Uganda update / God is faithful
1 Corinthians 1:4-9 · Vern Peterman · Jun 14, 2009
1 & 2 Corinthians, No. 02
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926136592788

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. Before we move into this valuable and important passage, I have a couple of important interruptions. Well, yeah, okay. We'd first like to ask Tori to step up here and join us. I heard the stage whisper, you're in trouble. We want to figure out how much trouble you're in. Actually, what we understand just happened is you just graduated, right? From what? High school. High school. OK. All right. And what may we ask is next? College. College. All right. And what's happening there? Going to study nursing. Study nursing. OK. All right.

And that's just going to be a lot of fun, right? Yeah, I'm sure. Well, we know that you haven't had enough of study and that you will need things to study. So we'd like to have you have something to study with. OK. And that, by the way, is a study Bible. Do you know what to do with study Bibles?

Oh, good. OK. All right. All right. Well, since you're about to turn a corner here, Do you mind if we pray for you? Okay, it's all right. Okay. She's gonna let us do this. All right Lord. We just thank you for this milestone in Tori's life and just for your faithfulness shown through it and as she looks forward to in a short period of time here stepping on to kind of the next part of the path you have in front of her we Just thank you for your faithfulness and we pray for your guidance and leading and strength day by day through it. And through it all, that Torrey's heart and focus and mind might be drawn to you. We just thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay. All right. Thank you for allowing us that, Torrey. Okay.

Something else to interrupt things with, I've been postponing telling you about my trip to Uganda. And so now it's time to forget the postponement and actually tell you. This is the short path, but that's not the path I took to get there, okay? Anyway, I went there. We had announced some weeks back that Bruce was going. Bruce did not end up going. I went there, I thought, by myself. As we'll find out shortly, I didn't actually go there by myself. The route was also a little bit irregular.

I went from Denver to Houston, and yes, I could tell it was in Texas. But then I stepped on a plane that went to Dubai and there when I got to Dubai I was able to spend some time with Matthew Ellis. Some of you may recall. He is taking Arabic language courses as part of an MBA program in Oman. So he was about an hour and a half drive away and so he and I got to share some dinner together and time back and forth with the airport.

From there, I went to Addis Ababa, which was supposed to be an hour and 20-minute stopover. It wasn't. When the plane had sat there for about five hours, they told us, you're not flying this plane to Uganda, which brought all sorts of fears of joy. And so we spent the night in Addis Ababa, and the great fun that I had was trying to get ahold of somebody who was waiting for me to tell them that no, I wasn't going to be there. Interestingly, the place where they put us up, there was no way to get through the jam phone line, so I end up contacting Nancy via the internet. I was able to get on that. And she made the phone calls to Uganda to let them know that I wasn't going to be there. So the fact that I was close didn't count at all. But the next day, we did get to Entebbe. And so I did land in Uganda. We were headed for Mbale. That's where the week was to be spent.

At the airport, I was met by Ada, the wife of Morris Ogenga, who we spoke of last time, and Ibrahim. Ibrahim is a fellow I have spoken of before. Ibrahim is the Arabic form of Abraham. And Ibrahim was raised Islamic, but has been a believer now for some decade of time, and is now a pastor in one of the places.

Anyway, the two of them met me at the airport. Shortly thereafter, I was introduced to this fellow. He's not from Uganda. He's from Houston. It was a very nice surprise. The fact that I was there was a surprise to him. The fact that he was there was a surprise to me. Neither of us had any idea the other was coming. We were both teaching at the same school at the same time. And it was completely uncoordinated, so that meant that we had to coordinate ourselves. But we had a little bit of additional work to do. This fellow is from Cypress Bible Church in Houston, Texas. Nancy went and checked on their online and appears to be really sound church. They talk about their doctrinal statement, the identification truths, and we're in Christ. Pretty good church. Now, why would I put a gray or darkish colored screen on there?

That's to let you know that while we were driving to Mbale, which is about a five-hour trip, and it was nighttime, we were told that we were teaching the next morning at church and that Doug Hermond was teaching the first hour. He said, oh? And I was teaching the next hour. So I had more of a suspicion that I might be teaching than he did. since it was my second time and it's his first time. That was his first moments in Uganda.

So anyway, he did very well the next morning. We went to church in Mbale. We stayed at the Mount Elgon Hotel, as we did last time. Went to the church in Mbale, which is right next to the school for the pastors. And there at the church, he taught the first hour on the character of God and did a wonderful job. especially for a fellow that could only prepare in his sleep. And then I taught on Hebrews 12, 1 and 2.

And this is looking unto Jesus. Now, the pastors or the ones who are pastors in training tend to sit in this area here of the group. I'm taking this picture from up towards the front. So the pastors tend to sit in this general area over here. Now, one of the things that happened on this trip is I loaded up my suitcases with things that I would need, and beyond that, things that I could leave with people. And various people in this body gave me things to take over there, various things. And so the lady standing right over there was given a baby carrier.

I'm sorry, what? What? But here, that does help. The lady was given a baby carrier. So this lady right there was given a baby carrier. That's a little thing made out of fabric to help carry a baby. It was real interesting. After church, I went up and talked to this group of ladies, and it was three of them, and I said, do anybody here know anyone that has a baby? I have a baby carrier to give to someone if they have a need for it. And so the older lady in the group pointed to this one lady and said, she's got a little tiny one, you know. And so she eagerly took the baby carrier and that was one of them. I enjoyed a great time with the people afterwards as I talked to them. The next day started the week where we went to this same piece of property just kind of across the yard.

Here's the school for pastors. There were 60 pastors in training and several village pastors who were at this gathering. They were from Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania. And so they all spoke different languages. English was the common language, which was really good because that's the only one I know.

It's also the only one that Doug Herman knew. What he and I did is we just coordinated and most of the time, since he was going to spend the following week and I would be gone, I taught most of the time and he taught probably about a third of the time. This is a smaller picture of the group from my last visit. We did get a larger picture but it's in Doug Herman's camera and he just didn't send it yet. So here's this last trip.

What I started off with is we went through a document that Hal and I had put together about seven years ago. on elders and taught through these teachings on elders from the Bible. First, the character qualifications of elders, and then what is the ministry of elders, elders, pastors, overseers, and then what are the operating guidelines? What are the elders to be doing and not doing? What's to characterize their ministry? And so I spelled out these things.

What was different from the last trip were the last trip they were exceedingly reluctant to copy anything. This time they actually had a copy machine in the office. So they readily made copies, which was a delight because all the students very definitely wanted them.

And so we spent a fair amount of time going through that document that Hal and I had prepared, oh, better than a half dozen years back here. The next thing we did is we went through actually something we'd covered some the prior visit but in more detail, plus this time we had handouts. We went through the teachings on marriage from Ephesians 5 and 1 Peter 3 particularly and especially in verse 7. And we went through that.

Now something that both Doug and I did was we had the students broken up into 10 groups. And so we would say, OK, here's the teaching now. Here's your assignment. You come back after you've had about a half hour. And then we'll have each of you present what you've done in your group.

And so we had them, for example, give some specific instances in their culture. That's very important. In their culture, what does it look like for a husband to love his wife sacrificially? What does it look like for a husband to show a sanctifying love to his wife? I was very pleasantly surprised with the answers that I got from the pastoral students. They did a great job. And so anyway, we'll actually be doing that with the husbands here this next Saturday. And we'll see. Maybe I need to compare notes with the Ugandans and see how it turns out. They've got some things to deal with that you don't, by the way.

Here is Dennis Warishko up at the upper left-hand side. And he's a fellow I met the previous time. The lower left side there is Fred Mazungu. Actually the way it comes out is Mazungu Fred because they have the last name first. Now Mazungu, that's their name for me. It means white. So it's Fred White is what the guy's name is. So there's Fred White, really nice guy. Now, up in the upper right-hand corner is a picture of Doug doing his teaching with the group. And then in the bottom right-hand corner, okay, this is, let me get it right, Francis Mufibi, or Mufibi Francis. He has a wife named Sarah and a three-month-old son named Peter.

He was the other one that I gave a baby carrier to. I started off by asking the students, does anybody have a baby? And then six of them raised their hand. I only had one carrier. I thought, now I'm in trouble. But afterwards, several of the students came up and pointed to this guy. And they said, this is a very deserving fellow. And so I gave it to him. trusting the student's judgment.

And I said, Francis, I need to get a picture of you with a baby carrier. And I said, Francis, you're going to have to let it go. He was hugging it so tightly. He was hugging it so tightly that I couldn't get a picture of it. So anyway, I said, let it show so I can see it. So I did get a picture of him.

So anyway, that was really neat. What was really neat was to see the eagerness of these students when you lay these things out. They just really lapped up every bit of it. In break times, they would come with more questions. They really were exceedingly interested in this material.

One other thing that happened is Doug just happened to bring about 18 flash drives to give to the students with his material on it. He started off by asking, how many of you have some kind of an access to a computer? 15 raised their hand. When he had 18 flash drives, somehow that wasn't enough. I don't know, you figure that one out. Whether or not they had access to a computer, they wanted one. Here are some of the questions that were posed to me, just as an example. If one spouse becomes a believer, and how did this come up? The last day I was there, we had an hour of Q&A on marriage and singleness.

If one spouse becomes a believer and the other doesn't, what should the Christian do when the unbelieving spouse wants to cut the heads off of chickens to enlist the Spirit's help in picking a name for the new baby? They wanted advice on that. I had a tough time finding the right verse. Okay, if a man with three wives becomes a believer, what should the pastor say if the husband doesn't want to love all of his wives? Or here's another one. What should a pastor say if a man who marries a woman and then finds out she has two children he didn't know about?

So anyway, those were some of the interesting questions I was posed. Those kinds of questions kept rolling for an hour. And the only reason it stopped is because one of the students says it's time to stop. But otherwise, they would have kept on going.

Realize that these pastors are stepping into situations like you see in the picture. Villages where people have mud walls and grass huts, no electricity. That's the typical situation. Most of the people can't read. Some of them that claim they can, can't either. That's what the pastors are stepping into.

Some of the things that we left, again, by the generosity of people here. We left MP3 players, about 175 of them. 25 more are on their way over there. They'll be there by this time next week. NCDs with the New Testament in audio, that is so people can listen to it. in Luganda, which is the language around Mbale, Swahili, which is spoken more in Kenya and Tanzania, and Luwo, another language around Mbale. So those are three languages. We also, just for fun, put English on there. So anyway, a total of about 200 are either there or headed there.

I met with a fellow by the name of Hassan. Hassan was raised Muslim. Actually, Hassan is how he said he pronounced the name. By generosity, I gave him some support funds since he is planning on being a pastoral student here at the school. Also gave him a Rairi Study Bible.

And by the way, here are these students. They're supposedly preparing to be pastors. As far as I could tell, not all of them had Bibles. Some of them who had Bibles had Bibles that looked like they'd been through World War II. In fact, they looked like they were printed before World War II. So Hassan was one of the fellows that I talked to. It was really interesting to talk to Hassan.

He's a single fellow, but to talk to him about the marriage customs there, which seriously impacts the pastors. Marriage custom there is the groom pays for everything. including typically three cows for the wife. A really good wife, you might pay seven cows for. And under the most extraordinary of conditions, you might pay 13 cows for a wife, plus everything else.

There's also a fellow by the name of Jared and I left with him some cords so he could connect up between different machines, some of the CDs and MP3 players. He's able to put different things on the MP3 players if need be and also distribute them to different people.

Also some support, in his case. Somebody in the body here gave a laptop, and he was so excited about that. I showed him the laptop, and his eyes got really big, and then his lips stuck out, and he said, oh, pastor, you know. And so anyway, he was very excited about that. Hugged me several times, you know.

Also left with him a small solar panel and various charging connections. Because one of the problems is he works in areas where you don't always have electricity and it's in fact something that is useful for potentially a number of the passers there, so it's something to be explored. A couple of flash drives as well. A third fellow is Ibrahim. I mentioned him before as someone who met me at the airport. I left with him a solar cooking kit.

One of the problems they have over there is all the cooking is done with wood, but they're losing 2% of their forest every year. And since hauling water and cooking are done by the wives, the fact that it's farther and farther and farther to get wood is the wife's problem.

Okay? So having her with a solar cooking option is something that potentially helps her quite a bit. So I'll be interested to hear back from Ibrahim to see if that's something that is useful and helpful. I'd also be interested in the future in getting him an option with these solar panels and charging. Here's why.

The villages have no electric power to them in almost every case. Okay? Many of them have people with cell phones. However, but where do you go to charge the cell phone? You've got to go to town. What if the pastor is able to charge the cell phone from a solar panel in his house?

Bingo. This all of a sudden makes a huge difference and the pastor, rather than an offering of bananas and potatoes, has something else that he has an income source from. So anyway, that potentially could make some big changes and so Abraham is one who's offered to kind of be a pilot study for that.

We'll see how that goes and I'll keep you posted. I made my way back. You know, it's funny, I've never had any real difficulty adjusting jet lag problems, time zones, never really a problem. However, it does help if you can sleep. I wasn't able to do that. So catching up on two days of sleep took a little bit.

Now, so far as the future of this ministry, there's some questions. And one of those questions is, while both Doug and I were really glad to work with the students, it seemed like the churches were putting a big emphasis on the buildings and not enough emphasis on properly training these students and giving them something to work with out in these villages. Taking a pastor who's not been adequately trained and putting them out in the village in a place where they have challenges making ends meet, that's a rough thing to do. So it seems to me that there needs to be some kind of change of direction in terms of where resources are put and where focus is put.

So that's something, and Doug and I have begun emailing about this. And he also, being his first time, had a chance to express his opinion when he was over there after I left. So anyway, real interesting. Opportunities remain. Some questions remain too. We'll see what the Lord does with it.

Oh, I want to read to you. I did get a letter of thanks from the students. Now, I realize that their English might not be the best, but here's what they said. On behalf of the student's body, I wish to register to you our vote of thanks for sacrificing your time duties and even your beloved family behind to come and impart us the Word of God which illuminated and enlightened us.

Also the skills of research, which is a very vital tool in the life of a pastor. Not only this, sir, but we are very grateful for the gadgets. MP3s, CDs, flash drives, of which, though costly, you lovingly endeavored to give to us. We are incredibly grateful. I tell you, it was an incredible work. Wow! Exclamation point.

We, however, sir, request that you come back because we'll still need more to build on what you laid a foundation. Send our dear greetings to your lovely families and friends, that's you I think, who supported this work and we are greatly indebted for their generous hearts and may the Almighty God pay them back abundantly. God bless you, we love you, and wish you safe journey back to the States. Yours in Christ, Odhiambo, Michael, Mazungu, Fred. That's Fred White.

Now, looking at this passage here, you can grab your handout and get your Bibles back open there to 1 Corinthians. We're looking at verses 4-9. The first three verses we looked at last time. Paul writes his personal introduction to this first letter, at least the first one that we have to these believers. In verses 4-9, Paul is thankful to God concerning these believers because God is gracious. God is gracious. That's the basis of his thankfulness. Here are the two main reasons why Paul is likely thankful to God.

He's expressing thanks to another person that wasn't done in that culture. That's something sometimes hard for us to realize. We will spend efforts teaching our kids to say please and thank you and things of that sort. Saying thank you to another person just wasn't done in that culture. It was fine for you to thank God, but thanking somebody else just wasn't done. As a matter of fact, it could bring upon the wrath of the gods. So saying thank you to somebody might be looked upon as putting a curse on them. The other was God was the one to whom credit was ultimately due anyway. So even aside from the cultural prohibition against saying thank you to someone, ultimately God's the one who gets credit for all this, as we'll soon see.

So here's the outline. This is the simple outline of the rest of the book. So the Corinthians had come to Paul with oral accounts of what was taking place in the church body. Someone would come with the letter and they would tell Ed, I need to add aside from the letter from the Corinthian church, they've got questions, I need to tell you this and this and this is going on. So the person with the letters from the Corinthian church to Paul says, Paul, here's what I'm telling you and also here's the letter with their questions. So what do you have? Oral reports to Paul. Paul addresses those in 1.10 into chapter 6, and then a Corinthian letter to Paul asking him questions.

He alternates between those three times. That's the quick, simple outline for the book. There's also a one-page outline on the cabinet to the right as you exit this room, if you'd like to have that. It's got more detail as to the structure of the book. Paul says, I thank my God That's something that he had written to other churches as well. The exact same phrase.

Romans 1.8 has it, as we have here on the screen.

Philippians 1.3 and Philemon 4. In this letter, Paul is going to deal with a lot of questions and a lot of problems. This church has got plenty of them.

So he thanks God for what God has done. and for what God will do in the lives of these believers. And he also thanks God for God's very character. These Corinthians have problems, but I am thankful that God did this. These Corinthians have problems, but I am thankful that God will do this. These Corinthians have problems, but I am thankful because of who God is. That's what I'm thankful about. He says, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus.

What's interesting is Paul writes 11 times in his letters, grace given. Grace given. This is one of those places. We're going to see in more detail as we study through the book, what's that talking about? What does it mean for God to give grace? The grace of God which flows from God's character. God doesn't just say, hey, I think I'll give some grace. It flows from who He is. It's a giving of totally undeserved blessing and ability.

In Ephesians 1.3, God who blessed us with every spiritual blessing, that's God's grace. God graciously blessed. That's why it was given as a free gift. That's the way grace is. Grace isn't something that you pay for or something that you owe for. It's totally free. It's not earned. It's not merited in any way.

And how or where was that grace of God given to those believers? Those believers in Corinth? In Christ. That's how he says it. In Christ. They were in Christ, that's how they were given. That's how they were graced. They were graced to be in Christ, and in Christ they were graced.

1 Corinthians 1.30, we'll get there. Paul is going to tell them that they were made to be in Christ by God's doing. They're not in Christ because they worked for it. It's not they're in Christ because, boy, they put out a lot of effort. It's not in Christ because, well, they're just really good. Right? In Christ, God pulled it off. God did it. It's his accomplishment. In Christ, identified with him is death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding.

In Christ, they have a spiritual giftedness. In Christ, they have a hope when Christ comes for them. that in everything you were enriched in him. We're going to see in 1 Corinthians 12-14 particularly about these spiritual gifts. Romans 12 and Ephesians 4 also address these. But in everything you were enriched in him, in truth that enrichment includes a lot more than spiritual gifts, but Paul specifically addresses it here. going beyond the blessing, as Ephesians does, that is really about our position in Christ, and pointing instead to spiritual ministries. These believers were the ones who were recipients. They were the ones receiving these spiritual ministries, as we'll study when we get there. They didn't merit or gain this enrichment. Oh, I'm enriched because I'm just really worth it. That's what the TV ads will keep telling you. You deserve it. You're worth it.

It's funny, why don't they give it to you for free? But this is real grace. This is not merit or gain that earns it. It's not our own worth of ourselves. It's in Christ. They were enriched by these graces because they were in Him. All they did was believe. And it's not a work, it's not a merit. God did the work. God prepared the works.

In all speech and all knowledge is one of the reasons we know he's going to address speech and knowledge later on and repeatedly actually in this book. The spiritual gifts and opportunities for ministry. And he's going to say, here's where the giftedness comes from, from God. God's the source. In the culture of the Corinthians, speech and knowledge were seen as a means to gain esteem.

Ah, I want really good oratory because then that'll make me look good in everybody else's eyes. And he said, hey, if there's anything that's really worthwhile speech, it's from God. Oh, I want to be very knowledgeable because if I have special knowledge, and a great deal of it especially, then that'll give me worth.

But he says, nope. If there's knowledge, God gave it. God's the source. He's the one that gets the credit. The Corinthians were all about climbing their social ladder. Paul says, all the things that people care about to go do the climbing with, God's the one who gets the glory and the credit. It doesn't help you climb the social ladder.

Even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you, this testimony concerning Christ is the gospel. What a person has to believe in order to be saved. What's that? That Christ died for your sins, was buried, and rose again. Do you believe it? That's the gospel. Believe it and be saved. It's that simple. It was proved out and verified among the believers in Corinth. In fact, 1 Corinthians 15, he spells it out. He says, you believed it and were saved. He had proclaimed Christ crucified and he tells them that in this very letter towards the beginning and towards the end.

He says, you're not lacking in any gift. Not in any spiritual gift. But they were lacking in understanding about the gifts. So he writes to them, you're not lacking in any gift. But you're lacking in understanding. Let me help you. Let me help you there. You do need insight and understanding in these gifts.

They weren't lacking in any of the gifts because God had been the one doing the gifting. All they had done was to believe. And believing is not to their credit, but to God's glory and to God's credit. Awaiting eagerly the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. You see, spiritual gifts are given.

Are they valuable? Oh, yeah. Does God have a purpose? Oh, certainly. But they're really for earthly and temporary use. for God's eternal purpose. But those gifts are not for always and forever. They have a use right here and now. But not into eternity.

When we see Christ, there will be a lot of good things, including the spiritual gifts, that will fall away. Because the reality, the eternity, is when Christ comes and takes us to be with Himself. Everything up to that point is preparation. Everything up to that point is just getting ready. That's what we're doing here this morning. We're just preparing for that day that we're eagerly awaiting, the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. The Father will tell the Son, go get your bride. Go get her. Readily, readily He will come and claim His bride. We're to be awaiting that day. Everything we're doing here is preparation for that day. Is it valuable? Yeah. Is it good? Yeah. And there's a lot of good things we can do to prepare, but it's all preparation.

Let me tell you, that day, that's the day. We live this day for that day, this day for that day. Our perspective now is one of anticipation, not of an I hope so kind of hope. Oh, wouldn't it be great if the Lord would come? That's such a wonderful idea. I sure hope it's true. No. A certain future hope. You see, here's the key.

Our history, our present, and our future all wrapped up in Him. And the best is yet to come. We're getting ready, folks. The best is yet to come. We're preparing. That's what we're doing here. This is all prep time. Verse 8 and 9, really cool verses. I love these verses.

Why? They revere our ultimate confidence in the Lord Jesus Christ. How will you be confirmed to the end, blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ? Will it be because I'm really determined Oh, Vern had a really good upbringing. No, that's not going to cut it. Who does it depend upon? Where is my confidence? Are you sure you're going to make it okay up to the day the Lord comes for us? How are you sure that's going to come off? Jesus is the one responsible. Did the Corinthians have problems? Oh yeah, a boatload. Did he have all kinds of questions? Yeah. Lots of them. We're going to talk about them.

But Jesus is the one who is responsible to confirm us up to that day. Remember we talked about this day for that day? How am I going to get between this day and that day? It's not by my own determination, not by my self-effort, not by a great background or anything else. This day to that day, it's Jesus' responsibility. The best thing that we can do is to count on that. I'm going to depend on you, Lord, to get me from this day to that day. Blameless on the day we see Him. Not because of our worth and efforts, but because of His life in us.

God is faithful. We saw this truth again and again as we went through the 50 chapters of Genesis. God's faithful. He sang about it several times this morning. That's his character. As a matter of fact, the structure of the verse is, Faithful the God. Faithful is first in the sentence here because that's for emphasis. He God the Father. And by the way, it doesn't say the Father. How do I know it's the Father? Because it says His Son. His Son, Jesus Christ.

He called you into fellowship with the Son to know Him and to be occupied with Him today and always, all during the prep time. It isn't someday I'll get to know Jesus. Getting to know Him today, now, this day, until that day we see Him face to face, that's the prep time. That's the prep time.

Into fellowship. Fellowship with His Son. That's what we all share together. All of us. We share it with each other, don't we? Fellowship with His Son. That isn't something that's just for certain special ones of us. That's all of us. You've been called into that. None of us holds any special place above another.

I think Nancy just yesterday was reminding me that my grandmother used to frequently say, you know, the ground is level at the foot of the cross. My guess is that the flat part of the seat on the throne is level too. Each one of us is a part of his body. Each one of us has an equal place to fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ and with one another for now and for always. Between now, prep time, and the day we see him face to face. Let's pray.

Lord, we're thankful that as we look at this, you're the one who is graced. You're the one that we can count on and depend upon. You're the one that we can rely upon. You are the one who is able. When we look forward to that day when you come for us and we say, how am I going to get there? That's not my job. You're faithful. It's your job. And we want to depend upon you each step of the way. Every bit of the prep time until the day when we see you face to face. We look to you now and ask that you'd turn our hearts to you, turn the eyes of our hearts to behold you. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.