dumping its garbage on you. You’ll be alright because you are in Christ and Christ is in God and the foundation of what you’re doing is that Christ lived Christ died Christ rose again in Jesus name. Church picnic on Sunday if you didn’t sign up, I don’t care come. There’ll be plenty of food. Come and hear the outdoor preaching great music. Great food fellowship. Come on. Come on down as they say or if you’re in North Carolina, come on up. We’ll see you at the picnic. And remember next Tuesday, I don’t know cuz that’s when Baltimore is coming to install new internet in the church. So we’ll talk to you then Lord. Thank you for the time that we got to share together this morning. Thank you for your inspiration as we went into your word in Jesus name. We pray for the health and well-being of all who have watched who are listening now as we move forward as sons and daughters of the most high Lord grant us the strength and the inspiration to live our calling as you have commanded. Amen. God bless you all and to all a good night. God bless you all and we’ll see you in church.
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