1 Corinthians chapter 16. 1 Corinthians 16. Let's read verses
10 through 12. Now, if Timotheus come, see that
he may be with you without fear. for he worketh the work of the
Lord, as I also do. Let no man, therefore, despise
him, but conduct him forth in peace, that he may come unto
me, for I look for him with the brethren. As touching our brother
Apollos, I greatly desired him to come unto you with the brethren,
but his will was not at all to come at this time. But he will
come when he shall have convenient time. Now again, this is one
of those passages that we might be prone to just read over. It kind of just appears like
it's just some closing statements. But every word in the Word of
God is important. And we ought to look at it to
see what we can learn from it. And Christ ought to be preached
from it. Now the church at Corinth had
a problem, you know, of exalting preachers. They were exalting
preachers one over another. And one of the men they exalted
was Apollos. It was Apollos. Go back with
me to 1 Corinthians 1 and look at verse 11. Paul is using Apollos
quite a bit and I think it's for the reason that there was
a problem. It was truly a problem. It says
in verse 11, It has been declared unto me of you, my brethren,
by them which are of the house of Chloe, that there are contentions
among you. Now this I say, that every one
of you saith, I am of Paul, and I of Apollos, and I of Cephas,
and I of Christ. Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified
for you or were you baptized in the name of Paul? Look over
at chapter 3 and look at verse 3. He says there, verse 3, you're
yet carnal, for whereas there is among you envying and strife
and divisions, are you not carnal and walk as men? For while one
saith, I'm of Paul, and another, I'm of Apollos, are you not carnal? Who then is Paul? Who is Apollos?
But ministers by whom you believed, even as the Lord gave to every
man. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. So
then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth,
but God that giveth the increase. Look at verse 21, 1 Corinthians
3, 21. Therefore let no man glory in
men, for all things are yours, whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas,
all are yours. So again over in chapter 4, verse
6, he says, These things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred
to myself and to Apollos for your sakes." He's softening it
a little bit here. He says that you might learn
in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no
one of you be puffed up for one against another. Now, God has
a way of humbling His people, of turning us from men to Christ by the very man He
uses to minister. He has a way of humbling us and
turning us from men to Christ by the man He sends to minister
to us. Now in our text, Paul said there
in verse 12, in chapter 16 verse 12, he says, as touching our
brother Apollos, I greatly desired him to come unto you with the
brethren. But his will was not at all to come at this time,
but he will come when he shall have a convenient time. Now whatever
the secondary cause was that made Apollos not want to go and
it probably had something to do with his awareness of what
was going on. How they were, some were taking
sides with him and exalting him against Paul and some were doing
it with Paul against him. and that probably had something
to do with it. But whatever the secondary cause
was, we know that the first cause was God. God worked sovereignly
in their lives to make it so that Apollos didn't go there
at that time. He didn't go there. Now what
do we learn from that? What is it that we can take away
from that? Well, first of all, the important
thing is not the man, the faithful preaching of Christ. That's the
important thing. Paul says there in our text in
chapter 16 verse 10, he says, Now if Timotheus come, he had
said earlier in the letter he was going to send Timothy. He
says, Now if Timotheus come, see that he may be with you without
fear, for he worketh the work of the Lord as I also do. According
to what we read in Scripture, naturally speaking, Timothy is
the last minister you would expect to be sent to a place like Corinth
with all the problems they had. Because Timothy was a young man. Timothy from scripture we see
that he had infirmities. He apparently appeared weak to
folks. He was young so he still appears
to have some youthful habits that probably weren't helpful
to his ministry. And so there were lots of reasons
you would think he wouldn't be sent. But Timothy was a son to
Paul in the Gospel. And Paul commended him highly
to several churches. Paul's commendation of him though
was not because of Timothy, it was because of his faithfulness
to preach Christ according to God's Word. Listen to these scriptures. He called Timothy in Romans 16,
21, he calls Timothy my work fellow. He was in the trenches
with Timothy ministering to the saints. He says in Philippians
2.19, I trust the Lord Jesus, in the Lord Jesus to send Timotheus.
And he said, for I have no man like minded who will naturally
care for your state. For all seek their own and not
the things which are Jesus Christ. But you know the proof of him
that as a son with the Father, he hath served with me in the
gospel." And then Paul desired to send Timothy because Timothy
had proven himself faithful to preach Christ just like Paul
did. He said back in 1 Corinthians
4 verse 17, he said, I'm going to send Timotheus to you, my
beloved son. And he said, and he's faithful
in the Lord. That was what mattered. He's
faithful in the Lord. And he'll bring you into remembrance
of my ways which be in Christ. In other words, he's going to
teach you Christ's Word. Just like I would, Paul said,
he's going to teach you the Word of our Lord. Paul told Timothy
in his letter to Timothy, he said, I charge you to preach
no other doctrine. No other doctrine. Christ and
Him crucified. It's not the man that is important. Paul said back there in chapter
3 in verse 5, he said, who's Paul and who's Apollos? Who's the man that's being sent
to you? He's just a sinner. He's a sinner. Paul said, we have this treasure
in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and
not of us. The man's just a sinner. He's
just like you. And, but the minister, he's the minister by whom you
believed, even as the Lord gave to every man. As the Lord gave,
the Lord gave. The preacher, the Lord gave the
faith. I've planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the increase. Christ is the head of the church.
He's the head of his church. You notice there when I read
to you from Philippians, Paul said, I trust in the Lord Jesus
to send Timothy to you. because it's Christ who's sending
the preacher. He's going to use a man like
Paul to do it, but it's Christ who's sending the preacher. Christ
is the prophet, priest, and king of His people. It's Christ that
laid down His life for His people. Paul said, was Paul crucified
for you? It's Christ that laid down His
life for His people. It's Christ who makes the man
faithful, It's Christ who gives Him the Word to preach. It's
Christ who puts Him in the place He will have Him to preach. It's
Christ who prepares the hearts of the people that He will have
Him to preach unto. It's Christ who blesses that
Word and brings His people to cast all their care on Christ
as our righteousness and our all. It's Christ. Christ is the
prophet, priest, and king of His people. So then neither is
He that planteth anything, neither He that watereth, but God that
gives the increase. So we don't glory in men. God's
people give all the glory to the Lord. So when God sends a
faithful preacher, and I would say this to anybody listening,
but especially you here, when God sends a faithful preacher,
Don't listen to that man as hearing the man. Listen to that man as
hearing Christ speak to you. That's important. Because if
he's sent of God and he's faithfully preaching the Word of God, that's
who's speaking to you is Christ, not the man. For we're laborers
together with God, you're God's husbandry. God's preachers aren't
in competition. Paul said there, I'm willing
to send Apollos to you. This was a man that some had
said they'd much rather have Apollos come than Paul. And Paul
said, I willingly want to send Apollos to you. So there was
no competition. We're laborers together. So don't
put one against the other. You're God's husbandry. It's
his vineyard. He chose you. He redeemed you.
He regenerated you. He's keeping you. Then look,
secondly though, this is also important, we should do everything
we can to care for every faithful minister that Christ sends our
way. We ought to do everything we can to care for them. Paul
said in verse 10, see that he may be with you without fear.
And that word means without dread, without dread. What he is saying
here, he is exhorting them to lay aside all these divisions
and all these problems they were having. and give Timothy their
ear rather than their tongue and bringing up all the petty
things that were going on. And you know, we have a way of
being able to bring something up to make it seem like, try
to seem like we're not bringing it up. And it's just no good,
you know. And he's saying here, don't even
bring any of that up. He's saying don't. The reason
is it adds a burden to Christ's minister. When you hear the things
that are going on and people are individually having trouble
with this one or that one, that adds an unnecessary burden to
you. And it causes a certain level
of fear in the heart for the congregation, for those members. And it can cause a certain level
of dread because it's not pleasant. It's never pleasant to go to
a place that doesn't have peace. But God, this is something we
need to remember. The reason we don't have to bring
up those things is so that that preacher can bring a message
from the Lord and not a message from his flesh. It's easy to
get in the flesh. And you don't want to preach
towards something because when everybody knows about it, it's
usually not going to be taken well. You want to get a word
from the Lord, and that's what the Lord's going to bless. So,
you know, he's saying avoid these things so that the preacher's
not caused to turn from the word of the Lord. And, you know, he's
going to preach from the gospel, from the word. He's going to
preach the gospel, but he's apt to get in the flesh, too. And
you don't want to do that. You want to preach in the right
spirit and to preach the word of the Lord. And here's the thing
to know and to remember. God is all-knowing. God knows
what His church needs. He knows what we need to hear,
and He knows what each individual member needs to hear. And this
is the amazing thing. We've seen this happen. In the
things men will choose to read here, and I don't know what they're
going to read, and I stand up and preach a word that goes right
with what they just read. And you'll hear, you wonder,
you know, why don't you just stand up and preach one point? I try not to go overboard, but
as you're listening and you're focused on one thing, and you
may not hear the next two or three things that are said, but
the next person is hearing those two or three things that are
said. And Christ is ministering to that one and that one and
that one, and He knows what each individual member needs. And
if the Lord will enable us to hear the gospel of Christ and
Him crucified, enable the body to be quiet, and to sit and listen
to what he said. Christ is going to answer every
question you have. I gave a man an illustration
one time. I may have given this to you, Brother Greg, too, at
one point. But I like it to this, you know,
when I was young and I would walk along with my father and
he would be teaching me something. And there I would go off, you
know, won't ask questions about this thing over here or that
thing over there. Well, he wasn't teaching me that thing or that
thing. He was teaching me what he's teaching me right now. And
if I want to learn what he's teaching me right now, I need
to pay attention to what he's teaching me right now. He'll get to that
and that over there, but pay attention to what he's teaching
now. He said this word now. And so, that's the thing to remember. That's part of what Paul meant
when he said to the Corinthians, I was determined to know nothing
among you. I wasn't interested in your troubles. I wasn't interested
in the divisions and all that. I was determined to know nothing
among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified because He's the
message that's going to cure what's ailing you. He's the one,
you're going to hear Him and that's going to make all the
little things that a congregation may think are the major things.
As you hear Christ preached and you hear Christ exalted, those
major things become totally insignificant. And Christ becomes the major
thing. I used that illustration to you that this thing of us
going through this life and going on our way to be with the Lord
is sort of like a funnel. And you know, as you're going,
it's getting more narrow and more narrow and more narrow.
And we're having to drop off some things. They won't fit.
We can't get them in the way with us because they're insignificant.
They don't matter. And the more further you go,
and the more you hear Christ, the more narrow it gets, and
the more narrow it gets, and He becomes important. To one
day, you know who we're going to be standing before? Just one
person. Christ. He's the only one that
is needful. The one thing needful. Alright. And I'm thankful too. And in
this place, you always endeavor to do that. You make a visiting
preacher feel welcome. And I tell you from experience,
that's a welcome thing from a pastor because it makes you want to
go back, makes you look forward to going back. And then look,
he tells here too under this heading of being providing for
the pastors, he says there in verse 11, let no man despise
him. Turn over to 1 Timothy 4. Let no man despise him. Timothy
was a young man. He was a young man. And look
what Paul wrote here in 1 Timothy 4.12. He is writing this to Timothy. He says, Let no man despise thy
youth, but be thou an example of the believers in word, in
conduct, in charity, in spirit, in faith, and in purity. Look at chapter 5 and verse 1.
Rebuke not an elder, but entreat him as a father, and the younger
men as brethren, the elder women as mothers, the younger as sisters,
with all purity, and honor widows that are widows indeed. The gospel
teaches us that God looks on the heart. God looks on the heart. That doesn't mean that our outward
conduct is not important. What that means is the most important
thing is the heart. It's the heart. God looks on
the heart. The age and spiritual maturity
of a man, of a believer, is not necessarily based on his natural
age. It's not. You take a man who's
60 years old that God just regenerated and gave faith in Christ, he's
a newborn baby in Christ. He's 60 years old in the flesh
and he's probably got some experience in the world that is valuable,
but he's a baby in Christ. And you take a man who is 30
years old who God gave him faith 10 years before. That man is
much more spiritually mature than the 60-year-old man. And so, you know, we're not to
despise somebody necessarily because they're young. They might
be older than us in the faith. And that's flesh. That's all
that is, is flesh. That's pride. that makes us,
we like to exalt ourselves for anything. You know, you are going
to find yourself talking to brethren down south right now who have
got snow, and they will be telling you about the snow you get, and
you are going to find yourself exalting yourself over them because
you get more snow. We kind of pity them, you know,
because we get so much snow up here. That is our flesh. We will
try to find something to exalt ourselves over others using anything. And we'll do it with age. We'll
try to do it with age. Now, at the same time, Paul said
a younger believer, especially a preacher, must be an example
of the believers in word and in conduct and in charity and
in spirit, in faith, in purity. In other words, if he doesn't
want to be despised for his youth, don't do anything to act like
a child. That's what he's saying. Do nothing to come across like
a child. but mature. See, this is the
point. Now, this is important. It doesn't
take very much for you and I to lose our witness. It doesn't
take very much for men to see something that you do or say
or post or whatever and cause them to not hear you. It doesn't
take much at all. Sooner or later, if a pastor
or somebody that's used to teach in God's church, he and his wife
can't do what everybody else does. They just can't. It'll
ruin the man. as far as being somebody people
are here. It'll ruin him. Absolutely ruin
him. Sooner or later you'll find it
out because the Word of God rebukes. You could just be preaching and
not even intending to rebuke anybody and the Word of God rebukes.
And when that happens, sooner or later they're going to take
that thing and throw it back at you. And we don't want to
ever do anything to bring reproach on the name of the Lord. Nothing.
That's the thing. And we don't want to do anything
to cause others to justify their sin because they see us doing
it. And you men who preach, you be
careful what you do, be careful what you post, be careful about
things like that because it's so easy, it's so easy to lose. You preach the same word just
as faithfully, but because of that thing, They won't hear you.
So Paul's exhortation to the church here though is that brethren,
those who are being ministered to, they should always defend
Christ's minister from those who would despise Him for any
reason. That's what he's saying there. Let no man despise Him.
There are going to be some that are probably going to try to
exalt themselves over Timothy because he's young. And they
think they're wise old sages, been around forever in the gospel.
And He said, now you that are faithful at Corinth, He said,
you don't let anybody despise Him. You defend Him and you protect
Him. That's what we are to do for
faithful ministers. God said this in the Word, we
know they're men, they're just men, and they're not to be exalted.
But God says this to us in His Word. He says, We beseech you,
brethren, to know them which labor among you, and are over
you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very
highly in love for their work's sake, and be at peace among yourselves. Defend them. Alright? Look at
this next thing. This falls under the same heading
of caring for the minister. Look, verse 11. but conduct him
forth in peace that he may come unto me, for I look for him with
the brethren." He said, when he leaves, let him know you are
thankful for him and provide whatever he needs for his travels
and, you know, send him on his way. And when you read passages
like that, and I have thought about this, You think about the
very fact this is God's Word. This is God's inspired Word. This is not just Paul, you know,
he's preached what God gave him and written what God gave him.
Now he's just saying something on his own. This is God's Word
too, just like everything else he wrote. And when you know that,
you realize this is God telling me how to provide for my brethren. And as you think about that,
understand this is how God's providing for you. He is putting
this word in the heart of His people. And His people are going
to hear it, and by His grace, by His effectual work and power,
they are going to heed what He is saying. And that is going
to be provision for you. This is God caring for His church,
taking care of His people, and in doing so, providing for you
individually. Now everything God uses here,
everything He says here, everything God gave Paul to speak here is
for the peaceful church family. That's what it's for, every bit
of it. So we can hear the gospel, so we can behold Christ our righteousness,
so we can be at peace with one another. That's the point of
everything He's saying here. So this is good for the church.
Everything He's saying is needful and it's good for the church.
God is always at all times providing for His people. In a word like
this right here, He is providing for His people. Now lastly, again
I want you to just think about this as I end the message here,
but God provides just what we need even in the particular man
that He sends to minister to us. There were some there that were
angry that Apollos wasn't coming. and they were the last ones that
needed to hear Apollos preaching. God didn't send Apollos there
for a reason, because they didn't need him. They were glorying
in the man, they weren't glorying in Christ. And so, God prevented
him from being there. Apollos was an older man, Apollos
was eloquent, and seems to be well-educated. Everything that
a Grecian would find very appealing, but it was all outward fleshly
stuff. And so God didn't send him there. Whatever it was, whatever
the reason was, it was God ruling it and God didn't send him there.
And it appears, if you read the scriptures, that God didn't allow
Timothy to end up going there either. He sent Titus there. Why did he not allow Timothy
to go after all this was said and he sent Titus there? Because
what was said was applied to Titus the same as it applied
to Timothy, the same as it applied to Paul or Apollos. But Titus
was the man for the time. He was the right man for the
time. And that's what God's doing. If you read the second letter
to the Corinthians, you're going to see that they still had a
lot of trouble. There were still troublemakers
there and there were still people stirring the pot and causing
trouble there. You're going to have that. You're
going to have that. But there was also some of God's
people there. And they heard it. They heard
what Paul wrote, what God delivered to them, and what Titus preached
to them. They heard it. And they sought to keep peace.
They sought to make it a place where Christ could be exalted
and honored and there'd be no distractions from Him. And that's
the whole thing. That's the whole point. And when
you hear that, you know this, God's going to bless His people. He is going to provide for His
people. You could be in the midst of a... Well, you were up here
in the midst of it. You were up here all scattered
about different places trying to get crumbs everywhere you
could get them. And God is going to eventually provide for His
people. He chose us freely by His grace. You would not think
that He would continue to provide for us by grace. He sent His
own Son for us, for His people. He gave His life for His people,
He's going to provide, He's provided us everything we need to enter
in God's presence, holy and just and acceptable to God. No other
way God could receive us but in Christ. And if He's provided
that, He will bless us and provide for us in this world. And He's
going to do it through the preaching of the gospel. His church is
a necessary means that God has chosen to use. It is an amazing
body when you look at it and how God put us together for the
purpose of preaching the Word. Because that is how He is going
to call others. And when He makes you see how valuable that Gospel
is and how God saved you through the preaching of the Word, He
is going to make His people valuable to you and the preaching of the
Word valuable to you so that you will lay aside whatever is
meaningless and insignificant and petty because you have to
have that Gospel. And that's how he keeps his people
together. And he uses all the trouble and
all the people that would cause strife that come and go and all
that. He uses every bit of that. The preacher wouldn't get the
word he gets if it wasn't for that. And the people wouldn't
see God working in their life if it wasn't for that. After
everything is said and done, and if it was any other kind
of organization, it would have splintered and fell apart, but
God keeps it together. because he's planting that word
in the people's heart and they see what's needful is Christ.
And whatever it is that's offended me or whatever, who am I? It's
not really that important. I'm just exalting myself to think
that they ought not to look at me that way or they ought to
value my opinion more or they ought to heed what I say. So
what? So what? And so you lay it aside
because you've got to hear the gospel. That's an amazing thing
God's doing. See, He's teaching us through
this. And He's teaching us that this gospel we hear, the doctrine,
the teaching we hear is real. It's life. It's Christ working
in our midst. And it makes you thankful for
the Word and for the gospel and for your brethren. So, I encourage
you, brethren, when you read about those peacemakers in the
midst of the church, doesn't that make you want to be the
peacemaker? is our peacemaker. He makes his people want to keep
peace. We don't want to. It costs far
too much to create peace between us and God. The precious blood
of God's own Son. It costs too much to create that
peace to let anything endanger that unity of the Spirit. And
so we endeavor to keep it because for Christ's sake, for Christ's
sake, we need him and we need our brethren. Alright, let's
go to the Lord. Our God and our Father, we thank
you for causing us to get hung up on
a passage of scripture that we would otherwise just read over.
We thank you for showing us that the Word is important. Every
word is important. that there's something there
to show us our needfulness of Christ and His provision for
His people. Lord, make us to be helpers,
fellow laborers. Make us to be ministers to one
another and ministers to Your ministers. And make us, Lord,
to be faithful to Your Word, to the gospel of Christ, and truly make us see that there's
nothing else that's important. Make us lay aside whatever comes
between us and the gospel. And Lord, we ask this in all
your churches. We ask you keep your people as you always do
and teach your ministers that may be laboring and having some
hard times and trouble. Make them to hear that you're
using everything about that to help them and teach them and
keep them and instruct them and exalt Christ. And so, Lord, keep
the peace. We thank you for peace. Peace
is such a good thing. Thank you for sending your son,
our peacemaker. It's in his precious name we
ask these things, Lord. Amen.