The Discipline of Thanking God for the Church ( 1 Corinthians 1:1-9)

Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to 1st

Corinthians, First Corinthians chapter 1.

1 Corinthians 1 · chapter mention

It's a sermon text for this morning, First Corinthians 11 to

9. And I want to express how

thankful I am to the Lord for the privilege of worshipping

with you all this morning and opening of God's Word.

So First Corinthians 1, 1:00 to 9:00 Hear the word of the Lord

Paul called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus

and our brother. Sustain us to the Church of God

that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus

called to be St. together with all those who in every place

call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both dear Lord and

ours. Grace to you and peace from God

our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of

God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you are

enriched in Him, in all speech and all knowledge, even as the

testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you

are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of

our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end,

guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is faithful by whom you were called into the fellowship of

His Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Let me pray one more time,

Father, I pray that You would grant us now as Your people, to

receive with meekness the implanted Word that is able to

save us. And to that end, I ask that You

would grant that the preaching of Your Word here and now and

anywhere else and preached would be done as a demonstration of

the Spirit and of power, so that our faith as your people might

rest not in man's wisdom, but in the power of God.

I pray God that you would give me clarity, give me boldness,

give U.S. Open minds and hearts, Grant for

the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts

together to be acceptable in your sight.

O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer, I ask in Jesus name,

Amen. In the book of Proverbs we read

some interesting things about good news from a distant

country. So Proverbs 2525 says this like

cold water to a thirsty soul. So it's good news from a far

country. Another proverb speaks like

this. Proverbs 1530.

The light of the eyes rejoices the heart, and good news

refreshes the bones. So good news from a distant land

is refreshing and energizing. The Bible says it revives a

person's psyche in much the same way as a drink of cold water

revives a thirsty person. It may even be life giving in

some way to your physical person.

The second proverb I just read, 15 verse 30 says it refreshes

the bones literally that that verse means it makes the bones

fat and healthy. You can almost think about

Jacob, the story that is told us in the book of Genesis after

Joseph had disclosed himself to his brothers in Egypt and they

came back home to Canaan and told their father Jacob that his

son that he presumed dead is very alive in Egypt and is a

mighty ruler there. The Bible tells us that after

the initial shock that came on Jacob from hearing that news had

warned off, he felt like someone who had drunk a very refreshing

drink because his decrypted body, in spite of his decrypted

body, he stood up and said it is enough.

Joseph, my son is still alive. I will go and see him before I

die. So good news from a distant

country can impact a person in a uniquely powerful way.

Well, none of that was true of the Apostle Paul related to the

church in Corinth. He did receive news from a far

country. I mean the Apostle Paul.

He was in the city of Ephesus, a famous 1st century city in what

is today the West Coast of modern day Turkey.

And we know. That for for a fact, because at

the end of the letter to the correct the first letter to the

Corinthians, he says I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost for a

wide door for effective work has opened to me and there are many

adversaries so we. Know even from Paul's words that

he's writing First Corinthians from the city of Ephesus.

And while he is there in Ephesus, people come over from

Corinth. He tells us in chapter 1, verse

11 that people of Chloe's house had come and given him some

updates as to how things were going at the church that he

planted in Corinth. In other words, people travelled

across the Aegean Sea from the southern part of Greece and came

over to what is the West Coast of modern day Turkey and gave

Paul updates about the church at Corinth.

But the news Paul received about the church was everything but

refreshing. He received news that the church

he planted was not doing well at all.

He was told that there are factions in the church.

He was told that there are members in the church filing

lawsuits against one another before unbelievers.

He heard that there were people at the church in Corinth going

to prostitutes. He even heard there was a man in

the church living in incest and the church had a carefree

attitude towards that egregious sin.

He heard there was controversy over eating food sacrificed to

idols and that they were desecrating the Lord's Table and

that they were misusing spiritual gifts and some of them

were even denying the future bodily resurrection of

believers. So this church had multifaceted

problems with the news Paul heard was not only not

refreshing, was deeply distressful, was alarming news

for somebody who cares for the glory of God in the church to

hear. I think if you and I lived in

Corinth in the 1st century and had options.

The church at Corinth when I was First Baptist Church or Second

Presbyterian. Would not make the least for us

to consider as a church to join because it had multifaceted

problems. Now, how would you pray for a

church like that? If you were Paul, if you were in

Paul's place and received this kind of devastating update about

the church that you labored over the course of 18 months to see

come into existence, how would you pray for that kind of

church? How would you speak about that

kind of church? How would you speak to that kind

of church or, or to bring it home to us here?

How are you to pray for your church?

How does God desire for you to pray for Trinity Baptist Church?

What's God's will for you in terms of how you speak to your

fellow brothers and sisters about this church?

And I would submit to you, it's very simple.

God calls you to be very thankful for this church.

God calls you to speak about this church to one another with

profound gratitude to God for this church.

And Paul shows that to us in this letter in the verses we

read in living colors. He shows that to us in gripping

and convicting ways. So first, I'm just arguing with

you this morning that God calls you as a member of this church

to be profoundly thankful for this church.

Notice verse four of our passage.

Look at verse 4. Paul says I give thanks to my

God always for you because of the grace of God that was given

to you in Christ Jesus. So giving thanks to God for the

believers at Corinth was a regular practice of the apostle.

He's telling them, and notice he says he does that always.

He's regularly giving thanks. He's not bankrupt when it comes

to giving thanks for this church.

Paul's attitude of thankfulness for believers for the church at

Corinth was not unique to that church.

It marked his life and ministry. Just listen to what he says to

the Romans. Romans 18.

First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you,

because your faith is proclaimed in all the world.

Hear what he says to the Philippians.

I thank my God in all my remembrance of.

You. Always in every prayer of mine

for you, for you all, making my prayer with joy.

He already says to the Colossians, We always thank God

the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ when we pray for you,

since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love

that you have for all the Saints.

He actually counted it as a debt that he owed here, the way he

speaks to the Thessalonians, Second Thessalonians, 1/3, we

ought always. In other words, we owe it as a

debt always to give thanks to God for you, brothers, as is

right, because your faith is growing abundantly and the love

of everyone of you for one another is increasing.

How could it be more? Clear from Paul's letters that

God's will for. You and for me is that we be

thankful for the churches in which he has placed us and for

any other true church that we know.

Paul recognized that no matter what joys or problems, what

encouragement or discouragement may be present in any given

church at any given time, the very existence of a church at

all is a miracle of sovereign grace for which God should

receive. Ceaseless thanks helps Paul's

conviction. That's what he operate operated

with. And so he could not close his

eyes to pray for any given church, even a church wracked by

problems as Corinth, without being overwhelmed with gratitude

to God for that church. He was.

He couldn't get over the fact that there is actually a church

at Corinth and there's a church at Rome.

There's a church at Thessalonica, and there is a

church here called Trinity Baptist Church.

That's something for which to thank God.

Beloved, do you realize that this church called Trinity

Baptist Church is a miracle of sovereign grace?

Do you know that the most fitting attitude of heart that

you should have before God for this church in this season and

at any other season of this church's life is that you be

profoundly thankful that this church is here?

I read a book recently and the authors point out something

interesting. They say that one of the slogans

that the Marine Corps of the United States.

Say it's often if you've been if if you are an ex marine maybe

you have heard this. They often say that every marine

is a Rifleman. So according to that, it means

that from 1 angle, if you are a Marine, whether you are trained

to drive trucks or to collect and analyze intelligence or to

do cyber warfare or whatever specialty you have been given in

the Marine, you must XLS a rifle man, as a marksman who operates

a rifle with extraordinary competence and ability.

So you you could not really be a Marine and not be a rifle

competent individual. What is one thing you would say

God wants every Christian to excel at?

What's one thing every believer cannot but be good at?

I think Paul will say giving thanks to God for the church,

for the triumph of the gospel. That the gospel of the cross of

Christ is invading the heart of sin, darkened human beings, and

turning them from goat supernaturally into sheep that

hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and gather week in

after week in and week out to worship Jesus is something for

which we should ever be bereft of Thanksgiving to God.

So you and I should be excelling and giving thanks to God.

Let our prayers for our churches be saturated with Thanksgiving

to God again. The case of Corinth is

particularly striking. That Paul would give thanks to

God for a church being so conscious, so painfully aware of

how profoundly flawed the church was, and didn't even seem to be

doing something about it. They didn't even seem bothered

by the fact that they had these many problems in their midst.

And not only was Paul privately thanking God for the church in

Corinth, he starts writing to them.

And one of the first things he wants them to know is how

thankful he is for them. So so get.

Get get what's going on here. He's not only giving thanks to

God vertically, he's telling the Corinthians he is very thankful

for them. I mean, if if if you were

thinking about a church with all these kinds of problems and you

had to write a letter to them, put pen to paper that they will

get what's one of the first things you will want to tell

them? I don't think I'll be eager to

tell them. I'm so thankful for you.

I'm so thankful for you as a church.

That would not be the first thing that comes to mind for me.

Now don't misunderstand. Paul does not mean he was

lighthearted and carefree about the problems in this church.

You don't need to look any further than the rest of the

letter. He's going to use strong

language of correction for the church.

He's going to rebuke them with strong language for their

cliquishness, for their carefree attitude towards incest in their

MID, for their carefree attitude towards lawsuits in their midst,

for the fact that people are going to prostitute from their

midst, for the fact that they are misusing spiritual gifts and

desecrating the Lord's table and denying the future bodily

resurrection of believers. He's even going to use biting

sarcasm to shock them up out of the stupor into which they were

descending. He's going to say things to them

like I say this to your shame. Is it the case that there's no

one among you wise enough to settle trivial matters of life?

He's going to speak in strong language to them.

Nonetheless, he never cease to give thanks for them.

So having a constancy in Thanksgiving for your church,

it's not the same thing as sweeping, difficult

conversations under the rock, because that's not the example

Paul shows us. He shows us you can be

simultaneously very thankful for a church, very thankful for your

church, and yet have hard conversations about things that

need to be talked through. So those two are not

incompatible. Those two are not mutually

exclusive. Actually, an attitude of

Thanksgiving to God for your church prepares you to apply the

gospel in the most edifying ways to the lives of your brothers

and sisters. As you learn to thank God for

the triumph of grace in each of their lives, you will learn to

speak the gospel to one another in ways that build up and exalt

Christ and speed people along the path of the pilgrimage to to

heaven. You see how it worked out in the

lives of Paul. I mean, he is going to go on to

rebuke them about what they need to be rebuked about and commend

them about what they need to be commended for.

Just read Chapter 11. He would say to them, I commend

you for remembering all the traditions.

That I gave to you. So, so he's so attuned to how to

speak the gospel to these people because he's thanking God for

them and seeing them through the lenses of the triumph of God's

grace in their midst. So he's not painting anything

with a broad brush. He's seeing them through the

eyes of God. So cultivating a habit of

Thanksgiving protects you and me from cynicism, from becoming

embittered and totally disillusioned with the church.

It helps you keep a gospel perspective on church relational

realities, on how things are working out in church, and

prepares you so that your participation as a church member

actually strengthens and builds up and encourages and stirs up

your brothers and sisters onto great love and good works for

the glory of Christ. That's exactly how it played out

in the life of the Apostle Paul. A life of Thanksgiving to God

for your church makes you into a catalysts of encouragement and

strengthening in the midst of your church.

So I would argue Thanksgiving to God for your church is a

prerequisite by which problems and hard conversations are

handled and talked about in a Christ's honoring way.

So being serious minded as a Christian and being thankful to

God, a perfectly compatible realities.

Now every serious minded local church has a church covenant

that says a number of things, among which will be something

like this. Having been brought by God's

grace to repent and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and

having been baptized upon our professional faith in the name

of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, we now

solemnly and joyfully renew our covenant with each other that

God enabling. Us, we will walk together in

love as brothers and sisters, a family whom God has saved by

grace. And I would argue, you cannot

effectively love on your brothers and minister to them as

God would have you if your heart is bereft of Thanksgiving to God

for them. You and I are members of our

respective churches. But at the end of the day.

Those churches are God's churches and He deserves endless

Thanksgiving for those. Now, if you have been a

Christian for any length of time, you know that this kind of

Thanksgiving to God for your church cannot primarily draw its

strengths from your day-to-day and week to week experience of

church life. Because that experience.

Steps and flows. It shifts and changes.

If you're going to draw only on how church life is going, how

connected you are, how blessed you feel at your at your church,

how peaceful things are, you're going to quickly run out of fuel

for Thanksgiving to God. So Paul is not drawing the

strength for thanking God for the believers at Corinth

primarily from the experience of the people there or from what he

is hearing about them. He's thinking more about what

God has done in the midst of that church.

So how do you sustain a life of consistent Thanksgiving to God

for your church? I would argue, remember what God

has done. So be thankful, and how you are

thankful is remember what God has done.

Remember the work God has done in the midst of His people, in

every redeemed person in every true Church of Jesus Christ at

the church in Corinth, here at Trinity Baptist Church, there

are marks of God's grace that if you are fixated on, if you look

intently enough at those marks of grace, you will never run out

of reasons for Thanksgiving to God.

God has done and is doing things here which if you have eyes to

see, they will always feed your Thanksgiving to God.

They will become streams that run into the raging river of

Thanksgiving in your heart to God for what He has done and is

doing. And I want to point out three to

you here from Paul's opening verses in First Corinthians.

So here's the first, where do you draw the strength to give

thanks to God? The 1st is you recognize that

the church is set apart. It's not accidental, it's set

apart. God's gotten in here.

Look at verse two of our passage.

Paul describes the church like this.

The church is those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be

sent together with all those who in every place call upon the

Lord, of call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both

their Lord and ours. Again, remember, Paul has heard

alarming things about the state of things at the church in

Corinth, and yet strikingly enough, he describes these

believers as those sanctified in Christ Jesus, as those called to

be God's holy people, called to be Saints.

You read that and you want to think, Paul, did you just hear

there is incest of that church? Did you just hear there are

factions there? Did you just hear people are

going to prostitutes there and fighting on each other's and at

each other's throat and going to court before unbelievers?

Did you hear that? How could you possibly know that

and refer to them as those sanctified and called to be

sent, called to be God's holy people?

Paul knows that the experience of the life of a given church in

any given season is never the ultimate reality about that

church. The ultimate reality about the

life of any and every believer and the life of any and any and

any and every church, true church, is what God has done in

the church. So the experience in any given

season, the relational tensions that may be or joys that may be,

do not tell the whole story. There is something more

profound, more eternal, more enduring, more undiminished by

the experiences of this life. True about that church.

And it is that God has set them apart and call them to be his

people. You know when Paul says to those

sanctified in Christ Jesus, he uses a word whose tense conveys

the idea that God has done and completed a work in the past

whose results will continue forever.

God has inducted every believer into the realm of the holy in an

irrevocable way. It's never going to be reversed.

What God has done in calling each one of his blood, bought

people from darkness into light and introduced them into the

realm of the holy is irreversible.

And that's true regardless of what season of life the church

is going through. And so Paul is fixated on that

and therefore thanking God for that.

Paul is speaking about eternal things here.

He is speaking about what we call positional or definitive

sanctification. Every believer knows that, not

because of any inherent holiness of the earth, but because of the

grace of God that has descended upon them and set them apart for

God. And then he calls them those who

are called, those who have been summoned by God.

Paul is not suggesting that God sent an invitation to Corinth

for the Corinthians to RSVP and any one of them could turn it

down or accept to come. Now he's saying God summoned

them with a car that produced a response.

He summoned them to himself with a calling that sounded like

Jesus calling Lazarus out of the tomb so that Lazarus did not

need to think to come out. He just came out because the

invitation created the response. And that's how God worked at

Corinth to bring about that church.

And Paul is saying, regardless of what's happening there right

now, we cannot but thank God for what he has done there.

You know, Paul describes this calling of the Corinthian

believers in verse nine. Look at verse nine of our

passage. God is faithful by whom you were

called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ.

So he ties their calling to the sovereign, indomitable work of

God to bring them to himself. In chapter 1, verse 26, he

describes that calling in terms of election, God's sovereign

choice of who believes. Look at chapter one, verse 26,

Paul says, for consider your calling brothers.

Not many of you were wise according to worldly standards.

Not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth.

But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise.

God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even

things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that

no human being might boast in the presence of God.

And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us

wisdom from God, righteousness, sanctification and redemption,

so that as it is written that no one who let one who boasts let

the one who boasts boasts in the.

Lord. Just look around here.

Just look around this room. Just turn your eyes and look

around this room. Do you know what you are looking

at? You are looking at a gathering

of God's holy people in Christ. What I'm preaching to this

morning, it's not a social gathering.

It's a gathering that has taken the sovereign operation of the

grace of the living God to bring into existence.

And I don't intellectually I know how I can know that to be

true and not be thankful to God. But maybe like you, I don't tend

to think of our church in these kinds of fundamental and

consequential categories. I tend to remember more that

heartbreak, that affliction, that trouble, that difficult

conversation that I have to have that trial, that brother or

sister who is straying into sin. I tend to think more in those

categories. Do you know what that does to my

Thanksgiving? It diminishes my Thanksgiving.

It drains the fuel for my Thanksgiving.

It makes the flame of my Thanksgiving not to burn as

brightly as it should. The truest things about any

given church lie beyond the perception of the five senses.

The truest things about this church lie beyond the perception

of the five senses, The the fact that God sanctified and called

and brought to himself are not things we see every day.

They're not things we gather and see all the time, but we know to

be true, indisputably true, by faith.

And so giving thanks to God includes very fundamentally

walking by faith, knowing that what God has done in your heart,

he has done in not brother's heart and not sister's heart and

not family. And therefore we are here by

God's work for which he deserves endless things.

Now, if you're here this morning and you've never called on the

name of the Lord, you've never repented of your sins, you've

never trusted in Jesus Christ, it's striking to me in relation

to your station in life spiritually, that Paul describes

this people also as those who call.

Upon the name of the Lord Jesus. Christ quite an interesting

description because he says they have been called and he

describes them as those who call on the name of the Lord.

So they are called to be St. and they call upon the name of the

Lord. That's, that's, that's a very

serious matter. That's, that's no trifle at all,

because only those who call on the name of the Lord will be

saved. Anyone who is not living their

life by calling on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will

perish forever, will be cut off from the life giving presence of

the one true and living God for all eternity.

Nothing could be more serious. So Paul describes these people

as the people who call on the name of the Lord.

And that means you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord.

And that means you believe in your heart that God raised him

up from the dead. And if that's true of you,

heaven's pledge to you is that you will be saved again.

If you have not never been born again, you've never turned from

your sin and trusted Christ. Let me just remind you of a

sobering truth. There is no name under heaven

given amongst men whereby we must be saved except the name of

Jesus Christ. If you have never repented, you

can call on him today. You can ask Him for forgiveness.

You can ask him that He walks in you this kind of union with

himself that made the Corinthians to become a people

sanctified, set apart and called to be God's holy people.

The Bible's promise is everyone who calls on the name of the

Lord will be saved. And that's because it is Jesus

and Jesus alone who suffered once for sins, the righteous for

the unrighteous, that he might bring anyone and everyone who

believes to God through himself. And so you have a wide you live

in the day of salvation. So I invite you think profoundly

about this. Think about this.

Just ask yourself questions about where do I stand in

relation to the God of the universe, the God who made me,

who had a distinct purpose for making me, namely that I should

be for His glory, and which purpose I have defied and kicked

against all my life? How could I ever possibly make

up for that kind of rebellion? The answer is He has made it up

for you in His Son, if you will but repent.

Those who are called are those who call on the name of the

Lord. So Paul draws strength to be a

consistent giver of thanks to God for the Corinthians.

First, from the fact that they are set apart, and that's true

of every believer here. But here's the second thing that

feeds and feels Paul's Thanksgiving.

It is that the church is equipped to be the church,

equipped to be the church. Look at verse 4 again.

I give thanks to my God always for you.

And here comes the reason. Because of the grace of God that

was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were

enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge, even as the

testimony about Christ was confirmed among you, so that you

are not lacking in any gift. You know, God's grace, we often

say quickly, is his unmerited favor.

But it's also God's transforming power through the gospel and not

power that grace took hold among the Corinthians.

By grace, they were comprehensively enriched

spiritually. God lavished them with spiritual

gifts that they could not possibly imagine.

Paul says you have been enriched in every way and you are not

lacking in any gift. But you know, Paul's perspective

is very gospel centered. He's not just saying like you

are such impressive people, you have all the gifts there could

be. You know, he recognizes the

gifts came to them because of God's grace.

They couldn't have earned what God did.

See what he says. The gift came as the testimony

about Christ was confirmed among them.

So this equipment came entirely by grace.

This wasn't because they were distinctive and impressive.

A recognition that the Corinthians were absolutely

lavished with gifts by God's grace was one of the streams

that flowed into the river of Paul's Thanksgiving.

And just think about the hundreds of spiritual gifts that

are represented in this room right now.

How many believers are here? By the teaching of the New

Testament, everyone of you has a spiritual gift from God.

Some have a couple. Some have more than a couple.

That means that it is possible that the number of spiritual

gifts present in this room this morning, maybe even double S the

number of believers present here.

Why is that the case? Because the grace of God by the

Gospel has been confirmed in each of your lives as a

believer. And for Paul, that's something

for which to thank God ceaselessly.

That's something for which to give praise to God.

The Corinthians also knew that God gave them gifts, but they

tended to think of themselves as distinct and as better than

everyone else. And so they were arrogant and

prideful. And that's why, as you read

through First Corinthians, Paul uses the word do not be puffed

up at least six different times to instruct them and correct

them because they divorced their spiritual wealth from the grace

of God. They forgot the the wealth came

to them. The gift came to them from God's

grace. They tended to be marked by

pride because they thought they were just wonderful people.

So it's a wonderful thing to be enriched by God's grace.

It's just as important to recognize that grace is indeed

grace. You didn't work for it, you

didn't earn it. You don't teach God's Word

because you could. You are not as kind and

hospitable and able to serve others because you could.

God work that in you by the power of his gospel, and

therefore he gets the glory. As people who believe the

doctrines of grace, we usually say sola gracia must always lead

to solid deal Gloria. The fact that we are saved by

grace and grace alone, equipped to be God's people and be the

church and serve Christ and one another by grace and grace

alone, should make us eager to return all the glory to the

giver of the grace that has come to us.

When we do that, that's going to train our hearts and lead us

away from pride and self exaltation, both as individuals

and as a church. So Paul calls us to give thanks.

He models for us Thanksgiving and shows us the strength for

giving thanks always comes from the fact that, you know, the

church has been set apart by God.

It comes from the fact that the church has been equipped by God.

But finally, it also comes from the fact that, you know, the

church is kept by God. Believers are kept by Jesus

Christ. One of my favorite truths in the

New Testament and in all of the Bible is that Christian people

are a people who are kept. They are people who are

preserved by the mighty hand of God.

Look at look at verse six of our passage.

Paul says this even as the testimony concerning Christ was

confirmed in you. The testimony confirming

concerning Christ is the gospel, and Paul uses that passive verb

again to show it is God doing the work and therefore God gets

all the glory. And his point is that the gospel

was validated, was ratified, was proven to be the gospel power of

God unto salvation for all who believe.

It was proven to be that by the gift that had come to the

Corinthians. So that's past.

What about the future? Did God do that work in the

past? Confirm his work, establish them

and then leave them? Like OK, you could figure things

out from here. No, look at verse verse 8.

Who will also confirm you? That's the same word.

Who will also confirm you to the end, Blameless in the day of our

Lord Jesus Christ. That's, that's, that's amazing.

God did a confirmation in the past.

God's going to do a confirmation in the future.

He worked in the past to establish you.

He will work in the future to complete what he started.

That's amazing. I mean, notice that by Paul's

writing right here, you will have to be blameless on the day

of Christ to be saved. You will have to stand before

Christ's throne, blameless in order to be saved.

Do you realize that, that on the day of judgment, you can't stand

before the judgment seat of God with filth on you.

There has to be a guiltlessness, A blamelessness mocking you as

you stand before Christ. That means you have to persevere

to the end. If you turn away from Christ and

abandoned a pursuit of godliness, you will not be

saved. That's what Paul is talking

about. And if we are honest and know

our own sins and know the stumblings and know the

remaining corruption that still mark our lives, we can be scared

by this and start to ask, will I make it to the end?

Will I truly stand blameless before the throne of Christ is?

Isn't there a real, genuine possibility that I could make a

shipwreck of the faith before the end?

And the answer is yes, if it all depended on you.

If it all depended on you, you not only can but will make a

shipwreck of the faith. But it doesn't all depend on

you. See, it says who will confirm

you, so God will confirm you. In other words, God will

preserve this flawed and sin tented Corinthians all the way

to the end. He will keep them.

In other words, God's preservation is the guarantee

for their perseverance. They will not make it to the end

if you remove the foundation of God's keeping work.

This is like what Paul says to the Philippians.

He who began a good work in your lives will bring it to

completion of the day of Christ. So he did not only confirm the

gospel in the beginning and let you figure things out for

yourself and let you press on on your own, He will confirm it in

the end. You will stand blameless before.

For the throne, I hope this grips your heart as it's

gripping mind. This is this is written to a

church that is wracked by sin. Like I said, their problems are

multifaceted. If you put me as a pastor at

this church and say start trying to revitalize this church, I

wouldn't even know which problem to start with because there were

so many of them. And yet Paul is saying that God,

who confirmed the gospel in you while I was with you 18 months

ago, however long that was, will confirm you blameless until the

end. Is that a reason for

Thanksgiving or what? How can you know that and not be

abundantly, overflowingly thankful to God for that church?

It doesn't depend on them. It's not their strength or power

that will bring them all the way to the end.

So if you look at the brothers and sisters that God's given you

here at Trinity Baptist, there are unbreakable bonds that God

has established between you and them.

So strong and so indomitable in strength that the allurements of

sin will not break, that Satan himself will not break, that the

allurements of the world will not break.

For those who are truly the sheep of Christ, He will keep

them and keep you bonded to them until we together are all God at

home and stand blameless, and the race is complete.

And we say, not by not, not my strength, but by His grace

alone, we have made it safely to the shore of eternity.

He, He who called you into the fellowship of His Son, will

confirm you to the end, blameless in the day of Christ.

So there is a day marked on God's calendar on which you

would have committed your last sin ever, on which you will

never need to repent of sin again, on which you will never

wish you spoke differently or listen more intently, like all

of that will be forever a thing of the past.

And Paul refers to that day as the day of the Lord Jesus

Christ, which is quite remarkable because the prophets

of the Old Testament, when they spoke of the day of the Lord,

they were Speaking of the day of Yahweh, the covenant God of

Israel, the One about whom they say He has marked a day.

That day is coming. And on that day, He will forgive

the sins of their people, He will transform their hearts, He

will defeat their enemies, and He will establish His Kingdom

and reign over them forever in righteousness.

As the New Testament opens, John the Baptist announces that those

days have opened. Those days have dawned on us.

And then Jesus is born, and the days indeed are inaugurated.

We are living in the day of the Lord, so to speak, and because

Jesus came and begun those days by His incarnation, His payment

for sin on the cross, His victorious resurrection from the

dead, His exaltation to the right hand of the Father, we

have an unshakable hope that He will finish what he came and

started. That day of the Lord is indeed

coming when Jesus will complete what He started at His first

coming and establish us. Complete all the way so that we

are like him. On that day, your physical

appearance will match the fact that you have been sanctified.

Right now it doesn't quite look like that.

I don't know if somebody met you last year at the grocery store

and say you look very sanctified.

It doesn't happen very often in this life, but it's coming a day

when our outward appearance will match with the fact that God in

Christ has inducted us into the realm of the holy that will be

fulfilled so we can be confident.

It doesn't matter what you're experiencing now as a believer.

What's happening to your marriage, What's happening to

your health? What's happening to your work?

What's happening with you regarding parenting and finances

and your health and everything else?

What's happening right now in the life of this church, what's

going on in this, in the season that this church is in now,

Those do not have any bearing whatsoever on whether this day

is going to come or not. The day is going to come and you

will be established blameless before the Lord.

So could you know that and not be thankful for this church and

not be thankful for these brothers and sisters that God

will confirm with you? When Christ splits the heavens

with blinding glory and all who have rejected Him are calling

for rocks to fall on them, and you stand in a spotless

righteousness that you did not earn and could not earn, but

it's yours forever. How could you know that and not

be more thankful for this church that God's given you and called

you to do life with and to persevere until the end?

I saw a bumper speaker sticker lately that said something like

live long and prosper and I've never met a human being who has

a problem with that. Most of us want to live long and

prosper, but then we have to ask the question after that.

Just let's just assume that all of us actually live long and

prosper. We have to ask after that, then

what? You live long and prosper then

then what you know for you and for me.

Believe us in Jesus Christ after this life, regardless of how it

looked like after this life. We await A revelation, a people

who are being kept a people awaiting A revelation. 0 and

verse 7 says as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus

Christ, our blessed hope. That's what we look forward to.

So, so let me close by just reminding you, God's will for

you is that you be overflowing with Thanksgiving for this

church, for your brothers and sisters, for God's grace at work

here. For the fact that he set each

one of you believers aside and inducted you into the realm of

the holy. For the fact that he's equipped

you with grace to be the church, with gifts, to be the church.

And for the fact that he is keeping you.

He's confirmed the gospel in your life and will establish you

will confirm you blameless on the day of Christ.

God wants you giving thanks to him for that.

And my argument is the more thanks you give, the better a

church member you will be, the more effective you will be in

your ministry to one another. And if you focus on what God has

done and is doing and will do, you will never run out of

reasons for Thanksgiving for this church.

They are always there. So May God make us a thankful

people, a people who so see what God has done through the eyes of

faith that we are always saying. I can't wait to meet with

brother X or sister Y again to worship the God who has set us

together apart, sanctified us, and called us to be his people

in Christ. Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your mercy to us.

Thank you that these things are not made-up, that we who were

darkened by sin have indeed been inducted into the realm of the

Holy, been strengthened by grace to be called your people, and

given gifts that make our passing lives count for your

Kingdom. I praise you for that, and I

pray that you make us abundantly thankful for that work of yours

in our lives and in the lives of our brothers and sisters and in

this church and in every true church that preaches your gospel

in Jesus name, Amen.