I just thought it'd be worth making a note about that as many churches have decided to celebrate what they call communion, so-called virtually or separately over live stream. We cannot call that the Lord's Supper or communion because it is central to that ordinance that it's done together. And I know I've interacted with several folks over this past week about so-called virtual communion. I just wanted to make a brief note about that to help us. We'll look this evening at 1 Corinthians chapter 7, but if you just go a couple of chapters ahead in 1 Corinthians, chapters 10 and 11, and you'll see why we cannot celebrate the Lord's Supper through the medium of live stream or internet access. In chapter 10, in particular, 1 Corinthians, in verse 17, Paul writes this, Central to our celebration of the Lord's Supper when we celebrate it is that we are together as one body. We're not only communing with the Lord individually, we're communing with him as his body, as his church. And that's why later in chapter 11, when Paul gives more detailed instructions about the Lord's Supper, he says at least three times, when you come together to do the Lord's Supper. You see, the gathering of the Church is not incidental to the Lord's Supper. It's not circumstantial. It's not a happenstance. It's actually at the heart of what we're doing when we celebrate the Lord's Supper. That's why we have to say that when the so-called Lord's Supper is done via live stream or virtually when Christians are separated, it really is something else. It's not the Lord's Supper. In fact, I would be even stronger to say that it's actually a desecration of what is called the Lord's Supper in scripture. It's not at all what God has designed for us. And so we cannot celebrate it in this way because it is a call for us to gather together and to commune with one another as the temple of God, as his church. and to commune with Jesus as his body. Now, of course, where does that leave us then as we are now prohibited from gathering because of the pandemic of the coronavirus? Well, it leaves us in a position of lament. We are sorrowful that the month of April 2020 is going to go by and Emmanuel Baptist Church is not going to celebrate the Lord's Supper. That's a grief. That's a sorrow. And it's something that we should lament, that we are unable this evening, as we would love to, to be together and to celebrate the Lord's table and to fellowship with one another. And we are hindered from doing that. And we want to bring our cry of lament to God and plead for his mercy upon us and upon this land, that he would lift this plague and that we could again be gathering together and celebrating it. But we also remember that we never lament these things apart from the hope of God in Jesus Christ. and that central to our hope in eternity is not whether or not we've celebrated the Lord's Supper recently, but whether we are trusting the Lord Jesus Christ presently. And that is all our hope. And even if the Lord were to call some of us home, even through this pandemic, before we are able to celebrate the Lord's Supper again, we have no loss of assurance that we will be present with the Lord forever because we trust him. Even the thief on the cross, when he was there, he never celebrated the Lord's Supper. And yet what did Jesus promise him? That that very day he would be with him in paradise. Our hope of eternity is based on faith alone. And we don't ever want to diminish or certainly hinder the great grace that the Lord means to give us when we commune with him at the Lord's table. But the celebration of these ordinances is not our ultimate hope. It is our trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we pray that the Lord would give us the opportunity to gather again soon to celebrate the Lord's table, to worship, to praise him together, to have actual preaching, which is when those of us who are installed to minister God's word do so in the assembly of the people, But until that time, we wait, we lament, we pray to God, and we seek His mercies and His grace as we try to be patient under what He has for us. I hope that's an encouragement, at least a help as well, as to why we wouldn't be doing anything resembling the Lord's Supper over livestream. But if you've already opened to 1 Corinthians, I would encourage you to turn to chapter 7 now. And for our time in the teaching of God's Word, I want to look at 1 Corinthians chapter 7, at the central paragraph in that chapter, verses 17 to 24. 1 Corinthians chapter 7, verses 17 to 24. And there in 1 Corinthians 7, verse 17, we find it written. Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches. Was anyone at the time of his call already circumcised? Let him not seek to remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone at the time of his call uncircumcised? Let him not seek circumcision. For neither circumcision counts for anything, nor uncircumcision, but keeping the commandments of God. Each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. Were you a bondservant when called? Do not be concerned about it. But if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. For he who was called in the Lord as a bondservant is a freedman of the Lord. Likewise, he who was free when called is a bondservant of Christ. You were bought with a price. Do not become bondservants of men. So, brothers, in whatever condition each was called, there let him remain with God." This is God's Word. Let's ask in prayer for His help as we study His Word together. Our Father, we thank You for Your Word, an unerring, inspired, infallible, and authoritative for us, and sufficient to guide us and to help us in the varied circumstances of life. We praise you for not only the truth of your word, but the goodness and wisdom of it, that we might find hope and help in even great times of need and uncertainty. We pray that as we are scattered and as now considering your word over the medium of the internet, that you would be with each home and each household and each individual watching. We pray that with Bibles open, you would also open our hearts and minds to understand your word. We pray you would add your extra blessing to these extraordinary circumstances to so help us be faithful to you and glorify your name in these days. We pray this in Christ's name, amen. Well, disappointment, as we know, is a universal phenomenon. Modern psychologists define disappointment as the grief or sadness over the gap between what we expected and reality. Now we all go through this sadness all the time. We go through the sadness of disappointment over relatively inconsequential things like your plans for a day being scuttled or your hopes for a week going awry. But we can also go through the grief of disappointment that is deep and that consumes every waking moment it seems. Like when our hopes for a marriage or a child or a career or even just having ordinary health and strength seem to be dashed forever. In many ways, the current coronavirus pandemic is a global experience of disappointment, isn't it? It's relatively small in many ways, the inconveniences of being locked up at home, the interruptions of our normal lives. But in other ways, it's massive. There are many who are enduring now job loss, the vanishing of financial gains, even life itself being cut short. In fact, this week, the infectious disease experts, many of them here in our nation, are expecting that the coronavirus to surge and peak in our nation this week. One of them said this morning that this is going to be the hardest moment for many Americans in their entire lives, that this very week, many Americans were going to face the greatest disappointment they will face in their whole life. You even think, as the coronavirus especially hurts the elderly and the sick, how many couples are recently retired who will be newly widowed by the end of this week? Whether it's little things or absolute life-changing things, disappointment is inevitable. It's unavoidable. So how do we deal with it? or even that's really too small a goal, what we mean by dealing with disappointment, which is the heading I've given our teaching this evening, is how are we to live in faith, obedience, and joy for God's glory when our life really isn't the life we want? We have help in God's word, and we have help in a portion of God's word that we might not expect because this chapter here in 1 Corinthians 7 is mostly about marriage. The Corinthians, as we see in both 1st and 2nd Corinthians, were a confused congregation. Pseudo-spiritual philosophies had sown confusion in the church. And if you look up at verse 1 of this chapter, you notice that Paul is responding to what they had written. They had written to the apostle, and he is beginning to respond to what they had wrote about, and especially their concerns about marriage, as he says they wrote, it is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman. But apparently among the pseudo-spiritual philosophies being sown in Corinth were some advocating celibacy. Even within marriage, as Paul has to address in verse 5 specifically, that husband and wife are not to deprive one another. So with this confusion sown in the church, Paul has to answer and clarify. Later, beyond the passage we're looking at in verses 28 and 36, Paul even has to clarify that getting married isn't a sin. This reminds us of similar confusion that was seen in the Ephesians churches, if you've been with us as we looked in our studies in 1 Timothy, that there were men in 1 Timothy 4, verse three, who were forbidding marriage as a consequence of their speculations in error. Mysticism, asceticism, legalism, all with Jewish roots and pseudo-spiritual arrogance were regular problems in the first Christians, and they pop up all the time in the New Testament. But as Paul always does as a faithful minister, he takes his church from the immediate issue, which is the questions and controversies about marriage, and he brings them into the broader truths of who they are in Christ and the objective realities of the gospel. And that's the paragraph here in the center of this chapter that we want to look at in verses 17 to 24. And this paragraph is critical not only for understanding your station in life whether married or single, this paragraph and understanding it is critical if we are ever to approach life with the faith and joy that God calls us to in circumstances that we don't desire. Paul's idea here in this paragraph is really straightforward. It's quite simple. He says it three times. In verse 17, verse 20, and verse 24, Paul repeats, remain with God, the life that God has assigned. And Paul's point here is very simple. Your life has been assigned to you by God. God has determined the circumstance of your life. So, remain there. Remain with the life God has assigned you. And that's Paul's main point that he wants to draw out in the controversy in marriage through this chapter. So he repeats at the beginning and the end of chapter 7, each person is to remain. Remain married, remain single. The point is to see God's sovereignty, God's assigning the circumstances of one's life. But beyond, again, the immediate controversy of marriage, this is a point that's relevant for all of our life circumstances. The great news for every circumstance that we might find ourselves in, brothers and sisters, is that if we have been called to God in Christ, there's no life situation that is not a high calling. We are never in a situation in life to which we have not been called by the upward call of God in Christ for His glory. And what the Holy Spirit is saying to us in this paragraph here is that we must see our lives through our life in Christ. That who we are in Christ must be the lenses or the grid, the perspective from which we look at the circumstances of our life so that we might live in all circumstances with joy in God for His glory. That's the main burden of this passage, to see our life through our life with Christ. And what I want to do is just see how this passage helps us think about who we are wherever we are. In fact, we might ask the question of this text as answering, who are we? And we'll see three answers at least in this passage. We are called in Christ, we are commanded by Christ, and we are consecrated to Christ. That's how we are to see ourselves in whatever circumstance we must find ourselves in. This is the things we must recall, especially when we're walking through the grief and sadness of disappointment, that we are called, commanded, and consecrated. Well, let's look first at verses 17 to the first half of verse 19, that we are called in Christ. If you're a Christian, you're called in Christ. And Paul says in verse 17, let everyone lead the life that the Lord has assigned. That is, walk in the way God has assigned him. Now, Paul uses that word that's translated here, assigned, to refer to the gift of faith several times in the New Testament. Earlier in chapter 3 verse 5, Paul is dealing with the personality disputes and says, what is Paul? What is Apollo? Servants through whom you believed as the Lord assigned to each. That God has assigned the faith that we have received. We see that even in the book of Romans chapter 12 verse 3, that each one has faith according to the measure that God has assigned. We believe as God has assigned us. That's what explains the fact that 27 years ago I believed the gospel in the church we were visiting, whereas my friend from school with whom before I had been mocking the church and the teaching didn't. What explains why I believed and he did not? Because God assigned faith. God was gracious. But not only has God assigned faith, not only has God assigned the ones through whom the gospel and faith would come, Here's the key to verse 17, God has assigned then the life we lead when we come to faith. That's the point. If God determines when and through whom the call of Christ comes, then he must determine how we live as a Christian, or the condition in which we are called as Christians. We know that that's what Paul means when he says in verse 17, the life to which, the end of the verse, God has called him. And literally, that is, the life as God has called him. The life in which God called him. Where he was when God opened his eyes and God shone in our hearts and brought us to faith in Christ. In essence, Paul says in verse 17, lead the life that the Lord assigned you when he called you. continue to walk in that station of life you had when God opened your eyes and made you a Christian. You see, what Paul is doing in verse 17 is very significant. He is correcting the idea that there's any particular earthly circumstance that's required to be a Christian or to grow spiritually in Christ. And that's not true at all. There is no child of God for which God failed to anticipate their background or their current life situation when he brought us to his Son. There is no Christian who cannot be a full and real Christian where they are right now, however they are. Now when we think of it, it just makes perfect sense. Is our omniscient or sovereign God surprised by the circumstances of life when he called us to himself in Christ? If we are young adults growing in Christian homes and have always believed nominally at least the gospel and have brought by faith in Christ or whether we're much older in life. We've lived years with foolish and sinful habits and God has called us to himself with many regrets and long and deep furrows of a pattern of sinful life. Is God surprised by any circumstance in which he calls us? Of course the answer is no. Sovereignly, omnisciently, all-powerfully, God calls us to Himself and knows who we are and how we will be when He calls us. Now what this all means then, if it's true, which it is, is that every Christian is living the life that God intends them to live and bring them glory as a Christian. No Christian is ever in a circumstance or in a condition in which they cannot bring glory to God as He intends where they are. Now this teaching here, and even just this verse, completely runs counter to the unfortunate assumption that continues to pop up throughout history that you can only serve Jesus well if you're removed from life's circumstances. That's why monasteries and cloisters have existed throughout Church history. Because many Christians have wrongly assumed that, hey, if we're going to live truly God-glorifying lives, we need to all move to this mountain away from everyone. And only there can we live lives of holiness for His glory. But, beloved, that is the exact opposite of what the Bible teaches. The Bible teaches, lead your life, that God has called you now in Christ. That God has called you as you are to glorify Him where you are. This is what it means to be truly free in Christ. This is what true Christian freedom is. It's freedom in any circumstance. And this particular truth ought to especially encourage those of you who struggle with deep regret about your life before becoming a Christian. Of course, we might have sorrow over our life of sin and our regrets over how we've lived. And we must lament the lives that we have lived outside of Christ in folly and in sin. But we must never do that apart from the knowledge of the sovereign purposes of God. God was the one who determined when we would see the truth of his Son in faith. And that means he determined the conditions of our life into which he'd call us. We must never think that in order to be full and God-glorifying Christians, we need some other life. God has called us to the life we have, when he called us, to glorify him there. And to illustrate this, Paul turns to the great divide, especially in the first century, of circumcision. We see this in verse 18. This is one of, if not the great divide in the early church was the divide between Jews and Gentiles as Christians and whether or not Gentile Christians had to become Jewish in order to be Christian. But certainly to be clear, let's remember Galatians 3.28 where Paul there wrote, There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. The gospel is the power of God to save both the Jew and the Gentile. If you are in Christ, whether you are Jewish or Greek, whether you are any ethnicity on the face of the earth throughout human history, you have the only Savior there is and all you need to stand before God clothed in his righteousness. And so what this means then very clearly in verse 18 is that those who are already circumcised when they were called by God, they don't need to undo it. And apparently this is exactly what some Jews did in the first century to be more acceptable to Roman society. They did not need to undo their circumcision. God knew they were Jewish when He called them to Christ. It also means, then, that those do not need to seek circumcision who are uncircumcised. The Gentiles do not need to be circumcised in order to be fully Christians. Salvation is by Christ alone and by trusting Him. So, Paul says in verse 19, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything. You don't merit more with God by being a Jew who's circumcised. Nor do you merit more with God as a Gentile. It doesn't count for anything. That is to say, Paul's saying negatively the point that what counts is whether or not you're in Christ. That's what counts. What counts is you've been called by God to Christ. And if you're in Him and standing by faith in Him, then you have all that does count. The righteousness and holiness of God and Jesus. Now we know that our world likes to say you can be anything you want. But the truth is, it doesn't really believe it, does it? If you make one wrong step, you get cancelled. In 2013, Justine Sacco learned this truth painfully. She was traveling and was tweeting some things on Twitter that were notably biting and sarcastic and frankly inappropriate about certain peoples and people groups as she was traveling through the airports by air. Now Justine only had 170 followers, but by the time she landed in her final destination, she was the number one worldwide trend on Twitter. People around the world were denouncing her sarcastic quips on Twitter. She lost her job, her life absolutely imploded. And she's one example of many that you can look at whose lives have been canceled based on unwise comments online. And even now, we know people will go up and dig up in the past what someone said or posted online when they were teenagers to eliminate employment or any advancement opportunities. Our world says publicly, be whoever you want. But we all know the truth is, is that if you're not perfect according to the world's standards, you're canceled. You're done. And so our world lives anxiously knowing it's only the right people who said always the right things that gain acceptance. And the problem is, is that in our world, what's right is changing all the time. And if you're not a Christian, you might assume that that's how it is with Christianity or the church or even with God himself. But that wouldn't be true at all. You see, those of us who are Christians are not those who were just born that way as Christians. We were born religious. or that we're the ones who have always done and said the right things. Or maybe you're sitting here watching this and thinking you've done or said or thought too much to ever be in the category of someone who could become a Christian. But you see, that's the great hope of the gospel and the difference between God and this rebellious world. We deserve to be canceled by God, not just temporarily, not just for a job, but eternally. But God has met His own standards of holiness and justice that we have failed as sinners in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, Jesus lived perfectly, obediently. He died on the cross and suffered a judgment He didn't deserve for sinners. And then He rose victoriously three days later so that all who trust in the Lord Jesus and call on His name have their judgment borne by Him on the cross, and His perfection becomes theirs only by faith in Him. Every condition that God requires in holiness and righteousness has been met perfectly by Jesus Christ. And the wonderful news, the good news, what we call the gospel, is that means that there are no conditions to come to God except trusting Jesus, who has met every condition. There is no cultural, there are no circumstantial prerequisites to being a Christian. As Paul says here in verse 19 of 1 Corinthians 7, they don't count for anything. Nothing counts except the merits of Jesus Christ and His righteousness. And if you trust Him, you have everything that counts, and you belong to God forever. All you need to do is know your need of rescue from God's judgment, your guilt in sin, and to know that Jesus Christ is God's Son who came to offer His perfect life on the cross for sinners like us and who rose again. If you trust Him now, He will save you. You can become a Christian right now by trusting Him. And for those of us who are Christians, this means that in every circumstance we're to live as those who are called in Christ. And we are never in a circumstance in which we cannot fully and really live as Christians for God's glory. because everything that counts has been done by Jesus, and we have Him as we are joined to Him in faith. So we are to lead the life that God has assigned because we're called in Christ. That's the first thing we're to understand, we're called in Christ. Secondly, we want to see in verses 19 to 22, and spend some time reflecting on this, that we are commanded by Christ. We're not just called in Christ, we're commanded by Him. We can be Christians anywhere and in any circumstance, but we cannot be Christians in any way. No, circumcision doesn't matter. Eternal circumstances don't matter. But what does matter is at the end of verse 19, keeping the commandments of God. What's important is not our circumstance. What is important is what God has commanded us in our circumstances. Now isn't it true that we often think the opposite? We can be tempted to believe that our situation excuses us from obedience. I'll obey God when things get more advantageous to obeying you. I'll be generous when the economic outlook is improved. I'll live purely when I'm married. I will serve the church when I have more recognized and exalted opportunities to serve. We could go on. But the exact opposite of what we often believe is really true. It's in the most difficult and trying times that our obedience most brightly demonstrates the hope and the worth of God in Jesus. No, Paul says here in verse 20, each one should remain in the condition in which he was called. That is to say, putting together with verse 19, obey Christ in the condition in which He called you. God is not shocked that you are in the circumstances you are in. He called you in those circumstances, so obey Him there. He means for you to obey His commands and to follow His Word where you are, not wait to follow it until you're in some other more advantageous situation. And just so that we don't secretly wonder or object, well, God can't really mean this situation I'm in. This situation is way too difficult. God can't mean this. He gives us another illustration here in verse 21. The one illustration of slavery. Paul uses bondservants, or slaves. Now we talked about this more last week when we looked in our study in 1 Timothy, in 1 Timothy chapter 6, verses 1 and 2. And if you're interested, I tried to deal fully with slavery as it compares in the Bible and in our American past in a sermon a year ago in March of 2019. It's titled, Slavery in the Bible in America. If you're interested, you can go online and listen to that another time. Slavery in the Bible and in America. But suffice to say, there were major differences between first century slaves, as Paul's writing here, and the transatlantic slave trade in our past. And we should not read the circumstances and the racism of American slavery back into the New Testament as though somehow Paul was ignoring or blind to those dreadful realities. But it's important also for us, as Paul here is referring to bond servants and slaves in verse 21, he wasn't affirming slavery in the first century either. And even though there were many ways that the American slave experience was more dehumanizing, the first century Roman slavery was no picnic either. Bond servants, or slaves, were legal property. One Roman philosopher, in fact, referred to slaves as animate tools. It's like having a lawnmower, it just talks. So dehumanizing to refer to people as just simply property. And masters had full legal power to use or dispose of their slaves at will. Slaves had very limited rights, limited marriage rights, and it was usually just to reproduce other slaves. And there were many abuses that were common for first century slaves. Torture and rape and flogging and other things that I will not describe. And the slaves had no legal recourse for their abuse. Now it's obvious even in this passage that being a bond servant wasn't enviable because of the end of verse 21 where Paul says, if you can gain your freedom, avail yourself of the opportunity. If you're able to be free from being a slave, it's obviously better. Go ahead, Paul says. So he wants to be very clear. He's not saying when we are called to remain in the condition we're in, that we are to remain in disadvantageous situations that we can get out of, that we can avail ourselves of, especially those that are oppressive and tyrannical as slavery. And we have many stories that come to us from the early church where churches would actually gather together their resources and to buy one another out from slavery. They would seek to buy Christian slaves out from their masters so that they would be free to serve the Lord and unhindered from slavery. But yet, with all the hardships and all the difficulties, and frankly just the demeaning state of life of being a slave, what does Paul say in verse 21? Were you a bondservant when called? Don't be concerned about it. Don't worry about it. It's almost funny, it's so shocking. Don't worry about being enslaved. I don't know about you, but if I'm ever enslaved, I am fairly confident I'm gonna worry about it. How could I ever not? But what we're dealing here with this illustration is we're getting to the rub of the Christian life. and the grand and the cosmic and the eternal difference that being a Christian makes. You see, as a Christian, our lives are not measured on the same timeline as the world. In the world, you have to anxiously get out of bad situations, of demeaning states. You always need to grasp for more money, more power, more influence, because you have no hope for the next life. Your time is running out. It is ticking. So you had better get what you can while you can get anything. But as Christians, we don't measure life on that same timeline. In fact, we don't have a timeline at all. We measure life on eternity, which is timeless. That's why Paul writes at the end of this chapter, beginning in verse 29, he says, this is what I mean, brothers. The appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings in it. For the present form of this world is passing away. Now Paul there is not calling us to irresponsibility in our marriages or in our economy, as we could see elsewhere throughout Scripture. But what he's saying is very significant. This world, Christians, is passing away. It's temporary. And so you are to evaluate every circumstance which you are in with the fact that it is expiring. It's temporary. And so you are entering to deal with it with that in mind. you are to remember Christians that your life is evaluated on an eternal timeline. That our estate in this life is never final. Our estate in this life is not even our longest estate as we look at eternity. So you don't have to strategize or squirm or seek to get out from any situation because everyone is temporary and the light of eternity If we were to use even the metric of Newton's hymn, when we've been there 10,000 years, will it really matter how long you were enslaved? So don't worry about it. Don't worry about it if you were called as a slave. See who you are by union with Christ. What counts then is His commands and obeying Him where you are. Paul will go on then in verse 22 and apply essentially what he'll teach in Romans chapter six. In Romans six, verse 22, Paul will write, you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God. That's who we are as Christians. We've been liberated from the true slave master, which is our sin. And we've become slaves of the greatest master there can be, which is God. So being in Christ, To be a Christian is to be freed to be a faithful slave. That sounds like a contradiction, but it's not. Because to have a master so glorious and so good as our God makes us willing and joyful slaves to His commands. And we've been freed for that joyful slavery. And so, a Christian is to see himself in two different ways. In relationship to sin, and to Satan, and to death, he's a freed man. In relationship to righteousness, and to God, and obedience, we're willing slaves. Slaves to righteousness. And that's what he says here in verse 22, how you're to see your life. He who is called in the Lord as a bald servant is a freedman of the Lord. That is to say, if you were called to Christ as a slave, remember no one is freer than a Christian. You're freed from sin. You're freed from death. You're freed from judgment. You're freed for an eternity of life with God. So don't worry about being enslaved here on earth. You're a freedman of the Lord. And even if you do gain your freedom, who are you? The end of verse 22, he who is free when called is a bond servant of Christ. Even if you have freedom, you remain a slave of Christ, a slave to our master who demands and deserves absolute trust and absolute obedience in every situation. So even if you get out of earthly slavery, what is your predominant concern in life? It's obeying your master, submitting to Christ. You see, the truth is, no one is freer than a Christian, because we have been freed from eternal and all-powerful spiritual slavery. And at the same time, no one is more enslaved than a Christian, because we've been called to the most glorious, all-sovereign Master, the Lord Jesus. So whether in this life you're in bondage or you're in freedom, you're in Christ, and that's how you view your life. as free in Him and as enslaved to Him, living for Him and living under His command. Now, what this means is that when disappointment strikes us, when the grief and sorrow of our expectations falling short in reality, the first question that usually strikes us is, well, what do I do now in the midst of the confusion? But if you're a Christian, You really never have to ask that question, because the answer first is always clear. Obey Christ. Obey Him. Follow the commands of God. Now it may be hard, it may be challenging, it may be attendant with many struggles, even suffering, but what we are to do as Christians is never confusing. It's always simple. Trust and obey. Because there's no other way to be happy in Jesus than to trust and obey. If you were enslaved, what do you do? You trust and obey. When you're in a pandemic, when you're facing difficult economic struggles, what do you do? You trust and obey. You follow the commandments of God. Now, this truth not only helps us in trial and difficulty and disappointment, it also reminds us and helps us with the purpose of our life, the uncertainty that we often feel and what we do with our lives. We have become in our society purpose crazy in life. Largely because we've forgotten that the whole point of life and the chief end of man is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. Our purpose in life is very clear. We're called for the glory of God. But today we often think of our purpose in life as something we get from the mountaintop or at a retreat. That we should go off somewhere and we should have this dawning realization that hits us preferably before we're 21. to tell us that what we are to do with our life, what is our purpose in life? Why are we here? Let me encourage you something. Your purpose in life will be found on the path of obedience. Your purpose in life will be discovered on the path of obedience. William Carey, the great missionary, did not become a great missionary and the father of modern missions because he went off on a retreat and discovered it or had it revealed to him. He was just a cobbler. He made shoes. But he put a map on the wall of his shop of the whole world. And he felt the weight of the truth of God's word that God so loved the world. He loved all the peoples of the world and was calling saints to himself from all the peoples on the face of the earth. And he was so burdened by the Word of God that as he continued to meditate and teach and preach on God's Word, God eventually launched him off into missions to be the great father of modern missions as a Bible translator and a missionary. He discovered purpose on the path of obedience. He obeyed God where he was as a cobbler. but who was consumed by the promises of God in books like the book of Isaiah and understood that all the nations had to belong to God. And he continued to follow in obedience until the purpose of his life was launched. And you could repeat this multiple times over. I'd even like to use the illustration. And since he's not here grimacing, I can use our dear brother and pastoral assistant, Kyle Davis. He's burdened for the translation of God's Word into all the languages of the world. And as we ought, and he's helped stir us up as a congregation and other congregations with the launch of Bible Translation Fellowship and the ministry and message that we need to do better than we are doing and we need to do more than we are doing when it comes to seeing the Word of God put into the languages of the peoples of the earth. Now, I've known Quyle for quite a long time and long enough to know that this didn't show up on some Christian retreat and it dropped in his lap. Instead, being burdened under what God says in his word, about his word going forth, the necessity of his word, and following that on the path of obedience and asking questions and pushing for answers, God has begun to show for our brother, and even for us as we join together as a church, the purpose of his life. And we could repeat this over and over again for each one of us as Christians. You are not going to find the purpose of your life staring at your belly button off in the desert. The purpose of your life will be found where you are, as you are obeying Jesus. As you follow the commands of God, as you take seriously the commandments of his word, God will lay forth for us His desire for us and the path He has for us and our purposes in your life. The calling of our lives is discovered with consistent obedience in our circumstances. The purpose of our life will be found on the path of obedience. And that's what we are to see. We are commanded by Christ. And that brings us briefly and thirdly, in verses 23 and 24, that we are to see ourselves as consecrated to Christ. consecrated to Christ. We are called in him. We are commanded by him and consecrated to him. Paul is concluding here what he's assumed throughout, that you were, as he says, verse 23, bought with the price. Now he had just said the same thing earlier in chapter six, verse 20, as he dealt with the sexual immorality that is among some of the professing Christians there in Corinth. And he reminds them in verse 20, you are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. And there he was reminding that because we've been owned by Jesus, that because his shed blood has brought us to union with God in him, that we're to remember that all of our relationships, all of our interactions deal with our relationship to God. And so we ought not to be divulging in sexual immorality, because our body belongs to God. But here, he's reminding us, not just of our physical morality, but the ideals and the life we submit to. And he plays off here what he brought up in verse 22, the issue of becoming a slave. He says, you are bought with a price. So don't become bond servants of men. Now by this, I don't think Paul is referring here to physical slavery. He's not telling free Christians don't become enslaved physically. He's using the metaphor of being the Lord's bondservant as a overarching theme of our life as we are slaves with Christ. And so we are not to submit our minds and our thoughts to the ideals of man, the very thing he's been dealing with in this paragraph. We are not to submit to man's expectations of what is spiritual. like with circumcision or uncircumcision. We're not to submit to the pseudo-spiritual ideals of that day, as though somehow you had to change your condition to be closer to God in Christ. He's saying no, he's saying no, don't submit yourself and become enslaved to the thoughts of men. In Christ, you are fully with God. You need nothing else added to you to become a real Christian. You don't need to change your external circumstances, even if you're a slave, to be truly in Christ, fully one with all of God's children in Him. And Paul says, don't submit to any other teaching. Don't become man's bondservants. Instead, in whatever condition, in verse 24, each was called, there let him remain with God. you are set apart to fellowship with God. And that's really the key here. In Christ, you've been called to God. Just because you've been called to Christ, your circumstances remain maybe unchanged, but you're not. Now, you're with God. That little two-word phrase, with God, reminds us of the great promises of God in Christ Emmanuel to be with us. It also reminds us of the psalmist Asaph in Psalm 73, and as his song ascends and concludes in verse 25, he says, whom have I in heaven but you, and there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you. But that last line there in verse 25, the Hebrew is better rendered in other translations, like the New Jerusalem Bible that puts it like this, with you, I lack nothing on earth. What Asaph is saying is not subjective. There's nothing on earth I desire besides you. We know that's a perfection that we have not attained in this life. No, instead, what Asaph is saying is with you, I lack nothing. There is nothing I need in my circumstance, in my condition, in life. God, if I have you. With you, I desire nothing on earth. And Paul, as it were, picks up the same idea. Whatever condition you are in when you were called, remain there with God. Wherever you are, you're there with God, consecrated to him. One of the real heartaches we've seen with the coronavirus is the fact of people sadly dying in quarantine. That means their last moments in life, they are separated physically from their family and their loved ones. And many of us have seen on the news or know even of such tragedies. I do pray that it doesn't touch anyone in our congregation or related to us. But beloved, even if it does, in whatever condition we're in, We're there called by God, and we're there with Him. That if God so sovereignly determines that one of us must die in quarantine, we're not dying alone. We're there with God, with Him. If the coronavirus has exposed anything in recent days for which we can thank God, it has exposed the charade and the lies of the health and wealth gospel, The teachings of many teachers online and on networks like TBN about defeating disease and about ending poverty just by speaking words of faith, they're being exposed as what they are, utter garbage, vile lies. Even those of teachers like Joel Osteen, who has supposedly the biggest church in quotes in America. He's famous for his best-selling book, Your Best Life Now. Of course, we know on the basis of God's Word that if we're in Christ, our best life is to come. But even though we are never in this life, in our best life, we are, however, in every situation, living God's best plan for our lives. And that often includes disappointments. It includes sorrows. It can include real deep griefs. But even in that grief, remember, that God is the one who put us where we are, who's called us as we are, and who is also with us where we are. We reject the folly of Osteen and those like him, and instead we take the wisdom of God's Word and the wisdom of those who have believed God's Word before us, even like our brother, the old preacher Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon said this, remember this, had any other condition been better for you than the one in which you are in, divine love would have put you there. You were placed by God in the most suitable circumstances. The Lord has ordered all things for your good. Beloved, if there was a better condition for us to be in right now, other than live streaming and being separated, and dealing with a crashing economy and a pandemic, then God would put us there. His divine love would ensure it. But instead, His love has placed us where we are now. The most suitable circumstances according to His purposes, disappointing, yes, but suitable for His plans, that we who are called to Christ might obey Him now and being consecrated to him, trust him and seek his glory in this situation. There is no other condition better for God's purposes in your life than the one you're in right now, this evening. So lead the life he's assigned to you for his glory in faith and obedience, with great confidence that he knows what he is doing and he's called us for his glory. Let's pray. Our Father, we thank you again for the wisdom of your Word, the clarity with which the light from your Word gives to our lives, and how so it can dispel our weakness and our confusion. We pray that you would indeed help us with joy and obedience. Lead the life that you have assigned to each of us. And as together you have assigned as a church that we would be separated and unable to gather, and even, we lament, unable to celebrate the Lord's Supper this evening as we normally would. We trust you. We give ourselves to you. We recognize that we are in the situation that you have designed for your glory. and you call us not to figure out the end from the beginning which you determine, you call us to obedience, to faith, to remaining with you as you are with us in Christ. Help us, Father, we pray. We pray for your help towards those who are facing even great financial distress and economic loss. We pray for those who are most weak among us, who have low immunity, who are elderly, who are facing real threats with the coronavirus. We pray for all of us that you would keep us and help us to glorify you where we are, as we are, as you have put us there. We trust you, Father. We pray for your help to trust you more. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.