MVOPC 11 December 2011
Call to Worship: Psalm 96:1-3
Opening Hymn: 32 “Great is Thy Faithfulness”
Confession of Sin
Most holy and merciful Father; We acknowledge and confess before You; Our sinful nature prone to evil and slothful in good; And all our shortcomings and offenses. You alone know how often we have sinned; In wandering from Your ways; In wasting Your gifts; In forgetting Your love. But You, O Lord, have pity upon us; Who are ashamed and sorry for all wherein we have displeased You. Teach us to hate our errors; Cleanse us from our secret faults; And forgive our sins for the sake of Your dear Son. And O most holy and loving Father; Help us we beseech You; To live in Your light and walk in Your ways; According to the commandments of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Assurance of Pardon: 1 John 2:1
Old Covenant Reading: Ruth 2:1-16
New Covenant Reading: 1 Peter 1:13-25
Hymn of Preparation: 100 “Holy! Holy! Holy!”
Sermon Text: 1 Corinthians 3:1-4
Sermon: Worldly Saints
Hymn of Response: 585 “Take My Life, and Let It Be”
Confession of Faith: Ten Commandments
Doxology (Hymn 732)
Closing Hymn: 708 “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go”
PM Worship: Hosea 11:1-11 – The LORD’s Love for Israel
Adult Sunday School: Children of the Promise: Infant Baptism – Part II
Suggested Preparations
Monday (12/5) Read and discuss 1 Corinthians 3:1-4. In verses 2-3 Paul writes: “I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for it. And even now you are not yet ready, for you are still of the flesh.” Obviously something has gone horribly wrong in Corinth, but what exactly does Paul mean by milk and meat and why is the Corinthian need to be fed with milk a problem? Americans can easily miss the force of Paul’s argument because we continue to drink milk throughout our lives. In much of the world, including in first century Palestine, milk was consumed almost entirely by infants and young children. Paul is sharply rebuking those Corinthians who have been Christians for some time but who haven’t made much progress in the faith. This is a rebuke that we need to hear clearly in modern North America where many churches have decided that it is just fine for forty year old adults, who have been Christians for most of their lives, to think and act like seventh graders when it comes to Christian doctrine. Of course, there is nothing wrong with thinking and acting like a seventh grader when you are twelve. But if you act like a seventh grader when you are thirty or forty something has gone terribly wrong. Paul makes this case even stronger by telling the Corinthians that they are acting like infants.
How does the language of milk and solid food carry over into the Theology? Are there certain doctrines that shouldn’t be taught until someone has been a Christian for say five years? Absolutely not! As Calvin wisely observed, “Christ is milk for babes and strong meat for men.” The great Princeton Theologian Charles Hodge fleshes out this point for us:
Every doctrine which can be taught to theologians is taught to children. We teach a child that God is a Spirit, everywhere present and knowing all things; and he understands it. We tell him that Christ is God and man in two distinct natures and one person forever. This to the child is milk, but it contains food for the angels. The truth expressed in these propositions may be extended indefinitely, and furnish nourishment for the highest intellects to eternity. The difference between milk and strong meat, according to this view, is simply the difference between the more or less perfect development of the things taught. … Everything which God has revealed is to be taught to everyone just so fast and so far as he has the capacity to receive it.
The important thing isn’t to measure how far we have come but that we are pressing on to, by God’s grace, continue growing. Read or Sing Hymn: 32 “Great is Thy Faithfulness” Prayer: Please continue to lift up our brother Pastor Youcef who remains imprisoned in Iran. Give thanks that the LORD continues to add members to the church that Pastor Youcef shepherds even though people can so tangibly count the cost of following Jesus in Iran.
Tuesday (12/6) Read and discuss 1 Corinthians 2:6-16. “You can’t beat something with nothing.” This is one of the soundest truths about motivating groups of people to action. If they want to do something and you simply tell them why the way they are going about it is wrong – they will almost certainly end up carrying out their original plans. Consider this famous story from the life of Dwight Moody: One time a very proper lady told him: “Mr. Moody, I don’t like the way you do evangelism!” He naturally asked, “Ma’am, how do you do evangelism?” When she told him that she wasn’t engaged in evangelism Moody gave this classic response: “I think I like the way I do evangelism better than the way you don’t do it.” You can’t beat something with nothing. Paul has shown how many of the believers in Corinth had been bringing the worldly wisdom and ways into Christ’s Church. He has shown how foolish and fruitless that is, but he doesn’t stop there. When people pursue worldly approval through means of worldly wisdom they are actually trying to meet a genuine need in an illegitimate way. Every person who has ever lived was created both for significance, to understand the world, to understand God’s plan for history, and to be in a vital relationship with and to know the Living God. Paul doesn’t simply stop with showing the Corinthians what a miserable failure the world’s wisdom is at achieving this things, he makes it clear that what the world could not achieve God offers to His people as a gift. You can think of what Paul is doing using the image of a balance scale. On one side are all the best insights that autonomous man can muster on his own. Paul doesn’t stop simply by showing how light they are, he goes to the other side of the scale and says: “Let’s place God’s revelation on this side.” This picture is vitally important for Christians to remember. We do want and need genuine wisdom in our lives. The key question is, “How can we get it?” Paul’s unambiguous answer is that we don’t achieve this wisdom by ascending to God, we receive it as a gift through Christ and the Holy Spirit who have come down to us. As Thomas Aquinas points out:
Just as … it would be the height of folly for a simple person to assert that what a philosopher proposes is false on the ground that he himself cannot understand it, so (and even more so) it is the acme of stupidity for a man to suspect as false what is divinely revealed … simply because it cannot be investigated by reason.
Paul’s point in today’s passage is even more dramatic than this. God has not only given the revelation to us, He has given us the Holy Spirit to guide us into the truth of that revelation and to conform our hearts and minds to that truth. In a phrase that none of us would dare to use save that God Himself has given it to us, “We have the mind of Christ.” Read or Sing Hymn 100 “Holy! Holy! Holy!” Prayer: Please pray for our congregation’s Session as it meets this evening.
Wednesday (12/7) Read and discuss Ruth 2:1-16. This beautiful passage has a great deal to teach us. One of its most important lessons is that you can be an exception to your generation and the surrounding culture. The story takes place during the time of the Judges. This was, to put it mildly, a wicked time in Israel’s history. The LORD had sent judgment upon Bethlehem (which means “house of bread”) by sending a severe famine upon the land. One Jewish family found the famine so severe that they left the Promised Land to sojourn in Moab. The husband dies and the two sons marry Moabite women only to have these two men die as well. Finally, after ten years, Naomi returns with just her Moabite daughter-in-law Ruth to the land of Bethlehem. Although Ruth had become a worshiper of Yahweh, she could expect only hardship in Israel because the vast majority of the Jewish people continued to rebel against the Living God. Yet the LORD, in His great mercy, brought Ruth to the farm of Boaz. In a sea of unfaithfulness, Boaz lived a counter-cultural life of devotion to Yahweh that was seen in everything that he did. We see this as soon as we meet Boaz in verse 4: Boaz greets his workers by crying out: “The LORD be with you!” They reply in kind, “The LORD bless you!” When we encounter a community like this, our hearts lift – but we also want to know if it is real or just a matter of pious words. As the book unfolds we discover that it is all true. Boaz cares for all his workers. He showers compassion on a Moabite outsider welcoming her into God’s family and into his own. He insists on doing the right thing in the right way without regard to how this will build up his own name. In short, he chose fidelity and left the results to God. How would the LORD respond? Though Boaz was content to make little of himself, the LORD would greatly exalt his name within the household of faith. From Boaz and Ruth would come the line of David and ultimately the Promised Seed – Jesus Christ our Lord. It all began with the grace of God in Boaz’s life, and Boaz’s commitment to follow the LORD and the walk in His ways no matter what his neighbors chose to do. This is a profound example for every generation and particularly for those who are living in places which are increasingly hostile to God. By His grace, you can be an exception to your generation and to the surrounding culture. Prayer: Ask that the LORD would increase your confidence in his revelation and decrease your desire to fit into this world’s mold.
Thursday (12/8) Read and discuss 1 Peter 1:13-25. This week we are looking at why Christians act in carnal/worldly ways and how we can grow toward spiritual maturity and reflect the wonder of the gospel in every aspect of our lives. If you are a Christian at all, you will be drawn to Peter’s words in verses 14-16:
As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, since it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”
The problem isn’t that we want to live in our former ignorance or that we resist the idea of being Christ-like in or holiness. The problem is that we are rightly pursuing a quest for significance but that we are doing it in the wrong way. We have been trained by life in this world to seek significance and acclaim through exalting ourselves. We therefore hope in our own plans, our own skills, our own strength, and our own future achievements. It also means that we are responsible for making sure that we get the credit and everything else that is “rightly” ours. Whenever people live like this conflict and ruptured relationships naturally follow. This is a zero sum game in which if you get a bigger piece of the pie I must take a smaller piece. And while none of us would claim that we want the whole pie, we all feel compelled to struggle over getting our fair share. Isn’t it interesting that each of us tends to think that our slice of the pie should be a little bit bigger than whatever everyone else wants to give us? So we struggle and develop resentments. In a word, we become worldly. Today’s passage reminds us that God does not call us to lower our aspirations. In fact the worldly quest for significance is sharply limited both by our own abilities and the willingness of a sin drenched world to acknowledge your achievements even when that would be appropriate. How much better it is to hope in the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who is able to raise the dead and to grant us – as a gift – far more than we could ever hope for or even imagine. Peter calls us to this in verse 13:
Therefore, preparing your minds for action, and being sober-minded, set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
This verse tells us two critical things about our quest for significance: (1) First, we are not to hope in ourselves or in what we can earn. Instead, we are to hope in grace. This requires us to contemplate the goodness of God in Christ Jesus for His people and to trust that He will give us far better than what we deserve. (2) Second, we need to recover the almost lost practice of embracing delayed gratification. The LORD doesn’t promise that He will lift you up tomorrow. As followers of a crucified Messiah we should not be surprised if the world hates us and that we have bumps in the road. Yet, fixing our hope on the grace which is ours in Jesus, we can know that He will lift us up in due time – and that our reward will last forever. Read or Sing Hymn 585 “Take My Life, and Let It Be” Prayer: Pray for the young people in our congregation that they would put down deep roots in the faith that has once and for all been delivered to the saints. Ask that the LORD would strengthen them, and all of us, that we would remember the sufferings of this world are but light and temporary afflictions in view of the exceedingly great weight of glory that is eternally being laid up for God’s people.
Friday (12/9) Read and discuss Hosea 11:1-11. At times the heaping of oracle of judgment upon oracle of judgment in the book of Hosea had become almost unbearable. “Beginning with this chapter and continuing to the end a new emphasis on the sovereign love and ultimately triumphant love of God can be found (James Montgomery Boice).” Hosea, indeed much of Scripture, can be understood as conveying three main themes: (1) God is holy, therefore we must be holy; (2) God is holy, therefore He will completely judge sin; and (3) God’s sovereign love is greater than our sin. While all three truths are important, the third truth receives the greatest emphasis. Boice continues:
In this (the last four chapters), the prophecy of Hosea comes full circle and parallels in its structure the story of the marriage on which it is built. The story of the marriage had three phases. There was an initial period of love and happiness. There was the period of Gomer’s unfaithfulness in which the course of her life was continually downward. During this phase Hosea continued to love his wife and provide for her, but her dissolute and promiscuous life led her into increasing poverty and eventually into slavery. The third phase is seen in Hosea’s act of redemption in which he purchased his wife in the slave market and thereby made her his forever. He said in that day, “You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you” (3:3). On the basis of that analysis we may say that the last four chapters of Hosea correspond to stage three. The love of God has been present all along, but from chapters 4 to 10 the notes of discipline and judgment predominate. Now, although judgment is still present, the emphasis falls on God’s prevailing and unquenchable love.
Recite the Apostles Creed. Prayer: Please continue to pray for the former members of Hope PCA in Portsmouth, NH that they would rapidly become part of other Bible believing congregations in the area.
Saturday (12/10) Read and discuss 1 Corinthians 3:1-4. On Monday we looked at how Paul considered many of the Christians in Corinth to be spiritually immature – even infants – as far as their Christian walk was concerned. Today we will look at the even sharper rebuke that Paul brings in calling the Corinthians “worldly” or more literally “fleshly” or “carnal”. What exactly does this term mean? Richard Hays writes:
Being “of the flesh” does not mean, as the Corinthian wisdom enthusiasts supposed, lacking refined spiritual knowledge and experience. Nor does being “of the flesh”, mean, as much of the subsequent Christian tradition has supposed, living in lust and sexual sins. No, for Paul, being “of the flesh” means living in rivalry and disunity within the church. This breathtaking assertion shatters and reshapes the whole scale of values on which the Corinthians are asked to measure themselves. If the Corinthians accept this new scale that Paul has proposed, they cannot deny they fall at the immature end, for they have indeed aligned themselves with the party slogans that Paul quotes back at them: “I belong to Paul” or “I belong to Apollos.” Thus Paul artfully brings his long reflection on the cross, the Spirit, and wisdom back to the issue that launched the letter: the problem of divisions in the church.
Professor Hays’ comments should not be understood as suggesting that being “of the flesh” never manifests itself in terms of sexual sins. Of course it does. The problem with such a narrow definition of the flesh (in addition to simply not being Biblical) is that it misses the fact that we can be just as fleshly while maintaining the highest standards of outward morality. Yet, because being “of the flesh” involves puffing ourselves up – it always eventually manifests itself by sowing divisions in the body of Christ. Read or sing Hymn 708 “O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go” Prayer: Please lift up tomorrow’s morning and evening worship services.
