Belonging to Christ

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So, we have this duck named Quackers. Charlie named it. And Quackers is not like the other ducks.

Quackers is weird. We noticed this early on. The other ducks that we have are this beautiful dark brown, almost black color.

They’re mallards. We don’t know what Quackers is. Quackers started out white, and Quackers has always had these little wings that are disproportionately small to the rest of his body.

We used to do like this, that that’s how his wings looked. He kind of like a T-Rex, you know, these tiny little limbs on this long body. Quackers started out white, and then we noticed Quackers was getting really dirty, so one day I filled up the kiddie pool and got the the blue dawn soap out.

Charlie was really worried. I said, this is what they do if there’s an oil spill, so we’re going to go scrub Quackers. That weird tan color wouldn’t come off.

Like, he’s just got what looked like dirty patches on him now. On top of that, quackers stands constantly. Now, I know all ducks are two-legged.

They stand. Quackers stands up. The kids and I were joking last week about quackers identifies as a prairie dog.

I mean, I’ve never seen a duck that does this before, and we didn’t know. Charlie and I have talked, did we get a defective duck? What is what is wrong with it what even is that because it doesn’t look like any other duck I’ve ever seen I mean we’re not losing sleep over it but we’ve had a few conversations what what is wrong with this this duck and then last night I don’t were you on instagram or something she’s looking at ducks all of our instagram feeds are just birds now uh she’s looking at this and she says oh my goodness this duck I said what she said this duck and she’s showing me across the the room she said there’s a whole bunch of these ducks that are just like this.

She said, hold on, they’ve got a name. Oh, it’s a runner duck, which seems fitting because it’s really fast. But that was really strangely comforting to us to realize that this duck is supposed to be like this. This is a certain breed called a running duck.

We were able to, or a runner duck, we were able to identify quackers. There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just a weird breed of duck.

But being able to identify him was comforting to us because we as humans, we’re interested in identity. We want to know where we fit, where we belong, where we come from, what who we are means in all of this. And sometimes we apply that to our animals.

We sort them by breed and what their. . .

Identity matters to us. Even people that say, well, they don’t care about things like that. I had a friend years ago who’s kind of out there and say, well, I don’t really like labels.

I’m postmodern. I don’t really like labels. You just did it.

You just labeled yourself. You just identified yourself there. We all do it.

We all do it. We all think about where we fit, where our meaning comes from. Some of us may think about it more than others, but we all think about it.

And the Apostle Paul dealt with this in 1 Corinthians, this question of identity. He dealt with it several times, but in the passage we’re going to look at today, he talks to the church at Corinth about their understanding of the people that they were looking at and even themselves and where everybody fits into God’s plan and where we find our meaning and identity because they had for so long had faulty views of this that were causing problems in the church. For one thing, they were identifying themselves according to the people they followed.

We saw that in chapter 1. We saw it pop up again in chapter 3 where people were saying, not just I like Paul, not just I think Apollos makes good points now and then. People were saying, I am of Paul.

I am of Apollos. I’m a follower of Paul or Apollos. You could even translate that as I belong to Paul or Apollos.

They were finding their identities in these men, and Paul corrects them on where their identities ought to come from. And so we’re going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 again today. We’ll be finishing up chapter 3 this morning.

We’re going to start at verse 18 and go to the end of the chapter, if you would turn there with me. If you don’t have your Bible or can’t find 1 Corinthians 3, it’ll be on the screen for you, but once you find it, if you’d stand with me as we read together from God’s Word and see how Paul deals with this question of identity in the church. So we’re going to start at verse 18.

He says, Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, If anybody’s identified themselves as wise in this age, he must become foolish so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God, for it is written, He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness.

And again, the Lord knows the reasoning of the wise that they are useless. So then let no one boast in men, for all things belong to you. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or things present or things to come, all things belong to you and you belong to Christ and Christ belongs to God.

And you may be seated. So everything that we’ve looked at up to now in the book of 1 Corinthians, if you’re new here with us, I’m not addressing this because anybody’s having an identity crisis that I know of. I’m addressing this because we’re studying through the book of 1 Corinthians, and this is where we are.

And if we weren’t studying through here verse by verse, if I just came to this and read it on its own, I’d probably think it was about wisdom and foolishness, and that’s part of it. But when you take it in the context of everything we’ve studied up to now, these are questions of identity and who the church was and who the church followed and who they looked to and where they fit in God’s plan. And up to now, they’ve really messed it up.

These three chapters have been about the chaos that has come into the church because of a faulty way of viewing those who serve them in ministry and ultimately viewing themselves and where they fit in God’s plan. We’re going to see some of the other fallout of this in the coming chapters when the worldliness that that entails sort of rears its ugly head and the church at Corinth has to deal with some immoral behavior that is still shocking to us today when we read it. But this all came out of an overemphasis on identifying with things in human terms. And we see here ultimately that the remedy to all the worldliness, the remedy to everything that was going wrong in Corinth was to find their meaning and identity and belonging to Christ. It wasn’t about who they were.

It wasn’t about the background that they came from. It wasn’t about who they supported. It wasn’t about which faction they belonged to.

It wasn’t about any of this stuff. it was in belonging to Christ. Throughout this letter, Paul has addressed the worldliness. He will continue to address the worldliness wherever it shows up.

But here in this section, he was calling them to change the way they thought about themselves and where they fit into the world. To stop looking at themselves as part of, I’m subservient to Paul, I belong to Paul. And good for Paul for recognizing that that’s wrong.

There are guys in ministry who would look at that and say, that’s pretty cool. These people following after me. Paul recognized that for how dangerous it was.

Wait, you’re a follower of Paul? No, no, no. Paul is a follower of Jesus Christ. That’s all Paul is. So you be a follower of Christ too.

He’s saying the remedy for all of this that was infecting the church was to find our ultimate identity and our ultimate meaning in Jesus Christ. And in order to do that, there’s a few things that over the next few verses he unpacks here that are some don’ts for us. And sometimes we look at the Bible, we look at Christianity, and oh, it’s just a bunch of rules about things you shouldn’t do. That’s a little bit of an oversimplification to say that’s all Christianity is.

But listen, when there’s something out there that’s going to hurt us, it’s not wrong to say don’t do that, right? That’s what we do with our kids. Don’t play in the street.

Don’t put your hand on the stove. Don’t lay under the car. Don’ts are okay.

And so he gives us some things that we should not do. Look at verse 18. He says, let no man deceive himself.

And so we should take from that, don’t be deceived into thinking like the world, because that’s what he’s dealing with here. They were thinking like the pagan world that they were saved out of. When he says, don’t let a man deceive himself, he’s telling them, don’t go back into thinking the way that you’ve thought before.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking the world thinks. Paul has spent the previous three chapters explaining why they shouldn’t do this, and the point needed to be made all those times, the point needed to be made again because it is so easy to do. It goes along with human nature to think that way.

And if you and I are not careful on a regular basis, we will start to see ourselves the way the world does, especially if we allow ourselves to be bombarded with messages from the world more than we take in messages from God’s Word. Then that is by default the setting that we will look through to see ourselves as the way the world sees us. And it’s so easy to find your identity in the way the world thinks.

It is so easy to identify yourself the way the world tells you you ought to. Now, when we start talking about questions of identity and identifying ourselves in certain ways, a lot of us, our minds go to all the cultural battles that are being fought today. I identify as this, I identify as that.

That certainly qualifies as well. And we need to address that, but I’m not off the hook either, because you can be a totally traditional person in the way you live your life and still fall into this. So it’s not just people out in left field, all right?

But we do have these questions of identity today, because we’re looking for identity anywhere other than in Jesus Christ, to the point that several of us went to a conference months back where they were talking about transgenderism, and the lady was explaining how, In many cases, people are looking for a change of identity because they’re looking for a physical solution to a spiritual problem. And our minds, again, if you’re like me, when we hear questions of identity, our minds go to that because that’s the hot button issue right now in our culture. But it could just as easily deal with me and how I identify.

Where do I find my identity? There’s a lot of places we can do that. As a man, it’s very easy.

Maybe this is true of women too, but I know men are especially susceptible to it. As a man, it is easy to identify myself by my job. Who am I?

I’m a pastor. Well, what if I’m suddenly not a pastor? I don’t have any plans to go anywhere.

But what if I’m suddenly not a pastor anymore? Have I lost who I am? Well, I’m going to be in a huge crisis if that’s where my identity is.

That’s why if men get hurt and suddenly can’t do their job anymore, That’s one of the reasons why there’s depression that comes out of that, because our identity, I’m not saying that’s the only reason, but part of it is because our identity is wrapped up in our jobs, what we do. Am I still who I am if I wake up and I’m suddenly not a pastor anymore? There’s got to be more to my identity than that.

We can wrap our identities up in our families and say, well, I’m a dad, I’m a husband, I’m a son, I’m a brother. What happens if those relationships get strained? I’m a mother, I’m a wife, I’m a daughter, sister.

grandfather, provider, caretaker. What happens if those relationships are severed or strained? Do we know who we are?

Here’s a hard one. We can get our identity wrapped up in what we believe. And I’m not talking about Jesus.

I’m talking about our other convictions. I’m not telling you how to vote. I’m just talking about me.

All right. I have strong convictions about most things. And you would be hard pressed to find anybody further to the right than I am without an actual tinfoil helmet, okay?

That cannot be my identity, and yet it’s so easy for it to be. And maybe you have opposite convictions, and maybe you’re now looking at me saying, I don’t know if I want to hear the rest of what he’s got to say. I’m going to tell you what the book says, not my political convictions, all right?

But in a world that’s so polarized, and everything has become politicized, like I can’t even sit down and watch cartoons with my children anymore without there being politics in it. When everything has become politicized, we have to be on the defensive all the time and we have to defend those convictions and it becomes part of who we are to the point that if somebody disagrees, it feels like a personal affront. But what happens if I’m shown to be wrong about something?

What happens if my side lets me down? Do I still know who I am? We can’t find our identity in our politics or our views, our convictions.

Even some of our religious convictions are a bad basis for identity. I am a conservative Southern Baptist, but if the SBC imploded tomorrow, would I know who I am? See, there’s got to be more to who we are than just that.

You could take any number of things. You could take your bank account. You could take your family background.

I’m immensely proud to be Choctaw, but if they introduced a blood quantum and said you’ve got to be a half a half percent 50 percent to be a member of the tribe tomorrow and I’m out do I still know who I am you could take your ethnic background you could take the city you came from you could take the sports teams you cheer for all of these people people make identities out of that apart from these things do we know who we are the specific question they were dealing with was which preacher they followed and I’m going to tell you that is a terrible basis for your identity I hope none of you are sitting there saying, oh, I’m Jared a thousand percent. Jared’s wrong sometimes. Be the Bible a thousand percent.

And then let me know nicely, you know, if I’m wrong about something I say. But it is so easy to be deceived into thinking about ourselves the way the world treats us or teaches us to. To see ourselves as one of those characteristics.

To see ourselves maybe is a combination of those characteristics, but those really aren’t at the core of who we are. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying those things don’t matter. My family matters.

My job matters. My convictions matter. My heritage matters.

It all matters. It’s just not who I am. They were dealing with this hero worship.

They were emphasizing power. That’s another one you can get wrapped up in power and influence. Who am I?

I’m a powerful, influential person. Years ago, I worked and helped out with campaigns and there was a point in time when there were 10 or 12 state legislators. If I opened my phone, their names were, we were on a first name basis and I could call them from myself.

When you’re in your 20s and in college, that’s kind of cool, but that doesn’t cut anything with God. By the way, if you need anything, I don’t have those connections anymore. So that was a long time ago.

But they were after power and influence. They were after, we’ve talked about the temple and the importance of the temple. They were identifying themselves in how they felt as they worshiped at the temples.

And of course, they’re factions we’ve talked about. Paul says, let no man deceive himself. Don’t delude yourself into thinking that those things are important, that they are what make you who you are.

Don’t assume here that what makes sense to the world makes sense to God. It makes total sense to us from our fleshly perspective to look at those things and say, well, that’s who I am. I’m a dad, I’m a pastor, I’m Choctaw, I’m an OU fan, I’m all these things.

Some of you, that probably made you madder than the political thing. And it makes sense to us from our fleshly perspective to say, well, that’s who I am. But don’t assume that makes sense to God.

It says in verse 19, for the wisdom of the world, that may be 18, 19, for the wisdom of the world is foolishness before God. The things that look like they make sense to the world. We talked about this in chapter 1 where God said that Paul said the things of God are foolish to the world.

The same is also true. The things that are wise to the world are foolish to God. It’s a two-way street.

He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness. So all the things that the world invents and devises and thinks we’re so smart that we all together are smarter than God’s word. God saw every bit of that coming and it says he catches the wise in their craftiness.

We can’t outplan God. We can’t catch God by surprise. It says he knows the reasonings of the wise that they are useless.

The best ideas that we can come up with in contrast to his word. The best ideas, the wisest, the soundest plans that we can try to devise that defy his word. God looks at them and says that’s not going to work.

God sees through the plans. He sees the reasonings of the wise. that they are useless.

We’ve seen how God’s ways look foolish to mankind, and here he points out that what looks wise to the world, what seems wise to our flesh is just as foolish to God. It’s absolute foolishness from God’s perspective. All of our wisdom, all of our craftiness is no match for him.

And so he says in verse 18, if any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish so that he may become wise. True wisdom requires us to look at life the way God does, the way God teaches us to. It requires us to look at ourselves the way God teaches us to, even when it looks foolish to the world.

And by the way, if we are walking with Jesus, if we are looking at things from a biblical perspective, if we are trying to be obedient to him, that is the surest recipe for looking weird in the eyes of the world. You know that, right? If you want people to think you’re crazy, follow Jesus.

Now, that’s not why we do it, but we just need to accept it that it’s going to be the case. Now, it doesn’t mean that we ourselves need to be personally offensive or that we need to try to be as out there as we can to try to drive people away, but if we’re following Jesus, the world will look at us and say, there’s something there that doesn’t make sense to me. But this is how we need to look at our lives and everything in it.

Not the way the world tells us to, but the way God tells us to. It’s the way we need to look at our own lives, the way God tells us to. That’s the way we need to look at the things that are important in our lives, the way God tells us to think about it and think, what was I so worried about?

That wasn’t even an issue. Does it happen to anybody else or is it just me? Maybe I’m the only one in here that makes mountains out of the molehills.

All of the things that we, or many of the things that we are so concerned about on a daily basis looking at our own lives from God’s perspective are that way. That when you step back, you realize how unimportant they really were. And we’re going to be much better off as believers if we look at things from God’s perspective and realize that it’s not always going to make sense to the world.

It’s not always going to make sense to us. There are times that we’re called on to obey even if it doesn’t make sense to us. As a matter of fact, God sometimes will explain why sometimes He’ll explain in His Word or by His Spirit why He wants us to do the things He wants us to do, but He doesn’t owe us an explanation.

And it’s like with my kids. Sometimes I’ll explain, here’s why I’ve made the decision I have. Other times I just need you to get out of the street and we’ll have a conversation about it later, but right now just do it whether you understand or not.

Sometimes it won’t even make sense to us in our flesh, but it makes sense to God. The third don’t he gives us is don’t put your confidence in human notions. The things that we think up, the things that we dream up, our ideas, our plans, our concepts of identity.

He said, so then let no one boast in men. This word boast means to put your confidence in. They were puffed up because I belong to Paul.

Oh yeah, well, I belong to Apollos. You’re boasting about people. These are not Jesus.

Paul didn’t die for you. Apollos didn’t rise from the dead. And this applies to all the things that we’ve talked about, not just the preachers that they were dealing with, but all the ways we live this out, it applies to the same thing.

Listen, your family, your relationships will not save you from your sins. Your political party did not die for you. Your favorite sports team did not rise from the dead.

Well, sorry, didn’t think that one through. Not in the same way, all right? They didn’t literally rise from the dead.

You get my point, right? Because I feel like I just blew it right there. None of these things that we put our stock in, none of these things that we put our confidence in are where our confidence belongs.

There is one person who was God made flesh and came to earth born of a virgin, lived a perfect sinless life so that he had no sins of his own to take responsibility for, who would have been completely justified to look at us in our sin and say, I don’t need this and I don’t need you. And who, in spite of that, loved us enough that he took responsibility for our sins and was nailed to the cross and shed his blood and died in the most agonizing, excruciating, humiliating way possible. For sins he did not deserve to pay for, and then rose again from the dead three days later to prove it.

There’s only one person who’s ever done that, and who because of having done that offers you the forgiveness that you need. There’s only one person who can make you right with the Father. There’s only one person who’s brought you into the household of God, not as a servant even, but as a child of God.

There’s only one person who’s made you part of His church so that you could grow to be more like Him. There’s only one person who’s done all of these things, and it’s not Paul, it’s not Peter, or Apollos, It’s not Jared or Rick or Rodney or Jack. It’s not our sports teams, our politicians, our families.

It’s not our jobs. It’s not any of these things. It’s Jesus.

If we want to have confidence in somebody, if you want to have confidence in somebody, have confidence in Jesus. If you want to find your meaning somewhere, find your meaning in Jesus. We were talking about this in the office this week, going through Ephesians chapter 1, and reading all the things that it says about who we are in Jesus.

Redeemed, forgiven, accepted, adopted. You want to find your identity? Find it in Jesus.

I’ve seen somebody wears a shirt. I think it’s my mother-in-law. No, it’s too confrontational for her.

I’ve seen somebody that wears a shirt that says, I don’t want to be known by pronouns. I want to be known by adjectives. Redeemed, forgiven, accepted.

That’s what we’re talking about here. You are not the ways the world wants to define you. You are exactly who Jesus said you are.

Put your confidence in that. believers, put your confidence in that. If we ever start having the squabbling that they had at Corinth in this church, it’ll be because we’re finding our identity in things other than Jesus Christ. If we’re not walking with Him, if we’re out living in worldly ways, it’s because we’re finding our identities in worldly things and not in Jesus Christ. Which brings me to the end of this passage and my closing point that who you are in Christ is what matters.

Not what the world says you are, not what you feel, because your feelings will lie to you. My feelings lie to me all the time. Not to make too much light of it, but my feelings tell me I’m hungry and I know it’s not true.

You’re just bored, and it only gets bigger from there. Your feelings will lie to you. But the Word says, for all things belong to you.

See, they’ve been looking to sweep up the scraps of what’s left behind as I belong to Paul, I belong to Apollos, I belong to. . .

The Word says, all things belong to you. Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, he’s saying they belong to you. These guys that you’re looking up to and putting on a pedestal and saying they’re better than we are.

They’re way up here. He’s saying those guys are your servants. They were sent here to minister to you.

They’re here for you. They belong to you. Or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come.

All things belong to you. Now this is not a name it, claim it theology. But this is pointing out that they are not second-rate people here left to fight over the scraps in God’s kingdom.

He said all of these things that have been put here, they belong to you. And there’s one reason, precisely one reason, why all these things belong to God’s people. It’s all things belong to you, and you belong to Christ. You have these things because you are His, and He says so.

And Christ belongs to God. Now, that doesn’t mean that he’s less than the Father. It doesn’t mean that he’s subservient to the Father.

What it means is he is the Messiah who was sent here by God. He is God’s Messiah sent to save you and to bring you into the kingdom. And this, to me, was a reminder of all the other places it says in the New Testament that we have been made joint heirs in Christ. We are joint heirs with him of all of God’s blessings.

And when you hear that, don’t think, oh, all the material blessings. There may be some of those, but it’s not God promising me a brand new truck. We’re talking about the spiritual blessings, which are more important anyway.

It’s talking about the relationship with God. We have that through Jesus Christ. It’s talking about the place at His table, a place in His kingdom. We have that through Jesus Christ. The connection where we’re able to go directly to God.

We have that in Jesus Christ. The forgiveness, the welcome, the joy, the peace, all of it we have because of Jesus Christ. We have all we need. We’re given all we need because we belong to Him. And He is the promised Messiah that God sent.

So you are not the things that the world says you are. You are exactly what God says you are. God says that we are sinners because we’ve all disobeyed Him.

Because we’ve all put things that are not Him ahead of Him in our lives. And God’s Word says we’re separated from Him because of that. But God’s word also says that even though he’s holy and has to punish our sin, he’s just and has to punish our sin, he’s holy and has to keep that sin separated from him.

He can’t just be okay with it. His word also says that we are loved enough because he is loving enough that he sent Jesus to pay for our sins. Jesus said by his actions that you were worth dying for.

And if you’ve come to that point of realizing your sin and ask for God’s forgiveness because Jesus paid for it, then you are all those things that the Word says you are. You are redeemed. You are forgiven.

You are chosen. You are adopted. You are all the things that God says you are because you belong to Christ. And this morning, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, it is as simple as recognizing that you’ve sinned against God and that sin separates you from Him, believing that Jesus died on the cross to pay for that sin in full and rose again to prove it.

And because of all that He’s done, You ask Him for that forgiveness and you’ll have it.