First Corinthians 16:5-12 Pauls Plans and Fellow Workers

Good morning. Well, as you notice, we're coming to the end of chapter 16. So this will be the next to last message, and then Mike gets to start 2 Corinthians, and Bob is super excited about that. And so am I. It's a tremendous, 2 Corinthians is a, someone said it's a one-up from 1 Corinthians. That was Bob's quote, and I like that.

So I thought I would go back and just briefly review, well, briefly, eight charts, the first four verses. And you know what I found in studying for this? There's always a wonderful reward to studying God's Word. And there's some just real gems in this.

Even though it sounds rather bland, well, he's taking a collection and then he talks about, well, I'm planning to do that. I'll spend the winter here. I'll do this. And you say, well, it sounds like a diary. I mean, and it sort of is. I mean, it's a personal letter. It really shows that these are personal letters that we're reading. We're reading Paul's personal letter to a church as someone who would write to Holly Hills. And this is a personal letter. It talks about people in the church, people that may come to the church. And so it's very personal. But in the midst of that is God's Word. It's been kept for us to read and for us to ponder. So, okay. With that said, so I've titled this section, following Macaulay's kind of lead, Paul's Plans and Fellow Workers.

So the outline, I wanna review the first four verses, and then we're gonna see his plans were basically his plans for Corinth. He wanted to return to Corinth. And it actually helped me to learn a little bit more about, and I knew this, you know, Corinthian was written, first was written in Ephesus. So he talks about leaving Ephesus and returning to Corinth and how he's going to do that. And then he talks about his ministry in Corinth.

And that's one of the little gems that's buried right in there. It's just a beautiful passage. And then he talks about later on, he talks about his friends, his personal friends, his fellow workers, Timothy and Apollos. And then we'll see, the final message will kind of cover his parting commands and his salutation.

Okay, so starting in verse one, it says, now concerning the collection for the saints, as I directed the churches of Galatia, so do you also. So this is the collection for the saints, and this is one, there are nine words, as we found last week, nine words in the New Testament that talk about giving, or gifts, and this is the first one, it's to gather, collect, and usually of money, And so this section will tell us about his direction to the Corinthian church and he's going to base it upon his experience in Galatia. And it's for the saints, and the Amplified kind of expands that, which it does often, and it says, for the relief of the saints, God's people.

So Macaulay points out, which is a good point, this isn't, he isn't collecting money for a social cause, he's collecting money for the needs of the body. And that's important, that's what giving is about, you're giving to the Lord for the needs of his local body. And actually in this case it's for the greater body we're going to find out it's for the poor saints of Jerusalem.

I'm not going to touch on that much I did last week but not so much this week. So as I directed the churches of Galatia and he directed to charge he gave orders to and Galatian churches were Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe. So okay, this is kind of a brief from last week. No picture this week of that. We'll get a different picture this week. So now here's his direction.

Pretty simple, pretty straightforward. On the first day of, notice it's every week. And so you could translate this, remember in the New Testament church, the church week started with the resurrection day. Every Sunday is resurrection day. So it's Sunday by Sunday. That's his direction. Each of you set aside something, and it could be by or with, aside, with, I like with, with himself, at home.

That comes from the Interlinear. And I found out, actually I had a question last week, and actually there's more than one version of the Interlinear. So as I actually, I should have known this, but this is the, word search interlinear. Karen asked me and I directed her to a different interlinear which isn't the same word.

So they're all a little bit different. Anyway, that's just a side note. Each of you, each of the churches at Corinth are, let me see, let me backtrack here. Each of you, the churches of Corinth are to give You may not all be able to give the same amount, but each of you is this word, is the idea of not one excluded. Some cannot give, they cannot give the same amount, but they all can give, is the idea.

Set aside, so here's these two ideas. Set aside with himself. And that kind of brings across the idea of setting aside under your control, and the idea of even to the effect of in your own household, implying rest. So you're setting aside this offering, or this gift, under your own control. You haven't taken it anywhere, but you're setting aside.

And I really like this. This is very practical stuff. And as I mentioned last week, this is something you do, you and the Lord are working on this, basically. But Paul's giving very practical directions. Storing up whatever he may have prospered in. So here's another good concept, too. Storing up, to lay aside, he may have prospered in. So the idea is here, some have called this proportional giving.

In the portion, as he has prospered, we are to give. If the Lord prospers you, you're to give in accordance with that. You're not to try to say, well, I'm gonna give more, the Lord provides, you give. If he doesn't provide, you can't give. And maybe you need other, you know, your provisions need to be for other things.

So that, with the purpose of that, no collection, be made when I come. So they weren't to wait for Paul to arrive, they weren't wait for the, Paul's arrived, okay, get your money together folks, get those nickels and dimes, shekels and whatever it was. No, he didn't want them to do that. That involves a lot of emotion and actually Paul wants us, giving us a very, precise and well thought out thing Paul directs. Paul didn't want the pressure to put on believers when they arrived.

He said, when he arrives, whomever you may approve, I will send letters with them. So the idea here is that whomever you test, and this word is documento, which we've seen in a lot of other contexts in the New Testament, but here it's a test with a view to approval. And the idea is you approve someone or you test someone that you believe is honest, that will take this money faithfully to its intended recipient. I will send with letters, and we don't really know a lot about the letters, but some of the constable kind of comments, Paul planned to send a representative from each of the community churches with his gift to Jerusalem. Perhaps the letters detailed how the money was to be sent and who was bringing it, so he would, you could match it again. I sent this, I sent brother so-and-so with this amount, and so they can compare that with the amount they got, so. And the goal here was that you would know this was honestly, the money was honestly given and was honestly delivered to its recipient.

To carry your gift to Jerusalem, So kind of hidden in here is the second word, to carry your gift, the gift of you. And so here we have the second word in the New Testament for giving, is charis, for grace. And actually Vine kind of has the deed of grace. And I kind of expanded it to be to carry the grace of you to Jerusalem.

And I really liked what Hal said in this context. A financial gift is a grace gift. It's out from God's grace. God is working through the believer. This is one of the many things that the believer under grace will do. He'll give out of God's grace. Not out of his, but out of God's grace. So this passage, which we're gonna be studying down the road of peace, talks about this idea of grace giving.

But it kinda compares it with the total picture, if you will, of the believer's life. It says, but just as you abound in everything, in faith, in utterance, knowledge, in all earnestness, in love, we inspire in you, see that, you abound in this gracious work also. And that last little phrase I think can be rendered, we surrenders it, you in this grace also be super abounding. So God wants us to abound in faith, in utterances, in knowledge, in earnestness, in love, and also in giving. That's kind of the culmination of that. And as I'm gonna show at the last, a chart from our brother Hal that kind of shows a picture of how giving fits in the believer's life. Okay, so giving demonstrates a grace of God.

Okay, so then the final verse is in chapter, verse four, and if it is fitting for me to go also, they will go with me. So the Apostle Paul opens up the possibility for going to Jerusalem as part of the group, as it seems best, and then we find out that after he wrote the letter, he decides to go, and we've got the culmination of that is in Acts 24, 17, where it says, Now, after several years, I came to bring alms to my nation and present offerings. And there's two more words, alms and offering, are two more of the words in the New Testament for giving, and that's from Constable. So what I found in looking at this, and two charts are two sets of information. I had the privilege of listening to Merriman from 1975, and he had five points about giving, and then Hal had a chart that I wanted to share with you as well. Okay, so principles of giving under grace. True giving to the Lord is a grace. It's out from the new man in Christ. It's not from the old man.

We're not to give out of compulsion, and that's actually one of the second points. True giving is always with forethought. We're to think about it. We're to pray about it. It's not something to be done lightly. It's not to be pressured. It's not to be, actually, emotion shouldn't be a whole, not that you shouldn't have emotional feelings about giving, but it should be reasonable and not, well, I gotta give something. I gotta give something to those missionaries. They're out there doing something. I oughta be giving them something. Well, no, that's not the way. You should feel their needs, understand their needs before you do that.

And I would, in going through this, I found this, convicting myself, how much time do I spend thinking about giving? And in truth, I haven't thought a lot about it. But this actually reminded me, hey, Roger, you ought to think about this a bit. The Lord wants you to think about it, be careful about what you give, and so on.

So the third point, true giving is a stewardship that begins with yourself. The fourth point is, true giving is a privilege of everyone in the body of Christ, rich or poor. So you don't have to be rich to give. And the other thing is, and this is so key, don't feel that, if you don't really understand If you're an unbeliever, if you don't understand the message of salvation and haven't believed that, don't be giving money. Really, don't do it. The God doesn't need money. He's not poor, he's rich. He doesn't need your money. But he wants your money as an expression of your love for him and that's actually the last point here is true giving is a love or agape giving.

And it's a fruit of the Spirit. So it's something, giving is a very personal thing, I think. And it should be personal, and it should be something that you've thought about and prayed about, and not something that's kind of frivolous or driven by emotion. Which is pretty much contrary to a lot of our, a lot of bodies of believers, I'm afraid to say, are driven by emotion in giving. And that's kind of their whole mindset. And it's sad. God doesn't, want us to be that way.

So this last chart here, this is from our brother Hal, giving of finances is only in a portion of the total giving. And I had thought about this when I went through this in preparing this message, I had thought about, well you know, giving of money is not the whole picture. And I came across this chart, wow, this is it, this is it.

So first of all, what do we do in the Christian life? We have to give ourselves to the Lord, we have to come to him in faith. realizing that we were in need, we were a needy person, that we trusted in his work on the cross. We have to come to him. And once we know him, we can give of ourselves, making ourselves and everything we have graciously available to him, seeking his guidance and wisdom, and that's from scripture, on how to give, how we should allocate all that is his. So that's the first part, giving ourselves to the Lord.

The second part is giving ourselves to the ministry of the gospel. We realize that as a believer, what's the most important thing that we have to say to anyone? And actually, it's the saving message of Jesus Christ. If we don't see that as the core of who the believer is, then we miss the boat. So that should be core to what we're doing.

Exercising our spiritual gifts in the local church, the edification of the body, building up the faith of the body, participating in God's ministry, and the defense and confirmation of the gospel, and then the last step in this is that you think about giving financially. After you've given yourself to the Lord, you've given yourself to getting out the Word of God.

I like J. Vernon McGee. I listen to him a lot. His goal is getting out God's Word. Let's get out God's Word. And he points out in his lifetime, he thought that he was in such a fruitful time. that his ministry was in, it was just in kind of a window when people were interested and he got God's word out on the radio. That was the way he got it out and it was a wonderful, and it still is, a wonderful ministry.

And that's what we're about. And the financial part will just come naturally after that. You'll wanna give to that what you're excited about. It's funny, in life you give to, you support things that you like, right? If you like hockey, you go to hockey games. If you like baseball, you go to baseball games. If you like football, you go to football games. If you're Bob, you go to all the games.

I know, I know. Actually, I didn't actually plan to say that. It just kind of, it just kind of came to mind. You probably should, Bob, after that. Anyway, but you know, you give away, and Bob's, he loves sports, and hey, I like sports, too. And we all, you know, I like sports, hey, you know. I don't like, me, a lot of the athletes, but I like the sports, anyway. Okay, enough said in that, we're gonna get on track here. Okay, so now, let's carry on here.

So today's verses. So actually in three sections. The first section, five through nine, talks about Paul's plans for Corinth. We saw his plans for Ephesus, what he's doing in Ephesus. Then we come down to Timothy, which is 10 and 11. Then finally with Apollos.

Okay. So that's it. So let's just start in here. And this seems, you know, somewhat dry at first, but again, there's some gems in here along the way. Okay. So Paul's going to talk about this kind of the back story here. He's in Ephesus. He's writing. He's penning a letter to this letter, the Corinthian letter, and he's talking about returning to Corinth. And I'll show a picture here shortly about that.

So he says, he starts off, but I will come to you after I go through Macedonia. So this is Erchromai, denoting either coming or going, future indicative active, so it's planned for the future, to come to Corinth, the Corinthians, but he's gonna go through Macedonia. Whenever I pass through Macedonia, Paul will come when his travels take him through Macedonia. And Macedonia was a province in the north of Corinth where Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea stood.

So I found this picture on the internet and I blew it up a little bit. It's actually pretty cool. So if you look, I've underlined Ephesus in red and Corinth in red. So Paul's there in Ephesus and the lines, those lines that are, there's a blue line and a purple line. The blue line is his second missionary journey and the purple line is his third missionary journey. So Paul's writing this and he's saying, I'm going to come to you.

And he's proposing to follow the path of his third missionary journey, it seems like to me. He's going to take a sea trip up to the top of the chart there, up to Philippi and Berea and Thessalonica. And then he's gonna travel by land down to Corinth, going through Athens, it looks like. And then he's gonna return that way.

So that's kind of the picture he's writing. He says, I'm gonna go through Macedonia, go through those there, on my way to see you. He says, for I am going through Macedonia, and perhaps I will stay with you. He's gonna pass through. He reaffirms his plans to go to Corinth. Next he gives some idea of how long you will stay. He says, and perhaps I will stay with you.

You know, and this is pointed out by various commentators. I looked, you know, Paul, Paul was some, in fact, actually, early, I think, in 2 Corinthians, which Mike will be teaching here the first couple, you know, verses or so, first chapter or so, we're gonna see that the Corinthians thought he was not being honest because he would say, well, I may be there and I may not be there. He left room for the will of God. And he didn't necessarily pin himself down that he could be there at a certain point.

He said, I'd like to be there. I pray I'll be there. But he didn't exact us I'll be there on February 25th. I'm not sure you could say that in those days anyway. And then maybe I'll remain with you. He uses the word perhaps. If things turn out that way, I'll do this and I'll do that. Paul left room for the unknown in a relaxed manner.

He never agonized over the will of God in such areas as he, where he should go. And the verse in Romans there talks about, let me find it here. It talks about if perhaps now at last this is Romans chapter 1 talking to the Church at Rome if perhaps now at last by the will of God I may succeed in coming to you. So Paul in many of his letters talked about returning to churches he'd been to and it was always by the will of God.

Now he's going to be more specific or even spend the winter with you or even spend the winter Paul did spend the winter in Corinth, but it wasn't the winter he had originally planned. It was actually, he wrote it in 56, I think, and he didn't come until 57, 58 AD. so that you may send me on my way wherever I may go.

So it seemed like he would phrase many things, he'll stay with you a while, and then you'll, in those days, he needed provisions to travel the next place. You'll provide me what I need to go on with my journey, seemed to be the idea. You may send me on my way, send me forward, You may furnish me, Weiss has it pretty good here. Weiss, you may furnish me with the requirements of travel where I may be going. So here he says, I don't wish to see you just in passing. Very kind of practical terminology. I just don't want to zoom in, zoom out.

I want to stay with you. I want to hang out with you a while. Paul's desire is to spend some time with the Corinthians. For I hope to remain with you for some time, if the Lord permits, allowing for the will of God. Remain is this to abide, epimeno, to abide, to tarry? He sensed the need to spend a good long visit with the Corinthians.

After writing this letter, you would think so. I mean, he went through all these. We're going to do a brief summary here in a bit. But he answered many questions that were on their minds that were as difficult as they had. So Paul had a lot to say to the Corinthians, as we've seen. In the view of the problems of the churches, he mentioned his letter. He wanted to understand what was going on with him, basically.

Okay. But I will remain with you in Ephesus, let's see, but I will remain in Ephesus until Pentecost. So here's one of the phrases that a lot of commentators think it really is very helpful with dating things in the New Testament. So he says, he kind of puts down a benchmark, if you will. He says, I will remain with you in Ephesus until Pentecost. I'll abide with you.

The departure at Pentecost would be based on the weather conditions. If they're going to be sailing, I don't know much about sailing, but I know we've sailed, we've done cruises. I know on rough seas, it's not much fun to be in a boat. Wayne can speak to that, right? He spent lots of time in a boat. Rough seas can be tough, and so in those days with small boats in rough seas could be very dangerous. And of course Paul has a dialogue about that in one of his journeys later on. So they had to be acceptable for sailing.

And the other thing was that he talks about in a kind of a Jewish holiday, and some people, you know, It seems like what Kosovo offers is that he had the Jewish unbeliever was on his mind so using Pentecost was not something that he was familiar with. He grew up knowing what Pentecost would be. Apparently Pentecost was typically in the springtime of the year, celebrated in the springtime of the year. Therefore Paul was writing the letter in the springtime.

Okay, so here comes one of the little gems here. For a wide door of effective service has opened to me and there are many adversaries. And this kind of goes along with our Sunday school lesson a bit. We talked about adversaries in Thessalonica. So this phrase right here, the first phrase, actually, I add the and in there, so let me just read it. It says, and for a wide door, and it says for effective service, but and, I think it's actually better, for a wide door and effective service has been opened to me, and there are many adversaries. So I like to, I thought the Weiss translation brought across the original the best. So it says, a door is opened to me, great and effectual.

So there's two aspects of this door being open to me. I was thinking about, if you watch Hallmark, I'll just kind of go right to it. If you watch Hallmark, I have seen, and it's good, it's a wholesome station. But many people will use the open door, closed door thing, and that's just mentioned, I saw that mentioned in just a bunch of different Hallmark episodes. It's across the board.

And it's often mentioned, well, and this is in terms of just somebody in the cat, well, the door is closed to you, so you can't go in with this job, you gotta do a different job. And that might be true, but the purpose here of the open and closed door is always in terms of the gospel, getting the gospel message out. So that's the focus, not so much on whether you're gonna choose job A or job B, it's how effective will the gospel be going out to people. That's the focus here. And he talks about using this expression, and we see that in Acts, the open door expression.

So we see that in Acts 14.27, and it says, when they arrived and gathered the church together, they began to report all the things God had done with them, and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles. So here we are talking about faith and faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ, what He had done. So open is the idea, an open door for the gospel. And I think that's the primary focus of scripture most of the time and not so much personal direction of your life.

The opportunity, so opportunity is described, so this opportunity, this open door is described by two adjectives, and that's why I like the Weiss translation. The first adjective is great, or megas, which is it would be great in extent, the gospel would have a, could be great in extent. And the second one is effectual, powerful in action or effect. So Paul's priority and why he desired to remain in Ephesus, that's why he was, that's why he wanted, because he had this opportunity for a megas, or a great, and a effectual presentation of the gospel. And so Marian says the idea is after he had entered the door, there would be effectual results.

But there are many adversaries to lie and oppose, antagonists lying in wait against him. You can think if you go through the book of Acts, look how many times in Acts he would go into a town, he would go into the synagogue, he would preach the gospel, he would talk to people in the synagogues, he would give them the message, his message was just incredible in these synagogues and we have record of many of those. but in other places too, but then after a short time period, the antagonists would come, many times the Jews would come and they'd run him out of town. So there were plenty of adversaries to the preaching of God's word. But here's interesting, he did not regard the adversaries as an indication that the door closed, applying to the gospel, or a sign that God wanted him to move on. So he stayed there as long as he could. Sometimes he had to be convinced to leave town. He said, Paul, you better leave, your life is in jeopardy.

So now, okay, that kind of finishes the discussion to the Corinthians and then to his ministry in Ephesus. And so now we start with talking about Timothy. Now Timothy comes, so apparently, and I don't even have all the background, Timothy was planning to come to Corinth.

See that he is with you without cause to be afraid or fear. I found this phrase kind of, it's tough, and I was like, the Amplified had it, and I wasn't sure this was exactly right, but maybe better. to see to it that you put him at ease so that he may be fearless among you." So there is some fearfulness in Timothy apparently. For he is doing the Lord's work and so also am I. So let no one despise him. The idea of despise is not to recognize or to ignore him. Evidently Timothy, being relatively young tended to make people despise him and he was fearful sometimes apparently.

And the last part of the verse says, but send him, this is the Amplified again, but send him off cordially, speed him on his way in peace so that he may come to me for I am expecting him to come along with the other brethren. Okay, so that's the message to Timothy.

So they can expect him, the bottom line is he's probably gonna come to Corinth. He's probably gonna minister there. So Paul was trying to clear the pathway, receive him graciously. Now we get to Apollos. So this is interesting, a little digression here shortly before we get into this dialogue about Apollos. Apparently there's a question about Apollos, and we don't have the dialogue about this, but apparently he got some information about Apollos from the Corinthian church.

So there's this expression in the original peri-dei, is the expression. And so we see there are six instances of this phraseology, and people have used that to kind of organize their study of the last part of Corinthians, 1 Corinthians. So starting in Chapter 7, we see that the questions came up, and starting with 7, there were questions before, and Paul went through and answered a lot of those, but then starting in 7, he starts using this phrase. So the first, and he introduces with this peri day, now concerning. So chapter one verse seven says, now concerning, it's not good for a man to touch a woman. 7.25 says, now concerning virgins, I have no command of the Lord.

8.1 says, now concerning things sacrificed to idols. And then we saw, now concerning, in 12.1 we saw now concerning spiritual gifts. And then in 16.1, which we just covered, now concerning collection for the saints. And then lastly, the last time he uses it, but concerning Apollos, our brother. So there are six things that, and people have used this, and I think it's wonderful to use that. You can see this pattern that develops through scripture, that now concerning this, now concerning that. So it's like he was answering a question that had been posed to him in a letter we don't really have. So the last question is about Apollos, our brother.

So basically, Paul didn't have a problem with Apollos. So we don't really know what their question was, but remember we saw back when, I'm not sure, either Mike or I taught it, he says, I'm of Apollos, I'm of Peter, I'm of so and so, I'm of Paul. There was division among the brethren over different teachers. Well apparently that didn't, you know, those differences were resolved, or if there had been differences, and Paul had no problem with Apollos. He says, I encouraged him greatly to come to you, to come to Corinth with the brethren. So Paul was not jealous of another teacher's, God's word.

He encouraged him. Then the last part says, and it was not at all his, Apollos' desire to come to you now, but he will come to you when he has opportunity. So, basically, he respected what Apollos, he said, okay, if that's what Apollos thinks is right, then I trust that brother, it's fine. He'll come to you when it's, and he didn't disparage him and say, well, Apollos should have come. No, he said, okay, you decide not to come, that's fine. So he trusted Apollos. All right, so I like to have some final thoughts. So this time, I decided, I'm not trying to, he tried to have something that's interesting and to the point, and this was really good. I came across this from J. Vernon McGee.

So he talks about this passage, 1 Corinthians 16.9, he says, this is a wonderful verse that I have put with Revelation 3.8, which is Christ's message to the church in Philadelphia.

So in Revelation 3.8, he's talking to the church at Philadelphia. And he says, the B part of that says, behold, I put before you an open door. And Paul says, a great door and effectual is opened. And I liked this kind of expanded, a door is opened to me, great and effectual, great in extent, powerful in action and effect.

So combining those two verses, so McGee says, these two verses I found to be true in the ministry God has given me, It's true today that there are many adversaries. Any man who will stand for the Word of God has many enemies. That was the experience of Paul. It has been my experience also.

However, the Lord opens the door and no man can shut it. Thank God for that. And actually, if you look at that verse 3.8, you'll see that that's the last part of the verse. It says, God has opened the door and no man can shut it. So I only read part of the verse. You read the whole verse, good to read the whole verse. God opens the door and no man can shut it. So God has opened the door for the preaching of his word, getting out the gospel message to all men that they need a savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. All right, so let's pray.

We thank you, Father. We thank you so much, Lord, for the message of your word. Thank you for this section in Corinthians. We pray that these very practical things about giving and about Paul's plans would be helpful to us in our lives, Father. In Christ's name, amen.