The last thing Jesus did on this earth was to leave it. After He rose, He did not die again like every other person who was brought back to life. They merely had their life restored to them, and then they died again by whatever means they died of. However, Jesus resurrected, and this body would never be able to test death. Jesus had beaten death; He had conquered sin; He perfectly fulfilled the Law, endured the full wrath of God upon sin, and now had the final victory over all things. There was one last thing to do after giving His disciples one final command: to rise to heaven and claim the Throne.
There is a problem in the Church today. Because evil is ever increasing (as Jesus said), we seem to think that Jesus is not reigning and that Satan seems to have this power that is warring and is equal to God. That is not what the Bible teaches. The Bible does not teach a Messiah who would come and then eventually overcome the devil after an intense battle. No, it teaches that Jesus is reigning NOW. Jesus took the throne 2000 years ago. Yes, He was God before, and He is still God now, but in His humanity, He is the King of all Kings, and He is ruling now. What does that mean and entail?
Nothing happens outside God’s sovereign will. Yes, He has allowed the enemy to run wild a bit, but never without a leash. The real enemy is not Satan anymore, and even then, it never was him. He is just a dog on a leash with limits to what he can do. He is just an imp that had no actual power or authority. Our real enemy is ourselves, our own sin, and our own desire to have a say on reality. If we truly believed that Jesus is the King of Kings, we would not be fearing or panicking over what is going on politically or economically. But more so, we would not be trying to advise Jesus on how to reign or to have a say on what we should be doing in our lives.
Is Jesus truly the center of what we believe and the center of what we do? Many want Jesus as Savior but not Lord. You don’t get one without the other. And if Jesus is Lord, that means He is the boss and He says what is allowed and what is not allowed. “Well, what about all the mass shootings and assassinations and crime?” What about them? God has never been under any obligation to prevent crime. Do you want to be under Minority Report? 1984? Brave New World? Because that is what is being asked for. God being sovereign does not mean preventing evil from taking place. It means dealing with evil when it is done, and God will indeed do that. All the evil that is done is going to be dealt with. Just because that justice is not done in our timing or our means of it being done does not make God negligent. He has the record. And the day is coming when judgment is coming. But Jesus is waiting to save whoever can be saved before that happens.
Jesus has a body: the Church. That is through whom He acts to deal with the things of this world and to get the message of salvation to others. A severe problem we have is that we think the problem lies anywhere except ourselves. Why is all this evil taking place? Very simple: because WE (that means YOU and me too) have let it happen. And we expect God to do the dirty work for us. No, WE are the agent by which God has chosen to act, so if we don’t do it, then it doesn’t get done. And then God will move through someone else. But Jesus is reigning now, and when people finally surrender themselves and truly let Him reign, they do absolute wonders. Read Christian biographies. The things I have personally seen are even beyond the miracles recorded in the Bible. If people ask, “Where is the evidence?” or say, “I wish God would actually do something,” He is and He does. But we have to pay attention.
The one thing I keep bringing up that many really don’t like to hear – and those willing have a hard time practicing, myself included – is that if Jesus is Lord, then you are not. We live in a time of many false religions and false Christs. How can I say that? Because so many “Christians” out there believe in a god who is omnipotent but not sovereign. They have a god who can create, save, and give joy and happiness, but it is on the self’s terms. Paul Washer was once asked to come do a teaching on the attributes of God, and he warned the pastor that if he did that and began speaking on the holiness of God, the righteousness of God, and the sovereignty of God, his most loyal congregants would rise up and say, “That’s not MY god!” And that’s the problem: most people’s “god” is really themselves.
Jesus is reigning and He is ruling now, and what He says goes. We don’t get a say in the matter, and any attempt we try to offer God should be considered sin because we are trusting our own wisdom instead of the omniscient one who truly knows everything. How foolish can we be? Don’t answer that, because there will always be someone who takes that as a challenge. If we are followers of Christ, we are not followers of self. If we are following Christ, we listen to and submit to and obey Him, and we are to deny ourselves. Our life as a Christian is not our own, and we need to start living like that. Jesus will let us do our own thing if we insist, but it will not be without consequence, and in reality, we will greatly miss out. And if we are not careful, the small “miss out” may turn into a BIG “miss out.” If Jesus is not our Lord, He is not our Savior.
Jesus is sitting on the throne, and He is guiding and directing all things for His purpose and His glory. He is setting up all of world history and all the nations to come together, and He will deal with them in one fell swoop. He is pulling out whomever He can from the fires of judgment, and then He will bring it all to an end. He will return and deal with those who have done evil in His sight and rescue those who stayed loyal to Him. Let us stop treating Jesus as a soon-to-be ruler but rather as the current and active ruler now and today. And what does that mean? It means if we are obedient to God and we act in the authority He has given us, we will truly be invincible to do all we are called to do, and nothing will touch us except that which is necessary for us to prove we belong to Jesus. So what do we have to fear? The opinions of intellectuals who only think they know something? Let us take solace that Jesus reigns now and He reigns forever, and there is no better King that anyone could ask for.
Next week, I will wrap up this series by analyzing Jesus as both Savior and Condemner.
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Jesus gave some very harsh criticism against the towns of Galilee, which saw numerous miracles and still just wanted the shows and not have anything to do with living a righteous life. Both Sodom and Nineveh, the two cities that in the Old Testament represented the darkest of sins, would have repented had they seen Jesus; they stand in judgment against those who refused to repent, having seen Jesus in action. But there is one group that had Jesus’ ire even more: the Pharisees and Sadducees, who made this system of false teaching, no hope for anyone out of their system, and intellectual/religious superiority over anyone else, even each other.
Several years ago, I wrote a series about the woes of Jesus against these people, and I’m not about to repeat that here. However, we need to look at ourselves as the Pharisees, not as the heroes. Where have we played church and piety, but in the practical, real world, we do nothing to help another? I don’t believe there is a single person who claims Christianity who hasn’t pulled a Pharisee at some point. I know I have. But I want to make clear that Jesus did not ever challenge the Pharisees regarding Scriptural accuracy other than their LACK of it. What He blasted the Pharisees over was their hypocrisy. They were all boastful and puffed up, but never produced anything.
One of the most misunderstood passages in the Gospels regarding Jesus was His analysis of a widow giving her two mites. Many others gave out of their riches, but the widow gave literally all she had. Many preachers will praise the widow for giving her last pennies in faith, but Jesus was not speaking in a positive tone about this situation. This was not a Pharisee vs tax-collector situation. Jesus was making a commentary about this whole system coming down. The context of this commentary was how the temple they were standing in would be totally leveled. John MacArthur brought that to my attention and pointed out that Jesus was speaking against the system that would encourage a widow to give her last two pennies to the church in the hope that God would finally bless her.
There is no teaching in Scripture that encourages compulsory giving. It has always been a free-will offering and in accordance with one’s ability. There is no teaching anywhere in Scripture that if you give your last pennies to the church that are needed for your survival, God will bless you. And you can be sure that the false teachers who are always asking for money are going to try to convince you that if you give your money to the Lord (in actuality, them), you will be blessed. They’ll cite Elijah, who requested the final cake from a widow before dying, only for the oil and flour to never run out, but that was a one-time thing. When a system calls for money at the expense of normal living, that’s called extortion. It doesn’t matter how much religious language you put on it and how well you decorate it; that’s called extortion. If a gang member said, “Pay this and we’ll give you protection,” we call it extortion. If a clergy says, “Tithe and you will get God’s blessing,” it’s the same thing.
Now, let me be clear. There absolutely is a place for giving, and God absolutely does bless a generous and cheerful giver. God will indeed make 90% go farther than 100% on self. The heart is what matters. Why are you giving? That is the question. I can testify to various situations where I had given willingly and cheerfully, and some time later, someone gave to me above and beyond what I was expecting. So even in financial giving, you reap what you sow, but it’s not a mathematical equation. And if your motive is to give so you can get, you will throw all your money away, and someone is going to live well off your dime. Jesus is not against giving; He is against extortion. He is not against supporting true ministers; He is against false ministers using His name to get wealth. Paul confronted them in His day, which is why he refused to charge a dime to any church, though he was entitled to it, because he was not going to give a window of a testimony for slander.
Now, let me be clear on this, too. Jesus is not against religion either. He is not against clergy. He built the priestly system. He raised church leaders. He is not against any of that. He is against hypocrisy, and so anyone who is involved in ministry as a deacon, elder, Bible study leader, evangelist, author, speaker, pastor, whatever, if you are going to claim the name of Christ and represent God, you are held to a higher standard. Jesus never once blasted the Pharisees over correct doctrine or even for holding to correct doctrine. It was hypocrisy with an emphasis on preventing people from “getting in.” Now, I have had this notion thrown at me numerous times by false teachers due to holding true doctrine and saying they can’t come in with false teachings. Anything can be abused. Remember my post about how Jesus gave an out to the outcasts? That is what Jesus blasted the Pharisees over; that they gave no out to the outcast.
What Jesus got so ticked at was the religious leaders was forcing everyone to look to them as though they were anyone worthy of attention and preventing anyone from worshiping God except by their way. The Pharisees thought they were God’s people and therefore were above everyone else, but that was not God’s purpose for them. God’s purpose for them was to be the messenger to the rest of the world on how to get to God. While God held standards about how to worship and gave a point and purpose that to come before God did require physical and moral perfection, those laws were to showcase our need for a Savior. When Jesus came, He completed that role, so now we can approach God’s throne as we are, so we can be changed to who He is. Jesus never opened a new door to God’s kingdom that wasn’t already there. He simply showcased that the point and purpose of it all was to reveal Him who would give us access to the throne. But all that access must be done God’s way.
Jesus blasted the Pharisees for blocking the way for the people from being able to worship God’s way and not even doing it themselves. He blasted them for putting people into their castes and not giving them an out. He despised their snuffing their noses at anyone they felt less than them, and how they sought their own praise for all their deeds. In the end, Jesus’ ultimate statement was, “This whole system is coming down.” And 40 years later, it did. Judgment starts at the house of God. We have the option to start cleaning ourselves or have it done for us. If we choose the latter, we’d better not complain about how it is done because God won’t hear it.
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One of the biggest misconceptions about Jesus is that He is just love, mercy, and compassion, but He is not about judgment and wrath. Jesus said He did not come to condemn the world but to save it; however, in the very next sentence, He said the world is condemned already. He simply is not adding to it. It’s already there. We have already sinned, and therefore, Jesus does not need to come around and bring judgment. However, Jesus does warn of that judgment that is already due, but in that judgment, He offers peace, hope, and salvation – the one means of escape from that judgment. A clear case study of this is found in Matthew 11:20-30.
In the first part of this passage, Jesus condemns three towns: Bethsaida, Corazin, and Capernaum, all towns in which Jesus had based His Galilean ministry and where He spent most of His time in ministry for three years. They all saw Him and heard Him, and yet there was no change in how the towns as a whole operated. They came for a spectacle, to get what they wanted, and then went right back to their lifestyles as though Jesus never was there. And this made Jesus mad and sad.
Many say Jesus was fond of using hyperbole, but I find many times people will argue that to try to lessen the sting of the message. The Bible is full of very strong language, equating witchcraft to idolatry, comparing our own righteousness to menstrual rags, and even making Ezekiel, Isaiah, and Hosea do some very strange things to showcase just how graphic the nature of sin is. I think the Bible actually holds back on the severity of sin because we simply don’t have the language to understand it. I don’t believe Jesus is using hyperbole here. I believe Jesus did believe Sodom, Gomorrah, and Nineveh would have repented had they seen Jesus in action. And because the towns who saw Him in action, the very Son of God on display, nonchalantly went about their way, what else would it take? This is the same thing Jesus confronted the Pharisees with in Matthew 12 with the blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. As John MacArthur put it, “If after you have seen what I do and heard what I say and all you can do is conclude this to be the work of the devil, then you are beyond the possibility of being saved. There is nothing more you could receive.”
Judgment was coming, and because Jesus was rejected, there was nothing more that could be done. This is also why God condemned the pre-Flood world, why He condemned Sodom and Gomorrah even with the hope of finding ten righteous men, and why He condemned the adult generation leaving Egypt. Because they did not receive the message, and even if God the Father had come down and shown all His glory to prove Himself to them, they would only hate Him all the more.
But with this condemnation that Jesus is merely stating is already there, Jesus offers hope. To come to Him, to be with Him, to take your yoke upon Him because every person’s daily life is simply brutal. When we find rest in Jesus, He does the heavy lifting. I don’t get how people think they can survive without Christ because they simply aren’t. They may put on a good façade, and they may have deceived themselves into being fine, but human life is not designed to operate without God. And Jesus doesn’t call for us to pull our fair share of the load. He simply asks us to come alongside Him and let Him do all the work.
Jesus did not want to condemn anyone; He wanted to save people from condemnation. He offered life and life abundant, but to acquire it requires denial of the old life. To get the new life, you need to get rid of the old life. And the new life is so much better than the old life. I have heard it said that the world is simply amazed at how Christians can engage in parties and enjoy company without the use of beer or drugs. Why? Because we have a source of joy that far supersedes any temporary pleasure the world offers.
What Jesus offers is the best thing that could be offered. I am reminded of what God offered Israel as they entered the Promised Land: life for obedience or death for disobedience. Such an easy choice… or more accurately, such an obvious choice which one would be better. But what did Israel do? They chose sin and death. Then they blamed God for it, and we are no different. So many times, we go back to the very vomit we throw up, and I am reminded of what Paul says in Romans 6: We are to be dead to those things. We were supposed to have given those up, abandoning the old life to embrace the new life. I am so grateful to have a God who doesn’t give up on me. Because He very well could. He gave up on three towns that saw Jesus in the flesh. He gave them over to eternal judgment, though obviously, there were individuals who escaped and believed.
We can desire to see someone saved all we want, but there does come a point when God says: “They are finished. They are dead. There is nothing more that can be done.” Yes, God could just snap His fingers and “save everyone,” but that is not how He designed things. Why would sinful people want to spend eternity with the very God they hate anyway? They want paradise but not God. And only those who want God are getting in. Do we want Him? Or do we just want what He offers? The towns Jesus cursed only wanted the show, the miracles, and the feel-goods. They didn’t want Jesus, and they didn’t want to give up their lives to Him. But those who did found rest and comfort. They found a load in life that was easy and light, lighter than anything they could ever find anywhere else. And they would never go back.
Find your rest in Jesus. And while it sounds cruel, the dead cannot be saved; you have to let them go. That is what Jesus did. They refused to get on the “ark,” and when the Flood came, there was nothing more that could be done. Don’t reject the message. Come to Christ before it is too late.
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How is it possible, with so much evidence for God’s existence and power, that to find anyone who believes Him is such a hard task? If God were expressing Himself in a human mind, this must have been what He was thinking regarding King Ahaziah, son of Ahab of Israel. Ahaziah was old enough to see the miracles of Elijah. He knew about the drought. He at least heard about the Mt. Carmel incident. And he knew of Micaiah’s prophecy that sent Ahab to his grave and gave him the throne.
Yet when Ahaziah fell through the terrace in his place, his first turn was to seek the Baals. Why? His mother was Jezebel, and she was one of Baal’s priestesses. His sister was Athaliah, who married Jehoshaphat’s son. Baal worship was rampant in Israel because of Jezebel and her children to the point where Elijah thought he was the last good prophet left. Ahaziah never turned to seek the Lord. He sought Baal, and Elijah stopped the messenger to force the king to face the Lord. Instead Ahaziah sent three different companies of soldiers to arrest Elijah. The first two were slaughtered because Elijah called fire from heaven, and the third pled for mercy. Elijah gave the same message: “Is there no God in Israel?” Ahaziah died and his brother took the throne until Jehu’s cleansing of Ahab’s line.
Let me ask a similar question: Is there no God in the United States? Is there no God in the Church in America? To be clear, Israel was under covenant with God and the United States is not, however the key problem is the same. Those who profess the name of Christ, those who proclaim to be in the covenant with God, are seeking other gods besides the Lord for their needs. Perhaps the greatest idol in the U.S. today, and there are many, is the “man of knowledge.” Yes, we have severe idols with drugs, entertainment, sex, celebrities, money, comfort, etc., but few are idolized greater than the academic. Understand that I am not talking about individuals but academia as a whole. And it's not merely the heathens who worship this god; the Christian in the U.S. worships this idol more than anything else.
There are a lot of good things that have come out of academic studies, but when academic credentials became the standard instead of actual quality work and character, all the academic fields fell into disarray and became total cesspools of false knowledge. Proverbs states that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. There is no true knowledge that can be had that does not find its source in the Lord. A militant anti-theist can say some truthful things from time to time, but those true things never originated out of that person’s thinking, but they actually came from a God-fearing man who got his ideas from the ultimate source. In all the academic studies we have, there are a lot of conundrums that cannot and will not be solved by man’s own efforts. The academics are seeking every source and possible answer except one that reveals the True God, and God is saying, “Here I am.”
George Washington Carver was born a slave and raised and adopted by his owners when slaves were politically freed. However, his people were still slaves to cotton economically because they knew nothing else. Carver had done his studies and realized the peanut plant would be the solution to not only freeing the blacks from cotton but the South itself, which had no other crop to work with. Where did Carver turn to? The academics? The witch doctors? No. He turned to the God of the Bible and asked God how he made each part of the plant and what each part could do, and he came up with 300+ recipes for the peanut plant. It was not even considered a possible crop at the time, and now he had it. He knew there was still a God in the U.S., and he turned to that God to rescue the South from its slavery to cotton.
In the churches, the situation is much worse. Is there a God in the American church? Look at the average church prayer meeting and you’ll find the answer as to whether that church actually believes in God or not. Where is the God that works miracles and shows supernatural deliverance? Where is the God who gave the U.S. the power to overthrow the most powerful empire in the world to earn our freedom? Where is the God that Carver prayed to and Edwards and Whitefield preached of? The answer is simple: He’s still here. He is just being silent because we are not seeking Him. We are not going after Him, not as a nation. I am so grateful for God placing me in a church at the right time to stop me from pursuing the academic-heavy slant I was heading in and reel me back in to use the academic strengths I have for God’s Kingdom instead of my own. My church is actively seeking in prayer for God to come back and do what God has been known to do in the church once again. But churches like mine are hard to come by.
Look at pastoral requirements. You see a standard list of business-like credentials. MDiv? Check. Previous pastoral experience with youth or associate or assistant? Check. Doctrinal statement of beliefs? Check. But show me the church that selects their pastors according to the official credential list found in 1 Timothy 3 and Titus 1, and I’ll show you a rare diamond in the rough. I will never forget Randy Guilluza of the Institute of Creation Research closing a conference back in 2018 with this statement. He said if he were on a pastoral selection committee, he would not ask about the Trinity. He would ask about how he handles the fear of man, because if he can handle the fear of man correctly, he’ll get the Trinity correct. When helping churches with their pastor selection team, Paul Washer will have the team list all the things they want the pastor to do and it usually ends up being a 160-hours-a-day list. Then he asks how long they want that pastor in prayer and Scripture seeking the face of God. In saying that, prayer and Scripture study and seeking God is almost never on the mind of church leadership.
Is there a God in the U.S.? Do we actually believe there is one? Because as God did with Ahaziah and the family of Ahab, God is going to remind the United States that He is still here, and it is not going to be for fun and games. Judgment is coming and it is here. We are seeing Psalm 50 being carried out before us – where the wicked, professing to be Christians, did all sorts of evil, thinking God was just like them and would readily forgive them all, but instead God is going to wipe them out and tear them to pieces. Our nation has forgotten God, but God has not left. He has merely been silent and left us to our own devices, and He is going to drop the hammer soon. That judgment will start in the House of God and since we have not and will not repent as a whole, the only option left is intense persecution. God is going to purify His bride before He comes to take her home. May we be as the 7000 who did not bow their knee to Baal. May we be among those who did not forget God, and may we proudly declare that there is still a God in the United States and He will be worshiped one way or the other.
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When one of you has a dispute with another believer, how dare you file a lawsuit and ask a secular court to decide the matter instead of taking it to other believers! Don’t you realize that someday we believers will judge the world? And since you are going to judge the world, can’t you decide even these little things among yourselves? Don’t you realize that we will judge angels? So you should surely be able to resolve ordinary disputes in this life. If you have legal disputes about such matters, why go to outside judges who are not respected by the church? I am saying this to shame you. Isn’t there anyone in all the church who is wise enough to decide these issues? But instead, one believer sues another—right in front of unbelievers! Even to have such lawsuits with one another is a defeat for you. Why not just accept the injustice and leave it at that? Why not let yourselves be cheated? Instead, you yourselves are the ones who do wrong and cheat even your fellow believers.
- 1 Corinthians 6:1-8
Paul just rebuked the believers in the Corinthian church for letting the sexual sin of incest not only exist in their church but being boastful about it in the last section. Now, he continues his lecture to them by getting into how to handle legal disputes among them.
There are a few important things to note before digging into the details of this passage. Paul makes it clear up front in verse 1 that what he’s saying only applies to disputes among believers. This does not apply when an unbeliever is involved in the dispute. Additionally, this section only refers to non-criminal disputes. He implies in Romans 13:3-4 that criminal cases should be handled by the government. The legal matters referred to in this section are property or civil disputes.
However, by using the phrasing “how dare you,” Paul is strongly urging believers to take their legal matters before Christians who can help them, rather than commanding them. So there is still a door left open for Christians to take cases to the secular courts in some situations. Roman law of Paul’s day allowed Jews to use their own authorities to settle property disputes. It’s likely that this same line of thought would apply to Christians, as they weren’t yet that far removed from the Jewish traditions at this point. Paul was also a Roman citizen, so he would have been able to use the Roman courts as well for any legal matters.
Today, we have a very different system than the Jews and early Christians in the first century. There are no specific religious courts in our society that Christians can use to handle our legal matters. Paul’s concern for the early believers at Corinth was how this would affect things at the second coming of Christ (verse 2). If believers can’t even handle small civil matters among themselves, how will we with Christ judge the world one day? We have become co-heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17), so we will reign and judge the world with Him when the end of times comes. So if they can’t even handle these petty little earthly matters, how will they judge on that day?
Paul emphasizes his case even more in verse 3, where he points out that Christians will judge angels. However, Paul does not give us any details of what exactly that means. Perhaps it means that Christians will have a part in judging the devil and his fellow fallen angels. Or, this may mean that Christians will rule over the heavenly angels with Christ someday, as we are co-heirs with Him.
Scholars disagree on the tone of what Paul says in verse 4, whether he is being sarcastic or as a rhetorical question. Either way, an “outside” judge, meaning an unbeliever, would have a different worldview than those who have faith in Christ. They will likely see matters in a different light, and they would not necessarily be looking at matters through a perspective of God’s love and justice as a believer would.
In verses 5-6, Paul lets them know that they should be ashamed of themselves for not being able to handle these matters within the church. There should be some believer among them who is wise enough to handle this! That would be much better than having Christian brothers fighting with each other in front of the secular courts over a small matter that probably isn’t important in the grand scheme of things. That gives the believers a bad name and does not represent the name of Jesus well to those who do not yet have faith in Him.
Paul does recognize in verse 7 that legal matters may need to be handled at times, but the fact that they are having these disputes among fellow believers shows their spiritual immaturity. They are not living out the love that God has shown them when they cause injustices to happen among their fellow believers. He points out in verse 8 that some of those believers are the ones who are causing these injustices and the need for legal authorities to step in. Their love for their fellow believers should be strong enough that they would be willing to suffer some wrongs against them for the sake of unity in the church.
How do we apply this passage to our modern world? Does this mean that believers should never take another believer to court for any reason? Depending on the situation, that answer could be yes. Jesus gave us a process for handling disputes among believers in Matthew 18:15-20. If all of us truly followed that and did our best to love one another with the love of Christ, then there would be little need for believers to take one another to court.
However, the problem is that we don’t follow that procedure from Jesus and we don’t always love one another as we should. We are spiritually immature and we are weak when tempted by the ways of this world. But as believers in Christ, we should be different than the nonbelievers in our society. We should hold ourselves and each other to a higher standard – the standard of being obedient to God in all things out of love and honor for Him.
We do have a court process that we can use when dealing with unbelievers, and I believe that also applies to those who may be Christians in name only who are not truly striving to live out their faith. But we should be careful to practice spiritual maturity and follow the instructions of Jesus before immediately turning to the secular ways of this world to handle matters among our fellow brothers and sisters in Christ, just as Paul encourages the Corinthians to do.
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This, then, is how you ought to regard us: as servants of Christ and as those entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed. Now it is required that those who have been given a trust must prove faithful. I care very little if I am judged by you or by any human court; indeed, I do not even judge myself. My conscience is clear, but that does not make me innocent. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time; wait until the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of the heart. At that time each will receive their praise from God.
- 1 Corinthians 4:1-5
Paul had been talking about human leaders of the church and how the people should focus on Jesus Christ and the gospel message rather than the people who teach that message. He wraps up all of those thoughts with the section of this letter that we’re looking at today.
Paul and all the other people who were spreading and teaching the gospel message should be regarded as servants of Christ (verse 1a). It’s important here to dig into the word “servant.” The Greek word originally derived from a rower on a ship, but it generally means an attendant or a servant. Often, we confuse the word slave with the word servant, but a slave is definitely not what Paul means here. This word for servant here refers to someone who is under an authority figure but they are functioning as a free person, not enslaved. Paul, Apollos, and the other leaders are under the authority of Jesus Christ. They are fully responsible to Jesus Christ and to Him alone. Other than that responsibility, they have freedom.
The word “entrusted” refers to the idea of a person managing the affairs of a household. This person was often a slave who would have significantly less freedom than a servant. The leaders had been “entrusted with the mysteries God has revealed” (verse 1b). These “mysteries” are the things that we cannot understand through our own human wisdom but only through the power of the Holy Spirit. While they had freedom under the authority of Jesus Christ, they were enslaved to what the Holy Spirit was revealing to them about God.
This is emphasized in verse 2 where Paul writes that it is required for him to be faithful. God has called Paul to proclaim the gospel message, and Paul absolutely must remain faithful and trustworthy in that calling. He cannot depart from it!
Because the only authority truly over Paul is God, he does not care what happens to him in human courts of law (verse 3). No human’s opinion matters to him, not even his own. This lines up with his writing in Romans 8:31-33: “What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.” If God is for Paul (and He clearly is), then it doesn’t matter who might be against Paul. No one can bring any charge against him that actually matters in this world.
Paul makes an important distinction in verse 4. His conscience may be clear, but he is not innocent. Even though he is doing what God has called him to do and he is being continually led by the Holy Spirit, Paul is still a sinner. Paul still had human temptations and disobeyed God in various ways, even though the “big picture” of his life is obedience to God. He knows that God is the one who will judge him. He doesn’t care at all about human judgment; only the Lord’s judgment matters to Paul, since the Lord is the only authority that is truly over him.
Paul then jumps forward to describe the final judgment day in verse 5. Paul commands them to not judge anything before that appointed time; again, humans are not the final, authoritative judge of one another, that’s God’s job. Only God will be the true and accurate judge of all humankind because only God knows all of our thoughts, words, and actions. Even the things that we have hidden from other people will be exposed when Jesus comes again to judge all of humanity. Everything will be exposed!
But Paul also makes sure to put some good news in there. On that final judgment day, not only will our sins be judged, but we will also receive praise from God for the good that we have done and how we have been obedient to Him in our lives.
Why does Paul bring this up? He saw that the Corinthian church was judging one another, and Paul is telling them they need to stop that. While we are encouraged through the Scriptures to hold one another accountable for the purpose of helping one another grow in our faith, that is very different than judging one another. We can encourage one another and help correct our brothers and sisters in the faith when we see them going astray, but only God has the true authority to judge.
We, too, are to live our lives as servants of Christ. We have the freedom to live how we want to, but to be obedient to God, we are required to live within the bounds of the gospel message and the mysteries that God has revealed to us in the Scriptures. We are servants of Christ, under the authority of Christ and Christ alone.
Now, that does not mean that we have free reign to disobey earthly authorities. God has set up systems of authority for us humans here on Earth so that we don’t all live in utter chaos. We are to obey the authorities that God has placed over us because we are following Him as the ultimate authority. But we should not live in fear of human authorities since it is only God’s judgment that should truly matter to us. As Jesus taught in Matthew 10:28, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
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The Jewish expression of deep remorse was to wear sackcloth and to cover their heads with dust and ashes. This was done after a defeat in battle but also as an outward expression of humility before God. When we sin and after God breaks us over it, our response should be that of humility and unworthiness to even approach God for mercy.
Job is a clear example of this. After dealing with his intense ordeal in which he lost his family and possessions and his closest companions kept berating him for a sin he did not commit, God showed up and didn’t even explain Himself to Job. Instead, God showed His sovereignty over all things; who is Job that God should have to answer to him? Job realized who he was dealing with and said, “I have spoken that which I knew not, therefore I repent in dust and ashes.” Job never sinned with his lips and blamed God for anything, but he had taken an unhealthy position of demanding that God give him an explanation.
Why dust and ashes? That goes back to creation. God made Adam from the dust of the earth, and after Adam sinned, God cursed him to return to the dust from whence he came. Adam did not come from a set of humanoids nor evolved from a common ancestor with apes. He was created from the dust of the earth as a special creation. So the Jews, treating this as a historical event, use dust and ashes as a symbol that, “I am made from dust and I am returning to dust and I am as worthy as dust.” Many ended up treating this as tradition and never really grasped the true meaning of it, but that is where it came from.
Dust, as we know, is the tiniest piece of dirt easily picked up by the wind. It is the most broken-down part of the dirt. Without gluing agents like water, it comes and goes with a mere breath. Ashes, as we know, are the remnants of anything that a fire has consumed. Like dust, ash blows away with the wind and is gone. This is also the imagery used to describe the brevity of life here on earth. Just a few decades and we are gone. When we are compared to dust, we are to realize that our lives are short, and we will come and go while the world goes on as though we were never there.
Isaiah takes a slightly different approach but uses the same idea. After pronouncing judgment upon Judah and other nations for their sins, Isaiah got a glimpse of the throne of Heaven. Just that one glimpse and Isaiah shrieked, “Woe is me! I am undone!” This could also be translated as saying, “I am disintegrated. I am dust. I am obliterated.” Isaiah realized that despite being God’s prophet, he was still in need of a Savior; if put in the presence of God, he’d be annihilated. When I’ve written about the holiness of God, I’ve made a point that God cannot let us be in His presence because He will simply destroy us merely with His presence as ice being near a fire melts immediately. We have to recognize that we truly are nothing and worth nothing when next to God. Yes, God loves us and yes, God treasures us, but we have no intrinsic value. Our value only comes from God choosing to love us.
When we sin, we, who are worthless as dust, turn against God. When we sin, we are demanding that our voice and our opinions be heard and that we get to decide what we think is right or wrong. But that is not our decision to make. That is God’s decision. That is why God has to break us, to put us back in our place and show us that we truly are just dust and ashes. Yet, despite that, God chose us. We must remember that when God breaks us, it is always for our benefit, because God had to get to the sin without destroying us. While it will leave us with scars, let us not forget that God is the master surgeon, too. He will break us and then restore us, and our restored state will be better than our first state.
However, there are people who will do anything they can to avoid brokenness before God and repenting in dust and ashes. Brokenness is painful, and we don’t want to go through it. So instead of dealing with the issue, we just mask it up. Instead of coming to the true Doctor, we just “tough it out.” If you haven’t noticed in this series, for every action that God does and calls us to do, there is always a counterfeit. Why does God have to break us? Because the sin in our lives is literally killing us, and God needs to do invasive surgery. But what does sinful man want? Sinful man is in such rebellion and enmity against God that even though we KNOW that what God says truly is best for us, we fight against it just because God said it. Ever notice how so many people have no problems with just about any idea presented in the Bible, as long as it is not the Bible saying it? So, when the Bible says that we need to be broken and mourn over our sin in dust and ashes, man will refuse to do that. But if an AA club says to do it, if a politician says to do it, or if the woke culture says to do it, it’s not a problem.
Instead of recognizing our brokenness and coming before God as though we are nothing but dust or ashes, sinful man will deal with the rock bottom shame of sin by seeking comfort, ease, and anything to dull or take the pain away. Some turn to drugs or alcohol. Some turn to sex or food. Others turn to motivational speakers or psychologists. Anything and everything except bowing the knee to Christ and confessing their sin before Him.
All of this ties into the next step in the proper response to sin: confession of sin, which we’ll look at next week.
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As I introduced last week, I’m beginning a blog post series to dig into the kings of the divided kingdom of Israel and Judah. The united nation had 4 kings before the split in 928 BC – Saul, David, Solomon, and Rehoboam. It was early in Rehoboam’s reign that the kingdom split, so we’ll begin our study with him.
Rehoboam was the first king of the new nation of Judah, which was comprised of the two southernmost tribes of Benjamin and Judah. But Rehoboam became king of the entire nation of Israel (all twelve tribes) when his father Solomon died (1 Kings 11:43). Rehoboam went to the town of Shechem to officially become king, but while they were there, all the people came to King Rehoboam and said, “Your father put a heavy yoke on us, but now lighten the harsh labor and the heavy yoke he put on us, and we will serve you” (1 Kings 12:4).
Newly kinged Rehoboam needed to figure out what to do to lighten the labor of the people so that they would serve him as their king. First, he consulted with the elders who has served his father, King Solomon. They told him to grant the people’s demands so they would be loyal to him. But Rehoboam didn’t like that answer, so he then asked his buddies what they thought he should do. They told him to make the people’s labor even harsher and their burden heavier. You think King Solomon was hard on you? I’ll be even harder!
When the people came back to hear King Rehoboam’s response, he followed the advice of his buddies. The King did not listen to the people he was beginning to govern, so they got mad at him and rebelled. “When all Israel saw that the king refused to listen to them, they answered the king: ‘What share do we have in David, what part in Jesse’s son? To your tents, Israel! Look after your own house, David!’ So the Israelites went home” (1 Kings 12:16). This all happened in order to fulfill the prophecy that had been made that God would divide the kingdom because of Solomon’s disobedience in 1 Kings 11:9-13.
But were the northern tribes really mad, or were they just playing? Rehoboam had to find out, so he sent Adoniram, his chief tax collector, to those tribes to collect the taxes. The people stoned Adoniram to death. So, Rehoboam fled and managed to escape and fled back to safety in Jerusalem (1 Kings 12:18).
Rehoboam wanted to keep the nation united, so he gathered all the troops he could from the two southern tribes of Benjamin and Judah and desired to go to war against the northern tribes and regain the rest of his kingdom. But, Shemaiah the prophet stepped in and intervened before Rehoboam could go to war. Shemaiah told Rehoboam that it was God’s will for the kingdom to be divided, so they obeyed and the troops went home (1 Kings 12:21-24).
After that tumultuous start to his reign, we learn more about King Rehoboam ruling over the nation of Judah in 1 Kings 14:21-31. Remember how God was mad at King Solomon for his disobedience? Well, things only got worse in Judah under King Rehoboam. “Judah did evil in the eyes of the LORD. By the sins they committed they stirred up his jealous anger more than those who were before them had done” (1 Kings 14:22). There were many “detestable practices” including Asherah worship and the worship of other pagan gods.
The division of the kingdom did not happen smoothly and then the nation was at peace. No, there was continual warfare between Rehoboam in the southern kingdom and Jeroboam in the northern kingdom during all of Rehoboam’s reign. Rehoboam fortified Jerusalem and other key cities as best as he could in order to defend his new nation of the tribes of Benjamin and Judah (2 Chronicles 11:5-12).
Many of the Levites from the entire nation of Israel desired to follow Rehoboam rather than the rebellion of Jeroboam in the northern tribes. They saw that Jeroboam was rejecting God, so they left their lands in the north and came south to Judah. Some Israelites fled to the south as well. They supported Rehoboam as they believed he was the rightful king (2 Chronicles 11:13-17).
But then, things only got worse for Judah. In Rehoboam’s 5th year as king, Shishak king of Egypt ransacked the temple and took everything that was valuable from the royal palace and the temple, including the gold shields that King Solomon had made. Rehoboam replaced them with bronze shields so they would have them for ceremonial use, but the quality was not the same. The destruction by Egypt would have been much worse, except Rehoboam did humble himself before the Lord (2 Chronicles 12:1-12).
Rehoboam served as king for 17 years in Judah, until he died and his son Abijah succeeded him (2 Chronicles 12:16).
What can we learn today from Rehoboam’s reign? The first thing is that what God says will happen is going to happen. God proclaimed judgment on King Solomon, and it came to pass exactly as God said it would, and even in the timing that God indicated.
The second thing we can learn is that division only leads to more destruction. Dividng the kingdom of Israel did not solve any problems, and perhaps it even created more. Judah did not continue following God during Rehoboam’s reign but instead turned to worshiping pagan gods. Many from the northern kingdom fled to Judah in the south, only to find out that Rehoboam allowed Judah to be just as corrupt as Israel was under Jeroboam. The grass may have been greener in the south at first, but it didn’t stay that way for long.
We need to trust that God will do what He says He will do. God clearly gave the nation of Israel a prophecy that it would become divided because of disobedience to Him, and it happened. God gives us the Bible to clearly warn us of consequences that can happen when nations become divided and stop following Him. Are we paying attention to its warnings?
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