Sermon Tone Analysis

We in America can easily take for granted the amazing blessings that we have.

We worship in a beautiful church with heat and air conditioning, while sitting on pretty comfortable chairs.

We have a sound system which allows you to hear when I talk, instead of me having to yell.

We have a Live-Streaming option, so that if someone doesn’t feel like coming to church, they can sooth their conscience by watching online, or if they truly cannot attend, they can feel semi-connected by watching all of us together.

You all will get into your cars after service and drive to your houses, without too much difficulty, without any fear.

You will eat your dinners from an adequately stocked pantry and refrigerator.

Do I need to continue all the amazing blessings that we have?

These are blessings from God.

However, Satan can use these blessings for his own gain.

All of these blessings can sometimes cause us to forget what we desperately need.

Sometimes what Jesus said in Mark 8 can be applied to us:

We can get so focused on the stuff that we have that we are in danger of losing our own soul.

In our excess, we need to remember humility for the sake of the Gospel.

Let’s read our text.

Paul urges the Corinthians to embrace humility for the sake of the Gospel

Pray

Let’s look at the proud.

The Proud

The Corinthians were proud.

Paul writes:

They were puffed up, because of which human teacher they were following.

Those of you who have been around since the beginning remember that the Corinthian church was split between those who were followers of Apollos and followers of Paul.

Apollos and Paul were both Biblical solid teachers.

They had different teaching styles and slightly different theologies, but both of them were orthodox and able to lead someone to maturity in Christ.

But, the Corinthians were saying, “I’m better than John because I follow Apollos instead of Paul.”

It’s like us saying: I’m more spiritual because I sit on the right side of the church instead of the left.

Which It is, as the road less travelled.

We as humans seize on the most absurd things to take pride in.

Paul, however, cuts down their pride by asking some direct questions:

Who makes you different from anyone else?

The Corinthians are presumptous.

A good English embellishment of that phrase is: “Who in the world do you think you are, anyway?

What kind of self-delusion is it that allows you to put yourself in a position to judge another person’s servant?”

They believed that they were super spiritual and full of godly wisdom as to climb into God’s judgment seat and say what was what.

But, as we know, they are not that person.

In fact, most everyone who has the presumption to climb into God’s judgment seat does not deserve to be there.

What did Paul just say?

Not only were the Corinthians presumptuous, but they were ungrateful.

Paul asks them

As Gordon Fee writes: “This is an invitation to experience one of those rare, unguarded moments of total honesty, where in the presence of the eternal God one recognizes that everything—absolutely everything—that one “has” is a gift.”

The Corinthians looked at themselves and said: Look at me!

I have these specific gifts of the Spirit.

I am able to understand these deep truths of God.

I am able to speak well and do some great things.

I have done this.

I have earned who I am, therefore I can turn around and use these gifts to judge and condemn my brothers and sisters in Christ.

They had a misunderstanding of grace, which caused them to be blinded to the fact that they deserve nothing.

They were ungrateful.

Their presumption, their lack of gratitude, have caused them to become spiritually luke-warm and blinded.

Paul, tongue-in-cheek, says:

“These Corinthians are lucky.

Already they enjoy favours that the apostles dare only hope for.

They no longer ‘hunger and thirst after righteousness’; they are filled; in the theory of the Spirit, they have eaten to satiety.…

In short, the Messianic kingdom seems to have come to Corinth and these people have been given their thrones, while the apostles dance attendance and are placed with the servants.”

It is a sad place to arrive at, when we are so filled in our pride as to say: I do not hunger and thirst after righteousness anymore.

I do not need Christ daily in my life because I have arrived.

I am filled up.

I am good.

But that is what the Corinthians were doing.

They were acting like they were already living in paradise.

God had already called them home.

Perfection was theirs.

Well, when one is presumptuous, ungrateful, spiritually luke-warm and blind.

One really doesn’t have fruitful ministry.

The Corinthian church’s pride hurt their ministry.

The Corinthian church was a large church, but it wasn’t growing larger.

They were not reproducing through evangelism and church plants.

They were content with bickering and tearing each other apart.

That doesn’t work in families.

That doesn’t work in churches.

We know what the Proverbs says:

We know what Revelation says:

Pride and all that goes with it does not produce a body of believers that shines like a city on a hill.

It produces a group of believers that are like a cess pool that is about to be removed and scattered.

Which is why Paul says in the passage we will discuss in two weeks:

We in the church of America needs to take this warning.

Why are so many of our churches dying?

Because in our pride we have declared that we have enough.

We, the independent farmer and rancher, have provided everything we need in life.

If we lack anything, we can provide it ourselves.

That’s the message of so many of the political candidates: if we want to make our state or our nation great again, we must look to ourselves and do what is necessary.

In our pride, we have refused to remember the God who has given us so much, including our salvation.

We have become shy about declaring that we owe God everything, being in awe of his grace so much that our lives are changed.

Being in awe of his grace so much that we do not care who hears how much we love him, whether our families or our friends or our government officials.

In our pride, we have convinced ourselves that we do not need God’s grace and help daily, being swept up in our own learning and wisdom, forgetting what it means to hunger and thirst after righteousness.

We have allowed everything to blind us to the fact that we desperately need Christ everyday, all day.

The Corinthians were proud.

Paul was humble

Paul was humble.

Listen to what Paul says:

To the godly one, to the Spiritually mature, humility is the only acceptable posture.

The humble one remembers that God gives a wide variety of gifts on the basis of grace alone, and therefore is alone deserving of praise.

But, Paul goes even further in humility from that sentence.

He grabs the Corinthians by the shoulder and points them to the cross.

We have looked at these verses several times in the past few months, but listen to them again.

Listen to what the author of Hebrews writes:

Jesus in humility embrace suffering and ridicule.

He embrace pain, both physical and emotional, out of humility.

Why?

Because of the joy that would come after the suffering and pain.