I want to thank you for your ministry to one another this morning. I've decided to participate in whatever the crud is that's going around, and so I'm praying for God to help us through. Thankfully, it's a little bit shorter passage, and it may be a shorter sermon, which, you know, that'd be a miracle, wouldn't it? But the blessing was that instead of singing this morning, I could just listen. And thinking about you all and thinking about your voices raised toward the Lord and what you were singing, the truth you were singing, ministered to my own soul. And I know it did to yours as well, but I was just thinking, you know, how many people on earth would love to be in a company of people this size? and hear the truth of God sung this way by people that believe it. We are deeply blessed, and I thank you for your blessing this morning. We're in 1 Corinthians chapter four, the last few verses of that chapter, 14 through 21. If you're using a Bible from the book rack, that'd be page 954. And let me just kind of set the context, because you remember that the last passage, the last time we were here, Paul was getting pretty rough on the Corinthian believers. When you truly care for people, you sometimes have to say hard things to them. And that was the case with the apostle Paul and the church family at Corinth. He's in good company. And remember what Jesus had to say in Revelation 1 through 3 to the seven churches of Asia. He was very direct with them and very frank. So in the verses that preceded our text this morning, Paul has utilized biting sarcasm to expose the arrogant foolishness of how some believers in Corinth were behaving toward one another. But it's clear that the apostle adopted that tone not because he had disdained for the church at Corinth, but because he cared deeply for them. Our culture puts such a great premium on being nice that sometimes doing evil doesn't seem to matter as long as you maintain your politeness when you do it. Just being nice can be more about protecting ourselves from discomfort than about actually caring for other people. It sometimes covers resentment that needs resolution. Part of loving our neighbor as ourselves is that we don't harbor grievances against them. but instead we reason, frankly, with the one that we think has done us wrong in an effort to restore a healthy relationship. That's right from the very source, Leviticus 19, the second great commandment, love your neighbor as yourself. Biblical church discipline displays the same kind of character as we will learn in chapter 5 of 1 Corinthians. But our text this morning shows us the heart behind Paul's confrontation of the believers in Corinth. It is a father's heart. As the apostle works to bring greater health to the church body at Corinth, he models for us effective discipleship. So as we consider the words of Paul, we find help in how we disciple others, whether it's parents with their children or teachers with their students, friends with friends, the various relationships that we have that God has given us so that we can bring good to our neighbor, so that we can cause them to grow in the Lord. So follow with me as I read verses 14 through 21 of 1 Corinthians 4. I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ. as I teach them everywhere in every church. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you. But I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills, and I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. What do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love in the spirit of gentleness? Three characteristics we see of Paul's interaction with these beloved children of God and children of his through the gospel. We see in verses 14 and 15, loving warning. Loving warning characterizes his discipleship of them. And then verses 16 through 17, Christ-like example that he's offering them. And then 18 through 21, the promise of a reality check. that the truth will out and reality will come to bear. So let's look at 14 and 15 once again. His loving warning says, I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. In other words, Paul is saying, I'm writing this, even the sarcasm that I've just engaged in, not to shame you, but to warn you, to put you in mind as children that I love. Paul wrote what he wrote, not to put them down, but rather to make them think. So much of what we do that is out of line with the gospel living happens because we're not thinking. Biblically, we disconnected our living from thinking in line with the truth. We let our human nature and worldly pride drive our behavior. So we must stop and make ourselves think. Put ourselves in mind. Look at how we're behaving, how we're talking, how we're thinking. Is it in line with what God has revealed? Paul says you have countless guides. You have, actually the word is a word we get myriad from, ten thousand teachers. The word we get pedagogy from to train children And the Roman Empire was usually slaves who served as guardians and instructors to lead children to the truth. You remember that Paul teaches in Galatians that the law, the moral law, was a schoolmaster, same word, to lead us to Christ. It was teaching us about ourselves how much we need rescue because we can't meet the law. Well, God uses many people in our lives to lead us to the truth. In fact, there's hardly a relationship that you have that doesn't do that. People may be a bad example or a good example. They may have good effect or bad effect. You still learn from them. It still shapes you. But Paul has a more special relationship with these believers because he was their father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. Now, there are many that have come to Christ through simple exposure to the word of God. One of the professors that really had profound effect on my own approach to the word of God, Stuart Custer, came to faith while he was suffering for a year, really, and began reading a Bible. As I recall, it might have been even a Gideon Bible. He began just reading through the Bible, and it was through reading the Bible that the spirit brought faith to his heart, and he trusted in Jesus. But more commonly, God often uses the gospel witness of individuals to bring others to faith. These believers were Paul's spiritual children in that he was the one who brought the gospel to them. The same was true of Timothy. He was Timothy's father in the faith. He had brought the gospel to Timothy. You remember that Timothy likely first met Paul when Timothy was probably about 18, and Paul had been persecuted, dragged out of the city, stoned, left for dead. Timothy learned right from the beginning that it cost something to serve Jesus. He learned right from the beginning that Paul was willing to give his life for the cause of the gospel, and on the next missionary journey, he went along with the Apostle Paul on the trip. If you think about it, there is no greater gift of love that you can give to another person than to show them the way of salvation through Christ alone. Of all the things you could pass on to those you care about, the priceless gift of the gospel has to be the greatest of all. When you give them the gospel, you offer them pardon and peace. You offer them life now and forever, and you give them God. from whom we're all estranged from birth until we're born again by the Spirit through faith in Christ and his gospel. You know, we tend to worry about a lot of things, what we're passing on to our children, the effect that we have on other people. We want to leave an inheritance. A righteous man leaves an inheritance to his children's children. But the best inheritance you can ever leave anybody is to make the gospel clear to them. And if God grants them repentance and faith, you will always have a special relationship with that person and they with you. And think about how it will feel when you enter heaven and you have people that welcome you there that are there in part because of your testimony to them of Jesus. And you can think of people that are like that in your own life, that profoundly affected you, not just sharing the gospel in word, but also by their life, that just changed who you are and how you view life. And that effect is an effect that lasts forever. So my question to you is, who are the ones to whom you've offered this greatest of all gifts? This is not a gift that you keep for yourself. This is a gift that you pass on. News is meant to be shared. And who are the persons in your sphere of influence that are still waiting for you to give them the gospel? Think about the relationships you have. Think about the people that you love or care about or at least have some interest in. What have you done to build the bridges you need to share with them the most important thing of all? Can you see your way to do that? Or maybe another way to ask this question is who are your children in the faith? Who are the ones that would say, I know Jesus because he or she shared Jesus with me and lived out Jesus before me? And then in what ways are you discipling others with the love of a father? You know, everybody, that you know is a needy person. No matter how capable they might seem to be, they're all in need of others investing in their life. Every one of us. We need one another. That's why the church, we need one another. We need people to invest in us. And there are people that you're uniquely positioned to invest in. There are people you could pour your life into. that long after you're gone, we'll still be shining the light of the gospel. And then we see that it wasn't just Gospel truth in terms of words that Paul gave that Paul really gave them a life to emulate He gave them a Christ like example verse 16. I urge you then be imitators of me That is why I sent you Timothy my beloved and faithful child in the Lord To remind you of my ways in Christ as I teach them everywhere in every church I mean, why is he sending Timothy sending Timothy because Timothy has learned from Paul what the Christian life is all about and he lives the same kind of life and It's not like they're completely dependent on Paul, because Paul has multiplied himself. Your children can't be completely dependent on you. You need to multiply yourself. Your students can't be completely dependent on you. You need to multiply yourself. You might be a pastor. You might have any kind of leadership. You've got to multiply yourself, that people can also be following Christ. Think about the reach. What would happen Look at the size of our congregation. What would happen if every genuinely born-again person here were to multiply himself or herself in your sphere of influence and they then started doing the same? Is it even conceivable that our community could remain the same? I mean, you don't have to be a mathematician and know how it actually calculates out. I guess we have mathematicians who could do this. But think of just the explosive spread. This is how awakening's happening. This is how revivals happen, is people that actually have the life of God in them are living in a way that impacts other people and passing along. So Paul exhorts them to imitate him. And he's doing so not for the sake of building a following. That has to be abundantly clear at this point in the letter. You know, a following for Paul, you know, those that imitate, they walk like Paul, they talk like Paul, they do things like Paul versus Apollos or Peter. It's not that at all. He's not saying, be a good Baptist. He's not saying, be a good fundamentalist. He's not saying, uphold the Reformed traditions. He's not saying stay loyal to our unique brand and don't change anything. What Paul is calling for is absolutely not party spirit or rivalry. The fact is he loves Apollos. He loves Peter. They are fellow workers. We love Baptists. We love Presbyterians. We love those that are following the Lord. We're not trying to build a party in opposition to them. We're fellow laborers working in different parts of the vineyard. What Paul is doing is urging them to live for something much deeper than just being part of a party. Or should I say he's urging them to live for someone much greater? He's appealing to those who make up the church at Corinth to live in the same Christ-like manner that he was living. He will later say, be imitators of me as I am of Christ. So it's not about Paul, it's about Paul saying, this is how you do it. You know, I'm a digital migrant. I can read the instruction manuals all night long, I'm still not gonna figure out how it works. I need somebody to sit down and say, okay, this is what you do. Punch that key, punch that key, do this. Oh, simple. They have to slow it down because they do it so fast that you're not, or maybe write down what they're doing, but do as I do, not just do as I say, do as I do, and we learn so much better. And I think about the people that have most profoundly influenced my life. It wasn't just what they taught, it was how they lived. It let me see, okay, I get it, I see what this looks like in real life. And so he says, he sent Timothy that they might remind, that he would remind you of my ways in Christ, not just the doctrine, not just the instruction, and certainly not putting down the doctrine, but rather a life that matches the doctrine. And that's actually a much higher bar, and it's far more powerful. It's when we see the faith in action in the lives of genuine believers that the doctrines of the faith become truly convincing. We know that we're not just parroting some mantra, but that we're actually living a life. The work of the Spirit that transforms us from the inside out intertwines with the work of the Spirit in the living power of the Word, the revealed Word of God. They don't contradict one another. They rather work together and affirm one another. Paul says it this way just before he's executed in 2 Timothy 3, you, however, have followed my teaching my conduct, my aim in life, what matters to me, my faith, my patience, that's long-suffering, putting up with frustrating people, my love, my steadfastness, bearing up under the load, my persecutions and sufferings. It wasn't an easy life that happened to me at Antioch, Iconium, and Lister. That's when Timothy first met him. which persecutions I endured, yet from them all the Lord rescued me. You've watched me, Timothy. You've heard me teach, but then you've watched me live. You've watched me bear great suffering for Christ gladly. You've watched the Lord rescue me. That kind of life is powerful. That kind of life marks people forever. And these people in the church at Corinth had gotten to taste some of that. In 1 Timothy 4, 12, earlier, he writes to Timothy, whom he sent to Ephesus to get older elders in line who are deviating from the truth. That's a hard job. Timothy is about 35, and he's taking on men significantly older than that that are going off. And Paul says, look, this is how it will work for you. Let no one despise you, look down on you for your youth. Make sure you put them in their place if they insult you in any way. No, that's not what he says. Let no one despise you for your youth, but set the believers an example in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. We do live in a culture that's very much about wanting other people to approve of us and not to put us down in any way. That's an idol. If they don't think you're a good person, show them that you are. They might speak against you as evildoers, but if you will live for them, live before them in a way that's truly godly, you'll actually so change the way they view things that one day they'll be among those who actually, at the visitation of God, the judgment of God, are welcomed because they've come to faith. They thought you were a bad guy. And now they know that you are good, and that Christ has been good through you. So who are the persons close enough to you to actually imitate how you live in Christ? This is one of the problems. You know, and by the way, you say, well, wait a minute, I'm an introvert, and I'm just so much more comfortable by myself. Do you realize how many introverts there are in the world who need someone like you who understands who they are? Okay? That's a cop-out. There are people that you have influence on. There are people you have connection with. And who are the people close enough to actually imitate how you live? Are you living transparently enough or are you always got the, like you're keeping people at arm's length and you're never gonna let them in to see who you really are and see how you really live? You can't disciple anybody that way. They've gotta get close. And by the way, it is helpful to you that people are that close. I guarantee you, every husband here is very grateful for his wife because that relationship is such, she knows him well enough that it helps keep him in check from being the awful person he would be without her. If you just let loose whatever you wanted to be and do, The same is true of our children. You know, people are looking at you for, how do you do the Christian life? Then you realize, hey, you know, it's not just about me. There's other people who are going to be impacted by this. I've got to raise my game here. And whether we realize it or not, somebody's watching you. Whether we realize it or not, there are people If they're not watching, they're the people that could be learning from you how to live for Christ if you would show them, if you would let them in close enough to be there. So with whom are you working to build or maintain such discipleship relationships? If you don't have them right now, you need to pray about who those people should be. Who are the ones God has sovereignly put into your life, divine appointments, with whom you could develop this kind of relationship? And if you do have these relationships, how can you keep those healthy? And then what are some practical ways you could encourage others to follow Christ faithfully by thinking, talking, and doing as you do? You know, it's really way easier for me to prepare a message like this, I've been doing it a while, than to actually have somebody with me watching and hanging out and seeing how I live. You're always on the clock. By the way, this is what some of the struggle happens in marriages, right? It's not like your dating years where you could like raise your game some so that you seem like Miss or Mr. Wonderful at least for the two hour span and then you could go home and collapse. No, your spouse sees you at your best and at your worst. Here's your offhand comments. Sees how you treat other people. And on the one hand, that might feel invasive and burdensome. On the other hand, what an opportunity to actually bring good to another person. I mean, think of all the opportunities. And let me just get this out of that closest of relationship. Think about the opportunity, even just being here together today, and the fact that people from all over the city are here, and they're gonna be together for a little while, what are the opportunities you have to actually interact with the people? Who are the people you're sitting near? Do you know their names? Do you know what's going on in their lives? Do any of them look like they're sad or down? Are things going great for them or things going hard? They may not let you in to some of those hardest and deepest problems, but you at least ought to be building the bridge. You know, we might do this for those that are coming in for the first time, and we want our guests to feel welcome, but we also want people who have been here for a long time to feel welcome. We want to notice when they're not there. We want to notice when they're struggling. We wanna follow up when we've said we're gonna pray for them. These are things that are so important, in terms of just practically living together. And then, verses 18 to 21, reality check. Some are arrogant, as though I were not coming to you, but I will come to you soon, if the Lord wills. And I will find out not the talk of these arrogant people, but their power. For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk, but in power. what do you wish? Shall I come to you with a rod or with love and a spirit of gentleness?" Now Paul anticipates resistance, and we find out as we read both 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians why. Not everyone in the church would listen to his warnings. There were those who'd come into the church that were using it for their own advancement. They belittled Paul personally to inflate their own power. They questioned His apostleship, according to 1 Corinthians 9 and 2 Corinthians 12. They accused Him of not being decisive enough, vacillating between yes and no, 2 Corinthians 1. They mocked His speaking ability and His physical appearance in 2 Corinthians 10. So that's why Paul calls them arrogant. They talk big, but talk is cheap. Do they manifest spiritual power? Do their lives show the character and behavior the Holy Spirit produces in those that are truly born again? The power of God in the lives of born-again sinners is what demonstrates that they are part of His eternal kingdom. People may be drawn to the church for its big events, its moving music, the charisma of its preachers, but the power of the Spirit manifest and transform lives is what is most attractive and fruitful. As you know, one of my favorite, I guess we could call him hero of the faith, Years gone by, Martin Lloyd-Jones, medical doctor who became preacher. God used him in remarkable ways in Wales and in England. But he talked about an experience he had, this is in Ian Murray's biography of him, about a spiritist who had her business near where Westminster Chapel was. and would watch the throngs of people going to evening services there at Westminster. And she got curious, and she finally came out of curiosity as to what was going on. She heard the gospel, and she was converted. And her testimony to Lloyd-Jones was this. She said, I sense the same spiritual power there that I do in a seance. only this was clean power. She was very familiar with the spirit world and with spiritual power, but this was clean power. This is what people should experience among the people of God, a sense of the clean power of God flowing through their lives and touching other people, the fruit of the spirit that Mark's people is having the vital power of the life of God Himself at work in them. It looks like love and joy and peace and long-suffering, not short views but willing to suffer long with people. kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. You know, if you go to a funeral or hear about the lives of people, one of the things that you'll often hear, or anybody really, if you're involved, anybody in need, is you'll hear testimony to the way God's people treat one another with love. You'll hear testimony to the joy and peace of a believer as they wait in the on-deck circle before they head home. You'll hear recounted acts of kindness and goodness and faithfulness and gentleness. You'll hear the stories of self-control in the middle of great crises. In other words, this kind of life is not religious ritual and rules. It's life flowing like a river from the indwelling Spirit of God. You can't really codify it. You can't really measure it, but you know it when you see it. You feel the power of it. It's the power of God, and it's exactly opposite of the works of the flesh, and Galatians there who had gotten enamored with legalism. He talks about the work of the flesh, they're just the opposite, the sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, that's the occult, using drugs. And you say, yeah, those things are really bad. And they are. But then he goes on to enmity, that's hostility and combativeness, strife, jealousy, fits of anger. rivalries, dissensions, divisions, and envy. This is fleshly stuff. This is living like you don't have life. And then finishes off with drunkenness and orgies, that's wild parties. It's not uncommon to find over half of these works of the flesh in the lives of very religious people. who claim to be serving God. We humans are good about choosing a small list of great sins and then ignoring the rest. That's the way the world works. That's worldly religion. That is not the kingdom of God. When Paul comes, he will not put up with this fraudulent Christianity, all puffed up with self-importance. he will gently shepherd the sheep, but he will take the rod to the wolves." So he's putting them on notice. God's sheep are worth fighting for. So let's think about this just a little bit because this really hits close to us. What areas of religious practice can sometimes be more important to us than actual spiritual power? What am I driving at? I think sometimes it's easy for me to feel like because I did my religious to-do list, and they might be all very good things, that I ignore what's actually going on in my heart and how I'm actually thinking and living and talking. Because I can check this box. I often see this in a Christian school environment where Or a Christian college would say, well, yeah, we know the doctor. We already know this. Yeah, but what are you living? How are you living? Do you actually love Jesus or do you just know Bible verses? And then what genuine spiritual power, the fruit of the Spirit, kinds of attitudes and behaviors do those who know you best see in you? And if you lack spirit-produced Christian character and power, what is getting in the way? It's possible. It's possible that you've adopted a religious culture, but you don't actually have life from God. Or it's possible that you do have life from God, But you've allowed some sin to fester, something to come into your life that's actually getting in the way of that power of God coursing through you freely. You're stunted because of what you've allowed to grow in your life and to corrupt your life. And so the Christian life is ever a life of repentance and faith. It's ever a life of saying, God, whatever's in the way, remove that from my life so that I can live for you. I'm gonna trust you. I'm gonna lean into what you're doing in me. And then if the Apostle Paul were going to visit you, would he encourage you or would he rebuke you for the way you're living your day-to-day life? Something to think about. That would be pretty intense. Having one of the apostles sit down and say, Drew, how's it going? What's really going on? Here's some things I've noticed. But do you realize that an apostle is just a sent one? That the real one you should fear and hold in awe is God himself. And God doesn't have to ask. He already knows. He knows exactly who you are. He knows exactly how you're thinking. He knows exactly how you're living. And you are accountable to Him. If you think about it, the whole human history is this way. I mean, Adam and Eve thought they could get away with disobeying God to get what they wanted, and they found out, no, it doesn't work that way. And at the end of the age, there are those that say, oh, I just did it my way. God will hold us accountable. He will shepherd His sheep. He will punish those who have turned away from Him. This is the ultimate reality. Are you for real or not? Well, I showed up at Hampton Park every Sunday for 50 years. That won't earn you a dime's worth of heaven. Who are you? as evidenced by how you live. I preached lots of sermons, even did miracles and cast out demons. Matthew 7, Jesus says, I never knew you, you that work lawlessness. In other words, your personal life was lawless. You did all this limelight stuff, but your personal life was lawless. I never knew you. Does Jesus know you? Do you know him? Is the power of his life evident in yours? This is what makes a Christian. This is what makes him or her a good disciple maker. This is what gives us a father's heart for other people. with loving warning in Christ-like example, remembering that there will indeed be a reality check. Let's pray. God, we all want to put on a good face. None of us like to be shamed. None of us want our sins paraded before other people. God, as we come to you this morning, I pray that we might open our hearts to you. They're open anyway, but Lord, help us acknowledge that. Help us stop pretending, and actually approach you as we are, with repentant hearts, willing to have you change whatever needs to be changed. Deliver us from big talk with small power. We pray that your power be evident in our lives, in the mundane, everyday kinds of things, because that's what most of life is made of. And Lord, help that power of God be just flowing out from us to the people around us in a way that honors you. Help us keep short accounts when we sin against others or sin against you. Help us, Lord, be a positive benefit and good. Deliver us from party spirit. Deliver us from exalting ourselves. May we exalt Christ. And may we do so not just with talk, but with walk. For it's in His name we pray. Amen.