Imitators of Christ. 10:23-11:1
Disciples Making Disciples: Inner and Outer Lives • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Transcript
Introduction
Good morning church, and welcome to august as we ask collectively where the summer went. I know for me, I feel like I’ve lost at least a month or something in the wash or maybe my brain is still slushy from covid. Either way, August kicks back off school, we get back in the swing of the fall programs and Bible studies, the building will be filled with the roar of kiddos again.
I also want to ask as the pastor that you prayerfully consider where your place in the church would be this fall. We have ways that you can serve in our kids ministry, with our students, get involved in a Bible study. But, I want you to really pray over if God is calling you to get in the game this fall. maybe you’ve felt for a while that God’s been calling you to give more or get involved, this is your sign then. Feel free to reach out to myself, Adam, or Elaine and we can get you pointed in the right direction. If you’re new to serving in these capacities, know that its almost always the case that you feel a little nervous and ill equipped at first but you tend to pick it up quickly. That all said we will be having our Children’s and Youth Ministry meeting on August 18th right after church. If you’re planning to help or interested come and join us.
Who or what are you imitating? Arnold Swartzeneger famously broke into a gym in Austria at night when he couldn’t afford dues because he wanted to lift. During the hight of his lifting career, he hung a picture of mount Everest on the wall of the gym and each day would flex his bicep. His goal, to have a bicep bigger than that mountain. Cheesy example, I know but our culture does this often without knowing it. We see adds for weight loss products and like what we see so we start to model ourselves after those people. Dave Ramsey always say that if you want to be a millionaire you should study the lives of millionaires not broke finance professors. Between ticktock, Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and pintrist you can take your pick of influencers and advertisers to look at. Their lives seek to be exciting and glamorous in the effort to sell you things so that you’ll “look just like them.” People fantasize over having that same hand bag, that vacation, that job, that life. Pay no attention to the fact that they have a professional photographer following them around and the picture you see is one of 89 that didn’t make the cut. Its blended and photo-shopped into oblivion.
Tension
We used to use the adage to speak of this phenomenon as “the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.” What is it about the 100 acres your cows have inside the fence that seems so unappealing when they see how much better the grass seems just out of reach. We all do this too. Contentment is a great thing in life but its hard to make money off a content person. Instead we have billion dollar industries whose goal it is to convince you that you aren’t content because you need more. You need to follow this person and be like them. Have what they have. Be more like them. And for 15 easy payments of 29.99 you too can have results like this.
The truth is we can be easily led into becoming imitations of worldly things and worldly people chasing images and ideals that we didn’t sign up for at first.
In today’s passage, Paul continues his conversation with the church about the relationship between exercising their feelings of personal freedom and liberties as they see fit. You see, they all want to live their lives, their Christian lives, as they see fit. “Their best life now”, if you will. But, we will see, that doing so imitates the wrong things. so let’s read today starting in 10:23. but before we do, let’s seek the Lord’s wisdom in prayer.
Pray.
Exposition
Remember, as we open these words today, that Paul has been seeking to tear down the attitudes in the people regarding themselves and what they should be allowed to do. They’ve taken no consideration for how their actions affect the church or the cause of Christ. In fact, as of last week, Paul tells them outright that their actions have become a sort of idolatry. They’ve taken Christ off the throne and put themselves and their rights on the throne. Obviously, and issue and one that he seeks to inspire them out of. Remember, all discipline, at its core, seeks to teach a lesson. This is the primary difference between punishment and discipline. One seeks only to punish and other tries to help you see the lesson in the you’d do well to learn and put into practice.
1 Corinthians 10:23–11:1 (ESV)
23 “All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up.
24 Let no one seek his own good, but the good of his neighbor.
Paul starts out with some very skillfully crafted words that are easy to remember and so hard for us to swallow. These words would fall into the “timeless truths” category as a way that we can still and should still live our lives. This, if you are a follower of Christ should be a compass that helps you guide your actions, behaviors, and attitudes. Just because its not against the law for you to do a thing, doesn’t mean that that thing will be good for you to do. Too principles help us as guard rails. is this thing helpful and not just to me? Is this thing such that it builds up, and not just me? The undergirding standard that Paul uses and encourages us too is verse 24. Is your behavior good for not just you but those around you.
This seems to insinuate that there is a debt that we owe to one another to look out for one-another’s good and discipleship, rather than to just what we want or how we want it.
when I was coming up in church the phrase “purpose driven” was one that marinated every evangelical church everywhere. Rick Warren and Saddleback were household names because everyone when through that book and churches on mass went through that study on the purposes of our lives and the church. You remember them? Worship, Fellowship, Ministry, Missions, Discipleship. the 5 purposes and functions of the church. Its been a while but I still have the book on my shelf and I open it from time to time to read the first sentence of the first chapter, which I’ve committed to memory. In a book that's all about you finding and living our God’s purpose for your life, the first opening sentence says simply, “It’s not about you.” Rick’s been all over the place since there, in fact many of the church leaders of that day have been but I’d argue those words are about as important as any he’d ever written.
Friends. My brothers in Christ. My sisters in faith. It is not about you. You aren’t even the main character in your own story. Your life, when lived properly, aligned correctly, shouldn’t be a series of questions you answer with what you’d like to do or like to be. For the follower of Christ, your hope, your goal, the true north of your compass that leads you from day to day should be, “What would you have me do and be Lord?”
In a pick your own adventure world we’ve lost that somewhere along the way. We’ve been led to believe that our goals should always been what makes us feel the best, makes us the most happy, gives us the most significance in our own minds. but, simply put, we’ve been led into a lie.
The Westminster Shorter Catechism states this simply and succinctly, and would that we could live by these words.
“What is the chief end of Man? Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” Might I say this another way to us this morning friends?
Your life isn’t about you but about making much out of God by how you choose to live your life. Your debt to Christ for the blood he shed for your salvation is one that cannot ever be repaid. thankfully, that’s not God’s intention. He doesn’t ask for repayment, knowing its above our means and our pay-grade. Instead, he asks simply that we trade places with him. He takes on our debt, our sin, our death owed, and he sets us free to live a new life, as a new creation in Him. In his name, in his authority. Paul says this poetically,
Galatians 2:19–21 (ESV)
19 For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God.
20 I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
Could you say these words over yourself this morning with truth and purpose? Would you echo Paul’s purpose statement over his life and ministry? These world sober me to attention every time I hear them because they were read over me at my ordination. Men of God laid their hands over me and prayed these words over me, my wife, and our ministry as they set us apart for the work of the gospel. There are days it feels like a call to action and days these words haunt me as I know I’ve missed the mark. But friends, we must own this truth again. The measure of your life is not that you did it as Frank Sinatra said, “My Way.” Your way, your plans, your desires, your ego, have been bought, paid for, and redeemed. Your ways got you in this mess in the first place, needed salvation, mired in sin. You and I need a better way, a better role model, someone to imitate that leads us to glorify God and enjoy him forever. This is a life of purpose.
25 Eat whatever is sold in the meat market without raising any question on the ground of conscience.
26 For “the earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof.”
27 If one of the unbelievers invites you to dinner and you are disposed to go, eat whatever is set before you without raising any question on the ground of conscience.
28 But if someone says to you, “This has been offered in sacrifice,” then do not eat it, for the sake of the one who informed you, and for the sake of conscience—
29 I do not mean your conscience, but his. For why should my liberty be determined by someone else’s conscience?
30 If I partake with thankfulness, why am I denounced because of that for which I give thanks?
Paul attaches this “God-glorifying-others-focused” edict over their lives to the exact issues they are struggling with and their “freedom” is taking. Guys, its not about the meat, its about your actions towards the meat which is revealing your divided heart. Your obvious care for only what you want and what makes you feel justified is the issue. You’re complete lack of consideration for what is good and what build’s up the body is in the middle of the noon-day sun, evident for all to see, except for you who is blinded by your own desires.
Put another way, the debt you owe to Christ, being crucified in him and raised to walk in the newness of life that he’s given you, is a debt that you even are called to live out in relation to his other children. You owe it to them to live in such a way the encourages them, builds them up, gives God glory by how you bolster them on towards godliness. You are your brother’s keeper. So keep them well, loving them and keeping their condition and sanctification in mind. Why? Paul tells us why...
31 So, whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.
Your life is one that puts its true north in these words, or at least it should be. Are you doing whatever you do with the utmost purpose of glorifying God in all that you do? Is that your chief aim at home? With your spouse? In how you parent? In how you do or do not disciple others who need you to come alongside them? When is the last time you shared the gospel with someone? Anyone? When is the last time you took anyone through any Bible? When is the last time you took yourself into the scriptures? When is the last time you went out of your way to encourage a brother or sister in Christ? Like in a way that it cost you something because it was what was best for them, not what was best or easiest for you? I guess what I’m saying here is, is there evidence in your life that you are living your life this way friends?
I don't’ want to give you a pass either. I don’t want to make it feel less awkward? I don’t want to make you feel better. Because I don’t think we should. Missing the mark here should feel like missing the mark. That guilt, that shame, that reality should call us to repentance and back to the cross for a re-calibration. Remember, we’ve been bought with a high price. We’ve been given new life as ambassadors of Christ. Are you a good ambassador right now? And if so, how so? Could the evidence be picked out by the way you behave? Your actions? Your attitudes? Is the fruit of Christlikeness and the passion in which you live for his causes evident to others?
32 Give no offense to Jews or to Greeks or to the church of God,
33 just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved.
Paul encourages us to make it a priority that our freedoms in Christ don’t step on the lives of others. In his account, Jew or Greek. Those who were struggling deeply with a deep seeded relationship with the law, and those who were struggling with years of pagan influence. Both were up against it with their own obstacles that could keep them for winning in a life committed too glorifying Christ. Their struggles were real, they were difficult, and they mattered to Paul, and to Christ. They were seen and acknowledged, and such was the love and concern of Paul for them that he decided to not act in a way that would set them back. He wanted them to grow up and out of those struggles and win over them in Christ. He determined his live would be best spent as their coach and cheerleader. He would use his freedom in Christ to become a slave to him, bound to his desire to see Christ glorified and built up in the lives of these men and women.
Friends, what about you? We’ve been over it a couple times now and I really want us to sit in this moment because I believe this word is of God. Is there a way that you are choosing to live out your life or your ministry right now that isn’t building up? This isn’t helpful but makes things more difficult for others? Are you hard to be around? Do others come away from your presence lifted up and encouraged or the opposite? Are there those that struggle in ways that you don’t that you don’t have any acknowledgement for, let alone pity for?
For the longest time, If i’m fully honest with myself and with you all, I hated my dad. Its taken along time for me to be honest about that because I never considered my feelings in that way. Why? Because I called it pity but in all reality, I KNEW that I was better than him and I called that pity. I couldn’t understand how anyone could choose substances over their family. How they could play such a card of absolute selfishness. and I flat out prided myself in how I was not that. Jesus parable in Luke 18 was one I’d heard multiple times, perhaps you too, but I never heard it until God used it to break my heart.
Luke 18:9–14 (ESV)
9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt:
10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.
11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector.
12 I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’
13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’
14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
All of this came to a head when I heard John Marshall preach one day and said the following statement.
“Do you know that their is no person who hates alcohol more in this world than the man or woman who is addicted to it. Their hatred for it pulls double duty, causing them to ultimately hate themselves.”
I had always thought and acted superior to my father because I didn’t get taken down by such things, not willing to acknowledge the reality that the debt I owed Christ extended even over him. I was no better, I was just saved. Without the grace of God I would be every bit of him and I was actively living my life in a way that glorified myself for what Christ had saved me from. As if it ever had anything to do with me. As if I was the cause at all. I’d been set free from a prison of my sin and I pretended that I set myself free. Then I used my freedom to think and act superior to those still in jail rather than showing them how I got free. Paul’s word echo intensely for us in 11:1.
1 Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.
Landing
Are you imitating Christ or something else? Someone else? Is your chief end to glorify God and enjoy him forever? Is it evident that you do enjoy the Lord by how you live your life? The word imitator here means “to be a copy of.” “Copy me as I copy Christ.” become a xerox of the character, purpose, and will of Christ. Give your life away to him and these purposes.
Friend, are you there today? Is the goal of your life, the song of your days to preach his goodness. To give the contents of your lungs to breathing his praises. To give the work of your hands to making him known? To giving the bulk of your relationships to living out his goodness and teaching others the way? Are you giving your life to the imitation of Christ or to living your best life now?
Lords supper. Matt Kasper.
