1 Corinthians [Season One]- 1 Cor. 4 - Tom Greggs: Servants and Stewards

Transcript

Father’s Day Welcome And Setup

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello everyone, good morning. It's lovely to be with you all. Happy Father's Day to those of you who, like me, are fathers and probably got woken up early by small children, more excited about the day than we were. It's a thrill to be with you all this morning. My name is Tom, and I'm afraid to tell you that I am a fill-in for a fill-in this morning. Because Ian is away with family. And he, the person who was meant to preach this morning, uh is unable to do so. So unfortunately for you, you get me. I I have to say though that I do worry a little bit that Ian may have planned this. Uh, we're making our way through 1 Corinthians, and 1 Corinthians 4 is perhaps the least exciting chapter in the whole of the epistle. Uh, so it's a good time for him to choose to be away. Um, and it's not the easiest chapter to deal with when you've got about four days' notice to preach on it going through, but we'll see how we get on this morning

Reading 1 Corinthians Chapter 4

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with it. So if you have Bibles and you'd like to turn with me, we are looking at 1 Corinthians 4. Listen now for the Word of God, according to St. Paul, as is written in the fourth chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. This is how you should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mystery of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you, or by any human court. I don't even judge myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness, and will disclose the purposes of the heart. Then every one will receive their commendation from God. I have applied all this to myself and Apollos for your benefit, brethren, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favour of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift? Already you believe yourself to be filled, already you have become rich. Without us you have become kings, and would that you did reign, so that we might be able to rule with you. For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last, like those sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to other people. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you, you are strong. We are you we you are held in honour, but we in disrepute. To this present hour we hunger and thirst, we are ill clad and buffeted and homeless, and we labor working with our own hands. When reviled we bless, when persecuted we endure, when slandered we try to reconcile. We have become and are now the refuge of the world, the scum of all the earth. I do not write this 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. Therefore 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?

Prayer For Help And Hearing

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Let's bow our heads in prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, Lamb of God, have mercy upon me a sinner as I come with unclean lips to seek after your face, to speak of your holiness and your goodness and your mercy. Holy Spirit, rest upon me now that my words may be your words, and that through all that is spoken and all that is heard, we may, each of us, be led once again to the true and living word who is Jesus Christ. That we may be led, Holy Spirit, and illumined by your grace and your mercy to meet with Jesus as we break words and as we break bread and as we drink wine. That we may know what it means for Him to promise us, Lo, I am with you always, even to the close of the age. May we hear Him speak, Lord. Speak deep within our hearts. Give us ears to hear you, give us hearts to respond to your call. For this we pray in your holy name, the name that is above all names, the name of King Jesus, whom we hail this day. Amen.

Sarcasm, Context, And Church Arrogance

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1 Corinthians 4 is a really tough chapter, I think, to understand. And it's a tough chapter in part because it's a chapter that is dripping with sarcasm and irony all the way through it. It's like a British person wrote it as opposed to an American who knew that Paul was a Brit. And it's not really how we're taught to read scripture, is it? We read scripture very seriously, we take every word factually as it comes through, and we don't think what is the purpose behind it very often? What's the tone that it's intended here? Paul is pretty cross with the Corinthian church for the way that it's behaving. And so this letter is sent. And if we're to understand, I think, what's going on in 1 Corinthians 4, then what we need to understand is what the background is to the circumstance that Paul's writing to, or else it's hard for us to work out the bits where he's being sarcastic and the bits where he's being a little bit more straight going through. I think sometimes when we think about the early church, we're tempted to imagine that this church that's in touching Jesus, touching distance of Jesus, that this church was perfect, that it was amazing, that all we have to do is try and get ourselves back to what that was like. Well, anyone who's read 1 Corinthians knows that that's not a very good judgment to make going through. But what I'm intrigued by in this chapter, above all other chapters, is that even though the Corinthian church is one ragtag bunch of a motley crew, a bit like all of us, or a bit like me at least, even though they're up to all kinds of crazy things, Paul saves his harshest criticism, he saves his fiercest sarcasm, he saves his deepest irony, he saves his grumpiest, most cutting comments for one sin with the Corinthian Church above every other one. And it's this the sin of arrogance. That's what the background is here. If you want to understand this chapter, read through it and think. Paul's writing to them thinking that they're arrogant so-and-so's and they need to be pulled back. This is the background to the letter. It's a church that's a mess in all kinds of ways. But worst of all, it's a church that's going about boasting. A church seeking to be leaders rather than to be listeners, a church seeking to project arrogance and ego rather than seeking to be those who mirror and imitate Christ, who consider themselves strong and powerful and mighty and wise. And it's against this context, this context of self-righteous, self-aggrandizing, self-seeking, self-confident, self-conceited, false Christianity, that Paul is writing. And Paul makes a move that he does on various other occasions in his epistles when he wants to pull people back down to earth.

Servants, Stewards, And God’s Mysteries

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Paul reminds the church that even as the one who is the last to see the resurrected Jesus, even as the apostle who is the apostle to the Gentiles, even as the one singled out in a special way, Paul says, Do you know what I am? I'm a servant. Do you know what I am? I'm a steward. So get over yourselves with your arrogance, because I've passed on a message to you, and it is the message of the one who is the servant king. Verse 1. Think of us in this way, says St. Paul, as servants of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries. And what's more, the word used here for servants isn't even the normal word that we would find in the New Testament. It's actually a word for an under-oarsman. So this isn't a high-level servant. This isn't like the butler off Downton Abbey in charge of everything where everybody stands up as he comes in. This is the hall boy. This is somebody down, not distinguished. But nevertheless, despite that, he has been entrusted here to be a steward, a dispenser of the goods of the great mysteries of God. Not because of his status, but because of the status of those mysteries, those graces, those glories that Christ himself. Sometimes I think when we come to talk about humility and we challenge ourselves with arrogance, sometimes I think we delude ourselves in our own understanding of humility. We dress it up. We even weaponize it as a way of manipulating people, a bit like Uriah Heap in David Copperfield by Dickens, who refers to himself all the way through as an humble man and a servant and is anything but that and is using that as a means to manipulate everybody around them. Or painful as it is for me to say as a British person, if anybody watched the coronation, there was a moment where I nearly threw up when the king walked in from a gold stage coast covered in jewels and ermine and silk, and his first words in this cathedral, while the world watched on, as he has all of the power of empire, was to say, like Jesus, I come not to be served but to serve. We use humility sometimes as a tool for manipulating the sake of others. We fail and feign humility and servitude, all the while using that as a means actually to elevate ourselves, to push ourselves a little bit higher. But I'm struck by the fact that here, St. Paul doesn't even allow that as a possibility. Because Paul says, I'm a servant and I'm a steward, a dispenser. And he doesn't even say, I'm a servant and I'm a dispenser of the gospel, of the answer that is Jesus Christ, of the rules, of the revelation of God. He says, I am a dispenser of the mysteries of God. I don't have the answers. But I know, think of Colossians 2.2. I know who the mystery of God is. And he has a name. And his name is Jesus, and I will never fully understand the majesty and the glory and the breadth and height and depth of his grace towards us. But I'm called on just to offer this to you. Not because of any status I have, but because of the wonders of this mystery itself. We are stewards of the mysteries of Christ, not in our own right, but only through him. Verse 7, Paul says, For what makes you different from anyone else? What you have, you have received. What you have, you have received. What you have is a gift, he goes on to say. And the point that he's wanting to make there is that if you have any exercise in being arrogant, if you start looking down your nose at people, if you start standing six foot above contradiction, if you find yourselves in a position where you believe yourself elevated and haughty, then you'll find yourself in a position where you're no longer standing with Jesus Christ.

Four Marks Of God’s Servants

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So what I want us to think about this morning and the time that's remaining to me is what it means to be a servant of God, and more specifically, what sort of character do servants of God have? In the ancient world, if you were sent as a servant or a steward, the one who is sent comes with the authority, with the status, with the identity of the sender. A little bit like how we operate with ambassadors today. And often when we think about that idea, we think, great, especially those of us who preach. I'm sent with the authority of the sender. I'm sent with the authority of God Himself to do all of this. But consider for a moment the nature of the one who sends us. Consider for a moment who that king is that we hail. The king who is born in a religiously conservative society as an illegitimate kid, something that follows him around all through his life, born into an oppressive colonial regime, born to parents who are homeless, made a refugee, finds himself not with a position of dignity or power, never a priest or a religious official, finds himself on the side of the poor and the oppressed and the imprisoned, goes on to be rejected and abused by those in power that he came to help and to save, and who dies the death of a slave through a lynching. The one who sends us, sends us not from the position of might and power. This isn't Herod. This is King Jesus. The one who says, My kingdom is not of this world, the one who says, Follow me, for I am humble and lowly in spirit. What does it mean for us to be a trustworthy steward of him? For people when we are sent to see the one who has sent us. Because I'll be honest with you, I don't see Jesus in lots of those who take the authority and power of standing and commanding and telling people what to do. I don't see the sender in them. Because the one who sends us, the one who sends us is the Lord who reigns from the manger and the cross. Not from the halls of power, not from positions of being rich and affluent, but from the position of being the last and the least. So let me say four things of what I think Paul is saying about the character of those servants of God.

Trustworthy Faith Beyond Mere Talk

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First of all, I think Paul says that servants of God, stewards of God need to be trustworthy. They need to be trustworthy. Moreover, verse 2, it is required of stewards, of dispensers, that they should be found trustworthy. And trustworthiness here is connected to the idea of faithfulness. In fact, it's the same word in Greek, pistos, that's used. And it's the word that's used a bit later to describe Timothy. For this reason, I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved, faithful, trustworthy child in the Lord. To be trustworthy, to be faithful is key to what it means to be somebody who is a steward or a servant of God. And it is faithfulness that is found in imitating Jesus Christ Himself. Since the servant, the one sent is like the sender. Think of Jesus as faithfulness. Faithfulness even to the cross. Faithfulness to the Father and the Father's desire. Faithfulness to the people who despised and hated him, faithful to forgive, faithful and unchanging. Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever. Jesus who is constant. Placing faith in Christ is about placing faith in the one who ultimately places his faith entirely in humanity. For God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son that whoever should believe in him, have faith in him, should not perish but have everlasting life. But the first place is that that sending, that sending that God engages in, that's the greatest act of faith in our humanity that we could ever possibly imagine. I think this is connected to the issue of what it means to be stewards of the mysteries of God. So often I think we treat faithfulness, we treat trustworthiness as if it were some kind of cognitive thing alone. Or as if it was some kind of contract that we enter into with God, where we say we're gonna believe X, Y, and Z and we're gonna perform PQR religious exercises, and the result of that is gonna be that we get the thing that we've signed on for at the end. We get everlasting life. But that is not how God's trustworthiness, God's faithfulness works. Sisters and brothers, God's faithfulness to us is never contractual. God's faithfulness to us is covenantal. God is faithful to us because God has promised to be faithful to us, and God cannot change. God can't on a Tuesday decide he feels differently about you than he did on the Monday. God is the God whose faith in us is infinitely greater than the state of our faith in him or our faithlessness in him. And any faithfulness that we have, it emerges from sharing in, from participating in, from living underneath, from joining in the faith that he has in us. Faith rests on reliance, on action, on foundation, on trust. I'm sure many of you know the story of the French tightrope walker who was the greatest tightrope artist in all the world. Indeed, he was so great a tightrope artist that he put a tightrope right across Niagara Falls, the first person to walk across it on a tightrope, and a great crowd gathered to see him do this death-defying stunt. And as he got up there, the crowd gasped at what was going to happen. But he strolled across that tightrope and strolled back again like he was just having a saunter or walk in the park. Everybody was amazed. So he turned to the crowd and he says, Who believes that I can go across this tightrope over Niagara Falls pushing a wheelbarrow? Well, some of the crowd, they'd seen how confident, how easy it was for him to go across and come back. And some of them cheered, others were a bit unsure. You know, it's one thing walking along like that, it's another thing pushing a wheelbarrow. But he got a wheelbarrow and he whizzed across and he whizzed back better than I do in my garden when I'm pushing a wheelbarrow around. No wobbles, nothing. By this stage, the crowd's amazed. They want to see more. So we shouts to the crowd, who believes that I can cross this tightrope over Niagara Falls, pushing a wheelbarrow with a person in it? And they start to cheer. And he says, but who really believes that I can go across this tightrope pushing a wheelbarrow with a person in it? Yes, we believe, we believe. He says, Who truly believes it? We truly believe. He says, Who's first then? And no one came forward. Faith is not about belief. To be a faithful, trustworthy servant is to place your faith in the one faithful reality that we can always trust. The reality which will never change. For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power, powerful action. Who is the king? He is King Jesus.

Integrity When God Sees The Heart

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Because of that, I want to say secondly that not only are servants to be trustworthy and faithful, servants of God are secondly integrous. They are integrous. It's one on the inside that counts here. So, more briefly, what I want to say is that if we place our faith and trust in the right place, then we don't have to pretend. We can be honest. We don't need to worry about our failings and our wobbles and our struggles because we know that the judgment isn't about the way that people perceive us, it isn't about the things that we go chasing after. Instead, it depends upon us constantly falling back into the faithful arms of Jesus that are eternally secure. I think that's a big part of Paul's sarcasm in this part of the letter about the people. They are pretending, they're puffing themselves up, they're being arrogant, but it's all a pretense to cover over the fact that on the inside they're not placing their faith where it should be. God sees, not as the world sees, but God sees our heart. God sees what is truly important. And that's why Paul can say in verses three and four, I don't care what people say about me, it doesn't matter to me how I am judged. Because in the end, it is God, God who sees all things, God who knows what is in my heart, who will judge me. Leslie Weatherhead, who was a great preacher in the 20th century in England, a Methodist as well, so he must have been a great preacher. I'm a Methodist, for those of you who don't know, told a story of his life as a young uh minister driving his first motor car. This was in the early days of motoring, and at that stage, kids didn't realize quite how dangerous motor cars could be. They weren't around very often, and one windy day, the worst of all things possible and imaginable happened. A little boy's cat blew off, and the kid ran straight out in front of the car, and Weatherhead hit him, slammed on his brakes, run him over. His mother saw what had happened, saw that there was nothing that Weatherhead could do. Weatherhead stopped, scooped the boy into his arms, took the mother, drove off to the cottage hospital locally. Miraculously, unbelievably, the kid didn't have a scratch, didn't have a bruise, hadn't broken anything, just had a mild concussion. When the kid came around and woke up from his concussion, do you know what his first words were? Where's me cap? Rarely, Weatherhead says, has anybody nearly lost so much for something so little? And having received so much, being concerned with so little. Despite all the talk that we have, despite the ways in which we get our faith so warped, what's on the inside is the bit that matters. That's the bit that God sees. What are the caps we're chasing in the wind, I wonder? All the while failing to see the grandeur and glory of the mysteries of God in Jesus Christ. Because when we realize that in comparison to Jesus Christ, everything else is just a cap blowing in the wind, then we need to get rid of that chaff and start focusing upon Him.

Humility That Looks Like Jesus

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So trustworthy, integrous, thirdly, humble. Paul really goes at the arrogance of the Corinthians here, and from verse 9 to verse 13, it's this kind of barrage of sarcasm at them, and he ends with it all by saying, We are slandered, but we answer kindly. We have become the scum of the earth, the garbage of the world right up to this moment. This, it seems to me, is pretty true humility. The word that's used here for the kind of scum of the earth is literally the bit that was left over after a sacrifice for purity. So the bit that you swept away, the bit that was considered ritually unclean is swept away. Paul's saying, I'm like the scum that's swept away when the ritual purity happens. That's how impure, this is how ordinary I am. True humility is the form that the servants of the servants of God have to have. A form of humility that realizes that we are servants of the one who dies the death of a slave, that we are servants of the one who reigns from the cross, that we are called to share in Christ's mission and ministry, as the holy one who hangs around with the ritually unclean and touches them, as the one who is the center of the whole universe and brings the outcasts in to dine with him, as the one who is the sovereign lord of all and deigns to meet with the last and the least of the world, as the one who is the all-glorious and is born not in Herod's palace, but on the streets in Bethlehem and put in a manger. Not as the one who is superior, but as the one who spends his time with the garbage of the world. Do you know that lepers in the ancient world lived around garbage sites because they had to be kept separate from people and had a bell shouting leper, leper when they came in? This is the kind of imagery that Paul is playing with here. These are the people who are the core of what our faith is. He says to those people, you might see yourself in this way, but let me tell you this. You are so precious in my eyes that I, as the king of the universe, the Lord of heaven and earth, I'm not just prepared to invite you to eat with me. I'm prepared to die for you. You are my beloved. What other status can we ever have or imagine that is greater than that? I think that Pope Francis, the late Pope, is the minister of God in the last 25, 30, 50 years, maybe, who has captured the imagination of the broader public of society more than any other preacher of the gospel that we've seen in recent times. And didn't wear all of the garb and was meant to go and bless the people, and instead knelt and said, I am meant to bless you, but I need you to bless me and pray for me. A moment when I saw something of Jesus Christ, and I wept. I'm told by a friend of mine who works in the Vatican that when Pope Francis was lying on his deathbed over Holy Week, his only fear, his only concern, his only upset as he faced death was simply this: that as pontiff, every year on Monday, Thursday, he had quietly gone to the prison in Rome and washed the feet of every prisoner that wished to have their feet washed as the Pope. And he was fearful that he was letting them down by not being that. That was all he could focus upon. What would it be for us to be servants of the servant of God like that? That is what it means to believe in a Saviour who kneels and washes our feet. He showed the world something of the likeness of Christ by touching the untouchable, by being in the midst of people in all of their anguish and pain.

The Danger Of Judgmental Christianity

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So finally, fourthly, as stewards of the mystery of God, we are to be servants who are never judgmental. Who are never judgmental. Sisters and brothers, I want to say this to you today. The biggest failing of Christianity in the West is arrogance. It's judgmental arrogance, confusing Jesus Christ for power and status, desiring to legislate for those who yet do not know Jesus Christ as their Savior, and telling them that they are to live in a way that demands grace to be given to us to even begin upon that journey and upon that path. That's what Paul is going on about in the middle of this letter when he says, You're behaving like kings. You're behaving like kings, and I'm the scum of the earth. How dare you behave like kings? Because the one who is the king says, My kingdom is not of this world. My kingdom is not about judiciaries, it is not about legislatures, it is about kneeling down and washing the feet of those prisoners who find themselves in the least and the last, who consider themselves beneath and below everybody else, and saying, friend, friend, come up higher, for the Lord has a place for you at his table. It is about realizing that we will be the ones not dining with Jesus when we say there is no space for people like you there. That when we stand and look down upon people, then we're failing to kneel like beggars, asking for the grace and forgiveness of our God who in his mercy reaches out even to a sinner like me. That is the message of Jesus Christ. And when we proclaim something else, we commit idolatry. We confuse the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ for Apollo or for Jupiter or for the powers of this world. Only those of us who know the need for mercy, only those of us who kneel in desperation, asking for God to reach to us in our brokenness and our frailty and to make us anew only to us. Is there a recognition of what it means to be one who is a beloved child of God? I

Otto’s Funeral And The Name God Knows

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want to end today by telling you about the funeral of the last emperor in Europe. It happened about nine, ten years ago. It was the funeral of Otto of Austria. It was a controversial affair. It was a funeral that was given full imperial rights, followed traditional paths. I wanted to show it to you, but it's in German, and I couldn't find it with a translation. I didn't fancy trying to translate going along. You can imagine what this was like. Kings, rulers, people from all around the world gathered at this funeral, and the funeral ends with a procession of the body in a plane casket going through Vienna. All pomp, all circumstance you could imagine afforded to this. The procession climaxes as the mourners arrive at the gates of a capuchin, a Franciscan friary. And the herald walks up to the door, bangs three times. The door opens, and a monk who has taken a vow of poverty asks, Who is it that desires entry here? The herald responds with all of the titles and royal powers that Otto had. Otto of Austria, once crowned prince of Austria-Hungary, Royal Prince of Hungary and Bohemia of Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia, Ludomiria, Ilyria, Grand Duke of Tuscany and Krakov, Duke of Lorraine, on and on and on and on it goes until it ends with, and I don't know what on earth this is, Grand Voivod of the Voivodiship of Serbia, etc., etc. The monk in his brown robes says, There is none known by that name here, and closes the door. Bang, bang, bang. Who is it that desires entry here? And all of his civic titles were given as somebody involved in setting up the European Union. Otto von Habsburg, president and honorary president of pan-European Union, member and quandam president of the European Parliament. On and on it goes with every civic power that he had. Again, the monk says there is none known by that name here. And slams the door. Third time. Bang, bang, bang. Who is it that desires entry here? And all of his academic titles are given. Doctor Otto von Habsburg, member of this university and that university, honorary graduate, done this, that, the other, member of these learned societies. Again, the Capuchin friar says there is none known by that name here and closes the door until the final time. Bang, bang, bang. Who is it that desires entry here? And the herald says, Otto, a sinner. And the friar says, Then let him come in. For for him a place is prepared in the kingdom of God. God is the one to whom we look, when we seek what it means to be a servant of his. When we don't understand all that he has given to us, when we don't understand all of the grace that is offered lavishly and freely upon us, when we don't understand that he deigns even to eat with us, then we don't understand who he is. We've taken our eyes off him. We're not eating with him. We're instead seeking another God.

Table, Mercy, And Final Exhortation

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As the worship group comes up to lead us now in a time of worship, as we prepare our hearts to receive the reconciling grace of God and the most palpable symbols that we have in the bread and in the wine, in the body and blood of Christ. Let's examine our hearts. Let's examine our hearts as we come to his table, trusting in his mercy and righteousness, about whether we're coming up, trying to say, this table's just reserved for me. And you don't have a place here. Because when we find ourselves in that place, then we'll find ourselves excluding ourselves from the table of Christ. Because we want to exclude others. Sisters and brothers, as those who are servants and stewards of the mysteries of God, our place is to serve those last and the least who kneel at that table like we do, with hands outstretched for a tiny morsel of bread. Because one day we too will stand before the throne of judgment. And the Lord who sees not as the world sees, who sees our hearts, will beckon us towards him and will call us to be part of his eternal kingdom. And our only plea will be, Father, forgive me. On your grace, on your mercy, on your lavishness, I depend. Will we be those who understand ourselves to be sinners saved by grace? Will we be those who steward the mysteries of God? Or will we confuse the kingdom of God for Rome? The power of God for the paltry power that we have, the lavishness of God's grace, for all of the bells and baubles and whistles of this world. Because in the end, there is one before whom we will kneel. One before whom we will bow. And at his name, every knee shall bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. To the glory of the Father. Amen.