2/27/22 1 Cor. 4:1-5 “Are You Trustworthy?”

25 Feb 2/27/22 1 Cor. 4:1-5 “Are You Trustworthy?”

2/27/22    1 Cor. 4:1-5       “Are You Trustworthy?”

Just the other day I was online on Facebook.  I know that many of you don’t go to this place and you really don’t care about it at all.  But I have an account there and I like to post some nice religious comments on a daily basis.  The reason I do this is that there are so many people of this country and the world who know nothing about God and I will try, as long as I live, to inject little nuggets of faith wherever I can.  I know of a pastor who does something similar only he will post something a little bit controversial.  This often brings a host of comments and sometimes they become quite ugly.  When this happens, he is quick to point out the offending party to everyone who is reading.  I think what happens to the offending party is that they are shown to be quite untrustworthy to everyone else.  After all it is not necessary to get mean and ugly in a conversation.  If you like confrontation then I would suggest that you tune into some our so-called news talk shows on TV or radio.  They are always rude and shouting at each other.  I do not consider any of these people who do this for a living as being very trustworthy.  I think that they lack integrity by what they do.  In today’s lesson we read about being trustworthy by God’s standards which are totally different than ours.  Hopefully we will be able to see how we can have and maintain our trustworthiness.

This is a story told by Alan Smith of a man and his grandson traveling down the road, walking and leading a donkey. They met a man who said, “How foolish for you to be walking. One of you should be riding the donkey.” So, the man put his grandson on the animal.  The next traveler they met frowned and said, “How dreadful for a strong boy to be riding while an old man walks.” So, the boy climbed off the donkey and his grandfather climbed on.  The next person they met said, “I just can’t believe a grown man would ride and make a little boy walk.” So, the man pulled the boy up and they rode the donkey together. That is, until they met another man who said, “I never saw anything so cruel in all my life — two human beings riding on one poor defenseless donkey!”  A little farther down the road they met a couple of men. After they passed, one of the men turned to the other and said, “Never in my life have I seen two fools carrying a donkey.”  The point of this is that we cannot please everyone no matter what we do.

Paul begins our reading by telling us that we are the stewards of God’s mysteries.  Remember a couple of weeks ago we talked about how you can only know the mysteries and secrets of God if you are a believer.  Non-believers cannot know these things.  You do not know any of the mysteries of God if you don’t know Jesus.  So, we are the stewards of these things and we are to carry them forth to all we meet.  You are to spread this news the best that you can.

In order for us to be able to do this then you must be trustworthy.  I think that there are basically three ways that you can judge yourselves to see if you are trustworthy.  The first way is very simple in that it is how you view yourself.  It is your self-image.

Paul wrote this letter to the Corinthians who were in a lot of turmoil.  Now before we decide to condemn these people, let’s take a look at their situation.  This was a very pagan city with all kinds of bad things going on about them.  They had joined this new religion that basically no one had ever heard of before.  But Paul had convinced them that this was the truth and they had been very brave to stand up for themselves to this point.  But after a while, their old life styles and habits were starting to creep back into their lives.  I think we all know how this can happen.  What this did to many of them was to lower their self-esteem.  They knew they were not measuring up to this new religion and they felt bad about it.  They did not look good to themselves from their own point of view.

I think that self-image problems are huge for us today.  If you go to any bookstore, you will find shelves of books on how to improve your self-image.  Our pagan society demands that you look good.  It demands that you are not overweight.  It demands that you have the latest fashions and styles.  You are supposed to look into the mirror and see the perfect person all the time.

This also spills over to your spiritual life.  I can’t count the number of people I talk to who feel totally inadequate in front of God.  This really affects their behavior as they will then shy away from anything that will show their perceived inadequacies.  In other words, they quit coming to church.  They quit reading their Bibles.  They quit praying.  The problem with this kind of stinkin thinkin is that everyone is inadequate.  We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.  All Christians and all people are inadequate.  You are not alone.

One of the most beautiful aspects of being a Christian is that you can take anything and everything to God.  If you have a self-image problem, then take it to God in prayer and listen for the answer.  Do the same thing with any sin problem.  Many times, these types of things make little sense to us but Jesus wants to hear from you whether you have good news for Him or bad news about your behavior.  The most important thing you can do to help yourself out of a mess like this is to go to Jesus in prayer.

I’m going out on a limb here again as I say that after several years in the ministry, I think that there are many of you who do not have a prayer life.  You do pretty well in many areas but you do not pray regularly.  How in the world to you expect God to answer your prayers if you never pray?  This is one of the reasons I want us to share our God moments in our prayer time.  Hopefully, you will be able to see all the wonders that God does for you and you only.  Maybe after hearing others talk of what God has done for them, you might be jolted into a prayer life.   Jesus is not someone to be feared in our sense of the word.  Rather He is to be embraced and we do this by regularly praying and talking to Him.

The second way that we judge ourselves as being trustworthy is by what others think of us.  In Paul’s time the Christians of Corinth were probably not looked down upon because they lived in a culture where any and all religion was good.  This is kind of like our pop culture today.  Anything goes!  The things that they would be ridiculed for are behaviors that everyone did but these new Christians considered these things to be sins.  Their friends from their former lives wondered why they didn’t hang around with them so much anymore.

This is a large problem for us today.  We are very concerned about how we look to others.  I have seen many marriages break up because the young man is unwilling to let his boyfriends go.  His friends will make fun of him if he doesn’t show up to party or play softball or do something else with them on a regular basis, say every Saturday or Saturday night.

I have seen many marriages break up because two people are working so hard to have a million-dollar house that looks good to the neighbors but they don’t have time for each other.  We have all seen these types of things happen.  I think that young people are especially vulnerable to these types of things but it happens to older people also.

Why is it that our neighbor’s car is so much better than ours?  You probably drive a new Lincoln and the neighbor has an old beat-up pickup but you still think it is better than yours.  Or why is it that even though your yard in immaculate,  think the neighbors is always better?  Or better yet, why do we think that we should find ways to work our way to heaven when we can have the grace of Jesus for free?  Our priorities are wrong.

Please don’t misunderstand me on these things.  We do need to self-evaluate ourselves.  After all, you are the first person to know when you are doing something wrong.  You can correct yourself along the way but you shouldn’t become obsessed with your image.  The same can be said of how others look at us.  You need to be aware of this also.  If you have Christian friends, they should be there to tell you when you are doing something wrong.  How others view us is important because we are to be modeling the behavior of Jesus Christ and others are watching.

So, these things are important but there is something far more important and that is how Jesus sees us.  I think that we can understand a little about how the ancients thought that Jesus saw them.  They were new to the faith so they still had a lot of mixed emotions about this and other religions.  These were very different times.  But the closer we look at them, the more we can see that things were not really that different.  For instance, let’s look at idol worship.  In Corinth there were idols everywhere.  These were a people who worshipped just about anything and everything that came along.  They were all ok with worshipping several idols at the same time.  This was fine.  This was the culture where the early Corinthian church existed.  It is no wonder that some of these people thought that it was ok to worship Jesus along with many other deities.

I’m so glad that we do things differently today.  I would say that for the most part people today don’t worship wooden idols or some sort of crafted idol.  But we do still worship other idols, other gods.  The first things that come to mind when we talk of modern idols are money, leisure, work and our government to name just a few.  There are many other things like this and they do become our idols.  However, I would like to talk about something a little deeper than these.

I think that we have become or are becoming a religion that uses what other people think of us as an idol.  Here is what I mean.  We have become a nation where we have to do everything possible to be politically correct.  We are not allowed to offend anyone.  Now in many cases this is a good thing, but not so with certain aspects of Christianity.  The whole point of Christianity is to confront people in their sinful lifestyle and have them come to Jesus for a much better life.  Jesus Christ names things that are wrong and we call them sins.  They are wrong even if 99% of the world thinks they are not wrong and does them.  They are still wrong.  Remember that the path is wide that leads to destruction.

So, we have this problem of being part of a religion that confronts people in their lifestyle in a country where we are not supposed to do things like that.  So, what are we doing about this?  Instead of standing fast in Jesus like we should be doing, we have decided that if this part or that part of the Bible is offensive, then we will just take it out.  I predict that it won’t be too long before we have Bibles that begin with the word ‘in’ and end in ‘amen’ and have no words in between them because they are all too offensive.  Friends and neighbors in Christ, this is not what He wants.  He wants us to spread His Word and help people to a better life.  The only way that this will happen is by telling the truth from the Bible.

Now if at any time during our talk of this you were thinking “Is he talking his truth or my truth?” then we have a problem.  I am talking of God’s truth.  His truth is the only truth.  Let me repeat that.  His truth is the only truth!  There is no other truth!  It is by His truth that we can measure how trustworthy we actually are.  And we all know when we are doing the right thing or not.  God made us in His image and I firmly believe that we all know when we are doing right or wrong.  It always feels so good to do the right thing so let’s see if we can.  Jesus loves us and all He wants us to do is follow His lead.  If you will just accept Him as your Savior, you can begin to have a great life in Christ.

Another way of looking at this is that I love to please Sharon.  I love to please my children and you folks.  I also want to be able to please myself to some degree and I think that this is natural for all of us.  But in order to do these things, it is so much easier if I am pleasing Jesus first.  He makes all the rest of this possible.

I have been in many congregations and looked into their faces and have seen the pain and trouble that they are living with, you are living with.  You cannot hide it because I can see pretty much everything from up front of a congregation.  It’s harder to do here online.  Often times I don’t know the cause of any of this but I still see that it is there.  So, I want you to have this message that you can trust Jesus with anything and everything.  It doesn’t matter how big or small it is, give it to Him.  And this is for everyone whether you are in good times or bad times or in between times, trust Jesus.  When you put 100% trust in Jesus, then He will give you the love in return to make you trustworthy to everyone.

Jesus loves you in spite of yourself, your troubles and your circumstances.  He loves us and He never wants to let go of us.  All He asks, and this is very simple, all He asks is that you follow.  If you want a full life of things that are important, trust and obey for there’s no other way.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.