Survey
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
* Your assessment is very important for improving the workof artificial intelligence, which forms the content of this project
Jews as the chosen people wikipedia , lookup
Holocaust theology wikipedia , lookup
God in Sikhism wikipedia , lookup
Binitarianism wikipedia , lookup
God the Father wikipedia , lookup
Grace in Christianity wikipedia , lookup
Divinization (Christian) wikipedia , lookup
Salvation in Christianity wikipedia , lookup
Christian pacifism wikipedia , lookup
State (theology) wikipedia , lookup
Historic Pentecost 12 1 Corinthians 15:9-10 August 19, 2012 Dear Friends in Christ, The text that we have for this morning is one in which the Apostle Paul turns his attention to the Christians living in the city of Corinth . And if you’re not all the great at world geography, the city of Corinth is a Greek city located on the Mediterranean Sea about 40 miles from Athens on a small isthmus of land about three miles wide. An isthmus is a piece of land that connects two larger pieces of land with water on each side. And for the early sailors, this was a very important place. For instead of having to sail all the way around the peninsula on their way to or from Rome and all the northern trading posts, the sailors would dock their ship in Corinth and pay to have it hauled up on land and dragged on rollers across that narrow three mile strip of land to be put back in the Mediterranean on the other side. There were no machines or cranes or modern conveniences to do this. It was labor intensive and took a few days, but it was a far faster and safer endeavor than sailing around the treacherous rocky waters of the Aegean . Having this very unique service for merchants of all nations made Corinth a very important city. Though today it is a relatively small town of only 15 – 20 thousand people, but during the time of the apostle Paul it had a population of well over 200,000 thousand people from a wide variety of nationalities. It was easily the most important city of Greece , boasting temples and markets and a ceramics manufacturing sector that was world famous. It is no wonder that Paul, on his second missionary journey, made certain to not only stop in at Corinth, but to spend 18 months there, the second longest time he spent at any of the churches he started. But even with all that time spent teaching and instructing the Corinthian people, there were still problems galore. The influence of the hundreds of false gods being worshiped in Corinth , the lavish lifestyle that was afforded by the prosperous traders, and the truly hedonistic me-first attitude of everyone living in Corinth made the selfless message of the Gospel a hard sell. These people were used to putting themselves first. In much the same way we have a society that talks about taking care of Number 1 and doing everything for yourself because “you deserve it,” the Corinthians were there first. Though they may not have had the slick marketing and the product placement to encourage a self-centered attitude, like modern America they were a me-first society that put the needs and concerns for everyone else in a distant second place. But if this were not a big enough obstacle for Paul to overcome, there was also another big problem with the people of Corinth . Again, just like here in the good old U S of A, there was a growing lack of morality. Sexual sins were so bad in Corinth that in the rest of the world if someone was immoral or caught in a sexual sin, they were said to have corinthianized. They simply took the name of Corinth and made it the new name for sexual immorality. For no matter if you were talking about out of wedlock births, or people living together or any other kind of sexual sin that could be imagined, the people of Corinth were willing not only to permit such godless activities but, in what seems like dejavue, they lauded those immoral acts as being acceptable and even praiseworthy. This is what Paul was dealing with as he came to preach the Gospel to the people of Corinth . He had to go against the many false gods and false religions that were there. He had to convince the people that there were more important things in this life than putting all of our own needs and desires before the needs and desire of all the people around them, and he finally had to show them that God’s gift of sexuality was not to be flaunted and misused. In essence, Paul needed to change these people. He needed to change them a lot. He needed to turn them around from being people who were the poster children for Satan to being Christians whose lives and service belonged to God. Certainly this must have looked like an impossible task. And we can easily understand Paul’s problem because we see it in our society today. After all, how can we expect the people of this world who have no regard for God or His word to suddenly want to be like us? How can we convince them that there is a better life in attending church and giving first fruits to God and serving those around us before we take care of ourselves? It is hard enough to convince our own members, how can we convince the rest of society? How was Paul going to convince the Corinthians to change their lives? Paul’s answer to them was one of personal experience. He simply pointed to His own life as an example of how people can and do change. And his point was not just that he had changed, but that also the Corinthian Christians had changed. It was a point that said everyone who follows Christ changes, whether they realize it or not. That is basically our theme for this morning and has the encouragement to “SEE HOW YOU HAVE CHANGED.” For in the first place, I. LIKE PAUL, WE WERE UNWORTHY OF CHRIST and secondly, II. LIKE PAUL WE ARE FILLED WITH GRACE. Now as we start out the first part of our sermon for this morning, the idea of changing and being different than we once were might seem a little odd to a lot of us. For many of us have been Christians our entire lives. We can honestly say that there has never been a time that we don’t recall the blessed Grace of Christ or the full forgiveness that is found in what He has done for us. To say that we have changed might very well be something that we don’t remember. But this does not mean that our entire existence was one of service to Christ. For all us were at one point like the Apostle Paul, namely people who were “not worthy” to be called children of God. For even though Paul speaks of his unworthiness in connection to being someone who “persecuted the church of God,” we don’t need to have imprisoned and murdered Christians to be people who were opposed to Christ. For even though in our eyes we think of ourselves as always being Christians, there was a time for all us when we were not. From the moment of our conception until the time Christ called us to be His own, we, like Paul, were against Christ. And whether our pre-Christian life was spent only in the womb or was spent in years of aimless self-indulgence, we did not have to take up arms against those who followed our Lord to be His enemies. All who are not for Him are against Him. All who do not worship Him, are people who are enemies of the cross of Christ. And by simply being enemies of Christ, it means that like Paul, we are truly unworthy of the grace which God has given to us. For the whole idea of being worthy implies some kind of “worth” on our part. It implies that there is something that we have done or maybe even will do that will make us worthy of the salvation of Christ. Yet from the very moment of conception we have brought with us the sins of Adam and Eve. We have brought along their desire to turn away from God and rebel against His word. We have brought nothing to help God or to praise Him or to thank Him. All we have by nature is our sins. In God’s eyes this means we are worthy of nothing but the wages of sin, and that is death; eternal and everlasting death. But God found a way to change that. He willingly offered up the life of His Son in our place. In knowing that we could not change and were never able to make ourselves worthy of being in His presence, He sent His Son to do it for us. And through the perfect life and innocent death of Christ, we were changed. All of us were changed. All of us were now seen by God worthy of the blessings of God because of the working of Christ as our Savior. Yet such a change is not seen by many. Many people ignore that change which God has given to them and prefer to be sinners who continually live in the Corinthian lifestyle. They want nothing different in their lives but the sorrow and short-sightedness which we also once had. They don’t want to change in the least. And many times we tend to agree with them. For there are many times even in our Christian lives that we don’t want to thank God for this change. There are many times that we don’t want to see that we are no longer as we were before. But if you take only one thing with you this morning, let it be the simple fact that you are indeed different. You have indeed changed. But do not think that it is something that you have worked on your own. Don’t think that somehow you have summoned up the inner strength or the intestinal fortitude to do what others cannot. Your change, the transformation from being someone unworthy to being someone worthy of eternal life and everlasting communion with God is done by grace alone. It is purely a gift from God that God has seen fit to give to you. Paul makes mention of that in our text for this morning when he says, “But by the grace of God I am what I am.” Paul saw that it was not his work that made him a great evangelist and missionary. It was not his work that made him want to hear more about “God’s salvation and then to share it with others. It was a gift of God’s grace. It was the working of God that brought about that change in Paul so that the persecutor of Christians might become the preacher of the Gospel. Yet Paul also makes mention that God’s “grace toward me was not in vain.” Though Paul knew there was nothing that he did or could do to get that grace or to find that grace, it was a change brought about solely by the work of God, Paul knew he could reject it. He knew that like so many others he could hear and see that working of God in his life and choose to go back to a life without God. He could be like the un-converted Corinthians that surrounded him. He could be like the heathens that never knew Christ. He could be like so many who take the message of God’s grace and simply ignore it for the very short lived pleasures of this life. For if we want to really be like Paul, people who have been changed by God’s grace and who will enjoy the blessings of life everlasting, let us, like Paul, use that grace to its fullest. Let’s use our time, talents and treasures to make sure that we always have the Gospel in our midst. Let’s use the people God has placed in our lives as the opportunity to spread the Gospel. Let’s use the freedoms of our nation to make certain that we are always proclaiming God’s truth. Let’s use all that God has given to us to continue to see that we have indeed changed. We have been changed by God’s grace to be His people. Amen. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. In His Service, Pastor Joseph R. Schlawin Our Shepherd Ev. Lutheran Church 1515 W. 93rd Ave Crown Point, IN 46307 219-663-5853