Take your Bibles with me and turn to 1 Corinthians 4. 1 Corinthians 4.

I told you when we started this series that 1 Corinthians is probably the most corrective book in the New Testament. Paul is dealing with error, and he doesn't hold back. This is probably the harshest book in the New Testament.

If that is true, than chapter 4 is probably the harshest chapter in this generally harsh book. Most of this chapter is one long sarcastic rebuke - it's intention is to shake the Corinthians out of their pride and help them to see Christianity as it really is.

Let's go ahead and read verses 1-13 tonight.

[!bible] 1 Corinthians 4:1-13 - KJV

1. Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.
2. Moreover it is required in stewards, that a man be found faithful.
3. But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you, or of man’s judgment: yea, I judge not mine own self.
4. For I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified: but he that judgeth me is the Lord.
5. Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord come, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.
6. And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye 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.
7. For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?
8. Now ye are full, now ye are rich, ye have reigned as kings without us: and I would to God ye did reign, that we also might reign with you.
9. For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.
10. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised.
11. Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace;
12. And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it:
13. Being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.

One of the biggest problems that the Corinthians had was that they worshipped preachers. They pitted their celebrity preachers against each other. And they really looked down on Paul - who was their founding pastor.

Apparently, Paul wasn't what the world would call impressive. Nothing we read about the apostle Paul leads us to believe that he was handsome, or that he was tall, or that he was super eloquent. or that he was rich. He seemed to have physical handicaps and seems to not have been a great public speaker.

And so the Corinthians despised him. He wasn't what they were looking for. They wanted someone who they could be proud of. They wanted someone respectable.

And this showed a total misunderstanding of what being a minister for God is all about.

If I were to summarize this section of 1 Corinthians I would do it like this:

God intended Christian ministers to be servants, stewards, spectacles, and sufferers - not sources of human pride.

Let's walk through this passage and break that down and think about how we can fall into the same traps in our modern churches.

I think we can break this into four points:

• God intended for Christian ministers to be servants and stewards
• God intended for Christian ministers to be spectacles
• God intended for Christian ministers to be sufferers.
• God never intended Christian ministers (or any other part Christianity) to build up human pride.

Let's pray and we'll jump into this.

The first point I want us to look at comes from verse 1

[!bible] 1 Corinthians 4:1 - KJV

1. Let a man so account of us, as of the ministers of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God.

So the first thing we see here is...

1. God intended for Christian ministers to be servants and stewards

Paul is saying here "this is how you need to think of us." Who is "us?" It is Paul and Apollos, the two different pastors of that church at this point. And Paul says you need to think of us number one like ministers.

That word minister is an interesting word. It is not the normal word for slave. It is a word that was used for people on a galley ship. Those ships usually had different levels, and the bottom level was where the rowers were. (If you've seen Ben Hur, then you can picture this.)

And so this word means "under rower" and it came to mean just anyone who was in a subservient position. So Paul is saying, you need to understand, we are just servants, we are just rowers, we are just in a subservient position. We are "ministers of Christ."

The second word Paul uses to describe himself and Apollos here is "stewards."

A steward was a house manager. They were in charge of the master's goods. They were still a servant. They were still a slave. But they were a slave with some responsibility and usually some authority over lower slaves.

So Paul is saying "we are just servants, and we are managers of the mysteries of God."

We are just taking care of this for someone else - it isn't ours. We don't get any credit and we don't get to treat it like our own.

So making a big deal about a Christian minister is about like making a big deal about a valet parking attendant. Whoa, did you see that car he was driving. Wow.

Yeah, but it isn't his car. He's just a lowly employee and if he starts acting like its his car - he's going to be in big trouble. And if you make a big deal about the valet, you are missing the point. You should be impressed with the driver.

Listen, as your pastor, I get to work with the "mysteries of God." I think that just means God's word. God's truth. I get to manage it and dispense it. And that is an awesome privilege. But it isn't mine. If I teach you anything of value - it's the word that does it, not me. If I mess with the word, then I'm in trouble.

I've always loved the way John MacArthur describes being a preacher. I am a waiter not a chef. My job is to get the mysteries of God from the Bible and bring them to you - but I am not the creator. God is.

So the important thing in being a servant and a steward is that we are faithful - faithful to who? Faithful to God. Faithful to the master.

I think what Paul was saying here is "If you want to judge me, ok. But the only judgment that really matters is my boss. I don't work for you."

So the first thing this passage teaches us is that God intended for Christian ministers to be servants and stewards.

Now jump down to verse 9. I promise we will come back and look at the middle verses in a minute.

[!bible] 1 Corinthians 4:9 - KJV 9. For I think that God hath set forth us the apostles last, as it were appointed to death: for we are made a spectacle unto the world, and to angels, and to men.

The second thing Paul was teaching them is...

2. God intended for Christian ministers to be spectacles

This verse is actually a fascinating verse - and it is easy to miss what Paul is saying here.

In the roman world, they would often have these parades. A conquering general would come into town and at the front of his parade he would have his men - the victorious soldiers, getting their well deserved glory.

In the middle of the parade they would show off the spoil. They would show all the booty they got from their war.

And then, at the very back, at the end of the parade, they would display the captives. These captives would be sneered at and mocked, then taken right to the Coliseum to be publicly murdered.

Now, what Paul is saying here is that God is treating him and the other apostles like the captives in the back of the parade. They are on full display for the world to mock and sneer at as they head toward their death.

Would anyone make a celebrity out of a conquered man who is about to be fed to lions? But that is what the Corinthian churches were doing with their foolish preacher worship.

So Paul is saying, look, we aren't celebrities, we are servants and we are spectacles.

The third thing Paul taught them about miinisters is in verses 10-13:

3. God intended for Christian ministers to be sufferers.

Look at these verses:

[!bible] 1 Corinthians 4:10-13 - KJV 10. We are fools for Christ’s sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honourable, but we are despised. 11. Even unto this present hour we both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwellingplace; 12. And labour, working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: 13. Being defamed, we intreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.

Paul is making a sarcastic contrast here between how the Corinthians thought of themselves and how Paul actually lived. The Corinthians thought they were the cat's meow. They thought they were wise and rich, and that they had arrived. They were "reigning like kings."

But Paul peels back the curtain and shows them what life was really like as an apostle.

• Paul and the apostles were considered fools.
• Paul and the apostles were weak.
• Paul and the apostles were despised.
• Paul and the apostles were hungry and naked and beaten.
• Paul and the apostles were homeless.
• Paul and the apostles had to work with their hands doing manual labor.
• Paul and the apostles were constantly being persecuted and had to meet that persecution with love and kindness.

Then Paul summarized how their life really was by saying "we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day."

I once had this job where I cleaned dishes in kind of a fancy restaurant. They served expensive meals to rich people on one side of the wall, but I was on the other side of the wall and let me tell you what that was like. I slid around for hours wearing a nasty apron that was covered in grime and filth, with my hands submerged for hours in a hot dish of soapy water, scrubbing dried on fish and shrimp and crumbs off of plates.

If I could have picked up one of our well-dressed patrons and brought them five feet from where they were sitting and showed them my bus bucket full of shrimp guts - they would probably have been disgusted.

And Paul is kind of saying to this Corinthian church - you think you are on the other side of the wall, eating and being fancy, and me and the other apostles are the shrimp guts - we are the offscouring, we are the filth in the dish room.

So these guys were patting themselves on the back, puffing themselves up in their pride about preachers - and those preachers are slaving away as servants, spectacles and sufferers.

As I said in the beginning:

God intended Christian ministers to be servants, stewards, spectacles, and sufferers - not sources of human pride.

And so that brings me to my last point.

4. God never intended Christian ministers (or any other part Christianity) to build up human pride.

This is the real problem with the Corinthian Christians - they were proud. They were so proud they were blinded by it. They couldn't see reality.

Here these ministers were suffering for them, serving Christ for them, being human spectacles for them - and instead of them accepting that with gratitude, they were treating these preachers like they were baseball cards - comparing them with each other, picking their favorite team.

I purposely kind of skipped over verses 6-7. Let's read those again:

[!bible] 1 Corinthians 4:6-7 - KJV 6. And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye 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. 7. For who maketh thee to differ from another? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? now if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?

I really think verse 7 is one of the most powerful verses in all of Paul's writings. I think it is something we need to think about deeply and seriously. It is a strong medicine for the disease of pride.

I'm a big believer in the power of pointed questions. Often it is more effective to lead people to the truth with questions than to bash them over the head with a truth and the questions Paul asks here are just masterful at getting to the core of this point.

So three questions, (let me translate them into modern english):

1. Who made you different from one another?

Think about that. Who made you different from someone else?

You look at some guy and you despise him, maybe the way he looks, maybe the way he dresses, maybe the way he talks. Well, why are you different?

• How much of that is genetics?
• How much of that has to do with how your parents raised you?
• How much of that has to do with the kind of teachers you had?
• How much of that has to do with the era you lived through?
• How much of that has to do with where you were raised?

Now, are you responsible for any one of those things?

I remember one time, I'll never forget this as long as I lived, going into the filthy house of one of my bus kids in college. His mom was drugged out on the couch. Their room had nothing in it. A bare mattress on the floor.

And I remember thinking "Why? Why did I have such an amazing childhood and this kid got this? Why did he have to go to a terrible school and grow up seeing gang violence and drugs and prostitution every day?"

Listen, so much of who you are is the result of God's blessing on your life. So much of it was a gift.

And that leads us to Paul's second question:

2. What do you have that you didn't receive?

What do you have that isn't a gift? How much of your success, and your morality can you really attribute to you?

I'm guessing not much.

So Paul hits us hard with this third question:

3. If what you have is a gift, why are you bragging like it wasn't a gift?

Think about that. It's like Paul is saying "you were born on third base, and you are jumping up and down like you just hit a home run."

Everything you have is a gift. When you get a gift, you respond with humility - not with pride.

Conclusion

I told you this is the harshest chapter in the harshest book in the whole Bible. But don't you see that it is really love? It's not loving to let people go on in blindness and false pride. Their pride was driving people away from Christ and would ultimately ruin them. They needed a harsh wake up call - they needed some tough love.

I'm guessing we probably could use the same kind of wake-up call in the modern church. We have so much consumerism in church today. So much "my church is better than your church, my preacher is better than your preacher" thinking. And what is all of that? It's just pride.

Let me close by telling you a personal story. A few years before we moved here, Amanda and I went on a mission trip to Mexico. It was an odd missions trip. We weren't going to work with any missionary in Mexico - but a Mexican church which had been founded by a mexican pastor.

We went down there to "help" with their vacation Bible school. These people were poor. These people were different. And I'm going to be honest, at first I thought I was better than they were. I thought I was superior. And do you know what I learned, they were special people, who were extremely good at what they did - and there wasn't much "helping" we could do.

Probably the best thing I did for them was dig a big hole for their church foundation with a shovel.

I went down there to teach them - and God used them to teach me.

That's what happens when we remember that everything we have is a gift. When we stop acting like we hit a home run and remember we were born on third base, God can actually use us.

Remember - all of this - it is by grace. Our salvation is by grace. Our gifts are by grace. And grace excludes boasting.

Let's stand together and sing "Amazing Grace"