Well, I grew up in a Christian home.
Grew up going to church, grew up with a family that, that loved the Lord.
And I went to a Christian school from fifth grade on.
I, I, uh, won the Bible award in, in eighth grade for whatever that
was worth, and, and went to church regularly, was involved in youth group.
And, and at seven years old, I prayed a prayer.
And at seven years old I prayed a prayer because I was listening to Petra.
If you guys remember the band Petra from the '80s and '90s, uh, take
some ibuprofen when you get home, uh, because like me, you're gonna need it.
But I r- was listening to a song, Petra, Somebody's Gonna Praise His Name.
And I just remember one of the lines is, "Is it gonna be you or me or is
it gonna be the rocks or the trees?"
And at seven years old, I just remember being heartbroken that nobody would
worship God and, and the rocks and the trees would have to do that.
And so I remember just crying and, and thinking to myself, "Man, I want God to
be worshiped, and so I wanna be saved."
And so I had my dad come in and I prayed a prayer at seven years old.
Well, I, I continued my life as a Christian kid in a Christian home after
that, and, and I continued to grow up.
Again, I was going to this Christian school and I was participating in,
in all the, the Christian things.
A- and then I got into high school, and in, in, in high school, God was
doing some things i- in my life, in, in my family's life and everything else.
And I got to my junior year of high school, and, uh, after my
junior year, went to this summer camp, Pine Cove, out in East Texas,
and I used to go all the time.
And, and I went just excited because I was just looking for that
spiritual high that you get at camp.
And I, I went there and I just was, was bankrupted.
I, I, I got there and it w- it was not there, and I just was … I
was angry the whole week at God.
I'm like, "God, where's the spiritual high?
This is supposed to be my break from everything else going on in my life.
Where are you, God?
Why aren't you showing up for me?"
And I remember, a- as camps do, on the, the last night they had the worship
night and, and I remember being there and just breaking down and realizing,
"Man, I have been trusting in my own self-righteousness for my whole life."
And I just remember thinking to myself, "I, I need to be over myself
and surrender myself to the Lord."
And so I surrendered my life to Christ there at, uh, at that camp in, in Pine
Cove, sitting on the floor of, uh, their main auditorium there in East
Texas the summer before my senior year.
Um-
That's a version of my testimony.
Now let me retell it for you.
I grew up in a Christian home because that's the family that the
Lord caused me to be born into.
I had parents that loved me because God gave me parents who loved me and
taught me about Jesus from a young age.
At seven years old, uh, God impressed upon my heart that He wanted my devotion,
wanted my affection, wanted my adoration.
I prayed a prayer from what I understood at seven to say, "Lord,
I wanna worship you with my life.
I need Jesus to be my savior."
After that, God had provided many things for me, including this Christian
education and this Christian school that I was a part of, and I got to
go, and, you know, God taught me a lot through that time, and He gave me a
foundation of understanding a lot about the Bible and a lot about scriptures.
He, He put me, God did, into a good church where I had good youth pastors who really
invested in me and, and poured into me.
He gave me these opportunities to, to go to these summer camps at Pine
Cove, where I was able to, to be around other Christian friends there
and, and learn more about the Lord.
And going into that senior year, like I said a moment ago, I went
and, and it just wasn't there.
And, and I was angry at God, but God was loving me through that week.
I was frustrated because I went thinking, "God, I need this.
This is for me, and I need to feel good this week."
And God, in His grace, His amazing grace, and in His mercy, opened my eyes
to show me, "PJ, you've been trusting in yourself for your whole life."
And in that moment, God, in His grace, opened my eyes to the fact
that I need a savior, and God showed me that Jesus is that savior.
And so there in East Texas, on the floor of that auditorium, I
surrendered my life by God's grace to Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior
Same story, two different heroes.
Who's the hero of the first story?
Me.
It was all about me.
This is what I did.
This is where, where what I figured out.
This is what, what I was able to determine, and I was able to do,
and I got this, and I made this decision, and, and it was me.
Who's the hero of the second story?
God.
This is what God did.
This is the family that God allowed me to be born into by his grace.
This is what God provided for me by his grace.
This is what God did for me.
He put me into this church.
He gave me these youth pastors.
He brought me to camp.
He broke my heart.
He showed me that I need a savior.
See, as we think about our lives as Christians, both individually and as,
as we're gonna talk about this morning corporately, we have an opportunity
to either boast in ourselves or to boast in Christ, to boast in God.
And boasting is God, in God is, is the, the way that, that he
wants us to conduct ourselves.
Boasting in God is, is what Christianity is all about.
I, I didn't really preach much about this verse, but if you look at verse
three from last week, look down at the Bible, it says this, "Grace to you."
Grace to you.
God's grace is what we're talking about this morning, unmerited favor.
And so the unmerited favor of God, what God gives us, how God equips
us, how God loves us, how God shows us all of the blessings that we
have in Christ, Paul's saying to the Corinthians, "Hey, grace to you.
I want you to continue to know the grace of God, to experience the grace
of God, and to own the grace of God."
And it's that grace that he's going to emphasize this morning See, the
thing about God's grace is God's grace is going to rob us of our boasting
and put His glory on full display.
When we properly understand what grace is and what grace does, and that's what
we're gonna see this morning in our passage, what God's grace is and what
it does is it robs us of our boasting.
Because God's grace, His unmerited favor, is just that.
It's unmerited.
God didn't save me at that camp because I was worthy.
In fact, I wasn't.
I had made an idol of myself in my own righteousness.
I didn't deserve His grace, but He gave me His grace because He's
a God who is loving, a God who is faithful, a God who is merciful.
And that grace, it robs me of my right to boast in who I am,
and instead it takes my life and makes it a platform for His glory.
And it doesn't just do that individually, God's grace does that corporately
with all of us as the church.
And so that's what we're gonna see here as Paul continues his greeting
in 1 Corinthians 1:4-9 here.
Paul's going to turn and he's gonna start praying for the Corinthian church.
And he does this in so many of his letters.
But it's unique the way that he does it here in 1 Corinthians.
So grab your Bibles if you're not already there.
1 Corinthians 1, beginning in verse four.
It'll be on the screen, but if you've got your Bible, maybe put your eyeballs
on the Bibles and let's read together.
It says this.
Paul says, "I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of
God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched
in Him in all speech, in all knowledge even as the testimony about Christ was
confirmed among you, so that you are not lacking in any gift as you wait for the
revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless
in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.
God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of
His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."
Again, the big idea of this passage is this, that God's
grace robs us of our boasting and puts His glory on full display.
I- in this passage, we're gonna see Paul focus on God's grace past, God's
grace present, and God's grace future.
Corporately, as he's writing to this church, he wanted the Corinthians to
understand, hey, you've received His grace in the past, His saving grace.
You are now experiencing His equipping grace, and you will continue to
experience His sustaining grace.
And so these first three verses begin by looking back at God's saving grace in
the life of the Corinthian church, and in our life as well, and reminds us of
just how much we have to be thankful for.
And so if you look here, he says this: "I give thanks to my God always
for you because of the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus."
Our first point this morning if you're taking notes is this: Be thankful for
s- saving grace that got us going.
Be thankful for saving grace that got us going Again, I give thanks to my God
always for you because of the grace of God that was given to you in Christ Jesus.
This is unique in 1 Corinthians because in some of Paul's other letters,
like in Romans, Paul said, "I give thanks to you, to God for your faith."
Or in Ephesians, he said, "You know what?
I give thanks to God," Ephesians, "for your faith and your love for the saints."
In Philippians, he says to the, the Philippians, uh, "I give thanks to God for
your partnership in the gospel with me."
He says to the Colossians, "I give thanks to you for, or to God for you,
for your faith and love for the saints."
1 Thessalonians, faith, love and hope.
2 Thessalonians, faith and love.
But here in 1 Corinthians, Paul says, "I give thanks to my God always for
you because of the grace of God."
In other words, Corinthians, I, I'm not singling out what
you're bringing to the table.
Rather, I'm gonna single out what God's done in you.
I'm gonna put the focus on him.
I'm gonna put the focus on what he's done, what his grace has done in you.
And the reason for this is, it, the, the Corinthians likely were
struggling with the issue of pride.
In fact, in 1 Corinthians 4:7, Paul's gonna write to them and say, "What do
you have that you did not receive?"
The answer to that question is nothing.
Everything I have, I received.
God has given me everything that I have.
And so Paul's gonna continue and he'd say, he's gonna say, "I- if then you didn't
earn it all, if, if it's all a gift, why do you boast as though it wasn't?"
And, and so Paul's writing to a church as they're saying, "Well, we've got Apollos,
and we've got Paul in our pedigree because he helped plant our church, and
we've got Cephas in our background too.
And, and look at us and look at our gifts.
We've got all of these gifts that we're demonstrating and exercising here."
And so Paul comes along and he purposefully zooms in here in this
opening of this prayer by zooming in on God's grace in their life.
He could've said, "I'm, I'm thankful for your giftedness, Corinthians."
He could've said, "I'm, I'm thankful for your generosity,"
because they're gonna support the, the church in Jerusalem there.
He could've said any of those things, but he starts by saying, we need to realize
what began all of this in the first place.
And it's true for us sitting here this morning as well, is the
grace of God, his unmerited favor.
In fact, it's the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus.
The grace of God given to us in Christ Jesus, that is the, the gospel.
That is the saving grace of God.
That's what the grace of God in Christ Jesus is.
That's the, the, the moment where your eyes were opened to understand
your need for Jesus as your savior.
For me in that auditorium in, in Pine Cove in East Texas, to realize,
man, I am bankrupt without Christ.
I have nothing to bring to the table.
My self-righteousness is filthy rags before the Lord When you received
the grace to be able to see your need for your savior, that's,
that's what he's talking about.
And without that, none of us are here this morning.
It, it doesn't matter who you are.
I mean, you think about the most amazing and accomplished evangelists that have
ever walked the face of the planet.
Think of Billy Graham, and think about the thousands he preached the gospel to.
Without the grace of God, Billy Graham is nothing.
I mean, you think … Let's, let's go back a couple thousand years.
How, how about Paul?
Without God's grace, Paul is nothing.
And if we would say that about Billy Graham and, and that about
Paul, I, I'm saying that about me.
Man, without God's grace, I have nothing of value to offer.
God's grace saves us, and God's grace gets us going, and the way that it does
is it brings us together as the church.
And that's why Paul's writing corporately to the body in Corinth
there, saying, "Hey, I wanna thank God for what God's grace has done
in you through Christ Jesus," that God saved a people, not a person.
I don't know if you've ever thought about that, but how great is it that God
didn't save us as individuals to just live our life in this isolated pod with
even just us and our immediate family?
But in his grace, he gave us to each other.
And Corinthians is gonna talk a lot about that when we get into the latter chapters,
in the spiritual gifts especially.
But God's grace has brought this place together, and so when you think of
anything to give thanks for about this church … Man, launching Adventure
Club, man, I, I'm so thankful for that.
I, I've got kids in Adventure Club.
I'm thankful for it as, as a dad.
But man, I'm, I'm more thankful for the grace of God that's doing that.
I'm thankful for the grace of God at work in the lives of the, the
leaders in Adventure Club, who are serving, who are giving their time.
I'm thankful for the grace of God at work in my kids' lives, that they
are able to, to read the Word and want to memorize the Word and wanna
treasure it up in their hearts.
I'm thankful for God's grace when I think about this church.
Again, 1 Corinthians 4:7 says, "What do you have that you did not receive?
If then you received it, why would you boast as though you did not receive it?"
Right?
So we can't stand on, look at how great we are as a church.
Look at what, where we've gone from 35 in a trailer to 350 here on Sunday mornings.
W- w- we can't do any of that because what we need to do is
say, "God's grace is doing it."
And it's not that we despise those things, not at all.
We just give the glory to who the glory is due.
Remember, God's grace robs us of our boasting and puts Him on full display.
God's given us everything, and it began with His saving grace.
And so we can guard against falling prey to this mindset of, of boasting
in ourselves by remembering, again, to look around at what God's doing here,
the, the saving events, the serving, the, the community groups, the, the
Adventure Club, the preaching of the Word, all of these things and say, "God,
we are so thankful that Your saving grace had me- has made any of this
possible, because without Your grace that began us, none of this has happened."
And so what do we do with all those things?
We don't despise them, we don't ignore them.
In fact, what we do is we give thanks for them for what they are.
Look down at verse five.
Paul says this, he's thankful for the grace of God that they received
in Christ Jesus, and then he goes on and says this in verse five, "That
in every way you were enriched in Him in all speech and all knowledge."
N- notice, it's still God's grace because we're passive in this.
You were enriched in Him.
That's a, a passive verb, so that means that we're receiving the action of that.
We're not making ourselves rich.
He doesn't say, "You became rich."
He said, "You were enriched."
How?
In every way.
We're gonna talk about that a little bit more in our second point in verse seven.
But in every way, meaning that, that you lack nothing because God's grace is able
to provide everything that you need.
So in every way, you were enriched by Him, in Him, in all speech and
knowledge In all speech and knowledge.
I'm gonna touch on that in just a second, but this i- idea of us being enriched
is, again, unique here in Corinthians.
Because in the other epistles, God focuses, or, or Paul focuses,
rather, on God being rich.
Uh, for example, i- in, uh, i- Ephesians 1:7-8, Paul writes this, "In him we
have redemption, through his blood the forgiveness of our trespasses,
according to the riches of his grace."
And so elsewhere in Paul, Paul is putting the focus on the fact that,
that God is the one that's rich.
But again, because he wants us to remember that we have received everything
that we have by his grace, now he talks about the fact that we have been
enriched, that God has made us rich, and he's done that through Christ.
And then he highlights speech and knowledge.
Logos and gnosis are the two words there in the Greek, and they
occur multiple times in the letter to the Corinthian church here.
Positively, they're gonna show up later on in, in 1 Corinthians 12:8.
There, they're listed as two of the spiritual gifts that the Spirit provides
to the church for the building up of the body of Christ, knowledge and speech.
There's speaking gifts, there's, there's knowledge gifts, and, and
those are two categories of gifts that we see active in the church.
That's on the positive side.
But then negatively, they're gonna show up here in just a couple of chapters
because knowledge and speech were two of the crutches that the world
used to try to put themselves forward as wise and Christians as foolish.
And so God's gonna take the knowledge of the world and make it foolish.
The, the, the proclaimed speech, the wisdom of the world, and make it foolish
in light of the wisdom of the cross.
But here he's saying to the Corinthians, "Look, you've been enriched.
You've been those that have, have received true knowledge.
Y- you have the true wisdom of God through Christ."
And so Paul here is reminding the Corinthians of the evidences
of God's work in their lives.
And so God's grace saves us, and it's, it's that which gets us going, and then
as we look around and we see the things that are happening here, like Adventure
Club or student ministry or, you know, supporting missionaries or whatever
we're doing, the preaching of God's Word, we look at that and we say, "Man,
these are the evidences of his grace."
That's what they are.
They're not us.
It's not like God, "Thanks for getting the ball rolling.
We got it from here."
Rather, it's we look at these things and, and they should
drive us back to the cross.
They should drive us back to Jesus.
They should drive us back to the grace of God that got us going to begin with,
because that's what they're there to do.
They're there to evidence this.
And again, Paul is talking to the church at large here.
And so in verse six he says this, he says, "Even as the testimony about
Christ was confirmed among you."
And so he says to them, "Church, I'm thankful for the grace that got you going,
that in every way you were enriched.
So now we see the evidence of the grace of God at work in you."
And then verse six, what does that evidence do but confirm the grace
that you received to begin with?
That's what verse six is saying.
Even as the testimony about Christ, which is what?
The Gospel.
Even as the Gospel was confirmed among you.
Well, how was the Gospel confirmed?
How was the evidence, how was it confirmed that they were truly in Christ?
Well, the grace that got them going was seen in what was happening.
And so Paul said, "There's enough that I see.
There's evidence there to point back to the fact that God's grace truly has
impacted this group, and I'm thankful to Him for that grace in your life."
And so we are thankful for God's grace that got us going.
Again, God's grace robs us of our grounds for boasting, and
puts His glory on full display
The, the testimony about Christ being confirmed.
The, the word confirmed there, it's a, it's a commercial term, it's a legal term.
Guaranteed, it comes to reality.
Back in, in 2022, uh, Mattress Mack, he's, uh, unfortunately a fan of,
of the evil Houston Astros, but we won't really dive into that too much.
But Mattress Mack, you may remember what he did back in 2022, maybe you don't,
but he put a, a, a guarantee out there.
He said if the Astros win the World Series that year, that anyone who spends more
than $3,000 at his furniture store would get all of their money refunded to them.
Well, guess who won the World Series in 2022?
Asterisks.
The Astros did.
You know, buzzers and trashcans aside.
Um- But Mattress Mack put an offer out there that became confirmed when?
When the Astros got the final out of the World Series and
won the World Series, okay?
So as soon as that happened, then the offer was confirmed.
It was guaranteed.
That's what Paul's saying is, is happening.
The, the grace that's evident in the lives of the believers is confirming
the offer that they indeed did receive the offer of salvation, that they did
receive the grace of God that saved them.
And then it was confirmed, it was validated, it was guaranteed as soon
as they began to produce the evidence within them that, that showed that,
hey, God's work is, is, is present here.
God's grace is at work here.
And just like Mattress Mack's customers, right, who got that refund, they couldn't
claim credit for, for getting the refund.
They couldn't boast, "Hey, you know what?
Look what we did to, to, to bring about the fact that we got a refund."
They couldn't do that.
Why?
'Cause they didn't have anything to do with it.
Somebody else guaranteed that for them.
It was somebody else's work that caused them to be able to receive the benefit
of saying, "Okay, and, and now I get the refund of the money that I spent there."
It'd be foolish for them to stand up and say, "Look what I did."
In church, it would be foolish for us to stand up and say, "Look what we've done."
This is God's grace at work in our lives.
God's grace is what's responsible for what's happening here in this church.
As we stand here, sit here, three years into our life as a church, we
have to avoid the pitfall of boasting in ourselves, of thinking, "Look at
us, we've got the right doctrine.
Look at us, we've got the right ministries.
Look at us, we don't do these things.
Look at us, we sing these things and not those things.
Look at us, we…"
Fill in the blank.
Our mindset as a church, because God's grace is that which got us going, has
to be look at Him It's not us, it's Him.
He's the reason.
Y'all, literally, this isn't happening.
What we're doing here this morning, without God's grace,
this place doesn't exist.
Without God's grace saving us, what do we have to hope in, right?
I often wonder, especially as I look around at the world today, and I
just see the chaos and the mess and the, the nonsense going on in the
world, I, I wonder about those who reject the existence of God, how do
they get out of bed in the morning?
And for what?
That's what King Solomon asked in Ecclesiastes, isn't it?
He chased everything.
He's like, "Well, I'm gonna find meaning in life in riches."
Nope.
"Okay, I'm fi- I'm gonna find meaning in life with, with pleasure.
I'm not gonna deny anything that my eyes desire."
Nope.
"All right, I'm gonna find meaning in life by accomplishing things,
building things for myself."
Nope.
"I'm gonna find meaning in life by being the s- the, the smartest
and the wisest in the room."
Nope.
Vanity of vanity, all is vanity.
See, that's life without the grace of God.
That's what it is.
That's who we are.
W- we wake up every day looking for something to give us meaning, and
we go to bed at the end of the day disappointed that we didn't find it.
But for the grace of God.
See, God's grace, one of the greatest evidences of God's grace, one of the
greatest blessings of God's grace that starts us, is now we gather
together here on Sunday mornings, and you know what we're doing here,
y'all, on Sunday mornings together?
We're not here to just get a little bit smarter about the Bible.
W- we're not here to, to just, you know, make a statement that, "Hey, we're here."
We're here because what we're doing here this morning is rehearsal.
What we're doing here this morning is rehearsal for what we're going
to be doing for all of eternity.
What we're doing here this morning is, is testifying to one another
and to the watching world out there that this world is not all there is.
What we're doing this morning is we're gathering because of God's grace that
has saved us and brought us here to say, "Hey, I'm so thankful that when
I die, I'm going to be with Him."
And so God's grace got us going, and we can never lose sight of that reality.
We can never boast in ourselves.
We can never say, "Look at us."
We always need to say, "Look at Him."
He's the one that began all this.
He's the one that got us going But it's not just that He got us going,
it's that He's keeping us going.
Look at verse seven.
Verse seven says this, in 1 Corinthians 1, he says, "So that you are not
lacking in any gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ."
This is connecting back, I think, to verse five, when he says that
we were enriched in every way.
Parenthetical statement, verse six, "So that your, your faith has been confirmed."
Now, picking up verse seven, going back to verse five again, "So that
you were enriched in every way," so that, the result being, y- you're
not lacking in any spiritual gift.
You have, in other words, everything that you need as you wait for the
revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
See, from God's saving grace, we turn now to His equipping grace.
It's, it's not just that God got us going and then left us on our own.
Rather, what we have to see as a church, as Paul's writing to the Corinthian
church, he's writing to us as well, we have to see as a church, th- that
we still depend upon His grace at work in and through the church as we
strive to be faithful to His mission.
God didn't get us up on our feet and then step back.
No, He's got us on our feet and He's still walking with us, and we are
just as dependent upon His grace as we continue to mature and grow as a church
as we were to even begin as a church.
And so our second point this morning is this, be thankful for
equipping grace that keeps us going.
Be thankful for equipping grace that keeps us going.
It's His saving grace that got us going, and now it's His equipping
grace that keeps us going.
A- a- and this isn't a separate grace, okay?
This isn't, like, a, a second experience of God's grace that we need.
This is the same grace, just different facets of it.
And so the same grace that saves us is now equipping us to serve Him.
See, God's grace, as we talked about last week, right, God's church, we are those
who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus.
I talked about that last Sunday.
That God saved us and set apart the church, set those of us who are in
Christ apart to be useful to Him, but He didn't just set us apart to
be useful to Him and say, "Go ahead."
He set us apart to be useful to Him, and now He wants to
equip us for that very purpose.
And as we think about this corporately as a church, it's that we have to understand
that God's grace is now at work equipping us to be faithful to His mission.
So lest we become like the Corinthians and boast as though we didn't receive
what we now see present in our lives as the church, we need to remember
that God is still active, that we still need His grace at work in our church.
Imagine a, a swim instructor.
And imagine a s- a swim instructor, if, if all the swim instructor did,
imagine if all he did was teach you how to get in the water, help you overcome
your fear of jumping in the water Would he be a very good swim instructor?
Imagine if that's all he did, and he's like, "You're good now.
You can get in the water.
And so go for it.
There's water here.
Y- you know what?
There's water down there that's even deeper.
Go jump in the water down there.
I, I got you in the water.
Uh, there's a high dive.
Why don't you jump off the high dive?
And then y- you'll be in the water.
And you've been in the water, I helped you get in the water, so you're good.
You've got it from here.
Good luck."
How long would that swim instructor be a swim instructor?
Not very long, right?
Yeah.
Why?
Because that's not all the swim instructee needs the instructor to do.
The person learning how to swim needs the instructor to teach them not just how to
get in the water, but then to be equipped to be able to survive in the water.
1 Corinthians 1:7, the first part, "You are not lacking in any gift."
You've been enriched, okay?
Reaching back, God's grace has enriched us so that you are not lacking in any gift.
That word gift there is the word charisma.
It's the, the word that's connected to spiritual gifts later on in 1 Corinthians.
So even though right now it's not necessarily speaking about spiritual
gifts, the connection is there.
And I think it's appropriate for us to see that God is, is talking about,
through Paul, that He has equipped us with all that we need as a church
when it comes to spiritual gifts.
And so what does it mean that they were not lacking in any spiritual gift?
Can we say the same thing?
Well, if you got your Bibles, uh, flip over, if you will,
to 1 Corinthians chapter 12.
1 Corinthians chapter 12.
So turn to the right, and just, uh, some basic math now, count
up from chapter 1 to chapter 12.
And when you get to chapter 12, find verse 14 with me
Find verse 14 with me.
I think this is gonna help us understand what it means that we
were equipped with every gift, that we're not lacking in any gift.
Paul says this in, in verses 14 through 20.
He says, "For the body does not consist of one member but of many."
He's talking about the church here.
The body, the church, does not consist of one member but of many.
He's talking about, uh, the church in, in, in comparison to a physical body.
He says, "If, if the foot should say, 'Well, because I'm not a hand, I do
not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.
And if the ear should say, 'Because I'm not an eye, I do not belong
to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body.
If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be?
If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be?
But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them as He chose.
If all were a single member, where would the body be?
As it is, there are many parts, yet one body."
I think that's what it means that we're not lacking in any gift.
God said, "I have arranged each member of the body as I chose."
I take that to mean that what that means for us is that this church is
made up of those that God has brought here to be a part of the church, that
we corporately together as Compass North Texas would not be lacking in any gift.
Does that mean we have every gift?
No, but it has … It means we have every gift we need to be faithful to the
mission that Christ has called us to.
And so He has arranged the body, and so y- you may not be the eye.
What … I don't even know who the eye is in the church.
You may not be the ear.
You n- may not be the hand.
You may be the foot.
You may be the earlobe.
Who knows wh- who you are?
You matter because you're part of being enriched in the fact that we are not
lacking in any gift because part of God's equipping grace is the people here.
So His equipping grace for the church corporately are those that are right
here in this room, those that He has brought here to be faithful, to serve
the body of Christ, and to help us carry out the mission of the church.
In other words, for what we need, what we're going to need, God is gonna
provide Whatever it is that we're gonna need as the church, God's grace is
going to equip us to be able to do it.
Again, it's not gonna be because we're gonna boast in that.
W- w- he didn't just get us started and say, "Good luck."
And so as we continue to be faithful, we need to recognize, man, God is
the one that's, that's providing.
God's grace is what's enabling.
God's grace is bringing people here to serve on the worship team or to
serve at Adventure Club or serve, you know, in, in our greeting, our
hospitality team or our tech team.
It's God's grace that's equipping the church to do the work of the mission.
God's grace is bringing people here who have a passion to
reach the lost with the Gospel.
That's God's grace doing this, and he is continuing to equip
our church, and I trust that he's gonna continue to do this for us.
See, it's not just that we depend on him to get started, to get going.
We depend on him to keep going.
It's his equipping grace that's keeping us going.
Back to the pool.
You're in the pool.
The swim instructor has, has taught you to, to jump in the
pool and to get in the water.
Well, well now, what this looks like, this equipping grace looks like this.
The swim instructor wants you to get comfortable going from one side
of the pool to the next side of the pool, but what he's gonna do,
because he knows you need it, is he's gonna give you the floaties.
He's gonna put the floaties on your arms, and so he's gonna
say, "Okay, I want you to swim."
And so you're gonna be doing something.
You're gonna be swimming, but at the same time, that which is keeping you
afloat are those things around your arms, the water wings, the floaties,
whatever you called them growing up there.
That's what's keeping you afloat as you get from one side of the
pool to the next side of the pool.
And so God has come to us as the church, and he's equipping us with our spiritual
floaties, and he's saying, "Hey, church, you need to swim towards the mission.
Get to the mission."
And so what we do is we actively pursue that as a church.
We're not just sitting back letting go and letting God, going, "Okay, go ahead.
Do it."
We're gonna participate.
We're gonna serve.
We're gonna get engaged.
We're gonna, we're gonna do what Christ has called the church to
do, but we're also gonna remember that what's keeping us afloat right
now are those spiritual floaties.
It's God's grace that's sustaining us along the way as he equips the church.
That's who we are.
And so church, we can be confident in this second point here that if we need a gift,
God's grace is gonna provide that gift.
If there's something that we need to do the mission that God has given
us of reaching people for Christ, teaching people to be like Christ,
and training people to serve Christ, if there's something we need to be
more faithful to that, then what this verse is telling us is that God's
grace is gonna give it to us, because we've been enriched in every way so
that you are not lacking in any gift.
Our mission is possible because of the grace of God at work in and through
us, because of his equipping grace
But there's something else that God's grace does and is doing
in the present, and is there in the second half of verse seven.
It's not just that He's given us every gift, but He's given us every
gift, he says there, verse seven, second half, "As you wait for the
revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ."
As you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ.
See, God's grace has provided us with these gifts to be used on
mission until either He calls us home or comes back for His bride.
And that's what Paul's focus is for the church here.
Hey, remember, Church, you haven't yet arrived.
This isn't it.
You're not there yet.
There are some that believe that the Corinthians may have had what is
termed an over-realized eschatology.
It's a big phrase, but here's what that means.
It means that they, they thought that they were already there, that there
was nowhere else to get, that they had reached the pinnacle, that the next
thing on the scene was just Christ coming back to set up the kingdom.
And what Paul's reminding them of is, hey, there's work to be done here.
We're not there yet.
You're to be on mission.
God's grace is gonna sustain you on that mission and sustain you as you wait for
the return of the Savior, as you wait for the bride of Christ or, or as the bride of
Christ for the groom to come back for us.
See, he's equipping us, in other words, as the Church, to be ready for His return,
waiting for the return of Jesus Christ.
That word waiting, it shows up other places like in Romans eight where we
are waiting for the revealing of Christ, what's gonna bring the redemption of
creation and of us as those that have been adopted as His sons and daughters.
In Galatians five, we wait for the fullness of
righteousness in which we hope.
In Philippians chapter three, we wait for Jesus to return.
And so as the Church, we have this tension of already not yet.
We are already sure of our future, and yet we're not yet there.
And so in the meantime, to get there, we've got His equipping grace that's
giving us everything that we need.
And so as we wait, we can wait confident that we will arrive
But again, this is, we're waiting not just as isolated individuals
or waiting as isolated families.
We're waiting in the context of the church.
'Cause He's equipping not the individual and not the holy huddle
over here, He's equipping the church.
And so we wait corporately together for that.
And so our responsibility, Church, is to be here, to be
present, to be all in, to commit.
You guys hear me say a, a couple of different phrases, don't you?
You hear me say sometimes, uh, talk about attending, connecting, serving, yeah?
Y- you guys have heard me say that before?
What we're talking about with that is, is that's what it looks like to belong here.
That's commitment.
It…
I'm all in at the church.
I'm connect- attending, I'm connecting, I'm serving.
I, I'm, I'm there.
Okay?
So sometimes people are like, "Well, what does the church expect of me?
What are my pastors looking for from me?"
There it is for you.
W- we're asking you to attend faithfully, to connect in relationship with one
another through community, through community groups, a- and to serve.
That's commitment.
So that's one thing that God is saying of you, "Hey, be
committed to the local church."
Okay?
And then the other thing that you hear me saying, you've heard me say
it this morning already, is about reaching, teaching and training.
And so you've got on the one hand what it means to be connected,
and so that's why we talk about attending and connecting and serving.
I'm committed to the church.
That's what we're talking about there.
Belonging, sometimes membership is the, the word that is, is thrown out there.
What do the pastors expect of me?
What does it look like for me to belong to this church?
Attend, connect, serve.
What's the mission of the church?
What is the church doing?
What are we trying to accomplish?
That's what we're trying to accomplish based on the Great Commission,
reaching people for Christ, teaching people to be like Christ, and
training people to serve Christ.
That's what our mission as Compass Bible Church is.
And so God's, what God's calling on you to do is He's saying, "Hey, I'm gonna equip.
I'm gonna provide the grace that you need as you wait for the return of Christ."
God's beckoning you to say, "Come be a part of it.
Come get involved.
Come commit to the Church.
Be all in."
Because this is where God's grace is provided through that
equipping grace that's gonna sustain us all the way to the end
His equipping grace
God's grace again robs us of our grounds for boasting and
puts His glory on full display.
As we continue as a church, as we look at the things going on, we have to
continue to say it's because God has provided us with everything that we need.
We're not lacking in any gift.
If God wanted us to have it, we would have it.
If it was necessary for the mission to be completed, we would have it.
And He's doing that through you guys, through bringing us together here
in this place as the body of Christ.
As God's church, we need His saving grace, but we also need His equipping grace.
Finally, as we look ahead to being with Christ, we need
His sustaining grace as well.
We need that grace that we can count on, that no matter what comes our way between
here and there, it's going to sustain us.
It's sure, and it's not just gonna sustain us for now, it's gonna
sustain us all the way until the end.
Look at verses 8 and 9.
Paul says this, "Who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the
day of our Lord Jesus Christ?
God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of
His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."
Here we come to this final component, this final facet of God's grace,
and that is His sustaining grace.
And Paul gives thanks here that God's grace set the church in motion,
continued to equip them for the work in the ministry, and finally here that
His grace would ensure that they would make it through to their ultimate
destination of being with Jesus.
Final point this morning is this, be thankful for sustaining
grace that brings us home.
Be thankful for sustaining grace that brings us home
When you fly on an airplane, I want you to picture it for a minute.
Y-y-you trust the pilot to get you up in the air, don't you?
And once the, the plane's in the air, you, you trust the pilot to s- to keep
it in the air, hopefully, depending on the airline that you're flying, I guess.
And then you, you, you trust that at the end, the pilot's gonna put that
plane on the ground and taxi it to the gate, and then all chaos is gonna let
loose as everybody wants to get off the plane and total depravity is undeniable
My point is you trust the pilot in the beginning of it, in the
middle of it, and at the end of it.
You're not on the plane worried that at some point in time the pilot's gonna come
back there and walk down the aisle past all the first class people back to coach
where you're sitting with, with me and, and, and tap you on the shoulder and say,
"Um, excuse me, can you come take over?"
You'd look at him like, "Are you crazy?"
You have a death wish.
I don't know how to land a plane.
By the way, if you're a pilot here and you're like, "Well, I do know how to…"
Fine.
Pilot a boat.
I don't care what you're piloting, just something you don't know how to do.
But imagine, imagine just how shocked you would be to have the pilot come
back and tap you on the shoulder and say, "I need you to land this plane."
You'd be like, "Well, that's not my job.
You got us in the air.
You got us all the way here.
It's your job to put us on the ground, not my job
None of you worry about that.
Because while you're sitting there, maybe some of you in first class,
great, I'm not jealous at all.
While you're sitting there with your nice leg room and your snacks and your
curtain that divides the rest of us plebes from you, while you're sitting
up there or in the back with me, you're confident that the pilot's gonna do the
work that the pilot's supposed to do.
You're not trying to sit there and think, "It's my turn.
I need to go do this."
God's grace got us going.
God's grace is sustaining us or equipping us.
And then finally, God's grace is gonna sustain us all the way to the end
In other words, God got us in the air, God's taking us to our
destination, and God's gonna see that we're gonna land safely.
It's His sustaining grace that is going to deliver us.
But again, I just wanna remind us that the pronouns in this passage when he's
talking about this, when he says in verse eight, "Who will sustain you?"
By the way, that who could refer to God or it could refer to Jesus, and
it's really one of those questions, is, is this God or is this Jesus?
The answer to that question is yes.
It, it, it doesn't really matter because if it's the Father, it's the Father
sustaining you through the Son, right?
Or it could be that, yes, this is Jesus sustaining us all the way.
Any, any way you cut it, it's, it's God doing it is the point here.
Who will sustain you to the end?
We really need the Texas standard version of the Bible, which
has y'all thrown in there.
So if it did, it would say, "Who will sustain y'all to the end?"
Because this is a, a plural pronoun here.
"Who will su- sustain y'all to the end, guiltless," corporately, "in
the day of our Lord Jesus Christ?
God is faithful, by whom y'all were called into the fellowship of
his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord."
So I just want you to see that this ultimate final deliverance
involves our identity and participation as the body of Christ.
Y'all, this is why that mindset that says, "I don't need the
local church," is totally aberrant to what scripture teaches.
It's not there.
God is saving a people, not a person, and He's saving you to be a part
of what He's doing, and us being a part of the local church is how the
m- universal church is manifested.
Somebody that says, "I'm part of the universal church, not the local church,"
no, you're not That's an oxymoron.
You can't be.
The universal church is only known through the local church.
God is saving us through our participation together as
brothers and sisters in Christ.
His grace, His sustaining grace, is experienced as we love each other as
the body of Christ, as we get involved in each other's lives, as we hold m-
each other accountable, as we support each other, as we pray for each other.
His sustaining grace is seen through the community of the bride of Christ,
and He is using the church, He's using us and His grace through the church
to deliver us finally home to Jesus.
It's not just that He gets us going and says, "Good luck."
It's not just that He's equipping us right now for the time being, but is
He gonna get us all the way there?
Who knows?
No, He's got us and He's gonna deliver us all the way home into the presence
of Jesus, to the end, guiltless, in the day of our Lord Jesus.
Let me flip over here.
Uh, Louis read it for us during our, our scripture reading, uh, this morning,
but I just want to reiterate this and, and read it again for you from Ephesians
chapter 5 i- in the words that Paul gives to husbands, which is really a,
a, a picture of what Christ does for us.
And listen here, he says, verse 25, "Husbands, love your wives,
as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that…"
So Jesus died for the church so that He might sanctify her.
That is the process of making us more like Him, more holy.
"Having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that
he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or
wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish."
See, part of Christ's saving work is the end, when we are finally
presented without spot, guiltless.
The word there is unimpeachable.
It's a, a term that was used in a courtroom of a verdict, that
you, no charge can stick to you.
That's part of Christ's love for us.
That's part of God's love for us.
That's a key component of the grace of God at work in us as the Church is
that He's gonna bring us and deliver us ultimately into the presence,
and we are gonna be presented before Jesus as the spotless bride.
That's His grace.
It's not your job by your own power to keep yourself guiltless
into the day of Jesus Christ.
God's grace is gonna do that, working in and through you and working in and
through the church until that day.
And you say, "Okay, but can I really trust that?"
Look at verse nine.
"God is faithful."
God is faithful.
God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of
his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
God is faithful
Part of his character.
He can't be anything else but faithful.
And so when you read the promises of God, when you read things
like he's gonna present us pure and spotless before the Son
And those are things that you can take to the bank because God is faithful,
and it's this faithful God who has called you into the fellowship of
His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
When the, you see the word fellowship there, this, this is not the same
as cookies and coffee or donuts and coffee in our, our situation.
This is a, a fellowship that's a, a, a partnership.
Think of the, the, the greatest literary work of all time outside
of the Bible, The Lord of the Rings.
Think of the opening book, the what of the ring?
The Fellowship of the Ring.
If you've ever read that book, they're not just hanging out having cookies
and coffee talking about the weather.
The Fellowship of the Ring is their participation in the mission.
They're together.
They're bought in.
They're all s- shareholders, stakeholders in what's happening, trying to carry
out the mission, and then they all get to participate in the blessings of
it and the rewards of it in the end.
That's the fellowship that Paul's talking about here, the partnership
that we are all in, that we all have a, a part of, a participation in
the Lord Jesus Christ
It's a word that shows up later on in one Corinthians chapter 10 verse 16.
One Corinthians 10:16 says, "The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a
participation in the blood of Christ?
The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?"
It's the same word there, same concept.
We have a fellowship with His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord.
God has called us into that, meaning that our share in Christ is our
share in Christ, not just right now, but for all of eternity, too.
And that goes back to His grace that saved, it's part of His grace
that equips, and it's definitely part of His grace that sustains
Let me go back to the plane.
When you deplane, after everybody has rushed off the plane, or maybe you're
rushing off the plane too, I don't know.
A- as you walk down the aisle of the plane, chances are usually the
pilot is standing at the end of the aisle of the plane, isn't he?
And when you're getting off the plane, most times, unless it's just
been one of those flights where it's like this the whole time, and then
you just smile and nod and just walk by silently, most time you just say,
"Hey, thanks, thanks for the flight.
Thanks for getting us here safely."
Uh, imagine instead walking down the aisle of, of the plane and saying to the
pilot, uh, "Hey, I just want you to, to know, uh, you don't even have to a- to
say it, you're welcome for being such a good, a good, uh, rider on the plane.
Uh, you're welcome for not making your life miserable.
You're welcome for, uh, for not complaining that I didn't get
the full can of, of soda on the plane, but only the half can.
You're welcome for, uh, not, uh, complaining that the armrest next to me
got taken by the person sitting next to me, even though they already had their
own armrest and I was in the middle seat.
You're welcome for not complaining about the fact that
I didn't have enough leg room.
You're welcome, uh, you're, you're just welcome that I graced you on this flight."
You would never do that.
As you get off the, the f- the plane, you look at the pilot and you see the one
that was responsible for getting you up, getting-- keeping you safe on the flight
and landing, and you say, "Hey, thank you.
Thank you."
Like the Corinthians, we as a church should give thanks for how God's grace
has saved us, how it is equipping us right now, and for the confidence that
we can have because God is faithful that it will continue to sustain us all the
way into the presence of our Savior.
It's God's grace
It's my prayer as the pastor of this church that that
will always be our anthem.
It's my prayer as the, the pastor of this church that you and I, anytime
that we talk about this place, that we find many, many reasons
for us not to boast in ourselves, but to boast in the glory of God.
It's my prayer that, that we continue to remember who it is that saved us,
who it is that's equipping us, and who it is that's gonna sustain us.
And it's my prayer that God keeps doing things.
I, I want us to be the biggest and most brilliant platform
for the glory of God around
I just want him to never make that a platform for us and
always a platform for him.
Let's pray together
Lord, we are those that have been made recipients of amazing grace, of
amazing blessings, of forgiveness, of redemption, of sanctification.
Lord, that you've given us your Spirit, you've given us your Word,
you've given us the ability to read and understand your Word and take it
and to apply it to our lives, Lord.
You've given us this place, you've given us to one another, you've given
us brothers and sisters in Christ who will care about us and pray for us
and, uh, serve alongside us and help us as we seek to, to live out what
it means to be a follower of Jesus.
Lord, your grace is everywhere we look.
What is there that we have that we did not receive?
The answer to that question is nothing.
You've given us everything.
And so if that's true, Lord, who are we to boast in any of it?
Instead, Lord, may our boast be in Jesus.
May our boast be in you.
May our focus be on the grace of God and your glory.
And so, Lord, we are so thankful for what you're doing.
We pray that you would do more, Lord, for you, that you would expand our
reach, that you would bring more people here, that you would save the lost
around us, Lord, so that your grace may be even more clearly on display.
May we get out of the way and give Christ center stage.
We pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen.