First Corinthians 3:18-23 The Worker Must be Assessed by Gods Standards, not Mans

We're in 1 Corinthians chapter 3 and Roger has brought us down to where we're going to talk today. I want to jump back a couple of verses and point out a couple of things that will fit with what my verses are today. 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verse 16 and 17 says, don't you realize that all of you together are the temple or you could say the sanctuary of God.

And that the Spirit of God lives in you. This is one of those questions that, yeah, they should know this. Yeah, they do know this. I'm reminding you, don't you remember? And God will destroy anyone who destroys or attempts to destroy this temple for God's temple is holy and you're that temple.

So what does that say about you? You're holy. It isn't that you have to try to be holy, you already are. You've been set apart by God for his very own purposes. So, it's good for us to realize that right now, today, in this building and other places, God has a temple on earth as surely as he had a temple back with Israel in Jerusalem. And it's the church, and each one of us is considered a member of that temple.

In Ephesians 2.22, Paul says, "...in whom ye are also being built together into a dwelling of God in the Spirit." It's a really important thing for us to view ourselves as members of this temple, to be aware of the fact that the Spirit of God dwells in each one of us. And this is another truth that is equally certain from God's Word. You might say it's a solemn fact, and how solemn a fact it is that a divine person, a divine person in the Holy Spirit, dwells where Christians are. And this may be added, why? bought out by the blood of Christ to be with Him for eternity. And this buying out process, this temple wasn't begun until the work of Christ on the cross was finished. That had to be done first.

He went back to the Father and he sent the Holy Spirit down to be in the saints and to abide with each one of us forever. He doesn't come and go depending on how good you behave or how bad you behave. It's God's testimony to the effectiveness of the work of Christ on the cross. It's that effective that the Spirit of God has been sent to dwell in each one of us. Whatever the mercies and blessings and privileges before that people had in the Old Testament, it could not be until the blood of Christ had made atonement. Atonement forever. And it was done. A complete job was done.

Now the Spirit of God comes where the blood was shed and stressed and there he dwells making those who believe in Christ and God's work a temple. He uses us as a building and understanding we're all part of it. It's interesting in the Old Testament that wherever the presence of God was is where the temple was. Wherever He was, it was constituted a temple. Even out in the desert with the tents and the sanctuary out there.

But the issue of a temple has nothing to do with how expensive the stones were. or how much splendor is in the building and how much gold and silver is there. That's not what makes it spectacular. In the Old Testament, the thing that made it great was the fact that the cloud in which Jehovah was pleased to come down was the true glory of the temple. That was the glory, it was Him.

So, as we move on now, I want to It's a really important point. So today we're going to cover 3.18 through 23. And I'll read them and then we'll start to drill down a little bit. Paul says, let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks that he is wise in this age, he must become foolish so that he may become wise. We'll explain it. It kind of doesn't make a lot of sense at first.

For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God, for it is written, He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness. And again, the Lord knows the reasonings of the wise, that they are useless. So then, let no one boast in men, for all things belong to you, whether it is power, or death, or things present, or things to come. All things belong to you, and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

So, we're talking about people involved in the work of the building up of the temple. I got this from Chester McCauley. The workers must be evaluated based on God's standards and not man. So a lot of times in Christian environments, the standard switches off of God and on to man and whatever man thinks is acceptable or praiseworthy, that's what you get. But you have to stick with what is praiseworthy from God's viewpoint.

There's a problem of self-deception. We'll talk a little bit more with that. There's a problem of human wisdom. And there's an application of the truth in verses 21 through 23. So, what Paul has done here, he combined the threads of his argument and he's drawn a preliminary conclusion. If his readers insisted on taking the natural view of their teachers, and continued to form cliques of followers, and that's what they were doing. I'm of Apollos and I'm of Paul and I'm of Peter.

They would limit God's blessing on themselves needlessly. So the thing that it cost them by doing that was it limited how God could bless them. What are the doctrines that these men taught were good or worthless or destructive? They're all going to be tested to see what they are.

So much that passes muster now, in that day will be found worthless, or even worse, it might even be found in contempt. So how incomparably better and safer to become foolish that one may be wise. So let no man deceive himself. Is it possible to do that? Is it possible to deceive oneself? that what is being taught is true when in fact it's worthless? Is that possible? Yeah, it is.

We see it everywhere. The consideration of Paul is a man should let no man deceive himself. He should be awake and aware of what's going on around him. If I were to define self-deception, the best definition I got from Macaulay, deception is the creation of a belief in one's own mind or the mind of another that is contrary to fact. What does it do? It forces us to look at the Word of God and stick with what the Word of God has to say.

I remember as a young believer, even before Don and I were married, we were looking around hanging out with other Christians, and so we went to a movie. We went to the movie, Oh God. Remember that movie? With a youth group. And we get back to somebody's house and they're trying to justify spirituality about that movie. There was nothing spiritual about that movie at all. Nothing. And I remember, I don't know if it was me or somebody else, challenged one of the guys that was going off about the spiritual benefits of the movie.

And his response was, well, my theology is different from yours and I'm entitled to my opinion. And as a young believer, I already knew that that was a false statement. The only opinion that matters is God's word and what it says. And even I, what I think it says doesn't matter. What really matters is what does it say? And that's where my faith is.

And so self-deception is a very easy thing to be caught up in because, especially we Americans, we're entitled to our opinion, right? Well, when it comes to God's Word, we are sort of stuck, I would say, with His Word and what it has to say. Now, the great source of deception is the attempt to have a good standing with the world by seeking to accommodate Christianity to the wisdom of the world. It's to deceive oneself where any reason is allowed in softening of evil.

Men who so weaken it, I will not say by Christian feelings only, but just common conscience may be found among those who bear the Lord's name. They're everywhere. But unfounded as they may seem and fine spoken, it is not the wisdom of God in Christ, but of this age that comes to nothing. Don and I the other day were watching. I don't know why we were doing this, but we were watching. Should I mention this guy's name? No, I'm not going to mention his name.

But he's a big man and he's a pastor and he really gets worked up. And he starts doing this across the stage and his voice booms out. But if you listen to what he's saying, you wonder, what passage is he talking about? He's talking about man's wisdom. He has no idea. It's just how he thinks it ought to be. And because he's highly emotional about it and has a lot of verboseness about it, his audience are screaming, hands in the air.

He's got to be right. Are they being fooled? Sure they are, because it doesn't line up with the truth of the word. The servants who will stand for the truth must be content to become a fool in the eyes of the world. Then that person will have the true wisdom according to God. It's interesting that the path that Paul took, obedient to the heavenly vision, Did he not seem foolish in the eyes of all those whom he spoke to?

Example, in Acts 22.22, I think it was Thessalonians was listening to him talk, and he's incarcerated in Caesarea, and Acts 22.22 says they listened to him up to this statement.

And then they raised their voices and said, away with such a fellow from the earth, for he should not be allowed to live. Take that back. The people that said this were the Jewish Pharisees that were trying to get the Romans at that point to incarcerate and probably do away with what Paul was teaching. And so these Pharisees, who were the religious leaders of the time, are away with such a fellow on the earth, he shouldn't be allowed to live.

If you go down four chapters, Festus decides to listen to what Paul has to say. And at the end he said, while Paul was saying his defense, Festus said in a loud voice, Paul, you're out of your mind. Your great learning has driven you mad. What does the world think of what Paul has to teach? They think he's out of his mind. They think he's mad.

So Paul said to him, I'm not out of my mind, most excellent Festus, but I utter words of sober truth. For the king knows about these matters, and I speak to him also with confidence, since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his notice. This is a King Agrippa. For this has not been done in a corner. King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you do." And Agrippa replied to Paul, in a short time you will persuade me to become a Christian. What did he just tell Paul? Well, you might persuade me to become a Christian, but I think what you're saying is crazy. You're foolish. Was Festus smart? And whatever he said, no. So where is Festus now? Or where is Agrippa now? Or where is his wife Bernice now? And the high priest and the accusing chiefs of the Jews, where are they now?

They thought themselves wise and so did others who in the Corinth assembly brought in the wisdom of the schools to evade the cross and stand well with the men of the time. If you take the wisdom of the world and you try to mix it with Christianity, you're automatically either a fool on either side.

So, is it possible to deceive oneself by practicing mental dishonesty and fantasy? Is that possible? Spiritual fantasy is an activity of the sin nature. that allows us to practice in the mind that which we fear to practice in reality. Isn't that an interesting definition? Spiritual fantasy is something that the source is the sin nature and allows us to practice in my mind what I fear to practice in reality.

William Kelly said that there are those who build wisely and well, and Roger talked about who they were last week. And then there are those confessing his name, building on the right foundation, build on the one and only foundation, but they build with unfit materials. And then there's even worse. There is the enemy at work using men to bear the Lord's name to corrupt and destroy.

Again, I don't think in 2020 we appreciate how aggressive this third point is in our society today. So evidence, do we need to have evidence of self-deception? Answer, the Corinthians were deceived in that they did not see the difference between the church and the world. They didn't see it. And there were they were so in love with human wisdom that they did not see that it stands in total opposition to God's wisdom. All men are deceived to the extent that their mind is empty to the word of God.

I've been reading. I don't know if I brought the book with me. I've been reading this little pamphlet, like 60 page booklet about John Darby and his life and the kind of man he was. And I've always had in my mind, I mean, this guy, if you've ever read Darby, He is just brilliant, but difficult to understand. And you get this picture in your mind of this big, powerful man with a booming voice who really had his act together. Well, this book totally changed my mind about him.

He was a little bitty guy. He was infirmed. He had disabilities. And he loved poor people. He came from an upper middle class wealthy family. He gave all his possessions away except for his library. And he loved living with the poor. So a guy, W.G. Turner, wrote this little book about him.

And I ran across this paragraph and I thought, see if you agree with me that this is a really good demonstration of the difference between the wisdom of the Word of God and the wisdom of the world. So Turner says, I remember once saying to him, quote, to desire to be rich is observed. But if I were a father of children, I should wish to be rich enough to secure them a good education. Wisdom of the world sounds good to me, right? Here's what Darvey said.

If I had children, I would as soon see them break stones on the road as do anything else, if I could only secure to them the gospel and the grace of God." Spiritual wisdom. So how much emphasis do we all put on education? Worldly education, because we believe that if we prepare our children with the right education, they're going to be fine. If we neglect the spiritual education in the process or we admix it, John Darby says he ought to be by the road breaking stones. What good is it?

It's not any good. So, remedy for self-deception. The way up is down. If any man among you thinks that he's wise in this age, He must become foolish so that he can become wise. That Darby explanation shows a man needs to become foolish to understand what is reality in this age. This world does not embrace God's wisdom and views, and it views those who do fools. Every single person in this audience today, at some point in your spiritual career, either you have been told you're foolish or you have been shamed by people thinking, oh, you're an idiot. You're a total idiot. And when I first became a Christian in my business circles, I can't tell you the number of men that came up to me and said, oh, Doyle, you're an idiot. All you need is a crutch in your life.

And I used to say, yeah, I do. But they can't see it. And we somehow don't see it either sometimes. The believer must let loose his human wisdom and embrace God's wisdom. Boy, is that apropos today with what's going on in the world with this virus and all the demonstrations and all this craziness, to let loose of human wisdom. I, like you, occasionally look at the news or read it on my phone and I think, these people have no wisdom. They don't know what to do. They talk a lot, but they don't know what to do.

The believer must be willing to bear his responsibility if it is to be freed by the truth. So Paul continued the subject of spiritual rather than natural wisdom. He urged his readers to turn away from their attitudes of world regards as wise to adopt God's viewpoint about things so that they would become truly wise. One of the hard lessons for spiritual growth is to come to the realization that the more dependent I am on the Spirit of God, the more mature I am.

Well, that goes totally against the whole mindset of how Americans think. I need to be independent. I need to be able to do this all myself. And we go to God and say, just show me what to do and I'll do it. Well, when in fact is, What you learn as you grow spiritually, the greater dependence I have on the Lord, the more rest I have in my heart. The less I depend on myself, the better.

So, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God. For it is written, he is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness. Everywhere, and without more or less within, the wisdom of the world is foolishness with God. It's interesting that the world calls God foolish, and God calls the world's wisdom foolish.

And where is the character so exposed? Right here. Nowhere is indulgence so perilous as in the temple of God, the church. where we try to use the wisdom of the world to keep the temple operating. The wisdom of this world commands the respect of the natural man, not the spiritual man. At times it may look very attractive even to the Christian, as in the case of the Corinthian saints. Nevertheless, it's foolishness with God. The very wisdom of the world becomes its own undoing. because they don't have any answers.

Paul used the Old Testament quotation to give added authority to his thought, and he quoted Job 5.13.

He is the one who catches the wise in their craftiness. He captures the wise in their own shrewdness. And the advice of the cunning, he quickly thwarts them. The wisdom of this world is really, when you come down to it, just craftiness. It entraps those who boast in it. And the Lord knows those reasonings. He's aware of them. And that's why they're futile. And again, the Lord knows the reasonings of the wise that they're useless. Psalm 94 11.

It's like the wise are already engaged in carrying out their plans, and here comes God and He intervenes. All the best wisdom the natural man can produce is foolishness compared with the wisdom of God, and God has revealed it in His Word. If you're like me, when you're studying the Word of God, I run into this all the time. I see something that God says and I think, how can that be? That doesn't fit the paradigm I'm used to. And God says, well, it's either my wisdom or your wisdom. And if you go with yours, I'll show you over time how foolish it is without harming you.

Unbelieving humanity cannot avoid God's judgment, though, through its own reasoning. The reasoning of the wise in this world is useless regarding the most important issues of life. What's the most important issue in the life of every human being? Isn't it salvation? That's the most important issue.

I can tell you a story about my own father. He used to come and visit me every year. He would spend his winters in Mexico and he'd come to Denver and he'd spend a month at my house and he'd be down in my basement going through my library. And for four or five years he did this and on the end of the fifth year when he was leaving, He said, well, I've read all your books.

I said, what do you think? He said, I still think it's up to me to save my own soul. Worldly wisdom. Worldly wisdom. I said, Dad, if you read the books, that's exactly what they didn't say. But that's what most mainline religions tell you. Legal religions, and especially the one that I came out of, It's totally up to me to do, you know, to get to those pearly gates with enough stuff on this side and less stuff on this side, and Pete says, come on in.

That is so foolish. The crucified Christ is the wisdom of God. If we go back to chapter 1, verse 18 through 25, where Paul says the wisdom of God, namely, that Christ crucified is foolishness to the world. It is total foolishness, Christ crucified. He makes the same point here, only he reverses it. The wisdom of the world is foolishness in God's sight. If you reject the cross from God's perspective, you're foolish.

You're foolish. And God knows the plans of the wise, and they'll come to nothing before they even start to execute them. So, he says, so let no one boast in men, for all things belong to you. True wisdom, God counted the wisdom of the wise as foolishness and would take them in their own craftiness.

But in this, the saints were below their privilege. In other words, if a saint lines up in a clique I'm of Apollos, and this group over here is of Paul, behind one another. You're lining yourself up behind one of God's servants, not God himself. That's to lower your expectations. A believer is not to belong to a man. A believer is to belong to Christ only. All things belong to us in the sense that we are set above all as belonging to Christ. We belong to him. We're his property. He bought us on that cross.

The Corinthians were extending themselves under certain teachers as if they belonged to different gifted men. It would be like our church dividing up and say, well, some of us are of Roger and some of us are of Courtney. And some of us are of JD, and some of us, oh, we really, really like Andrew Malloy, and some of us kind of like Mike. As if we did that, what would we be doing? We would be missing the point.

The point is Christ, not his servants. The Corinthians were extending themselves under certain teachers as if they belonged to different men. Paul says, no. No. They belong to you. Those men I just mentioned belong to you. Roger and I belong to you. You don't belong to us. We belong to you. To do so would be to place ourselves in the apparently false position of belonging to those whom you glory in. Because this verse is really cool. It says, for all things belong to you.

So in doing so, the Corinthians were only limiting the blessing that God could give them. They were rejecting God's good gifts by not appreciating all the people God had sent to help them. The world with all its power life with all its changes, death with all its terrors, even as all that can happen in the present or future are set under the Christian because why? He belongs to Christ.

And Christ is God's and God is over all. So in verse 22, And verse 22 says, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, things to come, all things belong to you. All of God's servants are gifts of God to everybody else. Everybody in this room is a servant, and we're a gift to everybody else. That's the way the body of Christ works.

The world belongs to the Christian in the sense that We will inherit it at some point, and we will reign with Christ over it one day. Psalm 24 says, The earth is the Lord's, and all it contains, the world and those who dwell in it, they all belong to the Lord. So life and all it holds contains much blessing for us, even death. Even death is a good gift. because it ushers us into the presence of our Savior. It's the only way we get there.

If you look at Romans 8.32, it says, He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how will he not also with him freely give us all things?

The verse says, Romans 8.38 and 39 tell us that there is, gives us a list of everything. Well, not everything, it gives us ten things.

Paul says, I'm convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, And then he sums it all up. Nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

These ten things represent the fundamental tyrannies of human life. Those ten things is what everybody's afraid of. They're all ours. And the things that enslave us, the things that hold men in bondage, those are the things that do it. So Chester McCauley says, the first application of this is that we should not glory in men. The second is that man is not the source of true wisdom. And to treat him as such is to detract from the glory of God. The second application of this is that we should glory in our own spiritual possessions that God gave teachers such as Paul and Apollos and Peter.

All things are ours in Christ, whether they are and they are a delight and they should be. I got behind in my slides. Those are the 10 things I mentioned. So verse 23. And you belong to Christ. Christ belongs to you. You ever entertained that thought? I belong to Christ. He owns me. He gave his blood for me. I'm his property. To know that the God of the universe has me as one of his prized possessions is a really comforting thought. He owns me. He bought me with his blood.

That's a really cool thing. I don't have to try. to belong to Him, I already do. All things belong to the Christian because the Christian belongs to Christ and all things are His. If you go to Colossians in the first two chapters, it's amazing, the list of who Christ is. Therefore in Him we possess all things, but it is only in Him that we do.

First Corinthians 8.6 says, Yet for us there is but one God and Father, from whom all things are all things and we exist for him and the one Lord Jesus Christ by whom all things and we exist through him. All things belong to the Christian because the Christian belongs to Christ. Therefore, in him we possess everything.

Paul made several references to the administrative order of God when correcting disorder in various kinds in the Christian church. Here's the order. The order is the father is over the son, right? The son is over us. And man is over a woman. Does that have to do anything with our position in the heavenlies? No. But if you want to have order, you have what we used to call in the military, what did they call that? I forgot now. What's that? Yeah, chain of command that keeps order. If you look in the news today, they're trying to disrupt that order. Chaos.

So 1 Corinthians 11, 3 says, but I want you to understand that Christ is the head of every man and the man is the head of the woman and God is the head of Christ. So even Christ himself put himself under God and we're under him. So Paul stressed divine order because the Corinthians were disorderly, having failed to submit to the control of the Holy Spirit.

So whether we look back, or we look past experiences of our past experiences, or forward to being with Christ in the heavenlies, it doesn't make any difference with us. All humankind, All humans are crafty, and philosophical reasons don't suit God's temple from man's perspective. All those who traffic in them will not escape His judgment.

Why should those who boast who have with Christ all things? They shouldn't, because we boast in Christ. All things are yours, whether Paul, Apollos, Cephas, the world, life, death, present things, or things to come, all are yours, and you are Christ, and Christ is God's. So in closing, we have all, and we flourish, not only in those things whom the flesh would set up as rivals, but all the circumstances present and future. ours now through the grace of Christ, and ourselves His as He is God's.

And that is forever. And to His glory flow blessed and infinite the associations which flesh overlooks. And the world in its self-sufficient nothingness treats it as nothing. So if we're going to glory, let's glory in the Lord. Let's close. Father, how we thank you. How we thank you for your word and how careful you are to keep us focused on your dear son, the Lord Jesus. And it's in his name we pray. Amen.