First Corinthians 4:14- 21 My beloved children and an admonishment of a father

We're going to continue on in the last part of chapter 4. Actually, you know, it's funny. I looked at the last, Mike and I sit down and we decide who's going to teach what and we kind of divide things up and we have a pre-planned thought from historic times we've covered 1 Corinthians. But each time you go through, you look at it a little differently.

And so I said, boy, there's not much left in chapter 4. Can I really get three messages in chapter 4? Boy, and I come across these three verses, 14, Actually, four verses. 14, 15, 16, 17. And boy, they are just really interesting verses. Very, very encouraging. So, we're going to cover those verses. And I've called it, My Beloved Children and Fatherly Admonition. So, I'm using Macaulay's outline here. I'll just go through and put it all up.

And actually, in his outline, you know, he was talking about divisions in the Corinthian church. And that's what he's addressing. He's been doing this since chapter 1. There were divisions in the church, and he was encouraging them not to have divisions, to be of one mind. So we're down to the very last part of that discussion about divisions in the church. And this point F in here, he says, the worker, the Christian worker, the apostle, must realize that suffering is involved in his ministry. So last week we talked about Corinthian mindset, and then Paul's mindset and his suffering in his ministry. Today, he's going to kind of take a little different turn. He's going to say, you're my brothers in the Lord. You know, I love you. I led you to Christ.

And he's going to approach it from that perspective. And then next week, we're going to finish up with, he's going to talk about anticipated visit. He was going to visit Corinth. And actually with that in mind, let's look at my picture here. I keep adding to this picture. I found a picture that Vern had about the ruins in Corinth. It was this kind of gateway city. And a lot of people coming and going. So this is a picture of the ruins there. And Paul, on his second missionary journey, he was there for a year and a half and he established the church at Corinth. So I thought, this is interesting, maybe I'll find some more. We'll put little pictures in now and then kind of liven it up here, right? Multimedia for Mike and Raj, right?

We're not exactly the gurus of that. Anyway, enough of that. Okay, so actually what I want to do here, I want to go back and quickly review last week. So with that in mind, let's just get into it here. So last week, he talked about, first we're going to talk about the Corinthians and their mindset. And so let's just, I'll put them all up here. You know, their mindset was interesting.

They thought they had already arrived. And maybe you come across people like that, they've already made it, and anything you talk with them about doesn't, they don't really want to hear because they've already made it, so they don't need to listen to you, right? Because they're there. Well, unfortunately, Corinthians thought they were there.

They thought they were filled. The Amplified Bible has, you behave as if you've already been filled and you think you have enough. You're filled. You are full and content and feeling no need of anything more. They thought they were rich. Rich in spiritual gifts. They apparently had a body of believers that was rich in spiritual gifts.

And they thought they had arrived there too. Paul doesn't need them to give any instruction about their gifts. We're going to see later on, he is going to give them instructions about their gifts. And then thirdly, amazingly enough, they thought the kingdom had come. The kingdom of God had come. And hey, life is good. They didn't live in 2020. They would know it hasn't come. Anyway, so they thought they had arrived. They were filled. They were rich. They were kings.

But Paul says, that's their view. Well, Paul says, well, here's the view of an apostle that knows the Lord. Here's the view of that. And he starts off and he says, this is the apostle's view. I'm going to put that all up here real quick since we're reviewing. He had like four points here. He says, for it seems to me God has exhibited us apostles last of all.

And the picture here is that in a Roman processional of triumph, when they came into the city, into Rome, they would come in with the generals at the front and the criminals were at the back. And he says, you know, I feel like one of those criminals at the back. I'm at the end of the processional. That's what my Christian life is feeling like.

And he says, you know, secondly, we're men condemned to death. And you see that, And that's part of the Christian life. From Romans 8, 836 it says, just as it is written, for your sakes we are being put to death all the day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.

Then thirdly he says, we become a spectacle to the world. like in this the world is our theater and we're in this drama and we're on public spectacle and he says you know we're being we're being viewed by men we're also being viewed by angels which is pretty interesting and we know from other passages of scripture that angels observe the activities of believers and the desire to understand God's salvation because they didn't go through the salvation process right Man did, but angels did not.

And that's another study unto itself. If you're interested in that, you know, email me or talk to me. There's lots to study about that. Okay, so now he's going to do kind of like a comparison, a contrast. He's going to contrast the mindset of the Corinthians with the mindset of the Apostle, or mindset of a Christian, if you will. And he's going to do the we, you, Comparison, we apostles and you Corinthians. And this is how they saw themselves and this is how the apostles, how it really is.

He says, for a believer in the Lord Jesus, we are fools for Christ. And that comes out of the fact that the very message that we're telling people to the world, to the unsaved world that don't know Christ is foolishness. But to us who are being saved, it's the power of God. So that word of the cross, that message about Jesus Christ coming and dying on a cross is foolishness to the world.

But they think they're prudent. They think they're wise. And scripture warns against that. It says in 1 Corinthians 3.18, which we covered earlier, Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you thinks he is wise in this age, he must become a fool, so that he may become wise. You know, you don't become And it's been said, I think, that a man only becomes wise in God's world, not in the human, in God's economy, a man only becomes wise when he comes to know his Son, the Lord Jesus.

Okay, so now it kind of continues on. Paul says, we are weak. And there's a verse that talks about his thorn in the flesh. In 2 Corinthians 12, 10, Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ's sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong. You know, like I mentioned, that's like an oxymoron. You think, when I am weak, then I am strong?

Boy, the world doesn't see it that way. You've got to be strong. You've got to take the bull by the tail. You've got to be out there, you know, making your way in this world. Well, God says, no, you're to be focused on Me, and I will make you strong. It will be My strength and not the world's strength.

Okay, but then they came back with, they were strong in their own strength. They thought that they could do it. They could handle it. And then the last contrast is here, but you are distinguished. He kind of flips it around. You are distinguished. They're held in honor by men because apparently they were maybe intellectual or they were the right crowd. In today's world, if you're the right crowd, you're in the right group. I'm in the right Twitter group or some people like to follow you on Twitter. You're in, right? How many hits did I get on Twitter today? Or whatever it might be. They were distinguished in their own eyes.

But God says the true servant of God is not distinguished. And Christ said in John 4.44, for Jesus himself testified that a prophet, a prophet telling you about God's kingdom has no honor in his own country. And we certainly see that many times people that that proclaim Christ or talk about Christ are not honored, they're kind of put to the side. They're kind of said, well, you know, that's not the mainstream. We're the mainstream.

That's, you know, that's something else. So, so true, knowing God truly is not held in high honor by the world. Okay, then he goes to this interesting 11, 12, and 13. It's this list of the apostles' suffering. I mentioned there's another list in another section of the scripture, but this is the list here. I'm just going to go through this briefly.

He says, we are both hungry and thirsty and poorly clothed. From the Amplified, they've gone hungry and thirsty. They habitually wear one undergarment and shiver in the cold. Bonnie asked me, that sounds kind of strange, Roger. Under a little further study, they didn't have enough money to buy enough clothes is the bottom line. So the fact that they only had one undergarment, they didn't have the money to buy more, right? If you got lots of money, you can buy lots of coats and lots of sweaters. You can be warm, but they didn't have that kind of money.

We are roughly treated and homeless. And this is from the other passage that talks about Paul's suffering in the flesh. I have been in labors and hardships through many sleepless nights and hunger and thirst. often without food and cold and exposure.

So quite a contrast. This is his lifestyle, as an apostle, preaching the gospel, going from town to town. This is what his life was about. Then it doesn't stop there. Then 12 and 13 kind of carried on. So here's, I'll just put them all down here real quick. It says we toil. You know, Paul worked with his hands. He was a tent maker. And I kind of searched that out a little bit. He actually provided his income most of his life. He got some donations, but he worked and provided most of his income most of his life, which I didn't. Of course, he got free income when he was in jail. So if you count that, so anytime.

Works with his own hands. We were reviled and we blessed. We are persecuted. We endure. We are slandered and we try to conciliate. We have become as the scum of the world, the dregs of all things, even until now. The scum of the world is this idea, if you have a scrubby or whatever and you scrub it, and you look at your scrubbing and you say, ooh, look what was on there. That's what he's talking about. That ookie stuff on your scrubby is what he's talking about. That's what they become. So a pretty dire picture, a pretty stark contrast between the Corinthians thinking they had arrived and what it really is like as a Christian walking with the Lord, serving the Lord.

So now we're going to start into today's verses. He's going to take a different tack, a tack of love and compassion, and he's going to tell them why he wrote these things. He said, I do not write these things to shame you, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For if you were to have countless tutors in Christ, yet you would not have many fathers. For in Christ Jesus I have become your father through the gospel. Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me. For this reason I sent you Timothy, who is my beloved and faithful child in the Lord. He will remind you of my ways which are in Christ, just as I teach everywhere in the church.

Okay, so let's really interesting verses really neat things to consider here He says I do not write these things to shame you So what things was he told I do not write these things to shame you so what was he talking about? The things we just read about the things right here. He he presented his case here. Are you Corinthians I? Here's Paul preaching the gospel. Here's the things he's talking about, the things he just got through with in 8-13. Here are the things I've described.

He said, amazingly enough, he did not write those things to shame them, but he's going to tell them why he wrote them. He didn't want to shame the Corinthians, but he wanted to do something else. And shame is to put to shame, to chide. So Paul does not want his writings in this chapter to put the Corinthians to shame but later we're going to see in chapter 6 he directly says it's to your shame that these things have happened so here he's saying this list of things I wrote about your behavior and compared with what a Christian should be like in the Lord they were not to shame you but here's what they were but to admonish you so the key thing is what does admonish mean it sounds like a It's not something that I, off the top of my head, would have a good definition.

I have sort of an idea of it at Manish. But I think it has but, Allah, in contrast to where they were at. So at Manish is this word. It's made up of a verb and a noun. The verb part is to put or to place. And the noun part is mind. So literally, it's to place in the mind.

So what Paul is saying here is that his desire is not to shame them, but to place in their mind God's word, place in their minds the truth of scripture. That's his goal. And if you think about that, that's really what you want, that's what Mike and I want, and what all true teachers want. We want to put in people's mind, not our thoughts, but God's thoughts, put in their mind.

If we shame them and say, Unfortunately, shaming historically in the Christian Church has been in view many times. I'm going to shame these people. I'm going to have all these do's and don'ts. And they're going to feel really bad when they walk out of here because they're going to say, I didn't do this and I did do that. And so they're going to feel awful.

Whereas God wants to put in their mind who He is and what He's done for them and how they should respond to that. So that admonish is a really key word. So it actually is used in a really important passage. Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 4 it says and fathers stop provoking your children to anger But rear them in the discipline and admonition of the Lord So actually King James says not King James at Newmark Center has instruction but boy admonishment after you realize this to place in their minds and boy I think about my children and I think wow I Did I really do that?

And I'm sorry to say I probably didn't do that as I should probably, as well as I should. My desire was there. We read Bible verses. We went to church. We did all the things that you would do as a Christian father. But did I really grasp that? That I was to place into their minds. Yes, I should discipline them, but I should place in their mind the truths of Scripture. So Macaulay has here which I think is apropos Preaching isn't preaching is not intended to create a guilt complex among believers Preaching is intended to edify and to build up believers Boy, if you don't get that right and a body of believers I don't think you can make any progress in knowing scripture.

You can't get anywhere because you're constantly People are constantly worried about well, I didn't do this. I didn't do that you know, they're constantly and and You're not coming across with the message that God wants to give. He wants his message of grace. We know in Ephesians, not Ephesians, but in Galatians, it says we're not under law, we're under grace. So, key word there. He wanted to admonish them.

And he says he wants to do it as my beloved children. This father-son, father-children relationship is in view here, as beloved children. So the first consideration here is that Paul considers the Corinthians that he was ministering to, the church that he was involved in starting, as his spiritual children. And then secondly, they're his beloved ones. He likes them. He loves them. He cares for them.

I mean, that's a huge thing. I mean, you can say, well, this is my ministry, but boy, I have a tough time at work, so to speak. I go to work, oh boy, these people, I don't know. He loved them, the Lord. He truly loved them. And this word, beloved, is a really neat word. And actually, Roy did a great job the other last Sunday about the definition. Actually, I didn't have his notes, so I was going to use his, but I didn't. Sorry, Roy. I didn't get to him. So the word, basically, from the concordances and other things, other helps, it comes from actually agape love, God's love. And it's used of Christ as love by God.

And it says, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. And it's also used between believers, from one believer to another. So the Apostle John talks about this in 1 John 4, 7. He says, Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God. So this is God's love lived out Among among believers and lived out among the Godhead which is pretty incredible So this is a pretty incredible statement that he they're his beloved ones. Okay. Now this is interesting He's gonna he said here that as my beloved children Now we're in verse 15. He's gonna kind of do some interesting things here.

He says, for if you had countless tutors in Christ. And actually, if you look at the original, that word for countless is a word for 10,000. And it actually comes from the word for myriad. It's a very large number. But 10,000 is the translation of it. So he said, if you had 10,000 tutors in Christ.

And actually, it seems like it's in the subjunctive mood. And maybe it will, maybe it won't. I think this is a hypothetical case. The best I could discern from this, this is a hypothetical case. He said, if you had countless tutors, if you had 10,000 tutors, well, that's probably not possible. And tutors here is this word that is for a guide or a guardian. It's a child leader. And we see that. We've studied that in other parts of scripture.

So this is a, and it's in Christ. So notice the person is one who is leading in the things of Christ. So this is not a, this is a good thing. This is a good, he says it, but you can have many people that lead you into Christ, but I want to focus on something very special. It's wonderful that you have people that lead you in Christ, but I want to focus on something that's even more special.

So that's the next part of the verse. Yet you would not have many fathers in Christ. So the question is, what does he mean by fathers in Christ? So, and this is really very interesting. So Luis brings us across, for in Christ, through the gospel, as for myself, I begot you. So he says that you would have many fathers in Christ. And the third part is this part, for in Christ Jesus, through the gospel, as for myself, I begot you. So Paul says an amazing statement, I begot you.

You know, Paul was involved in a birth process. It's a father and a son kind of deal. So this begot is this word of one by means of preaching the gospel that becomes the instrument in the impartation of spiritual life in Christ. And it's a fact. So he said, I was involved factually at your coming to Christ. I was your spiritual father. So that's what's going to So in Christ Jesus, Paul says, in my living union with Christ, as I walk with Christ, in fellowship with Christ, I was God's instrument in bringing you spiritual life in Christ.

But what's interesting, part of the key part of this is, you say, well, Paul sounds kind of boastful. I think he's pretty boastful. You know, he's boasting about, here's this church of people, and he says, I begot you. He's an apostle, first of all. You've got to think about that. So he, you know, he possibly has the right to say that. But the key part of this is that How did that birth happen? What was the mechanism? So that's the cool part here. So it's through the Gospel, by means of the Gospel.

And the Gospel, you probably can all quote it. If you look at 1 Corinthians 15, 3 and 4, For I delivered to you of first importance that I also received what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. Notice that he says he delivered something that he received. He didn't say the gospel. I had this idea of the gospel and I pushed it out and it was about Christ. No, he said I received this information. I didn't, I wasn't the author of the information.

So I like to kind of put the gospel here, those three verses kind of in a bullet form. I like bullets. I like charts and bullets. And that was most of my life as an engineer. Sorry to say, PowerPoint was my friend at work. If you could put it in a bullet point chart, you were good. Hey, you were king of the mountain, right? You knew what you were talking about. Pictures and charts. Too bad Courtney isn't here. He would be laughing with me. Oh, there he is. And he could attest that. If you can put it in charts and bullets, you're a good guy. So here's the gospel in three bullets. Three ideas. Really important. Three verbs here.

Christ died. Christ was buried. Christ was raised. Christ died for our sins or on behalf of our sins. He was our substitute. Christ was buried. You only bury a dead man. And it was a testimony of the fact that he was truly dead. Christ was raised. God raised him up since it was impossible for him to be held in his power.

So that's a gospel You can read it in three and four. The bullet form helps me. If it helps you, I praise the Lord. A couple of additional points. Mike and I both like several people. We like Macaulay. We use Macaulay. We use Constable. We use Weiss. We use Merriman. We use all these great guys that have helped us understand scripture. Macaulay had a couple of observations.

This is a picture we have here. of a birth. If you think about it, the picture is of a spiritual birth, okay? In this picture, the gospel serves a key point. The gospel is the seed or the sperm of this birth. The gospel is what Paul says, I begot you. He begot them with giving them the gospel. And the gospel gives life. If you think about it, in essence, the good news, what's stated in these three bullets, is the good news that gives a person life when he believes that. He goes from death to life.

So it's really important to see that the gospel is the seed or the sperm of what Paul is trying to say here. That's what makes this passage so really neat. I got so excited. Wow, look at this. This is just so cool. And we know how important the gospel is, but this kind of puts it down in black and white.

So Paul, and Paul was excited about saying that he, that I begot you. That he gave them the gospel and they attained a spiritual life. So based upon that, so what does he say after? He says, I begot you. You came to faith in the Savior through the gospel.

He says, therefore I exhort you to be imitators of me. And you're going to say, oh here we go, Paul bragging again. He says, be imitators of me. Paul is just a man like us. He's got to have something in the closet there that we shouldn't be imitating. Therefore, based upon what I told you about my spiritual fatherhood, I exhort you, I beg of you, be imitators of me.

Become or become what you already are so so let's just see so I kind of racked my brain here So this is this is Rogers words here So you can call me up or email me if you think I've gone off the track here Okay, so this word imitator I really think the idea here in the sense of what we're talking about here the idea is centered on our faith in Christ and Because we know that if we copy someone, if I just copy, if I copy Mike, you know, I would be pretty cool. I'd be a pretty cool guy if I copied Mike. But would that be what the Lord wants me to do, just copy Mike? No. Or say if I copy another believer, or if I copy God, let's say I copy God. That sounds even better, right? Well, that's not what the Lord wants. He doesn't want us to copy Him. He wants us to believe in Him, to trust Him, to rest in Him.

That's what the idea of imitation is about. It has to do with our faith. Well, Scripture talks about... It has four uses that I could find. Actually, Macaulay helped on this. We are to imitate Paul. He has another verse that I think is better than this verse. We are to imitate Paul. We are to be imitators of churches in their faith. We are to be imitators of God. Sounds good. We are to imitate stable believers.

So let's just look at these verses. So this is in 1 Corinthians 11 verse 1. just as I also am of Christ. So, from that verse, this helps, right? We're not imitating Paul, we're looking at his faith in the Lord, right? So, it comes back to faith. So, don't think so much of imitation as a copy idea, but it is a process of faith, which is what the Christian life is all about.

So secondly, therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children, Then it says in 1 Thess 2.14, For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus and in Judea. For you endured the same sufferings at the hands of your own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews.

Then lastly, Hebrews 6.12, So that You will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who by faith and patience inherit the promise." So we're imitating, if you will, we're seeing another believer's faith, or we're seeing Christ's faith, Christ's trust in his Father, and we're saying, that's what I'm, quote, imitating. But it's a faith operation, and not a copy operation.

So hopefully I made that clear. So I'll still make copy of Mike sometimes. Okay, so Paul's going to wrap it up here. Okay, in verse 17. So this is interesting. He kind of went through his argument that he's a spiritual father, that the gospel is the thing that brings, that changes people's lives, and that they're to be imitators of the faithful ones. So now he says, I want to do something else.

I want to send you Timothy. He says, for this reason, I have sent you Timothy. Because of this reason I have sent you Timothy. So what's the reason? It's stated in the second half of the verse. He's going to tell them why, in the rest of this verse, why he sent Timothy. First of all, he's going to tell you Timothy's resume.

He is my beloved. There's our cool word there again. And my faithful child in the Lord. Same metaphor, father, son. He had two qualities. He's my beloved. A strong word for affection. My faithful child, notice that he's faithful not in himself. He didn't have his act all together. He was faithful in the Lord. He trusted the Lord. He walked with the Lord. That's what made him faithful.

So here comes the reason. He will remind you. So Paul realized that we're forgetful. We forget things. We need to be reminded. He says, he's going to remind you of my ways which are in Christ Jesus. Remind is the idea to call to one's mind. It's in the active voice. And it's a ways of me and Christ. So I was thinking about this.

We could say, looking back to the summary I did earlier, we saw some of Paul's ways. As he contrasted himself with the Corinthians, he said, this is what the Corinthians are about. This is what Paul's about. We saw some of Paul's ways. He says, we're fools for Christ. That was one of his ways. We are weak in ourselves, but we're strong in the Lord. We become a spectacle to the world for Christ. So those are some of the ways of Paul. We can list many, many more.

It says, just as I teach everywhere in every church. So Paul had the same message to all the churches. And so I was thinking about this. I said, what are the messages? And what just kind of hit me here was that it was a message of Jesus Christ and him crucified. And we see that popping up in many places where Paul writes, it was Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

That's basically the Gospel again, right? It was that He proclaimed Him, Christ. He admonished every man, teaching every man in all wisdom, so that we may present every man complete in Christ. And then lastly here, I think it's worth repeating multiple times, Paul puts a disclaimer various times about the Gospel.

For I neither received it, the gospel from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." So Paul was a messenger. He was presenting God's message to man. And it was God who was the power behind bringing people to salvation, not Paul. But he could say, I begot you, so that's really kind of interesting. Okay, so I thought, well what...

I want to close here. What verse or what thought should I come with? And this kind of occurred to me. So let's look at, and this comes from a passage. My born ones are my little children concerning whom I am again striving with intense effort and anguish until Christ be outwardly expressed in you.

So Paul wanted to see Christ in these Corinthians. He wanted to be outwardly expressed. But, moreover, I was wishing that I were present with you at this very moment and could be thus changing my tone because I'm perplexed about you. So Paul is perplexed and we're going to see that being perplexed as we go through the rest of Corinthians, both in one and two.

There's a lot of perplexing things, but his heart was that he loved them. They were his beloved. And that's kind of important to see in all of his writings here, that he truly loved these brothers and sisters in Christ. So we thank you, Father. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior. We thank you for his word. Thank you that you that you call us your beloved and we thank you that you've saved us and you caused us to be born again and we thank you that we can come to know you by the study of your word. In Christ's name, amen.