Alright brethren, let's turn
to 1 Corinthians chapter 3. My subject tonight is God will
do it. God will do it. Now, it will
help us understand our text, I believe, if we see the application
that the Holy Spirit gives. This is not a man-made application. This is the application the Holy
Spirit gives us at the end of our text. So if we see this from
the beginning, it'll open the Scripture to us. It opened it
up to me. So we're going to jump ahead just a minute. I'm going
to read you three passages here. And this is the... I'm going
to end with these three applications. But let's read these first. 1 Corinthians 3.18. Now this
is the lesson Paul is working towards. This is what he is going
to teach us. 1 Corinthians 3.18. Let no man
deceive himself. He talked to me. I don't want to deceive myself
and you don't deceive yourself. What does he mean? If any man
among you seemeth to be wise in this world, we think we got
some fleshly wisdom, let him become a fool. that he may be
wise. Fall down at Christ's feet. He's our wisdom and we've got
to trust Him rather than our wisdom. And then look down at
verse 21. Therefore let no man glory in
men for all things are yours. And he lists some things there.
And what you'll see in those things he lists there is even
some of those things seem bad. Stammering Paul. eloquent Apollos,
impetuous Peter, life, death, the world. But even if it seems
bad to you, He's saying, remember, even the error, and even the
bad things, and even the things that appear to you to be all
out of order, God's working all those things for you. That's
what He says to His people. And then look down at 1 Corinthians
4-5. Therefore, judge nothing before the time." Don't be hasty
to judge a brother or sister in Christ. Don't be hasty to
do that. Look, before the time. When's the time? Till the Lord
come. We're not talking about just
necessarily when He returns the second time. We're talking about
when he comes in the gospel, and when he comes in trial, and
when he comes in providence, the Lord is going to come and
minister to his people, right now, where we are. And he says,
who he will both bring to light the hidden things of darkness,
he will do it, and he'll make manifest the counsel of the hearts.
Can you do that? No. And I can't do that. So we
wait on the Lord. And He says, and then shall every
believer, every true man have praise of God. Praise from God. Alright, now. Here's the point. We're quick to put our hands
to God's work. Especially now when it comes
to God's preacher. When it comes to God's brethren. Our brethren. And when we're
surprised, we get surprised by a sour note. You know, a man
can be a true preacher and preach something and you go, that don't
quite sound right. And yet he'd be a true preacher.
We're talking about God's preachers, true preachers. And the same
is true of brethren. They can do something sometimes
you think, that don't look like a believer. And sadly, we're
quick. Quick. We might have known the
brother for years and were quick to make him an offender just
for a word, he said. Remember when Christ was walking
along with Philip? Been with him for all that time. Ministered to him. He'd seen
all those miracles. He'd done all that stuff. Christ! And Philip said, if you'd show
us the Father. And Christ turned and looked
at him and said, Philip, have I been with you this long and
you don't know me? Now, it's a good thing to do,
as the Apostle John said. The Apostle John said, try the
preachers by the Word of God. And he said this, Beloved, believe
not every spirit, but try the spirits, whether they are of
God, because many false prophets are going out into this world.
Don't just take any preacher's word. Take it to the Word of
God and see, is he preaching the truth? That's a good thing.
But it's a bad thing when we're quick to make our judgment and
our condemnation, pronouncing a true faithful brother as a
false preacher or as false brethren. That's wrong. To do that quickly. Simply because they sounded a
brief few sour notes, or because they made a few errors in judgment,
or because we just don't like something about the way they
preach. You see, that's what was going on at Corinth. Exactly
what was happening at Corinth. When we do that, we do three
things. We make ourselves to be wiser than Christ our wisdom. We got more wisdom. Two, we glory
in men. We glory in ourselves. We glory
in others. We glory in what we bring to
pass. Rather than glorying in Christ and knowing whatever this
is that's going on, He's doing it for my good and His glory.
This prophet is right now. Even overruling the error, He's
doing it. And number three, we make ourselves
the judge. We put ourselves in Christ's
judgment seat and we hastily judge the matter before the time. Now we're going to see later
there is a time to judge. Paul said, I've determined already
at one point. But it was after he waited till
Christ made it clear. And that's what we're talking
about here, not being hasty to take sides and all this kind
of stuff. Now, if the whole building, here's
the point, if the whole building is going to be a spiritual building,
which the church of God is His temple, and if the whole building
is going to be spiritual, it's got to all be built by Christ,
on Christ, through the gospel of Christ. That means I can't
build it, you can't build it, we can't, you know, it's got
to be Christ that builds it. Every stone in the temple's got
to be laid by Christ, through the Holy Spirit, corrected by
Christ, put in place, kept, grown by Christ. It's got to be all
done by Christ. And therefore, everything that's
of our sinful nature, our self-wisdom, our self-glorying, and our self-condemnation,
everything that's of our flesh has got to be burned up. We've
got to see that everything that we build of our flesh, Christ's
going to destroy it. It won't profit us. In this world,
in the church, wherever, it won't profit us. He's going to burn
it up if it comes between us and Him. He's going to do it
so that Christ might be all. He might be our wisdom, our righteousness,
our sanctification, our redemption. And He's going to do it that
we may be made to trust Christ in everything. Trust Him in all
things, in time, in everyday things, in His church, and for
all eternity. Now, let's go back and review
just a minute. Whatever any believer does which
is honoring to Christ, whatever a believer, be it a preacher,
be it the Lord's people, we're talking about true believers
now, whatever any of us do that's honoring to Christ, whether we're
laying the foundation or building on the foundation, it's all by
the grace of God. Look here at verse 10. According
to the grace of God which is given unto me, Paul said. Verse
10. According to the grace of God
which is given unto me, as a wise master builder, as the first
one, the first builder, I laid the foundation. Now God laid
the foundation, Christ is the foundation, but he sent Paul,
and Paul through preaching the gospel, God laid the foundation
in their hearts. That's what he's talking about.
And look, and by the same grace of God that's given, another
builds thereon. That's what he's saying. So,
we don't have any room to glory in men. You can't glory in me.
I can't glory in you. We can't glory in the flesh.
It's of God. It's God's building. God gives
the increase. So then Paul gives a warning. Now watch verse 10.
But let every man take heed how he buildeth their own. For other
foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus
Christ. Now let me simplify that as best I can. Paul is saying
Christ and Him crucified is the only message to be preached.
Period. The only message to be preached.
Christ and Him crucified. And then Christ is the one that
we must ask to bless the message Christ is the one we must wait
on to bless the message. It's Christ building. God gave
it all into his hand before the world began. God determined he's
going to have Christ have the preeminence. Above all, he's
going to get all the glory, all the praise, all the applause,
because the triune God, the glory of God's revealed in Christ,
and God's going to get all the glory. And so, Christ was chosen
and all His people were chosen in Christ to give Christ the
glory of election. Christ was the one that God predestinated
His people to be conformed unto. Christ is the one God sent forth
to work out righteousness for His people, to fulfill the law
for His people, to put the sin of His people away. Christ is
the one who successfully redeemed every individual particularly
loved child of God. You see, God is going to have
Christ have the preeminence. And then God raised Christ to
the right hand and gave Him the power over heaven and earth as
the God-man. He already had that power as
God, but He gave it to Him as God-man. And He gave it to Him
to be the head over all things to the church. to feel what needs
to be filled in his church, in his people, in his body. And so Christ is the one who
is going to send forth this gospel, and our heads are going to personally
work. When the Holy Spirit comes, He
prays the Father who sends the Holy Spirit, and when the Holy
Spirit comes, the Holy Spirit doesn't speak of Himself, He
comes to bear witness of Christ. And He regenerates His people,
and He brings us to faith in Christ. And then Christ effectually
keeps working in His people throughout all our days to constrain us
to follow Him and wait on Him and trust Him. Those are the
good works He'd have us to do, to look to Him and trust Him
in all our dealings with one another. And he's going to constrain
each of his people to do that. We may fall into error and he
might let us fall into error. To burn up all our efforts and
all our wisdom to show us he's the head and he's the wisdom.
But he's going to work that in you and constrain you to follow
him and trust him and wait on him and ask him. He's going to
do that by constantly showing you through faith what He's done
and what He's doing, so that you're constrained not by law,
not by I got to or I'm going to be punished, but by love,
by the love of Christ for you. So you see what I'm saying is
Christ is all and He's in all. And God's going to have it this
way because that's what God determined in Christ. So then, Christ must
have the preeminence in every message we preach, Christ must
have the preeminence in every doctrine we teach. Christ must
have the preeminence in every act of providence. That which
we look at, we think, that don't have anything to do with the
gospel. Yes, it does, because He's doing it all. You come here
to get your classroom work, Sarah, You go out there to get your
clinicals. That's where he's showing you, I'm really ruling
this thing. And I'm really working it. And
I'm working everything in Providence to teach you experimentally. And I'm the one doing the work.
You get it in theory, book knowledge right here. You don't get it
in reality, in this world. That's what he's doing. And he's
doing it. So we got to give him the glory and ever work. We don't
have any works to glory in. He gets the glory. We've got
to give Him the glory in every... He's got to have the glory in
every heart. He's got to be first in our heart, especially now
in our waiting on Him to build up His church. This is where
the world's gone off the wall. This is where the world's religion
has just said, we don't need Christ. We can build a church.
We get people to come in. We get a bunch of people to come
in. Just keep getting them to come, keep getting them to come.
Well, the mafia can get people to go to a casino. That's no
big deal. You know, you can get people
to do stuff that they want to do if you give them the stuff
they want to do. But if you just preach Christ, you've got to
wait on Christ to build it. That means in the errors, everything
is survived. You've got to wait on Christ
to do it. But now, what if a believer, what if he errs? What if he,
you know, this is a true believer we're talking about, a preacher
maybe, and he's in the area where I know what he's saying, that's
not right what he's saying. But he's so consistent, he's
been consistent for years, he just said something that's got
a few sire notes to it. What if a believer that's been
and walked in truth all these years, and all of a sudden he
does something that you think, Absurd! What if he forsakes his
brethren and his pastor? You know, you think, that's absurd.
What do you do about that? Christ, our sovereign God, our
sovereign head, shall bless and correct all his preachers and
all his people through his gospel in his time. And therefore, all
we do is preach Christ, support the preaching of Christ, pray
to Christ, wait on Christ, and give Christ all the glory. Now
let's see this. First of all, He teaches us here,
Christ our Head. This is the first point. Christ
our Head. Not me and not you. Christ our
Head will make manifest His true work while at the same time burning
up all our works of error. Christ is going to manifest His
true work in you individually as a believer. And He is going
to burn up our works that are of us. Now look here, verse 12. Now, if any man build upon this
foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble. Now everything you and I do as
God's true preacher and true people, everything that we do,
every one of you here that's been chosen, redeemed, called
by God, you're either building on this foundation by Christ of Christ, with Christ, building
Christ on this foundation, or we're building a fleshly structure. But all the time, every one of
us who believe are building on this foundation. Christ is the
only foundation. No other foundation can a man
lay. We're building on that foundation all the time in everything we
do constantly. Either truth, by God's grace
or error by our flesh. But we're building on it regardless.
Now he says here, any man. We're talking about God's true
preacher and God's true people. I'm going to show you this. He
says, any man. We're talking about believers
here. Because in a minute he's going to show you that though
a believer be an error, he's going to save him because he's
God's true child. We're talking about believers.
Chosen, of God, redeemed by Christ, regenerated by the Spirit, preserved
by God, God's true witnesses whether they're in the pulpit
or pew. He says if any man, when we're building on Christ our
foundation, He says we're either building gold, silver, and precious
stones. Now, what do these things represent?
This is by God's grace only. If you build gold, silver, precious
stones, it's God's grace only. Because this is of God. That's
what He's talking about. This is of God. By God's working,
by God's grace, by God's working, we're building doctrine on this
teaching. And the things that we're doing,
following Him, praying to Him, trusting Him, waiting on Him,
we're doing it from Christ the Rock Himself. You see, the gold
can't be consumed because it came... The gold, silver, precious
stones, these things come out of the rock. That's where they
come from. They come from the rock. They
come from Christ, the foundation. Gold, silver, precious stones.
So they can't be consumed by the fire. You know, if you take
gold and try to put it in a fire, in a furnace and try it, the
dross is going to fall away. That which is fleshly or earthy,
that's going to fall away, but not the gold, not the silver,
not the precious stone. That's going to remain. So, that's
what we're talking about. The gold, the silver, the precious
stone, that's all of Christ the foundation. But, when we build
upon Christ using wood, hay and stubble, it's of our flesh. It's of our vain wisdom. It's
of our vain strength. It's of our self-condemning old
fleshly man. That old sinner that's in the
believer. Things that... You look at wood,
hay and stubble. These things don't come from
a rock. Where do they come from? They don't come from Christ the
rock. They don't come from the... Wood, hay and stubble grows up
out of the earth. These are earthy things. And these are things
that can be consumed by fire. You put wood, hay, and stubble
in fire, it's going to go up. The gold, the silver, and the
precious stones won't. That's what he's showing us here.
These are the difference between things that can be burned and
things that can't. Now, let me illustrate what he's saying here,
and the illustration's right here. These true believers at
Corinth had been founded by Christ, on Christ, through the preaching
of Christ. We saw that in the second chapter. Preach nothing
to you, but Christ him crucified. They were founded by Christ,
on Christ, through the preaching of Christ. And they began well. They began bearing witness of
Christ. They began building on that foundation
with gold, silver, and precious stones from Christ the foundation. On Christ the foundation, from
Christ the rock. But, they began to turn to their
flesh. They began to find fault with
certain preachers. And they began to find fault
with certain brethren. And they began to talk about
it. And then they began to think, well, we can fix it. So they
began to create sides. And they began to get this one
on their side and that one on that side. They just created
division in the church is what they created. And they did this
saying they were doing it for the glory of God and for the
good of His people. But all they were doing was dividing
one another. Because they were quick to look to their wisdom,
quick to try to fix things, and quick to judge what was going
on, and quick to condemn. So what did Paul do? There you
got these people, they're building with wood and stuff, what's he
going to do? Surely he's going to go down there and he's going
to take the gloves off and let them have it. What's he doing? Paul's building with gold and
silver and precious stones. He's preaching the truth to them.
He's telling them, the only one that can fix this is Christ.
Christ is the only one that could have redeemed you. He's the only
one that went to the cross, put away your sin, redeemed you,
and brought you into God's holy presence and made a way for you
to have acceptance with God in God's holy presence at His right
hand right now. And by the same token, He's the
only one that can fix division in His church. Fact of the matter
is, for His true people, He's allowed the division there to
teach you. He's the only one that can fix
it. That's what Paul's teaching them. Now that is gold and silver
and precious stones. If Paul had come down there telling
them, now this is how you can jump in there real quick and
fix this. Now later he's going to show there's some things that
have to be, there's a man that's got to be removed because he's
causing trouble in the Corinthian church. There are some other
things that have got to be fixed, and he shows them that. But see
what he is saying here now, this all started because he is saying,
you were looking to you rather than to Christ. Now this is what
he is dealing with first. Not exalting one man over another,
but us all exalting Christ, waiting on Christ to do the work. Now
that is building with gold, silver, and precious stones. Now, here
is his point. Christ is going to correct His
own through this gospel. Look here at verse 13. Every man's work shall be made
manifest. Now again, we're talking about believers here. True child
of God. True children of God. Now this
might be God's true preacher that's followed into some erroneous
doctrine. Or he might be using some means
that aren't necessarily the best. It's just wood, hay, and stubble.
This might be God's people who's trying to erroneously condemn
one another over that. And that's error. That's error
when we don't wait on Christ to work it out. This might be
exalting one brother over another and trying to create sides or
all that. Or this might be people who are trusting Christ, exalting
Christ, and waiting on Christ. Either way, he said Christ is
going to make it manifest. If you start trying to separate
the wheat and the tares, what's going to happen? We're going
to tear up the wheat, pull up the wheat, and leave the tares.
So he's saying Christ will do it. That's the key to notice
here. God's going to do it. That's what he keeps saying.
God will do it. Now look here. He's going to
make every man's work manifest in the day Christ comes forth
in the fiery trial. Look at verse 13. Every man's
work should be made manifest for the day. What day is that? It's the day, it's the hour that
Christ makes himself known in the heart. Christ was going to
make Himself known and He's going to declare it, because it shall
be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every man's work
of what sort it is. Look over Malachi 3. I want you
to be sure to get this. When we talk about the fire here,
the trial here, Christ is the fire. Christ is the fire. Either it's Christ getting all
the glory, Christ being the head, Christ being the wisdom, Christ
being righteousness, Christ being holiness, Christ being redemption.
But whatever it is that is rubbing against a man's fleshly desires
to have that glory, Christ the fire is going to burn it up if
he's truly God's. Now watch this. How is he going
to do it? He's going to send his preacher.
How is he doing it in the Corinthian church? He sent Paul to preach
this to them. to write this to him, and Paul's writing this
to him before he goes there and preaches to him. And exactly, it's exactly
what he was doing here in this church. And then Christ's going
to come forth in the message, in the message, and He's going
to come into the heart of His child. And Christ's the fire. He's going to try every man's
work of what sort it is. Whether it's of Him, gold, silver,
precious stones, or whether it's of our flesh, wood, hay, and
stubble. Christ's going to try it. He's going to try it. Now,
we apply Malachi 3. Now let me say this. We apply
Malachi 3 to when before Christ came the first time, He sent
John the Baptist, and then He prepared the way, and then Christ
came to His temple. But this is true right now. If you're in the midst of a trial,
and you're Christ, and you're leaning to your wisdom, and your
understanding, and you're judging your brethren, and what have
you, you're building with wood, hay, and stubble. And it might
be this message that Christ has sent, but he sent forth his preacher
to prepare the way and then Christ coming into his temple. And he's
going to fix it. But he'll do it, we won't do
it. Watch this, Malachi 3.1, Behold, I will send my messenger,
and he shall prepare the way before me. That's what I'm trying
to do tonight is prepare the way for him Trying to pick up
the stones get the stones out of the way everything that's
prohibiting us from seeing Christ Look and the Lord whom you seek
shall suddenly come to his temple What are you believer? You're
his temple What is his church where his temple The Lord will
come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom
you delight in. Behold, he shall come, saith
the Lord of hosts. But who may abide at the day
of his coming? And who shall stand when he appears?
For he is like a refiner's fire." You know what a refiner's fire
is? The refiner, you see those Pittsburgh boiling refineries? Where they're making that steel?
They're boiling that stuff and it's hot and it's molten coming
out of there. They're getting rid of the dross. So this is
nothing but the purity there. He's that refining fire. He's
like fuller soap that purges the stain. He shall sit as a
refiner and a purifier of silver. And He shall purify the sons
of Levi. Oh, He's not going to purify
everybody, but He's going to purify everybody He's made a
priest. That's what the sons of Levi are. Everybody He's made
a priest to God, He's going to purify us, brethren. "...and
purge you as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the
Lord an offering through faith in Christ our righteousness."
That's how we offer an offering in righteousness. We come to
God trusting Christ only. So you see what he's saying?
So from Christ, not from us, every believer is going to receive
a reward according to what each believer used to build on Christ.
Now understand what this means. Understand what this means. Remember
when he said back up there, every man shall receive his own reward
according to his own labor. What he's saying is, we're going
to reap what we sow. Quite simply. Watch, verse 14. If any man's work abide which
he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. Why? Because it's by God's grace.
It's not of us. It's by God's grace. It's to
God's glory alone. Because this believer built with
Christ. This believer stayed on Christ.
He trusted Christ. He didn't look from Christ. He
preached Christ. He waited on Christ. He bore
witness of Christ. He trusted Christ to make it
effectual. He never wavered from Christ. And the only way you
do that, brethren, is by Christ working in you. And now this
could be said just of our true man and our old man. The true
man, his works going to abide because he stayed on Christ.
But look at this. What's his reward then? He going
to receive a reward? What's his reward? Christ receives
all the glory for the work. You couldn't give me a better
reward to see Christ get all the glory? What am I striving
for when I'm preaching? I'm striving to... I want to
see Christ work in your heart so that all you do is praise
Him for being your righteousness and wisdom and holiness and redemption.
That'd be my greatest reward. His reward is Christ is their
one foundation. And Christ has saved His people. through their bearing witness
and their support in the gospel and their whatever. And Christ
made his building to stand. And in addition, Christ saved
that believer himself. All that's his reward, it's all
of Christ. It's Christ himself. But the
child of God. Now we're talking about a child
of God. Stay with me now. The child of God who turns to
using his own fleshly efforts. And we do this. You do this and
I do this. Turn to using fleshly ideas and
fleshly efforts and fleshly means and things like that. Christ
is going to save him. We're talking about an elect,
chosen, redeemed, regenerated child of God. Christ is going
to save him. He's not going to let him perish. But, Christ is
going to save him by fire. Christ is going to burn up all
of his fame works. And that's going to be painful. But he's
going to destroy it all, the wood, hay and the stubble. Look
at verse 15. If any man's work shall be burned,
he shall suffer loss. But he himself shall be saved,
yet so is the fire. You see that? So, if I'm sowing
with Christ, but by God's grace, and waiting on Christ by God's
grace, that's going to last. That's going to stand the fire.
But my old fleshly man that wants to build with the flesh, Christ
is going to burn that up. He is going to burn that up.
That's right. And how is He going to save that
man? Well, when He burns up, you know, we go and we spend all this money to get our
kids in college and get them a job and do all these things
and all this stuff and just take them away from the gospel. Well,
if they are gods, God will burn it all up. Everything we've done
in good intentions, trying to help him out, he'll burn it all,
slap to the ground, that that child might be under the gospel.
It might go against all our intentions, everything the mother and the
father wanted, everything we hoped for. God's going to put
that child where He'd have him hear the gospel and trust Christ.
Whether it's against what you wanted to build or what, He can
burn it up. And then we're going to be saved
that way, and our child's going to be saved that way, but yet
it's going to be by fire. because he had to burn it up.
It would be painful. I've experienced that. I was going to be a believer
and try to serve the world. And it was painful when God burnt
that up. But He burnt it up. He saved
me by fire and burnt it up. You see what I'm saying? You
get what I'm saying? He's going to turn that child back to Christ.
He's going to turn him back to the Gospel. He's going to bring
him down to Christ's feet. He's going to make him see there's
nothing else more important in this world than Christ. That's
what he's going to do. But do you see the main point
here? Christ does it. Christ does it. Not you and me. Christ does it. And he does it
using gold, silver, precious stone. Looking to Christ, speaking
of Christ, asking Christ to bless it, waiting on Christ, and anything
else is wood, hay and stubble. It's me and you trying to make
something happen by us. And he won't have that. Now let
me be very careful, very brief, real quick. I could stop now,
but I just want to show you this. Secondly, what if a man is indeed
false, false preacher, false believer, and he's attempting
to defile Christ's church? He's attempting to separate it
and divide it and all that. Same message. God and not you,
and not me. He'll take care of that. Look
here, verse 16. Know ye not that ye are the temple
of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man
defiles, if he's trying to destroy the temple of God, him, here's
the key word, shall God destroy him. Don't you get out your shotgun
and try to shoot him down. God will take care of him. God
will take care of him. For the temple of God is holy,
which temple you are. How did we become holy? God's
building by God's grace. by Christ's blood, by God's blood,
by the Holy Spirit dwelling in you, that's how you're God's
temple. So if God did all that to make
you His temple, when you were just a dead, defiled, nothing
sinner, now that He separates you out and dwells in you, made
you His own temple, He's going to do everything to keep you
holy, keep you separate and provide for you. Now, I want to just
read these three applications again. So then, hearing this,
how does that strike you and me? Here you go. Number one,
let's don't deceive ourselves. You know when we get into a conflict,
don't we exalt our wisdom? This is what they ought to do.
We know it all when we get into an argument with somebody or
a conflict. Look at this. Let no man deceive himself. 1
Corinthians 3.18. Let no man deceive himself. If
any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him
become a fool that he may be wise. Why? For the wisdom of
this world is foolishness with God. You're going to use this
world's wisdom? That's foolishness with God.
Look, for it's written, he who? God. God takes the wise in their
own craftiness. I can't. He does. And look at
this. And again, the Lord knows. You
don't. I don't. The Lord knows the thoughts
of the wise at their vein. You see that? So let's just be
a fool at Christ's feet trusting Christ our wisdom. Here's number
two. Don't glory in men. Don't glory in your flesh or
in other men's flesh. But know this. Everything God's
doing right now Good or bad is for His people in this world. Look at that. 1 Corinthians 3.21,
Therefore let no man glory in men, for all things are yours. You see that? All the paula,
paula, cephas, the world, life, death, things present, things
to come, all are yours. All of those things don't look
good. They don't appear good to us, naturally speaking. That's
what he's saying. Whether it's a man who you think
is stammering and stuttering around like Paul, or it's a man
you think is too eloquent like Apollos, or it's a man like Cephas
who's too impetuous, or it's the world. You see a lot of good
in the world? Everything happening in the world
is happening just for his people. Exactly. Because it has to happen
this way. Because God determined it. Sin
and all. Or life or death. Are things
present or things to come? All yours. And you're Christ.
And Christ is God. And here's number three. Wait
on the Lord Jesus to judge and to correct. He's going to show
up. It's His church. He bought it. He sent the preacher. He gathered
the people. He's going to be there. And He'll do the work.
Look at this, verse 5, 1 Corinthians 4, 5. Therefore, judge nothing
before the time until the Lord come. Wait on the Lord to make
it clear. Who both will bring to light
the hidden things of darkness. He's the only light. And He'll
make manifest the counsel of the hearts. Isn't that what He
said? He's the Word who makes known hidden parts of the heart. You see men come and they sit
down and they want to hear the gospel. Oh, I love, man, you preaching
my gospel. And they sit there a little while.
The next thing you know, they want to take your head off. What
happened? Christ made manifest the heart.
See, the message hasn't changed. The message has been the same
as they were saying they rejoiced in before. But it got to be old
stale bread to them. Just manifest the heart. What
if it's a preacher who's in error? Wait on Christ. What if it's a brother in error?
Wait on Christ. Even his error. Is God working
for your good? And He's showing you He'll make
it known in time and He'll show you what the right thing to do
is. So we wait on Him. You know,
He says there, watch this, He says, you'll make manifest the
counsel of the heart, then shall every man have praise of God. You know, if we try to fix things
and we try to be hasty in our judgment and our wisdom and all
our self-wood, hay and stubble, take matters into our own hands,
you know, we always do, we create division and we create sorrow
and sadness. Families are divided, brethren
are divided, all that kind of stuff. That's what we create.
But, if by God's grace, Christ makes us wait on Him. Christ
is going to cause His true people to wait on Him. And when He does
that, it's another one of those cases. It's all by His grace.
It's by His working. It's by His burning up our wood,
hay and stubble. It's by Him making us sit down
and wait on Him. And God's going to say, well
done. You're going to have praise of
God. Which one you want? Division? Sorrow? Sadness? That's
the flesh. Or wait on Christ and have God
say, well done. I want the latter. I want the
latter. That's what Christ will get us.
He'll do it. God will do it. Amen. Let's stand together. Father,
thank You for Your Word. Thank You that You give it to
us and You minister to us and You make it effectual in our
hearts. Just constantly burning up our
wood and our hay and our stubble. Constantly giving us these unsearchable
riches in Christ, making us to rest on this foundation. And
Lord, we pray that you would keep doing that in each of us
with our old man and our new man. We pray that you'd do it
anytime that we turn and look to our flesh and our strength.
We pray that you would do it in the heart of some needy sinner
that doesn't know you. You're doing it right. We just
need to be made to see that. Rest in You. Forgive us, Lord,
of our hastiness. Forgive us of our self-wisdom,
our self-condemning. Forgive us of being hasty. Make
us wait on You. We ask it in Christ's name, for
Your glory and honor. Amen.