When You Come Together

I Corinthians 14:26-40

Good morning and welcome!  It is a blessing to be together as a body of believers.  God has been gracious to us in so many ways that it is difficult to properly understand and express gratitude for all He’s done for us.

I am thankful to God for you His saints, His holy ones.  I am thankful for the opportunity to gather together.  We have the means to gather.  We have safety when gathered.  We have a place to gather.  We have abundantly more than we can ask or imagine.  Sometimes, I wonder what the saints of the first century church would think if they could see us now.  The chairs you sit on are comfortable.  Just the fact that you have chairs at all is a luxury even today.  Our stomachs are filled.  If there is anyone here who didn’t eat breakfast, it was because you chose not to, not because you didn’t have something to eat.  We have musical instruments and musicians to play them.  We have more Bibles here than there are people.  Everyone here can read.  Everyone can hear and see.  I fail to be properly grateful most of the time.  May we make time to be thankful each day.  Let’s give thanks now as we come together …

Signs & Secrets

1 Corinthians 14:6-25

Welcome! Today, as promised last week, we will really delve into the main body of I Corinthians Chapter 14 and explore the meaning of the gifts, especially prophecy and speaking in tongues. I’ve got a huge amount of ground to cover today. It is critical that we see the passage in context, so I am going to go back to I Cor. 12:7, going through to today’s passage, with brief comments as we go.

Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good. To one there is given through the Spirit a message of wisdom, to another a message of knowledge by means of the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healing by that one Spirit, to another miraculous powers, to another prophecy, to another distinguishing between spirits, to another speaking in different kinds of tongues, and to still another the interpretation of tongues. All these are the work of one and the same Spirit, and He distributes them to each one, just as He determines. – I Cor. 12:7-11

The Way of Love

 1 Corinthians 14:1-5

Welcome! Today we continue on in our series of I Corinthians. For the next two weeks we will discuss I Corinthians Chapter 14 which primarily deals with the gifts of tongues and prophecy. At the outset, let me say that Christians, mature believers, have had a pretty wide spectrum of beliefs about how to properly understand and interpret this chapter. My approach this week and next will be, as best I can, while giving an overview of this range of interpretations, to really try to look at this chapter in the context of the rest of I Corinthians and in context with the rest of Scripture.

In order to get that context, I want to go back to Chapters 12 and 13, because there is some key content in these chapters that will really help us as we seek to understand Chapter 14. Going to verse 4 of Chapter 12,

There are different kinds of gifts, but the same Spirit distributes them. There are different kinds of service, but the same Lord. There are different kinds of working, but in all of them and in everyone it is the same God at work. – I Cor. 12:4-6

This is one of what I think are the two main themes of Chapter 12 – there are lots of ways God supernaturally equips and empowers believers, but they are all given by the one and only true God. This is also the primary point in the following verses:

The Persistence of Love

I Corinthians 13:7-13

Good morning!  It is so wonderful to gather and praise God together, isn’t it?  He is worthy of praise. 

Why is God worthy of praise? 

2 Samuel 22:4 says He is worthy because He saves us. Psalm 48:1 says He is worthy because of the good things He has done. Psalm 96:4 says He is worthy because He is real, He made the heavens and the earth, He is holy, He reigns. Psalm 145:3 says He is worthy because of His greatness which no one can fathom.

Of course, there are lots of reasons to praise God, not least of which is God’s persistence.

True Love

1 Corinthians 13:5-6

I would like to open to the book of Dabo chapter 35 verse 31. And Dabo saith, “Let the light inside of you shine brighter than the light shining on you.”

Now for our real passage, I Corinthians 13:5-6:

[Love] is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.

Paul isn’t saying that we need to follow these rules in order to complete the task of loving others. He’s just showing that the foundational reason for exercising spiritual gifts is to love others. Love is more difficult and less “shiny” than the brand new spiritual gifts that the Corinthian believers were experiencing. I don’t think the list in 1 Corinthians 13 is an exhaustive list of what love is. Paul is listing qualities of love that were in contrast to the way the church in Corinth was exercising their spiritual gifts. Apparently, they had been rude, self-seeking, easily angered, etc.

The Most Excellent Way

1 Corinthians 13:1-4

Welcome! Today we are beginning our series entitled Of First Importance which, over the next few months, takes us through I Corinthians 13-16. Viewed another way, this is the conclusion of our earlier series Broken but Indispensable which took us through the first 12 chapters; this series took place last year from May through early October. With the Christmas season approaching, we chose to do a shorter series on worship and then pick up I Corinthians this year so that we wouldn’t feel rushed through the incredibly rich and dense material that we see in the latter part of I Corinthians. We wanted to take our time so that the content would really sink in, so that we would have time to really explore the practical applications of the material.

Signs of Christian Maturity

And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ.—Ephesians 4:11-13 (NASB)

Today’s message is going to be centered on verse 13:

Until we all attain unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs to the fullness of Christ. 

More specifically, this message is going to focus on the signs and indicators that we can look at to determine if we are maturing spiritually.

Not Just Another Christmas

Merry Christmas and Welcome!  Today we will have something a little bit unusual (at least for Clemson Community Church).  We’re going to have a message which is not part of an ongoing series.  It’s not that this has never happened before, but I would say that it only occurs a couple of times a year at the most.

Today’s title for the message is “Not Just Another Christmas.”  On Thursday, Carl and I were joking around a little bit about how slight changes by omitting a word or varying your inflection when reading the title significantly changes its meaning.

Us: Die

Welcome! Today we come to the final message in our relatively short series on worship. I’m not sure what the people in the cars driving by the church all week thought about the message title – “Worship:  Die”. I want to get to the meaning of our title today, the subject of our message, in a roundabout way. I want to start by reading excerpts from one of my favorite stories, “The Golden Key” by George MacDonald. My great challenge is to not give up on the message altogether and just read you this story, to only tell the little parts that directly relate to this message. 

For those of you that haven’t heard of George MacDonald, he was a Scottish author, poet, and Christian minister who lived from 1824 to 1905. He is probably best known for his fantasy literature and for the fact that C.S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll both credit him as one of their most important influences. Indeed, if you read the Narnia books of Lewis and also read enough of MacDonald’s fantasies, you will see how Lewis was definitely inspired by MacDonald and even “borrowed” some of his imagery for his own works. Similarly, you can see MacDonald when you go down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass with Carroll.

Us: Bow

“Sing and Tremble.” I am very excited about this series on worship, so I’m sorry to have missed so many of the messages. Worship is such an important concept for us to understand and apply in our lives. Worship is actually fundamental to living as a Christian, because its purpose and practice go to the very heart of our relationship with God. We were created to worship – and that is what we as believers will be doing for eternity in heaven. One of the quotes that Carl put in his introduction to the series is from Don McMinn: “Our entire being is fashioned as an instrument of praise.” So worship is something that is built into us as human beings. Everyone worships something. Some of the most intense worship experiences I have seen since moving to Clemson have been at football games. It might sound a little crass, but many people here worship football.

Worship is usually defined in terms of a ritual or response associated with reverence and adoration – of something. There must be an object of worship. But worship is more than just expressing our love for something. It is more than just cheering at the football game or singing songs in church. Worship is defined by priority. The true worshipers of football are the ones who are out there cheering on the team, regardless of the weather, paying whatever it takes, going wherever they need to. To make something a priority means giving up other things. Therefore, worship implies sacrifice. You have to give up something to be a true worshiper. You choose to make the object of your worship more important than other things in your life.