Sermon Tone Analysis

When Ros & I were on our honeymoon in Hawaii in 1984, we were in a market place in Honolulu.

There was a booth with a pearl & jewellery display & Ros & I were just doing the touristy thing of browsing.

The guy there said to pick out a pearl.

But we said no, we were not buying.

He made it clear that there was no obligation.

So we picked out a pearl & then he said to pick out a nice ring that we thought would go with the pearl.

We again reiterated that we were not buying.

We said it several times & he acknowledged that & said there was no obligation.

He then proceeded to drill a hole in the pearl & mounted it on the ring.

He asked Ros to try it on – we are still thinking we are not buying - & then he proceeded to tell us how much it would now cost us.

We said no, thank you & he flipped and said that since he mounted it on the ring, we were obligated to buy it.

He pointed to a sign on the top of his display that says as much

Well, we were not going to let this guy exploit us like that & it was a very tense & disturbing moment for a young, newly wed couple & we walked off coping a lashing of abuse & cursing.

No Christian Is Shortchanged

Date: 07-07-19 837 Echuca

When Ros & I were on our honeymoon in Hawaii in 1984, we were in a market place in Honolulu.

There was a booth with a pearl & jewellery display & Ros & I were just doing the touristy thing of browsing.

The guy there said to pick out a pearl.

But we said no, we were not buying.

He made it clear that there was no obligation.

So we picked out a pearl & then he said to pick out a nice ring that we thought would go with the pearl.

We again reiterated that we were not buying.

We said it several times & he acknowledged that & said there was no obligation.

He then proceeded to drill a hole in the pearl & mounted it on the ring.

He asked Ros to try it on – we are still thinking we are not buying - & then he proceeded to tell us how much it would now cost us.

We said no, thank you & he flipped and said that since he mounted it on the ring, we were obligated to buy it.

He pointed to a sign on the top of his display that says as much

Well, we were not going to let this guy exploit us like that & it was a very tense & disturbing moment for a young, newly wed couple & we walked off coping a lashing of abuse & cursing.

- The guy was not upfront, nor honest with us, even though he knew that we had no intention to buy

- He was trying to exploit the fact that we were young & naive

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- No doubt, most of you have experienced a situation where you believe you were short-changed & exploited either accidentally or deliberately

- That can happen merely on the level of a person giving you change that didn’t add up to what you purchased

- But it may be that you think that you haven’t been treated fairly in life – either by people or by God

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- Of course, it is very important to maintain perspective when we think we’ve been short-changed

- Just because we think we have been short-changed, it doesn’t follow that we actually have been short-changed

- I can think of our modern culture of entitlement that goes to this topic

- Some people obsess over being short-changed because they have been given an entitlement mentality & it has caused them to think that some things are theirs by default – when equity would reveal otherwise

- However, all of us can claim to have been short-changed sometime during our lifetime

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Q.

How does this relate to this passage today?

- We see in this passage talk of the Corinthians boasting in men

- We know that they have a mentality of pitting one apostle or minister over against another

- It’s not that they liked one more than the other, or that there was a teacher who they resonated with

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- It had to do with competition & pride – which teacher was the most worldly wise; spoke the best wisdom; had the most impressive oratory & the like

- This was their cultural fade & they were immersed in it

- They didn’t merely debate these things, but took sides & were condemning one another over their choice of the various ministers

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- Paul finishes this word by reminding them about what they actually possess

- The church is a unit & we all belong to each other – we are not islands & Jesus never created a church that was meant to compete with one another

- All things are yours says Paul, yet you belong to Christ & Christ belongs to God

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- Chak thought up an illustration at our home group - of the various Bunnings Stores around the country that are all selling their products

- Another Bunnings store may only be a suburb away, but whatever each store sells benefits the owner because the owner owns all Bunnings Stores - It would be a win-win situation for them

- The Wesfarmer group owns Bunnings Stores so it would be ridiculous for the owners of the stores to favour or reject one store over another

- They own the lot, so why would you shoot yourself in the foot like that

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- The deal here is that by knowing that believers possess all things, makes it fruitless & pointless to argue over various apostles or ministers

- The bottom line is that a win from either minister is a win for the team – the church

- This goes to the heart of what Christ has done in creating the church

- So let us begin

1.

Identifying Deception

1. Identifying Deception

Q.

Who here, thinks, they are a deceived person?

Raise your hand if you believe that!

Q.

Who anywhere in the world, thinks, they are a deceived person?

- In truth, no one thinks they are a deceived person

- If they did think they were deceived, they would change position

- The reason there is deception is because deception is deceiving

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- The first deception in the Bible occurred in the Garden of Eden

—4 The serpent said to the woman, “You surely will not die! 5 “For God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desirable to make one wise, she took from its fruit and ate; and she gave also to her husband with her, and he ate.

- God says that if they eat of the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good & evil, they will surely die – the serpent contradicted by saying that they would surely not die

- But then came the deception – God knows that your eyes will be open & you will be like God

- He imputes God with selfish & evil motives

- God is jealous of His position & that He wants no rivals, only servants

- He’s holding you back from your divine potential

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- They take the bait & disobey God

- They disobeyed Him via a greater concern for their own desires than their relationship with God

- Interestingly, you can identify these traits in what the apostle John says here...

—16 For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world.

- Here is what got to Eve – when the woman saw that the tree was good for food (lust of the eye), that she could be like God (lust of the flesh) & desirable to make one wise (boastful pride of life)

- She gave way to the deception & in the process, distrusted God’s goodness & disbelieved God’s word

- Eve was struck with ambition, pride, and the quest for self-exaltation apart from God

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- The apostle Paul zeros in on what is fundamentally wrong with the church’s approach here in Corinth

- The Corinthians were being tempted & allured away from the Cross-life by the cultural trends & cultural elites of their day

- That trend was the high place & regard they had for wisdom & oratory

- The phrase “Corinthian words” was proverbial for speech that was eloquent, polished & rich – with rhetoric that was nothing short of brilliant

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- These rhetoricians were masters of “crowd psychology,” as we would call it today

- In stadiums & auditoriums, hours & even days were spent listening to speeches & orations

- Yet the wisdom that was elevated was a godless wisdom

- A wisdom that Satan gives – a corrupted wisdom that rejects the notion that God sent His Son to die on a cross

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- This wisdom has caused this church to be judge & jury over the ministers who minister to them, but even worse, judge & jury over the apostles who actually started those churches

- Paul says of his own speech

—1 And when I came to you, brethren, I did not come with superiority of speech or of wisdom, proclaiming to you the testimony of God. 2 For I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.

3 I was with you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling, 4 and my message and my preaching were not in persuasive words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, 5 so that your faith would not rest on the wisdom of men, but on the power of God.

- The fact that this church exists is testimony to the overarching power of the Spirit of God who moved in them & opened up the truth of God to them, in spite of their reasonings to the contrary

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- Don’t think that we are miles away from the situation of the Corinthians

- What was kryptonite for them is still kryptonite for us, but in another form

- Political correctness is the new form of kryptonite in the 21st century

- Political correctness is the overarching obsession of the cultural elites of our day & it is luring God’s people away from the truth in ways that also allured the Corinthians away from the truth

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- But what these two cultural trends have in common is that they are both sourced by the wisdom of this age