Faithfulness in Service
1 Corinthians 4:1-5 · Randy Peterman · Mar 13, 2016
1 Corinthians, No. 11
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/492653016209

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Last week there was some discussion about the destroy thing, so I spent a few moments studying it because it bothered me that I didn't have a really good solid understanding of it. I did look at my dad's notes from when he taught it, and the biggest thing is that God is very concerned about the division in the church, and He's very concerned about the fact that a shepherd would not shepherd appropriately.

And so for the sake of continuity I want to kind of pick up from this idea that two weeks ago we looked at the house where the shepherds or teachers were teaching inappropriately and the house was therefore, I'll say, getting mud bricks or wood, hay, and stubble instead of the precious jewels and gems that were being built. Then we get to this point here where Paul is so concerned about corrupt teaching and the destruction of the believers. The Greek word there that was translated destroy could also be translated corrupt. This idea that you would corrupt the believers there. So not only are they getting bad materials, but they may be getting intentionally pushed astray. I would call it spiritual abuse if I'm honest. That's a concern to the point where Paul is built up at this point to this concern over the fact that people are teaching false things about him and the other teachers that have come through Corinth and judging them incorrectly.

So when we get to the top of chapter 4 and verses 1-5, which I'll go ahead and read now, we have this restatement, because Paul, this is already not the first time he's talked about the purpose of his ministry, he restates that he circles back around Let a man regard us in this manner, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.

In this case, moreover, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy, but to me it is a very small thing that I may be examined by you or by any human court. In fact, I do not even examine myself, for I am conscious of nothing against myself, yet I am not by this acquitted. But the one who examines me is the Lord." Therefore, do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness, and disclose the motives of men's hearts. And then each man's praise will come to him from God."

So in other words, don't try to be a rumor mill. Well, yeah, certainly don't try to be a rumor mill. So we see here that Paul His language is not mincing any words, yet again. So when we were looking at the previous parts of this letter, we see that he's pretty serious and he's not mincing any words and he's continuing on with a serious tone and he's calling out these people in the body of Corinth who are being divisive.

In this case, He says, let a man regard us in this manner. Now what's interesting is he's not putting a person specifically here. He's not using a definite article. He's not using a specific name. He's saying a man or any person. So let any man regard us.

And the idea for the word regard there, we could also translate account or reckon. So let any person account or reckon or regard Paul's ministry and the ministry of those who were with him as servants and as stewards. Where's the arrogance that can come? Where's the touting your title that can come from, again, being a steward of being a servant?

Right, you are under someone's supervision, in this case, the Lord. Yeah, you have a responsibility to someone else. It's not to your own name and your own account. So I work for a large multinational corporation whose name I probably won't say on the recording for the sake of legal reasons, right? And this large multinational corporation has a CEO. And that CEO, everybody inside the company gets all worked up about that CEO, and what if the CEO were to come to town, or what if the CEO says something, or what if the CEO is going to do something, and everybody worries about the CEO. But the CEO is actually a steward, and he's accountable to the board of directors, and he's accountable to the shareholders. And the thing that's interesting with this is that with Paul's concern here, he's wanting to make sure that these Corinthians are actually looking at him in his appropriate role.

What happens if you think of somebody in the wrong way, in the wrong role? If we look at our government, and I'm not trying to be political when I say this, but if we look at our government, what happens if one of the three major branches at the top that's supposed to have checks and balances operates outside of the role it's assigned. Or we as citizens attribute the wrong kind of authority to that branch. The consequence of that is that you have an imbalance. The consequence of that is that you have a misrepresentation of what is supposed to be established.

And in Paul's case, God established Paul, right? He gave him 14 years of training and then commissioned him to go out and go on his missionary journeys. And all of that was because God had called him to be a servant. God had called him to be a steward. So Paul doesn't get to toot his own horn. Paul doesn't get to claim himself most amazing. In fact, when he talks about himself as an apostle, what does he call himself? The least of the apostles. So Paul is definitely trying to be humble.

I've got a question here and I think it's worth asking. In the body, how do our estimations of other believers impact our ability to listen to both brothers and sisters as well as leadership? If you don't set those opinions aside, things can get skewed. Well, actually, I would say the reverse of that in the sense that we shouldn't set the opinions aside. We should actually specifically choose to have one singular opinion, and that is one of respect. But it's true, if we don't have that singular opinion of respect, then all of the other opinions we might cultivate could be not only divisive, but that's usually a work of the flesh. What if we're not appropriately esteeming our leaders? How many of you have been in church situations where there's the one special pastor or the one special elder that everybody favors? What happens if that's the case? If we all just prefer Roger, Roger's our elder of choice.

And Roger's definitely not comfortable with that, I can tell. He's like, no, don't say that. That's inappropriate, right? What is appropriate is respecting Roger's calling in service to the body, but not lifting Roger up above others. That causes division. That's precisely the point that Paul is making here. That is not an appropriate thing.

We need to not have the division, and we need to regard He wants the church in Corinth to regard him this way, but a practical appropriation for this in our own day-to-day walk in the body is this idea of equal respect for the leadership that the Lord has put in place, as well as a careful respecting of one another inside the body. So he says, servants of Christ, that he should be regarded, or they, he says us, plural, because he's also talking about Apollos and Cephas, should be regarded as servants.

When you're serving, there is no glory. When you're serving, you don't get to be touted as the most amazing servant. That's not the way that goes. It's not about you. It's about the other person. If Paul wasn't serving, then he would be going around trying to build up the Church of Paul. But that's not the purpose. That's not what he's doing here. But they're servants of Christ, and their motivation and their deference is unto Christ. It's unto Him, and He is the one that gets the glory. Not Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas.

So we're going to step into what I suspect will be the longest section of our discussion this morning because I want to be really clear on this mystery principle. As I was thinking about this and preparing and studying, one of the things I realized and I was kind of impressed by this fact, we hear mystery and how many of you when you hear mystery have a really full confidence of what Paul means when he says mystery? because I, if I'm honest, had maybe more of a shadowy definition of what a mystery was in the New Testament. So Paul has nine mysteries that he's revealed throughout the New Testament. John has another two that he mentions in the book of Revelation. But Paul has nine mysteries, and I want to take a moment to look at these mysteries, each one individually, Because we need to identify what a mystery is, and why it was a mystery, or else it's easy for us to confuse what the meaning of mystery is. Now, as a parallel concept, what makes an apostle an apostle? What has to have happened in the New Testament chronology to make somebody an apostle?

He has to have seen Jesus Christ, for one thing. Okay, he has to have seen Jesus Christ, and they were sent and called to preach the gospel. And they were personally trained by Jesus Christ? I would argue that Paul wasn't personally trained, but he did see Jesus Christ. Out there in the Arabian desert, there was nobody else there to train him, so he saw him. There are things that we get the impression the Holy Spirit was communicating and teaching him things.

Those two core principles of having seen Christ and being called and sent to be messengers are key elements of what makes an apostle an apostle. That way, when you go down the street, because there is down the street from us a church off of Yale that's an apostolic church, and they believe that they have an apostle there that is in charge of the church. based on our working definition of what an apostle is, we can say that that's probably not a true statement. It doesn't pass muster. Jack?

Your dad preached rather significantly last Sunday on the word stewardship. He has a stewardship of these mysteries of God. He's responsible. Right, so he has a responsibility, there's an accountability for these things. So we have a clear definition of what we think a stewardship would be, and that's a responsibility as caretaker but not owner of something.

We have a clear definition of apostleship, but when we talk about mysteries, let's see how Paul uses the word mystery so that we can have a clear definition of mystery. Not only is it, you know, this is where, and Roger brought this up before, my dad gets the, in his PowerPoint slides, the moose because it's kind of the Greek word, musterion.

But let's take a look at, we're going to be selective. We don't have time to go over all nine of these. It would be awesome if we did, but we would maybe not make it all the way through First Corinthians in an efficient manner. So we'll take a look at some of these. Let's start in Ephesians 619.

So we'll take a look at this the second mystery, the mystery of the gospel. And the order of these is kind of random and I apologize it's not as revealed sequentially through the books. But Ephesians 619 He says, and pray on my behalf that utterance may be given to me in the opening of my mouth to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel.

Now why was the gospel a mystery? It did not pre-exist. It had not previously been revealed. And so the Holy Spirit had to divinely reveal the truth of the gospel. Prior to Christ's death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding, salvation was by believing in what God had revealed up to that time, which did not involve the death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding of Christ. 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4 had not been written yet. Romans 10. There's these places where we can find the gospel, but those had not been written yet, so it was a revelation that God had given, very specifically, that had not been previously revealed.

There was no prophecy of the specifics of the gospel. We had prophecy of the specifics of the Messiah, didn't we? But this was a mystery. This was a thing that was not anticipated by those who had come before. But when Paul came in, all he had to do was preach the factual, actual works of Christ on the cross and his death, burial, resurrection, and ascension. And people would have the revelation from the Old Testament, the prophecy that was given, to match that up and say, Paul is preaching this new thing, but it's a new thing rooted in what was revealed. But the Holy Spirit had to reveal the truth of this mystery.

So, a mystery, if we're going to say it very succinctly, a mystery is not something that was prophesied before specifically and explicitly. How about the birth of Christ to a virgin? Was that a mystery, or was that a prophecy that was fulfilled literally. So can we have a mystery revealed to us today? I don't think so. The Holy Spirit is unlikely to reveal to Roger or Mike or my dad as elders a new doctrine. But we previously didn't know.

If that's the case, then we could have all kinds of exciting things. We could start our own version of the Mormon Church. That's what Joseph Smith did. He said, ah, I have a new revelation. So those things matter quite a bit. If we take a look at Colossians 1, 26, and 28, this is one of my personal favorites of the mysteries. And if you get there, go ahead, somebody else can read it out loud, because I keep doing most of the reading here.

The mystery which has been hidden from ages and from generations, but now has been revealed to his saints. To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the host of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. Alright, thank you. So what's the mystery? Christ in you.

In the Old Testament, was the Holy Spirit constantly indwelling them? No. In the Old Testament, did they have God indwelling them? No. When Saul gets anointed, and he's going to be the king of Israel, because Israel is a bunch of whiny babies that want a king, when Saul gets anointed, For a time, Saul is filled with the Holy Spirit and goes and runs with the prophets, it says. And then the Holy Spirit leaves him and he goes on and he is the king. And then as it turns out, a wicked spirit comes and possesses him at some point in time. He tries to kill David and is very selfish.

That's not a true statement that we can make of believers. Christ is in us and we are also equally in Christ. So these mysteries are very explicitly revealed to the Apostles. They're clear, and the mysteries are tied to new, clear, revealed truths. They just were not previously known. There was no prophecy of them in the past.

The mystery of the Church as the bride of Christ in Ephesians 5. We go there in Ephesians 5, 22-33 and we hear lessons on marriage. You're familiar with the lessons on marriage from Ephesians chapter 5? We've all felt inadequate there, right? Oh, hey, I have some opportunity to grow here.

But the mystery of it is that this is Christ in the church, this intimacy that is expected to manifest in a biblical marriage between a godly man and a godly woman. It's a manifestation of this mystery of Christ in the church. Now, in the Old Testament, who was God's bride? Israel. Israel was God's bride. But Christ comes, and His bride is not Israel. His bride is the Church.

That was not previously revealed. We didn't have a full understanding of everything that Christ would do. We did not have a full understanding of all the consequences of what Christ would do. So these things were mysteries. They were not previously revealed, but they were revealed by the Holy Spirit when the Apostles were commissioned to go out and preach the Gospel and establish the Church. So, any questions on mysteries before we move on?

I don't want to belabor the point, but also I want to make sure there's clarity and that people don't have any confusion. Pat? You referred to this last week, but also the Holy Spirit involves us. Correct, yeah. I guess that would be another mystery. Paul doesn't call it as such, so I didn't include it in this list, but that was not something that they had seen before Christ. Christ actually tells the disciples, I must go so that God can send his helper. So Christ told them earlier about the Holy Spirit coming than some of this church establishment truth that was revealed after the fact.

Is this enumerated? Are there different functions? I'm not sure I understand. Can you restate that? You have Christ indwelling us. You have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. Do you have different functions? We are in Christ, and Christ is in us because of our new creation being made new in his image. And the Holy Spirit indwells us to empower us under righteousness. So one of them is in position and identity, and one of them is in condition. And that's the way I would identify that.

The interesting thing is that if we also look at Ephesians chapter 4, we see that God the Father is even involved in the lives of the believers. So all three parts of the Trinity are actively involved in our day-to-day life, both spiritual and earthly. Tommy, it looked like you were going to say something. I know that there was a possible foreshadowing of all this, even though it was just a barest hint that when, in the presence of the apostles, Jesus made that prayer to his father at the time after Judas had left. Yeah. And so I in them and they in me. Yeah. It was a hint, but that was all it was. They had no idea what was going on. There were things that were waiting to happen.

If we look at the chronology of the ministry of Christ, I think it's Matthew 12, if I have my addresses right, but let's double-check me on that, so be a Berean. I think it's Matthew chapter 12 where Israel rejects Christ, and after that, Christ's ministry direction shifts, as certain things he knows will play out differently. and the Holy Spirit is revealing to him the Father's plan has changed. He wasn't surprised, but the Father's direction is moving this way, as Israel has rejected Christ. I want to be careful I don't state that God was confused or surprised by something. That's not proper theology.

So Paul includes himself in this us principle, the stewards of truth, They're stewards, they're servants, and this ministry that they have is to pass that along. So the next element of this is what does it mean to be a steward of this truth or a servant that is carrying this truth inside the church?

Why is Paul writing a corrective letter to the Corinthians? Someone has abdicated their stewardship. Someone has abdicated their proper role as leaders in the Corinthian church. They have selfishly and carnally pursued these divisive theological ideas and they brought about division because they did not take seriously the stewardship that they had been left with by Paul. and probably Apollos.

So this principle of stewardship actually means that it comes with the idea of passing these things along. When we look at 2 Timothy, Paul writes to Timothy in 2 Timothy chapter 1 verses 13 and 14 that Timothy should be maintaining sound doctrine himself, and then in chapter 2, verse 2, he instructs Timothy to entrust these very same sound doctrines to faithful men who will then pass those same sound doctrines on. It is Roger and Mike's and my dad's responsibility as stewards in their eldership position to be passing these things on to the next generation. who will hopefully be passionately and deeply studying and walking with the Lord to pass these things on to the next generation, who will hopefully be studying and passionately walking with the Lord to pass these things on to the next generation, and so forth, until the Lord comes.

How many of you have heard of the great movement going on in the Church of Ephesus today? Nobody? Why is that? There is no Church of Ephesus. The Muslims have taken over. The Church in Ephesus is, for all intents and purposes, no more. There are missionaries there.

But the faithful men stopped being faithful at some point in time, and stopped carrying that on and passing that down. So when Paul is concerned about the stewardship, he's concerned about the stewardship of the truth, not the steward. and he's passing that on. His heart and his mind and his body are focused on those things. This is what the Lord has entrusted him with, and Apollos with, and Cephas with, and they're moving forward with those as critical elements of their mission. So the next thing Paul says is, it is required of stewards that one be found trustworthy. What use is it if you've got a responsibility for truth but you can't even be trusted with it? Distrust or an abdication of that responsibility is a severe problem.

In 1 Corinthians 4.17, Paul writes, "...for this reason I have sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, and he will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in every church." So, Timothy is And as it turns out, the Greek word pistos is the same root or the same Greek word behind this idea of faithful or trustworthy. It's the same word. Timothy was trustworthy and he was there as a trustworthy servant to remind the Corinthians of this truth. But how do we know that Paul was trustworthy based on that 417 passage, since that's a nice, easy cross-reference? Why is Paul trustworthy with it? What does he even say there in 417 that lets us know he's trustworthy or faithful? He says he's in Christ. He says he's in Christ, for sure.

But it's just as I teach everywhere in every church. My message isn't changing. It's always the gospel if I have to preach the gospel, if I'm planting the seed. And it's always who you are in Christ and what Christ did for you on the cross when you are being watered.

His faithfulness and his message were consistent. Paul was trustworthy. But Paul knew he'd been given a position of trust, a stewardship, a place of service, that if he failed, if he walked away from the Lord, would be carrying with it eternal consequences for every Greek and Jew that he would have otherwise run into and been able to preach the gospel to. So trustworthiness or faithfulness are supercritical elements that Paul is concerned with, and he knows that is the position of a servant, not one of building esteem within a community to build up your own personal brand of Christianity.

So after addressing this issue of trustworthiness, he says, but to me it is a very small thing that I might be examined by you, or may be examined by you, or by any human court. Roger, you're smiling. It sounds pretty proud, pretty boastful. It is a strong statement. Paul doesn't care. Go ahead and judge me. If you judge Paul, what do you get? Let's be honest. Let's talk about what we know, what's revealed about Paul. Let's judge Paul.

Let's do it. By the grace of God, he was and is what he was his. Okay. Can someone say that less cryptically? Bob, you look like you were going to say something. I think something is really important here, and I think you've got to finish the verse and go to the next one to interpret this.

If we walk by the Spirit in the Lord Jesus Christ, we're not to pay attention to our own walk, right? That's what Paul is going to say here. But if you're looking at Jack's life, and you're judging him, it shouldn't make that much difference because the Lord is going to be the final metric of that walk.

But we know that we look at one another, we look at each other's walk and we kind of make some conclusions about somebody's walk, right? And we may judge, I mean the idea is judge is not as negative, but we may judge that that's a person walking in the spirit. But he said that's a small thing. But by the way, I don't account myself at all in terms of how I'm walking. That's because when you walk in the Spirit, the Lord is the judge and to Him be the glory, right?

I'm sorry to move ahead, but I think we've got to put that into perspective about how we're looking at one another. Yes, we do make some conclusions, but small thing. So it's a small thing to be examined by the church in Corinth, so he invites that examination. Right? Go ahead. It's a small thing. I mean, it's trivial. Let's do it. Judge me.

In all honesty, let's take a look and let's account for the life of Paul. Did he live a servant's life? Did he carry a stewardship of planting and watering and preaching the gospel? As we're going to get to, and as Bob insinuated, there's a reason for that. But that examination is something he welcomes. If I'm honest, there's parts of my life that I'm not so proud of that I really would prefer that people didn't spend too much time examining, because I have examined them a lot and I don't like them. places of sin, let's be honest, right? None of us in this room besides me has sinned, but trust me, it's out there. The idea that we can find in Paul this welcoming of examination is because he actually lived out the biblical, Holy Spirit-led life. Paul's process and his behavior were very consistent.

If we look at Acts 17.1-4, we find something similar to the 1 Corinthians 4.17 passage. Luke writes, Now when they had traveled through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica where there was a synagogue of the Jews. And according to Paul's custom, he went to them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the Scriptures, explaining and giving evidence that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead, and saying, This Jesus, whom I am proclaiming to you, is the Christ, or Messiah. And some of them were persuaded and joined Paul and Silas, along with a large number of the God-fearing Greeks and a number of the leading women.

So Paul has the stewardship of the gospel, and he lives a consistent life, so that if you're going to evaluate him and examine him, you're going to walk away saying, oh yeah, he does what he says. Now we can read Romans chapter 7 and say that he says he still wrestles with the flesh, right? That was a great relief for me to read Romans 7 when I was a teenager, because I was like, sweet, Paul also screwed up, there's a chance I might make it through this thing alive.

But we have here this idea of this examination by any human court. The principle here is that Paul welcomes that, but he doesn't stop there. And as Bob pointed out, we have to keep reading and follow the rest of the passage or the verse that's there. And he says, that he does not examine himself. Now that seems an interesting turn. Elsewhere, do we find Paul saying elsewhere that we should examine ourselves? We do. But why does Paul not examine himself? Because he says there is a greater examiner coming. There is a greater examiner. What happens when a believer abides? What will the examination reveal? Christ. It will reveal Christ.

When you go in to the dentist every six months, you go to the dentist every six months, right? That's what I do. But I work at a dental supply company, so I've seen really gnarly pictures of really gnarly teeth, so I really like teeth to be taken care of. When you go to the dentist, at whatever interval you choose to go to the dentist, what are you hoping the dentist finds?

Nothing. Nothing. Not a single, you want him to take x-rays and go, my goodness, those haven't changed by thousands of a millimeter. No new cavities, no new wear. The gum line is all in place, and I want to stop being anal about all my dental vocabulary. And you hope that everything is just fine. You hope that everything is just like it was before.

But sometimes it's not, right? And then what do they have to do? They have to drill. Oh no, drill or worse, right? Depends on what's going on. The reality though is that as believers, how much drilling, how many cavities do we have in Christ? None. But our condition, our earthly wrestlings still exist. Our earthly condition brings the need for judgment and evaluation of things. But our position is solid.

And if we're abiding, if we take a look at Galatians 5, in fact, let's do so. Let's go to Galatians 5 and we'll take a look at the fruits of the Spirit, 22 and 23. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And 23b here is a humdinger in the context of what we're looking at.

23b here, he says, against such things there is no law. Paul knows he's been abiding. He's had to. He's been under tremendous pressure He can either walk in the flesh and blow up and destroy his ministry, or he can abide and walk in the spirit and fulfill his apostleship, and he knows he's been abiding. Examine me. Check me out. But he doesn't examine himself, and instead he knows that another examiner, a greater examiner, is coming. So let's take a look at the next set of verses here.

Yet I am not by this acquitted." If the glove, if it doesn't fit, you must acquit. Is that what was happening in the O.J. Simpson trial? That terrible, terrible rhyme. Which as it turns out is actually a manipulation technique. But the idea of acquittal is something here that Paul does not say, I'm not guilty. That's not his call to make. He can say, I don't feel guilty, and I want you to examine me. I don't even look at myself. I'm not checking myself out, feeling tremendous amounts of guilt. And instead, he says, I'm not acquitted by that.

But the one who examines me is the Lord. Now, if God is doing the examining, what do we know about Him as a judge, as the examiner? Unimpeachable, righteous, all-knowing. Holy. If you're going to look for qualities in a judge, those are the ones you want. When I went and got called for jury duty, the judge said I'm supposed to be impartial. And I was far enough back in the room that I laughed a little bit, and I hope I didn't get kicked out on account of that. But earthly judges are partial, are they not? But God is an impartial judge. He's a righteous, holy, unimpeachable, that's a great word, judge. But he doesn't stop there, because Paul's known for his run-on sentences. We shouldn't be surprised, right? He doesn't stop there.

Therefore, do not go on passing judgment before the time, but wait until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness, and disclose the motives of men's hearts. And then each man's praise will come to him from God. before the time. What's the time?

Do we have a judgment that we just talked about? Yeah, we talked about this fire, this purifying fire, this judgment that was coming. But what's the purpose of that judgment? It's the purpose of that judgment is rewards. And so it's not about wrath, It's not about division, it's about rewards. There are times of earthly judgment.

We have Hebrews chapter 12 where we see God brings about earthly judgment. That's why God can say he's going to destroy the people who are confusing and distorting the gospel in the verses that Roger covered last week. It's because there may be earthly judgment for liars lying on behalf of God.

I don't think it's an accident that Joseph Smith was shot in jail They might call him a martyr in the Catholic Church. I think God was calling that out. I'm sorry, Mormon Church. I said Catholic, didn't I? Apologies. They'll misquote me. I'll be misquoted on that, I'm sure. Some apologists will find that.

But the idea is that God's judgment on the earth may come for discipline, like Hebrews 12 tells us, but the reality is that Paul says we need to be focused, when we're looking at the context of this, we had division that was coming from foolish thinking and following foolish leaders who were teaching that you should follow one of multiple leaders instead of the revelation given to Paul and those who were missionaries traveling through the area teaching and watering. and division that's happening where people are giving the wood hands stubble and building bad houses.

I happened to have breakfast with somebody yesterday, or coffee, and we talked about this very thing. The person asked, well, can a Christian even grow in one of these fluffy, seeker-sensitive type churches? And the person was skeptical, but my answer to that is yes, because They still have the Word. You still have the Bible, even though you may not be equipped by the leadership of that church. But my prayer, and what I think the will of the Lord is, is that you'd be drawn out of that scenario of poor equipping and poor teaching, up towards proper biblical teaching. All of those things come together. The division that was there, that was forming, gets wrapped up here.

If you stop being the judge, if you stop being divisive, if you stop thinking about I'm with this sect or I'm with this sect, those divisions go away because the judge is coming that can judge righteously. So how does our attitude shift towards one another if instead of division we have another thing that gets fit into that space? What happens to our attitude? I can't wait to spend time with you guys, and I can't wait for us to work past any differences we have, so that we can love one another with the passionate love of Christ. Does that sound a little better than division? That's okay with me. That's alright. But this division that comes here, Paul is not worried about that division in light of what is true.

He says, don't pass judgment now, the time is coming when the Lord will come and he will pass judgment. And what does the Lord's judgment carry with it? What is he going to be judging? for rewards, but his ability to judge goes beyond what we see with our eyes. I heard a quote, and I'm sorry I can't attribute it appropriately, but it was, we judge ourselves by our intents, and we judge others by their actions. And I thought that was actually pretty relevant here. But how does Paul say that God judges? What is he going to look at? He's going to bring to light the things hidden in the darkness. And he goes to the motives. And the motives thing is so important.

When I was in junior high and high school, and I was addicted to pornography, which is an awesome thing to say in front of your mother-in-law, I looked really good at church. nobody could look at the outside of what they could see during Sunday morning time and identify what's Randy doing in the darkness. And they couldn't identify the motive. So when you look at the legalist who is trying to be righteous by their own strength, what's their motive? It's the flesh, it's pride.

So God can discern that that's fake. God can discern that the motive was this artificial motive and call you out on it. How many rewards do you get for the artificial motive? The carnal motive? Yeah, that's a wood, hay and stubble motive. Bob, you definitely look like you had something on your mind.

Yeah, I mean this judging not yourself I think relates kind of to legal principles too, right? You kind of alluded to that before a little bit, but if you judge yourself in the flesh, that's because you're not measuring up to some standard, right? So that's a negative judgment. If you're doing good things and you judge that as being good, where's the credit, right? Yeah, and that's that motive issue. So if I'm instead of judging myself on my works and looking for the merit that comes from that, if instead I'm asking myself, am I abiding? That's the question we should be asking. We look at Galatians 5 and we see what's the consequence of abiding?

The fruit. So we don't have to sit and evaluate the fruit. You know who produces the fruit? The Holy Spirit. And you know who the fruit inspector is? Christ. And you know who guaranteed that the only fruit that we take with us would be the good fruit? God, we have the guaranteed source of the fruit, we have the guaranteed reward for the fruit, and we have the one that is glad to bestow that reward.

All three parts of the Godhead are actively involved. So when we look at the end of this, He said, And then each man's praise will come to him from God. And that's a really, really powerful place to get praise from. Is there a better, higher place to get praise from? No! And that's a really awe-striking truth.

So God is going to reward us or give us praise And all we did was abide. All we did was obey. And that's not obedience in a legalistic way, right? That's because we're empowered by the Holy Spirit. So Paul keeps circling back to this principle. Have you noticed that as we've gone through this? We're only partially through chapter four. Paul keeps circling back to this principle of this division is coming from the flesh, unity comes, and fruit comes, and blessing comes from God.

And so we can walk away from this verse, if we never read the rest of the book, which would be a shame, unless a rapture happens, that's a good reason. We can walk away just from here, knowing that division is something that does not have to reign in the Church. I've left a lot of churches. Some of them I left quietly, some of them I left very disruptively. There are many testimonies of such things. But that division came from carnality. Sometimes my own carnality, probably more often than not, but also the carnality of others. So let's ask one more question that I think this passage begs to be asked.

What's the difference between discernment and judgment? If we use those two words, how do we differentiate the definition of those two things? Because I've heard, Paul says here, we shouldn't judge. What does he mean, Tom? Discernment is to decide in the quiet of your heart, according to the evidence presented from God's word, that this is what it is.

I don't have to sweat over it. Hopefully as we're abiding, the Holy Spirit is clearly articulating what is true for us, that we walk in faith in. If a liar comes in and starts lying, we know not to take the wood and stubble that he's handing us and put it in our house. We have the discernment to know that. But the judgment situation is an important thing that we don't judge one another unto wrath and division. But there will be a time where we have to have discernment. We're going to call that our spirit-led judgment, is discernment.

Otherwise, Galatians 6.1 couldn't be written. Hey, you who are spiritual, come alongside the person who's been found walking in sin.

Well, I shouldn't judge. Nobody comes alongside. The guy's wallowing in the ditch. I didn't want to judge. So we don't want to walk away from this not having an understanding of discernment. But we also don't want to walk away with this with judgment and legalism.

What's interesting in chapter 5, Paul's going to come on pretty heavy with some judgment here because there's some sin in the church and he wants to focus on that and say, you've got to judge that sin. You can't leave it there. So there's that balance between... Yeah, and in 5.5 he makes a literal judgment. I give such a one over to Satan. That's not a mild judgment. That's not small and trivial. But the principle in this case is that the church has abandoned proper discernment and proper judgment and proper discipline and gone crazy in this area of liberalism and permissive behavior.

That was the second bell. We should probably wrap up. Any other thoughts or questions? Things you wish I had said? Things you wish I hadn't said? Okay, let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you so much for this time that we have to gather and study your word. Thank you that we get to look forward to your judgment and look forward to your praise. What a tremendous thing. Something that we don't attach enough significance to in our daily walk, I think. We just pray for your Holy Spirit to just embed our minds with this doctrinal fact. We thank you and we praise you in Jesus' name. Amen.