Becoming Less, for Jesus’ Sake

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When I was a teenager, we had in our church a couple of men who were older, retired pastors. And as somebody starting out in ministry, I really looked up to both of these guys. And they were tremendously respected, almost to the point that their names were mentioned in hushed tones in the church.

They were respected in the church. They were respected in the community. They had been denominational leaders.

And you’d look at them, and these were just very godly, very dignified men. You would look at them and think, these are men that know a lot, and their relationship with God is on a whole different plane from ours, and they’ve just got everything in their lives together. As I got to know them, though, please don’t take that though as indicating they were living a double life.

As I got to know them, as I spent time with them, as they invested in me and my ministry, I realized that they were people just like I am. I realized that they would talk about the things that they still struggled with. that God had been working on them about for 50, 60, 70 years, things that they still struggled with, areas where their walk was not what it ought to be, things that they had to deal with the Lord about.

And they opened up, and I realized that they had never sought this admiration. As a matter of fact, it kind of embarrassed them. And as I got to know them, as I got to know them more and more, I came to realize how incredibly humble these men were, how incredibly realistic they were in their understanding of who they were in contrast to who God is.

And it made me respect them all the more because they didn’t think themselves to be something that they weren’t. And I’ve told you all a few stories that I’ve spent enough time in politics that I kind of have a radar for people who think they’re more important than they really are. You see a lot of that in politics.

Unfortunately, you see some of it in ministry too, and when that detector starts going off in my brain, I just steer clear of those guys and try to not be one of those guys, although I think we all have the tendency to do it if we’re not careful. But there is this human tendency to think that we’re better than we really are or want to portray ourselves as better than we really are. And in church that can happen too.

We can walk in and we can put on a mask and we can try to cover up the things that we’re struggling with. We can cover up our weaknesses and I’m not saying we have to walk in here and tell everything that went on during the week. But we try to put on this mask of holiness and pretend that we’re somehow further along in our walk than we really are.

And this is dangerous to us and it’s dangerous to those around us. And the Apostle Paul deals with that in 1 Corinthians chapter 4. Last week we started 1 Corinthians chapter 4, where Paul was talking about not judging one another as believers.

And again, I want to be very clear in what we talked about last week. It’s not judging in the sense that the world interprets judging. The world looks at it when we say certain teachings are wrong.

They’ll say, oh, that’s judging. No, it’s just saying what God’s judged. When we say certain behaviors are wrong, the world says, oh, you can’t judge.

That’s not judging. That’s saying what God has already judged. He’s the judge in that case.

We’re just saying what he told us to say. Talking about dealing with one another, people who within the church appear to be serving God, and yet the Corinthians were trying to judge their motives and judge their hearts and whether or not they were really faithful and fruitful in ministry. Because the Corinthians were doing that, they were doing that to each other, they were even doing that to themselves.

And you know, sometimes we can go to one extreme or the other. We can either judge ourselves way more leniently than we do anybody else, or we can judge ourselves way more harshly than we do anybody else. And Paul’s point to the Corinthians is, you and I are not each other’s judge.

We’re not even our own judge. There is a judge who’s going to make the final determination. And Paul says, just because I look at my life and nothing there that’s wrong, doesn’t mean that I’m acquitted in the judgment, doesn’t mean that God looks at my life and thinks everything’s right.

There was this problem going on at Corinth where they were judging each other, they were judging all these teachers, and they were fighting over these things. They were dividing into factions over these things. It reminds me very much, and I’ve told you this story before, reminds me very much of the first church I pastored, that I was voted in as their pastor on a six to zero vote.

And that was the only thing they ever agreed on because there’d been so many splits over the previous 20 years. They were down to six people. And it was the Northern Baptist and the Southern Baptist. And that was not denominational lines.

That was which side of the auditorium they sat on and who they spoke to. And it all went back to personalities. That was where Corinth was.

They were fighting about, in some cases, they were fighting about, I’m a follower of Paul. Oh yeah, well, I’ve heard Paul and he’s garbage. I’m a follower of Apollos.

Oh yeah, well, Apollos couldn’t carry Peter’s tennis shoes. And they would fight over this stuff. There was so much wrong at the church in Corinth.

And all of it came back to a wrong view of who we are, who we ourselves are, and who these other servants of God are in contrast to the holiness of God. And so I want to look a little further this morning at 1 Corinthians chapter 4. If you’re a guest with us this morning, first of all, we’re glad you’re here.

But I also want you to know, I’ve given this disclaimer several times, I’m not preaching about any of these things because they are problems that I’m aware of in our church. Sometimes we go through 1 Corinthians and look at these things and somebody might say, what have I gotten myself into? This is what they’re needing to hear about.

I’m not talking about any of these because I’m aware of these things being issues in the church. The best time to talk about them is before there are ever issues. But I’m telling you these things because we’re studying our way through 1 Corinthians and this is where we are.

And this can, if we will take this to heart, if we can take this to heart, it will help us in the long run to avoid some of the pitfalls that the Corinthians were dealing with. So we’re going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 4 this morning, starting in verse 6, if you’ll turn there with me. And once you find it, if you’ll stand with me as we read together from God’s Word, if you can’t, if you don’t have your Bible or can’t find 1 Corinthians chapter 4, it will be on the screen for you.

1 Corinthians chapter 4, starting in verse 6, Paul says, now these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes, so that in us you may learn not to exceed what is written, so that no one of you will become arrogant in behalf of one against the other. For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive?

And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it? You are already filled. You have already become rich.

You have become kings without us. And indeed, I wish that you had become kings so that we might also reign with you. For I think God has exhibited us apostles last of all as men condemned to death because we have become a spectacle to the world, both to angels and to men.

We are fools for Christ’s sake, but you are prudent in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are distinguished, but we are without honor. To this present hour we are both hungry and thirsty, and are poorly clothed, and are roughly treated, and are homeless.

And we toil working with our own hands. When we are reviled, we bless. When we are persecuted, we endure.

When we are slandered, we try to conciliate. We have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now. And you may be seated.

And I will point out that where the next paragraph starts, where we’ll pick up next Sunday morning, Lord willing, he does say, I don’t write these things to shame you, but to admonish you. But he is making here a point to the Corinthian believers about their view of themselves and about their view of the spiritual maturity that we’re all progressing toward as the Holy Spirit works in us. And they needed to understand, as we need to understand, that Christian maturity is about humility and faithfulness.

It’s not about greatness and achievement. Sometimes the people that we most look at as being examples of Christian maturity, because we say, look at all the things that they’ve done. Look at who he is.

Look at how he acts. Look at the great platform he has. Look at all the things he’s accomplished.

We will look at these as great men and women of God because of the things that they’ve done. And that’s not to say that they’re immature because they’ve done things, but it is to say that it’s not the biblical standard of how we can tell somebody is mature in Christ. It’s not the biblical standard by which we can tell whether we’re mature in Christ to look at it and say, well, how much have I accomplished? How much have I done?

And that’s really the argument that Paul is moving forward throughout these verses, Because the Corinthians lived in a culture, a lot like ours has historically been, that was very achievement-based. People wanted the laurel wreath that came because you’d won a race. People wanted a procession, a parade in their honor.

People wanted the praise of men. It was important that people saw you as rich and powerful and influential. And it’s not too dissimilar from the western world we live in, where we push for achievement, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing in its proper perspective. It’s just not the measure of how godly somebody is.

Paul even says here that his stated goal for the Corinthians was for them to learn maturity. Now, as we’ve gone over chapters one through three, we see that Paul brings up a few times this debate that goes on at Corinth between those who follow him and those who follow Apollos and those who follow Peter and those who try to trump everybody and say, well, I just follow Jesus and we should just follow Jesus, but they were using it as a spiritual hammer to bash the others. Oh yeah, I’m so spiritual, I don’t even follow these other guys.

There was this debate that went on because they were looking at their teachers. But Paul even says when we get here to verse 6, these things, brethren, I have figuratively applied to myself and Apollos for your sakes. The whole argument that Paul has made, while the thing about people fighting over Paul and Apollos is true, while that really happened, Paul says, I was using that as an example for you so you could realize what you’re really doing wrong.

Because there were people at the church at Corinth who were trying to make themselves the big people. They were trying to make themselves the super spiritual influential people that they could control the church and that they could direct the church and that they could develop a following. Now, you probably know as well as I do, if you come right at somebody, we don’t always respond well to that.

When somebody comes right out and tells us face-to-face exactly what we’re doing wrong and what they think of us, how many of us enjoy that experience? Anybody? Not me.

Some people are going to fight back at you. Some people like me are just going to shut down. but sometimes you can illustrate you can illustrate the behavior in a way that comes at it kind of sideways that’s why when my children were little they didn’t listen when I said hey you got to stop telling me things that weren’t true that wasn’t getting anywhere that wasn’t getting past here but I told him the story about the boy who cried wolf and told that to him a few times enough times that they finally started to get it that’s why Nathan came to David and instead of saying you messed up.

You did wrong. You sinned with Bathsheba. You sinned with Uriah.

You did all of this wrong. You’re an embarrassment to the kingdom. He didn’t do that.

When David had an affair with Bathsheba, when David basically murdered Uriah, Nathan the prophet came to him and told a story about a man who had taken somebody else’s sheep. And David was outraged at the injustice of this. And David said, we’ve got to get the man who did this.

And Nathan then says, you’re the man. And that’s what Paul’s done here. He hasn’t lied.

He hasn’t said anything that wasn’t true. They were doing the things he said about him and Apollos and Peter and building up a following around them. But we get to verse 6 of chapter 4 and he says, I have applied this figuratively to myself and Apollos so you could see what was wrong on the ground in Corinth.

I’m paraphrasing a little bit. Because if he’d called out Bob and Bill and Frank, and I’m just making up names, that’s not anybody here that is doing it. But if he’d called out these people by name at Corinth, that would have been the end of it.

But now they’re three chapters in, and they’re understanding, wait a minute, Apollos is nobody. Paul is nobody. Paul said that about himself several times.

Who is Paul? Meaning Paul’s nobody. Paul’s a servant of God.

If you want to worship somebody, worship God, not the one that’s serving him. And once the Corinthians are finally on board with that, he says, and by the way, that applies to you all as well. And once you’ve already agreed with the premise, how do you argue with that?

Once you’ve already accepted that that’s true, you can’t argue that it applies to you as well. That had to be very convicting for them that they had recognized how wrong it was by this point, how wrong it was that the way that they had been treating these teachers, building some up beyond what they deserved and tearing them down, tearing others down, And now to realize, wait a minute, that was wrong and we’re doing the same thing to each other, those in leadership at Corinth. He wanted them to learn humility.

And he wanted them to adopt a scriptural view of themselves. This is what he’s talking about. Verse 6 is one of the most challenging, well really this passage in general is one of the most challenging things I’ve ever tried to decipher in the scriptures.

But verse 6 tells us that he’s talking about a scriptural view of themselves. And all throughout the first three chapters, he has quoted the Old Testament over and over in terms of man’s wisdom in contrast to God’s wisdom so that we see where we really fit in this. That God is powerful, God is holy, God is wise, God is right, and we don’t come close to him in any of those.

No matter what we think of ourselves, we don’t approach the holiness of God, we don’t approach the wisdom of God, we don’t approach the might of God, none of those things. And so he says here in verse 6, so that you may learn not to exceed what is written. So that they would have a biblical view of themselves and who they were in contrast to God and not exceed that, not go beyond it, so that none of you will become arrogant in behalf of one against the other.

Because when we really understand the holiness of God, when we really understand that God is not just a magic genie, he’s not Santa Claus, he doesn’t work for us, he’s not going to bend over backwards to affirm whatever choices we want to make and whatever views we want to have. When we really understand that he’s holy and he’s in charge, it becomes very difficult for us to become arrogant about who we are in light of that because we see him for who he really is. The prophet Isaiah in Isaiah 6 saw a vision of the holiness of God in his temple.

The man went all to pieces, started crying, woe is me, I’m undone, I’m falling apart here because I’ve seen the holiness of God. And Paul wanted them to get that proper biblical view of the way things work. And he reminds them in verse 7 of God’s grace, which should also make us humble.

He says, for who regards you as superior, what do you have that you did not receive? He looks at the Corinthians with all of their gifts and all of their influence and all the things that they had, and he says, what do you have that you did not receive. Meaning, if we read between the lines there, what do you have that was not a gift from God?

And suddenly that puts a different perspective on it. And today we might look at ourselves and say, I’m the smartest person in the room. Who gave you that intellect?

It was God. I’m the wealthiest person in the room who enabled you to earn that money. I’ve heard somebody say, well, I worked for it.

Who gave you the back and the legs and the brain and the hands and everything else that you need to work for it. Every breath and every heartbeat is a gift from God. The Bible says that every good and perfect gift comes from above.

Every blessing we have up to and including especially salvation is a gift of God, of God’s grace. So what gifts do you and I possess that we didn’t simply receive from Him that we can look at and say, well, clearly I’m just the best at this. He says you’re boasting in it as though it’s something that you came up with and not something you received.

So he reminds the Corinthians of the grace that they’ve received. And if we recognize the grace of God that is around us, again, up to and including salvation, it becomes very difficult for us to become arrogant about who we are. That’ll humble us when we understand what grace is, what we deserve from God versus what we’ve received from God.

Don’t ever tell God you want what you deserve. Because biblically speaking, I know what I deserve. It’s called separation from Him in this life and separation from Him in eternity in hell.

That’s what I deserve. I don’t want what I deserve. I want grace, the favor of God that we don’t deserve.

So he reminds them of where God is and where we are in comparison. And that anything that we have that the world might look at and say, well, that’s worthy of boasting about, even that is a gift of God. And suddenly when we have that right view of ourselves and where we fit into God’s world, humility follows pretty closely behind.

And Paul wanted the Corinthians to learn that humility. And he goes on in the next few verses to compare Christian humility to fleshly pride. And when he did that, when we do that, we see how foolish the pride thing really is.

We see how foolish it is to be prideful as believers. He goes through this list of categories that the Corinthians would put themselves in. The way they viewed themselves, the way they presented themselves, starting in verse 8, you’re already filled.

That means they had enough of everything. They had enough to eat, they had enough of everything. That was a relative rarity in the ancient world.

It’s rare enough in the modern world, but it certainly was a rarity in the ancient world. And he says, whatever it is, you’re satisfied and you have enough. They considered themselves to be rich.

He says, you have become kings. Without us, they considered themselves to be powerful. The Corinthians considered themselves to be on top of the heap.

They were good people. And it’s sort of that misapplication of the Old Testament that so many in Jesus’ day had, that they thought if they were wealthy, it was a sign that God preferred them. So the Corinthians were looking at all the things that they had and saying, we’re better than these others in our church.

We’re better than the others outside. And Paul says, hey, you think you’re filled and you’re rich and you’re powerful, you’re kings. I wish it was true.

I wish that you had become kings, that we might also reign with you. Paul’s making here the subtle jab. There’s a little bit of sarcasm in his writing here.

Paul is making the subtle jab at them and saying, I wish you were all the things that you thought you were. Because then you could show us lowly apostles how to get there. You could show us how it’s done.

And we see in contrast the status that the apostles have attained. And you and I look at the apostles as these super Christians. You know, they’re the pillars of the faith, and they’re these incredibly spiritual people.

I mean, if we forget all their failures throughout the Gospels. We look at them as these incredibly spiritual, heroic figures. And Paul says, let me tell you what the apostles are like, where y’all are filled and rich and powerful.

In the next verse, he says, we are last, we are condemned to death, and we’re a spectacle to the world. So they receive the last of all things. He’s saying we are living off of crumbs here.

We’re condemned to death. They were in constant fear for their lives. This idea of being a spectacle, you know, we’ll say somebody’s making a spectacle of themselves if other people look at them because they’re acting weird.

That’s not what that means. The idea of being a spectacle in the ancient world was where they would have these parades where they would take defeated generals and defeated kings and they would parade them through the streets to humiliate them. And the people would hurl things at them and they’d shout abuse and insults at them.

And it’s not necessarily that the Romans literally did this to the apostles, But he’s saying this is the way we are viewed. We are viewed the same way that these humiliated, defeated kings and generals are. And we’re paraded through the streets.

And we see the comparison there. You folks at Corinth, you think you’re godly, you think you’re mature in Christ because of all the stuff you’ve got, because of all the stuff you’ve achieved. I wish you could show us apostles how it’s done because we can’t get there.

We can’t get to these heights that you’ve achieved. We’re down here in the streets. We’re down here in the dirt.

People look at us like we’re garbage for the name of Christ. The apostles weren’t treated that way because they were bad guys. They weren’t treated that way because they had terrible personalities. They were treated that way for the name of Christ. And by the way, if we’re walking with Christ, the implication there is that we’re going to be treated the same way.

And folks, there’s probably more of that on the horizon than we would like to admit because the world is growing increasingly hostile toward the things of God. And so we have to make a choice ahead of time that we’re willing to endure that or we’re not. But if we’re going to walk with Christ, we have to be prepared to endure it.

And so the Corinthians here, they’re free to consider themselves wise and strong and distinguished as long as they understand that the apostles in all of their maturity understood themselves to be foolish and weak and without honor. And when you compare those two things, you realize how foolish the Corinthians really were. And hopefully they understood that too.

It’s like somebody who had a lackluster high school football career bragging to a Super Bowl champion about how good he is because the Super Bowl champion dropped some passes. That’s a thing, right? I’m really asking.

That’s a thing in football? It’s been a long time since I’ve watched. Because the Super Bowl champion made some mistakes on the field.

I’ll put it that way. We would look at that and say, come on now. Have some self-awareness.

You can see how foolish this boasting is, right? In comparison, that’s where the Corinthians were. And the apostles exhibited far more maturity than these people who were boasting about their spiritual maturity.

They were known for their wisdom, the apostles were. That wisdom came from their relationship with the Lord. These men had spent, many of them had spent three years with the Lord.

Paul had spent some time studying under the Lord in the desert after the ascension. These people knew the Lord. If anybody in the Christian community was great, if anybody knew the Lord, if anybody had spiritual wisdom, if anybody was spiritually mature, it was the apostles, but they didn’t flaunt it.

Instead, it says in verse 11, going into verse 12, to this present hour, we are both hungry and thirsty. We’re poorly clothed. We’re roughly treated.

We’re homeless. We toil working with our own hands. He said there’s a rough life here.

We could boast about being the apostles. We could go around telling people how powerful we ought to be. We could go around and try to make ourselves kings, and yet this is where we are for the cause of Christ. Because they were out being obedient to Him and doing the things that He told them to do.

They were out following His teaching. They were out making disciples. And because they were doing these things, they were making enemies of the world.

And for that reason, they were hungry and thirsty and poorly clothed and roughly treated and homeless and toiling, you don’t see the boasting here that they could have done. You don’t see them saying, we’re powerful, we’re spiritual, we’re all these things. You don’t even in this, Paul is very gentle, even though he’s a little sarcastic here, he’s very gentle in his response.

He could have said, boy, don’t you know we’re the apostles and you’re going to come at us with that boasting? Instead, he just shows them where they’re wrong. Because spiritual maturity is a lot like what Margaret Thatcher said about being powerful.

She said, being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you’re not. Being spiritually mature, if you have to tell people you are.

If you have to boast about it, you’re probably not. Instead, they embraced this lowly status. They embraced this humility.

Paul talks about how they responded when these things happened in verses 12 and 13. He said, when we are reviled, we bless. So when somebody verbally abused them for following Christ. He said, we bless them.

When we’re persecuted, we endure. When the government came after them, when the mobs tried to hurt them in the streets, he says, we endure. When we are slandered, we try to conciliate.

When people would make up lies about them, they would try to bring reconciliation. And that was common. It was common for people to be slandered for the cause of Christ. There were periods of time where Christians were arrested or treated as outcasts because people either unintentionally or intentionally misunderstood what the Lord’s Supper was about and accused Christians of cannibalism.

There were moments of Christian history where the most vile accusations people could come up with were hurled at the church for no other reason than they hated Jesus Christ. And Paul says when people treat us this way, we try to conciliate. We try to make peace. We have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now.

He says, we are treated like the lowest of the low. We are treated like the outcasts of society. And that was okay with Paul.

I mean, I’m sure it wasn’t his preference. Nobody likes to be treated that way. But they counted it an honor to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ. Now, why is it so important that we understand this humility?

Because there will be times that you and I are called on to suffer for the name of Jesus Christ. Now, there are people in our world today who lose their lives because they follow Jesus Christ. I don’t see it getting to that point in this country anytime soon, although I could be wrong. But we’re in a period of time where we could lose our jobs out of living out our obedience to Jesus Christ. We could be treated as outcasts or monsters because we have the audacity to believe the things that he told us to believe and have the audacity to believe the things that his followers have believed for 2,000 years. Can you believe that?

That somebody would still do that. We’re in a time in the world where it can get in the way of family relationships. And if we don’t have some humility of realizing the holiness of God and realizing that we’re merely his servants, then we’re going to fail that test because we’re not going to be prepared for it.

Our humility as followers of Jesus Christ affects the way we deal with each other. It affects the way we deal with the world outside of here. And the most important part of it, why we need to be humble and willing to suffer and willing to endure, is that true Christian maturity reflects the character of Christ. Look at who He was and what He did.

The God of this universe, the all-powerful second person of the Trinity, took the unimaginable and unprecedented step of becoming a person. He became a human being without ceasing to be God. It still boggles the mind how that works.

But He came down here to be with us. Philippians 2 talks about how he gave up his rights, his rights to be in heaven, his rights to be worshiped, and instead came down here to be with us. And honestly, we’re a lot of trouble, right?

I’m a lot of trouble. The world is a lot of trouble. He came down to be with us.

In spite of our sin, in spite of the thousands of years that we as a species have spent rejecting him and rejecting his ways and turning our backs on him, he came down to be among us and he lived a perfect sinless life and continued to be rejected by us, continued to be shamefully treated, continued to be despised and treated, as Paul says, like the dregs of the earth, like the lowest of the low, to the point where that God in human flesh, who deserved nothing but our worship and our praise, and who we deserve nothing from but judgment and condemnation for our sin, he took that sin on himself. He took responsibility for it and he was nailed to the cross where he shed his blood and he died in the most agonizing and humiliating way that sinful minds could conjure up. He didn’t have to do that.

He was under no obligation to do that and yet he humbled himself to do it anyway and he died to pay for our sins in full. Three days later he rose again from the dead to prove it and now he He offers salvation and forgiveness to the p