The Why of Love | Four Ingredients to being an Irresistible Disciple - 1 Corinthians 16 | June 23

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Hello, everybody. The lovely Joshua is going to come read for us chapter 16.

Now, regarding your question about money being collected for God's people in

Jerusalem, you should follow the same procedure I gave to the churches in Galatia.

On the first day of each week, you should each put aside a portion of the money you have earned.

Don't wait until I get there and then try to collect it all at once.

When I come, I will write letters of recommendation for the messengers you choose

to deliver your gift to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, and if it seems appropriate for

me to go along, they can travel with me.

I am coming to visit you after I have been to Macedonia, for I am planning to

travel through Macedonia.

Perhaps I will stay a while with you, possibly all winter, and then you can

send me on my way to my next destination.

This time I don't want to make just a short visit and then go right on.

I want to come and stay a while, if the Lord will let me. In the meantime,

I will be staying here in Ephesus until the festival of Pentecost.

There is a wide open door for great work here, although many oppose me.

When Timothy comes, don't intimidate him. He is doing the Lord's work,

just as I am. Don't let anyone treat him with contempt.

Send him on his way with blessings when he returns to me. I expect him to come

with the other believers.

Now, about our brother Apollos, I urge him to visit you with the other believers.

But he was not willing to go right now. He will see you later when he has the opportunity.

Be on guard, stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong,

and do everything with love.

You know that Stephanas and his household were the first of the harvest of believers

in Greece, and they are spending their lives in the service of God's people.

I urge you, dear brothers and sisters, to submit to them and others like them

who serve with such devotion.

I am very glad that Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Archaicus have come here.

You get a little helper in the car when you get married.

They have been providing the help you weren't here to give. They have been a

wonderful encouragement to me as they have been to you.

You must show your appreciation to all who serve as well.

The churches here in the province of Asia send greetings to the Lord,

as do Aquila and Priscilla and all the others who gather in their home for the church meetings.

All the brothers and sisters here send greetings to you. Greet each other with

a sacred kiss Here's my greeting in my own handwriting Paul If anyone does not

love the Lord That person is cursed Our God, our Lord,

come May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you My love to all of you In Christ Jesus.

Amen Well, we did it You did it We've arrived at the last chapter in Corinthians

At work I have a co-worker who likes to say You're doing it look at you, you're doing it.

It's kind of sarcastic and not very helpful, but I suppose that the most important

thing for you is that you did it.

You've survived the book of 1 Corinthians.

You've dealt with me saying 1 Corinthians over and over again.

And while you may have playfully made fun of me, I hope, you didn't question it.

In fact, in all of your banter, I'm willing to bet that you're not going to

be able to look at this letter again without imagining me in your your head

saying 1 Corinthians. So, mission accomplished.

This whole year has been one practical joke.

You're welcome. Although I don't know what the punchline is,

so I guess it wasn't a very good joke.

But in all seriousness, we did it. We have arrived at the last chapter of 1

1 Corinthians 16 · chapter mention

Corinthians, chapter 16, and I'm very proud of you all for sticking with it for so long.

There's a lot of challenging things in this theologically heavy letter, for sure.

So, So my hope is that we haven't just survived, but that we have been and are

being changed through it all. So that's my hope and that's my prayer.

That's the prayer that Paul has. The goal that Paul has for the Corinthians

is that they would be changed by this letter, that their hearts would be changed.

And as you know by now, because we've gone through so many weeks,

the Corinthians were being changed in a bad way.

They were being influenced more by their culture, more by the world than they were by Jesus.

And so Paul writes to encourage them to be changed by the gospel,

to be conformed into the image of King Jesus.

And then he outlines kind of what that looks like through these 16 chapters.

As we've arrived here in chapter 16, kind of Paul does his usual thing you may

have noticed at the end of his letters. He gives a final teaching.

He kind of lays out his travel plans and he sends greetings from other churches

and tells them to greet people who are on their way. And then he also gives

one last kind of encouragement.

And it's almost like Paul in this particular letter in 1 Corinthians,

it's almost as if Paul is saying, remember all of that stuff I just wrote to

you, all the stuff that you read aloud and probably embarrassed some of you as you heard it,

because you know, I was talking about you, all of this stuff that I've laid

out for you, all the stuff about being in one faith, in one spirit,

under one Lord for the one and only God,

about living for God in a world that is overwhelmingly unchristian and actually

opposed to the message of Jesus.

All the things that I wrote to you about laying aside your pride and your preferences

and not getting your own way,

about laying aside your giftings and just loving people, all the stuff about

pursuing the spiritual good of another person in love.

And no matter how difficult that may be, how very worth it is every single time,

all of this stuff, remember all of this stuff that you just read, that I just wrote to you.

It's almost as if he's saying, here are some ways that you can start practically living it out.

Here are some things that you can put it into practice. You can,

we're collecting money for the church in Jerusalem.

You can sacrifice of your personal freedom of what you do with your finances.

You can give to your brothers and sisters in Christ who maybe you don't know

that you can pour out of your personal treasure to help those fellows,

brothers and sisters, your believers in Christ.

And here's an opportunity for you to put that in practice. Paul says,

I'm planning on coming to see you.

And so here's an an opportunity for me to see all the wonderful ways that God

is changing you, that you can share with me the fruit of your faith,

the love that God is growing in your hearts, that I can't wait.

He's basically saying, I can't wait to be there with you so that I can see all

of the ways that you're being changed, all the ways that God is reshaping your

hearts, all the ways that he's healing the divisions among you.

He says, not only am I coming, but he says that Timothy's coming.

And then he says a weird thing. He says, don't intimidate him because he knows

what kind of of people he's writing to, right?

He's like, don't, don't scare him. Don't make him upset. Don't treat him poorly.

Here's an opportunity to love Timothy.

So here's the opportunity to serve him and to show all the ways that God has changed you.

He says, Apollos is probably going to come. Also Stephanas, Fortunatus,

Achaicus, all these people.

Stephanas and his house are the ones I mentioned last week, actually,

that are the ones that Paul says that they are spending themselves.

They're spending their lives for the gospel of God, for the glory of God, for God's people.

So he's saying, here's an opportunity to practice, to put into practice that

whole discussion we had about submission.

It tells them to submit to them, to serve them, to love them,

that they are doing wonderful work for the kingdom of God.

So, encourage and restore their souls as they come to you.

Stephanas and his household are actually from Corinth as well.

We see them in chapter one.

Paul mentions the people that he baptized. He says, thankfully,

I didn't baptize any among you except a couple people.

And then it's almost as he forgot and he said, and the household of Stephanas, right?

So, Stephanas and his family are from Corinth and he's telling them to restore

them, to submit to them, to serve them.

Look at all these opportunities that are coming your way to put it to work,

to put into practice all of these things that I just wrote to you,

to practice the expressions of the Spirit, of the love of God through you for

the spiritual good of another person.

It just occurred to me, they read these letters out loud, right?

Like, how long were they sitting there reading? This is a long letter.

This is a really long, this is probably where people fell asleep and died.

But I guess Paul wasn't there to heal them at this point, so maybe it wasn't.

I do want to say this before I move on to the main point of today,

because we're going to get to a different point, but God is providing so many

opportunities for you right now.

We are not in want for opportunities. He is surrounding you with these opportunities

to put into practice the righteousness of God, the faith that is being built in you.

And so, if Paul were to write this letter to you, if you were to imagine that

you were one of the recipients, what are some of the names that would be listed

that Paul's saying, here are some opportunities for you?

What are the opportunities that would be among this list that he is saying?

And I know that not all of you kind of take notes and all of you are note takers,

but I do encourage, I would encourage you to pick up the habit.

I know I'm not the best example of that either.

But don't let the words that are shared here on a Sunday, just be left here.

Let them flow in you and through you. Let them change you.

So, if you have some paper, pull out some paper. If you have your phone,

I give you permission to look on your phone right now and open the notes app

and just jot down a quick,

maybe three opportunities that God is presenting you with, providing you with

right now of you to let go of self,

to put aside self and to work for the spiritual good of another person.

I know I was thinking about this yesterday And we have a neighbor across the

street that I've seen. I've obviously seen him. I've never really talked to him.

I keep mistakenly calling him John, which is the guy that rented from him previously.

But I think his name, which I remember, just Carlisle. That's right.

Something with a C. Carlisle.

And I just saw him the other day putting together a table and didn't go and

help him, but thought, hmm, that's probably an opportunity.

So maybe I'll be on the lookout for some more opportunities to get to know Carlisle.

And the wonderful thing is, is that you, as you put into practice,

recognizing and acting on these opportunities,

the more you will recognize the way that God is trying to work through you,

the more opportunities that you will see as you get accustomed to acting on

them and recognize them.

And so these are the opportunities for you to put into practice all that we've

talked about over the last 20 some weeks and really act and let this word of

God change you and put into practice all the beautiful things that you were

called to as Christians,

as believers, as disciples of Jesus.

And discipleship is in a way what we've been talking about the whole time.

Time, disciples of Jesus, what it looks like to be a disciple,

all the ways in which the Corinthians were being changed and influenced and

conformed to the image of the world around them, to the culture,

rather than into the image of Christ when they should have been being,

when they should have been being,

when they should have been being transformed into the image of Christ.

I think that makes grammatical sense.

There's this verse in Romans chapter 12 that you may be familiar with.

Romans 12 · chapter mention

Don't copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you

into a new person by changing the way you think.

Then you will learn to know God's will for you, which is good, pleasing, and perfect.

I know that if you know this verse, you probably know it in the NIV because

it seems like that's what we probably all memorized back in the day,

which you can probably quote along with me, but do not be conformed to the image

of this world or the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind,

then you'll be able to test and prove what God's will is, His good,

pleasing, and perfect will.

So, we're talking about being conformed to the image of Christ.

We're talking about being conformed, which I remember I said is you're probably

going to have to give up some of who you are.

It probably is going to require you losing a bit of who you are to be conformed to the image of God.

We have that picture that you've probably heard before of Michelangelo,

I believe, right? One of the Ninja Turtles.

The way he described creating his sculptures is that he would just remove everything

that wasn't the David or Pieta or whatever the sculpture was, right?

That's how he saw it. He saw a giant thing of whatever it was,

marble or granite or whatever it was, and he just removed everything that wasn't the statue.

And so, that's kind of what it means to be conformed into the image.

Of God. What we're talking about is what it means to be a disciple,

what it means to disciple other people.

It means to teach them to know God and to be like Jesus, to teach them how to

obey God and seek His best for our lives.

And so, in preparing for our time together, I came across a wonderful phrase,

and it kind of sums up all of what Paul is trying to communicate to us, that he is trying

to make irresistible disciples and not irresistible in the sense that we're

attractive or, or this or that, but more in the sense of that we are not distracted by other things,

but that we pursue and follow and, and put our hearts firmly on the Lord.

And so I love that. I love that little phrase.

That's what we're going to, I'm going to repeat quite a, quite a bit today.

And that's what I pray for myself. That's what I pray for you guys that we would

become irresistible disciples.

But how do we become irresistible disciples, you may ask?

I'm so glad that you asked that question, even though you didn't say it out

loud. I'd love to tell you.

Paul gives us in this chapter four ingredients, the four ingredients to make

an irresistible disciple.

And these are sort of the four necessary actions that we must internalize as

we act on these opportunities that God is presenting to us to depend on His

Holy Spirit and walk in obedience to him.

These are sort of the four actions that we must take. The four commands,

essentially, Paul's giving us commands here.

There are four of them. Paul says, be on guard, stand firm in the faith,

be courageous, and be strong.

These are all sort of referencing a military metaphor that Paul's using.

As we'll see, we're not going to really depend on that metaphor too much,

but sort of talking about soldiers on a battlefield, be on guard,

stand firm in the faith, be courageous, be strong.

And so, in this metaphor, the first two are almost referencing waiting an attack,

while the second two are almost referencing actually being in the combat.

But like I said, we're not going to get too far into that metaphor,

but it's important to note because there is some information that's being communicated

there that we don't see in this language.

But Paul says to be on guard, be alert, wake up. Paul says to wake up.

And this reminds me of so many stories throughout the Bible. So, so many stories.

The one that came to mind most immediately was Gideon in the book of Judges with the Midianites.

God keeps removing soldiers from Gideon.

He keeps taking people away because of the worry that people might see Israel

defeat their enemy, the Midianites, and that they would just recognize that

they did it under their own power, under their own strength.

So God keeps taking soldiers away so that it's obvious that God is working here

and not, it's just not the strength of people.

At one point in this story, he uses the way that the men drink water from a

stream to separate them.

And so some men lean over and sort of lap the water up with their face.

They put their face in the stream and those ones are sent away while those who

kneel by the stream and cut the water and bring it to their face.

So as to kind of remain vigilant, to stay on guard, to watch out.

Those are the ones that are kept.

So, he says, wake up, be watchful.

We know that the disciples are invited to stay awake and pray with Jesus in

the garden, but they are constantly found asleep.

And so, the message, we see that kind of written in the context, wake up.

Isaiah loves to remind God's people to wake up. In chapter 52,

he writes, awake, awake, put on your strength, O Zion, on.

Put on your beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city. Wake up.

Jesus even tells his disciples in a parable, he tells a story of these 10 young

women who were invited to a wedding in Matthew 25.

He says, then the kingdom of heaven will be like 10 virgins who took their lamps

and went to meet the bridegroom.

Five of them were foolish and five were wise. For when the foolish took their

lamps, they took no oil with them.

But the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. And as the bridegroom was

delayed, they all became drowsy and slept.

But at midnight, there was a cry, here's the bridegroom, come out to meet him.

Then all those virgins rose and trimmed their lamps. And the foolish said to

the wise, give us some of some of your oil for our lamps are going out.

But the wise answered saying, since there will not be enough for us and for

you, go rather to the dealers and buy for yourselves.

And while they were going to buy, the bridegroom came and those who were ready

went with him to the marriage feast and the door was shut. up.

Afterward, the other virgins came also saying, Lord, Lord, open to us.

But he answered, truly, I say to you, I do not know you. Watch therefore,

for you know neither the day nor the hour.

So wake up. And Jesus says a similar thing in Luke chapter 12.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

He says, be dressed for service and keep your lamps burning as though you were

waiting for your master return from the wedding feast.

Then you will be ready to open the door and let him in the moment he arrives

and knocks. You have to be wide awake for just the right moment,

for the return of the King.

You need to not be distracted by unimportant things.

And so, there's kind of two purposes in this command to wake up,

this ingredient, you might say.

The first is to be prepared for the arrival of the groom, the arrival of the

king, to watch out and be prepared.

The second is to be on guard against the enemies and against the things that

may distract us along the way, the things that leave us distracted when the king comes knocking.

So, a watchfulness against enemies and other things in life that could distract

us, and then a watchfulness for the coming of Jesus.

And the problem in this story, in Matthew 25, is not necessarily that the ladies ran out of oil.

We kind of read it as prudence and being prepared, but they never ran out of oil in the story.

They were afraid of running out of oil. So then they got distracted and they

left and they went to buy some, but they never actually ran out of oil.

So the lesson for us is that when the king comes, wherever you are,

however you are, just stand there, open the door, greet him,

give what you have and offer what you can with open arms.

Even if you believe that it's not enough, just let the king have a seat in your

house, be on watch and be prepared for him.

And when he shows up, open the door, don't get distracted by other things.

Be on watch for the king and be on watch and guard against those that that might distract us.

The Corinthians were not on watch against the culture creeping in and affecting

their worship, affecting the way that they were living,

distracting them with divisions and litigations and self-satisfaction.

Chapter after chapter, Paul is addressing these things that were distracting

the Corinthians, the culture that was creeping in.

And he says, wake up and focus on the outcome. Focus on the coming of the King.

Don't get distracted by the world. Don't get distracted by these other things.

I think oftentimes we are sort of lulled into a false sense of security,

believing that there's like a ceasefire.

We have this military metaphor that we are operating under.

Whether you kind of like that or don't like that metaphor, the Bible uses it quite a bit, right?

We often think that maybe there's a ceasefire as if the enemy is not attacking.

Even if we grow tired of the fight, we have to realize that the enemy is always

there, even if we can't see it, even if we can't perceive it.

He's not going to take a break. So, vigilance is a fancy word,

but it is the posture for irresistible disciples.

Vigilance as we await for the Spirit, as we keep looking out for the Spirit

and how He's moving around us, how He's moving in our lives,

how He's moving in those around us, as we guard ourselves against the barrage

of the enemy so that we are found awake and not distracted.

Two more quick stories about this and then we'll move on. In the secular use

of this command that Paul is giving to us.

So just means that outside of the Bible, the way that this command is used,

it is used to describe people who are carefully crossing a river,

careful to, as they step on slippery stones, right?

So we all, we live in the mountains. There's lots of creeks.

There's lots of rivers. We have a picture for what that looks like to be careful

as we cross a river, as we step on slippery stones.

That's how this command is used outside of the Bible.

And so, we must pay attention so we don't end up in the water.

And that's the image that Paul is painting here, to be vigilant,

to be careful, to wake up and pay attention, be on guard.

The second is a story from, or a verse at least, from your favorite book of the Bible.

We all have the same favorite book of the Bible. Everybody say it together.

Habakkuk. That's right, Habakkuk. I knew that you shared that same favorite

book of the Bible. You never forget about that book, book, I'm sure.

Habakkuk seeks the Lord at the beginning and he says, I will climb up to my

watchtower and stand at my guard post.

Then I will wait to see what the Lord says and how he will answer.

Habakkuk was watching as he sought the Lord.

He was watching to see how he would answer. Now the story of Habakkuk is kind

of unfortunate because God's like, God answers him obviously because God is

always listening and always answering.

But he says, I'm going to send the Chaldeans, which are the Babylonians.

And Habakkuk's like, no, no, no.

That's not what I asked for. That's definitely not what I asked for.

But that's a lesson as well to

be on guard and to be vigilant watching for wherever the Lord is working.

Because sometimes he's not going to work in the way that you're asking,

but he's going to answer those prayers no matter. So, wake up, Paul says.

Stand firm. Stand up.

Wake up. Stand up. It sounds like a Bob Marley song.

Y'all know the one I'm talking about, right? Get up, stand up. Stand up for your right.

Get up, stand up. Don't give up. Those are kind of wise, applicable words for

us as we seek to be irresistible disciples.

I thought of another song for

wake up, but y'all aren't ready for that one this early in the morning.

Stand up. I'm not, I'm not going to be distracted. Stand up.

This is not the first time that Paul has instructed the Corinthians to take

a stand in this book. Last week, we read this.

Now I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preached to you,

which you received in which you stand and by which you were being saved.

So standing up has has everything to do with what we're standing upon.

That if you want to stand firm, the best way to do that is to be standing on

a rock solid, unshakable foundation.

And in this passage, that firm foundation is the faith. It says, stand firm in the faith.

And what that's not meaning is a subjective faith.

It's not a believing. It's not your belief. I believe I'm standing firm on my

my confession, it is the objective faith of what you are standing on,

the object of your belief, the object of your faith.

So as we learned from another parable of Jesus in the book of Matthew,

we can seemingly build our house on a firm foundation only to realize in the

end that we were delusional, that we had deluded ourselves.

This is what Jesus says in Matthew chapter seven, everyone then who hears these

words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his.

A foolish man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell and the floods

came and the winds blew and beat against that house and it fell and great was the fall of it.

Paul says a very similar thing in a few chapters back in Corinthians.

He writes, Therefore, let anyone who thinks that he stand take heed lest he fall. So stand up.

But not only that, inspect the thing that you're standing on.

Make sure you're standing in the right place. Examine what exactly you're standing on.

An irresistible disciple stands firm in faith.

Irresistible disciples stand firm together in one spirit.

And they stand up on the firm foundation of the Lord.

These are kind of the three ways that we see in the Bible, this command described

as standing up, stand firm in the Lord.

We see that here in chapter 16, the ESV version reads, I think every version

kind of reads this, stand firm in the faith. That's what he's literally saying.

And of course that appears elsewhere.

And again, stand firm in the faith, the object of your faith.

He says, we stand firm in one spirit. it. We know after all of these chapters

that 1 Corinthians is full of Paul's encouragements towards unity and oneness,

of togetherness, of fellowship, of familiness.

But also Philippians 127 joins in that crescendo.

Above all, you must live as citizens of heaven, conducting yourselves in a manner

worthy of the good news about Christ.

Then whether I come and see you again or only hear about you,

I will know that you are standing together with one spirit and one purpose,

fighting together for the faith, which is the good news.

Not fighting each other, but

fighting together, standing side by side together, standing up together.

There's probably some sort of military metaphor there as well with like Romans

and those like standing in their phalanxes or whatever they're called.

That phalanx is this thing. So, it's something else.

Phalanx, yeah. What did you say?

Oh, what'd you just say to me? Better watch your mouth.

Finally, stand firm in the Lord. Paul also writes in Philippians 4,

1 to stand firm in the Lord.

But again, just for a bit of diversity, a bit of variety, he exhorts us in 1

1 Thessalonians 3 · chapter mention

Thessalonians chapter 3.

We have been greatly encouraged in the midst of our troubles and sufferings,

dear brothers brothers and sisters, because you have remained strong in your faith.

And it gives us new life to know that you are standing firm in the Lord.

So we stand up, we build our lives on him. We are firmly anchored to the gospel and to his promises.

We build our lives on Jesus. We stand firm in the faith. We stand firm together.

We stand firm even in the expectant faith of our future resurrection,

which is what we saw yesterday.

We have our eyes on the outcome, that we see what it's all for.

We stand firm in faith. We stand firm together.

We stand firm in the Lord. He is our only rock and solid ground.

Wake up, stand up. And then the third ingredient is that we as disciples would

be maturing, that would be growing up.

So, Paul says, grow up, be courageous.

It is as harsh as it sounds when Paul says, grow up.

We kind of, I don't know, think of us talking to our children or probably more

like talking to a sibling, right? Just grow up.

But that's what Paul's saying. You may notice that some translations say something

to the effect of act like men in or play the man,

which is really just shorthand for Paul telling them to stop acting like children

in the way that they think, in the way that they are pursuing selfishly all

that they desire in the moment, that they're chasing after self-gratification.

He tells them to stop it, to quit it. I think some translations,

older translations even say something like, quit and play the man or something like that.

So, there's this component of stop acting like children, grow up and trust God for the future.

Again, I'm not sure if you've noticed this, but Paul has compared the Corinthians

to children at least three different occasions in this letter.

And we've seen it over and over again. Some of them are the more famous ones

that you might come to mind.

But I know that Jesus says that to such belong the kingdom of heaven,

but I'm pretty sure that Paul and Jesus had different childish characteristics

in mind when they wrote those words or use those words respectively,

which is kind of the point that there's different ways to be children.

Paul recognizes this in his letter. The phrase that I've kind of come up with

over the years, I'm not sure if I've shared it with any of you,

at least recently, but it's more of a statement, I suppose,

than a phrase, but that is, I am a child in all of the ways I shouldn't be.

That's kind of the way it is, right? That's what what it is,

that we are all children, we are all childish in the wrong way.

How Paul makes this distinction back in chapter 14. He writes,

Brothers, do not be children in your thinking.

Be infants in evil, but in your thinking be mature.

So, maturity is one of the marks of love that Paul gives us.

Maturity is a mark, an attribute of being a disciple of Jesus.

It's something the Corinthians were especially deficient in,

you might say, that they needed to hear this multiple times to grow up.

It is interesting, perhaps only to me, but that this phrase that Paul uses to

literally play the man, this is the only place in the New Testament that it shows up.

Certainly, this idea is captured in other phrases. I think it's more of like

a word, you know, some sort of word that's a clause that means something like play the man.

So, it doesn't show up anywhere else in the New Testament here.

But you know where it shows up a lot?

Obviously, the answer is the Old Testament because that's That's kind of the

only other option, but it shows up a lot in the old Testament.

More specifically, it shows up a lot when Moses is offering instructions to

Joshua to leave Joshua with instructions.

And then it's reflected in the way that Joshua presents commands to those who

are under his leadership.

And you're really familiar with it. Although you may not yet know why in Deuteronomy

31, Moses instructs Joshua, be strong and courageous. That's that word.

In my favorite verse, one of my favorite verses in the Bible,

Joshua 1.9, Joshua repeats, Have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous.

Do not be frightened. Do not be dismayed for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

We go back to that same idea. Don't be distracted as you go along the way.

Be strong, be courageous.

When we're children, there's a lot of things that That seems scary.

But as we mature, as we grow up, most of the time, those fears are shed away

from us as we walk into maturity.

Paul's saying the same thing that we see here in the Old Testament.

And also here are a list of 22 other verses that this shows up in the Old Testament.

I think we'll have a list. Feel free to write that down, to take a picture of

them. There's a lot of them, so maybe you won't get them before they disappear.

But just reference them in your studies throughout the week.

This is that same phrase that Paul uses to play the man, to act like men,

to grow up, the shorthand for growing up, which we translate a lot in our Bibles

as be courageous. Don't get distracted.

Don't be afraid and let that turn you along your way.

An irresistible disciple doesn't pray for an easy life.

Paul says, grow up. He says, pray for the spirit of God to strengthen you.

Don't pray for your life to be easy.

Phillips Brooks. I don't know who that is, but apparently here at a little town

of Bethlehem. So there's that.

Phillips Brooks said, do not pray for easy lives. Pray to be stronger men.

Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers. Pray for powers equal to your tasks.

Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be a miracle.

We should be praying perhaps more Gideon-like prayers that God would use us

despite our small size, that we are the least, maybe the least of these,

but that that God uses us in ways disproportionate to who we are.

That Jesus has not called us to an easy self-indulgent life.

The easy life doesn't lead us down the narrow road.

God has promised us in his word that he will light the way, not that he will remove the bumps.

So the irresistible disciple is growing, growing towards heaven,

growing towards holiness, growing towards the one who alone is holy.

So we live our lives with our eyes looking up, even as we trudge through the

difficulties of this life.

Wake up, stand up, grow up.

And lastly, be strong.

I know that doesn't end in up. So all my fellow OCDers are like really struggling right now.

We can say, pray it up. How about that? Paul is always praying for spiritual

strengthening to descend upon him and his fellow brothers and sisters in Christ.

And so we be strong by praying and by seeking that the Lord would pour his spirit

out upon us and strengthen us.

Paul writes in Ephesians, For this reason, I bow my knees before the father

from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory,

he may grant to you to be strengthened with the power through his spirit and

your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith,

that you being rooted and grounded in love may have strength to comprehend with

all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge,

that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.".

Paul wanted the Corinthians as well to be filled with all the fullness of God,

to be strengthened by the Spirit of God. And so he prayed diligently for this.

So we pray, pray it up along with the saints in glory that you will be strengthened

so that you won't grow weary in practicing your righteousness,

practicing the righteousness of God so that you won't get distracted,

that you won't get tired.

Let me just give you a quick definition of righteousness because it's one of

of those church, churchy words.

Righteousness is doing right by other people. And so I just pray that the Lord

would strengthen us with his spirit to do right by people.

And if we keep practicing this, if we keep practicing our righteousness,

if we keep practicing the righteousness of God, as the spirit enables us in

our lives, fills up with his, his, the fruits of his spirit of righteousness,

what we practice begins to become our second nature.

And so when the trials of life come, when crisis comes,

when any, just the details of life hit us, that not only is it God's grace that

stands with us, but it's our own nature as well.

Because as we, if we refuse to practice righteousness, what we'll find is that

it's not God's grace, but our nature that will fail us.

It's our own nature that fails us when we don't practice in actual life, when we don't prepare.

The way I say it, the way I pray for it is that righteousness would be my default.

Not frustration, not anger, not sin and selfishness, that a disciple of Jesus,

practices in this life and is

changed by God so that the spirit at work in their life is their default,

that we act from the spirit and not react out of our own strength,

that we would act from the spirit and not react to a situation from our own strength.

So I pray that the Lord would strengthen us, not with the strength of activity,

but with the strength of being that our very natures would be changed so that, that, that.

That our innermost nature would be changed and not just the appearance of our actions.

So we'd be strengthened with the strength of being.

So that's it. The ingredients of an irresistible disciple.

To wake up, that is stay vigilant, be on the alert, stand up,

seize, take hold of what is already yours in Christ Jesus, retain it, lay hold of it.

Don't let it go. Don't go back on what God has already given you.

Grow up. Is the trend in your life toward increased likeness of Jesus?

And pray it up. Tough times lay ahead. We need the Spirit of God at work in

our lives, strengthening us.

It is worth noting that there is another part to this sentence that Paul provides

us sort of with a secret sauce, if you will, to these ingredients.

In verse 14, he says, and do everything with love.

Let everything you do be done in love. And so this is not a command like the other four.

This is not command like the preceding commands, but rather the manner in which

the other commands are to take place.

So Paul's not saying, he's not saying do the other four previously mentioned

commands and then do this one with love or, or accompanied with love by love.

What he's saying is that as you act, as you do these commands,

as you carry them out, It should be drenched in the atmosphere of unconditional,

God-like, God-enabled love.

Love keeps our firmness, our standing firmness from being hardness or becoming hardness.

It keeps our strength from becoming domineering.

It keeps our maturity gentle and considerate of others.

It keeps our right doctrine, our right believing from being obstinate dogmatism.

It keeps our right living from becoming smug, self-centeredness, self-righteousness.

It's the secret sauce of love. And it was in short supply among the believers in Corinth.

I'm immediately reminded, of course, of Paul's encouragement,

his command to not let anything be done without love.

We read that a few chapters ago. Don't let anything be done without love.

And so, I just want to finish our time in this wonderful book that we've come to the conclusion of.

I just want to finish our time reflecting on those words, the very climax of

the letter that we read a few weeks ago. This is chapter 13.

Isaiah 13 · chapter mention

And I'm going to make Jenny come and read it. But let's just finish our time

together reflecting on Paul's final encouragement.

If I speak in tongues of men and of angels that have not love,

I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.

And if I have prophetic powers and understand all mysteries and all knowledge,

and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned,

but have not love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or

rude. It does not insist on its own way.

It is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice at wrongdoing,

but rejoices with the truth.

Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease.

As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in

part, but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child. I thought like a child.

I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.

Now I know in part, then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

So now faith, hope, and love abide. These three, but the greatest of these is love.

Thank you for listening to Mountainside Church's podcast. We hope you found

inspiration and encouragement in today's teaching.

To learn more about our church, stay connected or partner with us, visit mcboone.com.

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