Faithful Ministry in Uncertain Times

0:48But uncertainty was simply accepted as a normal part of life up until about the past 50 years or so. Childbirth was dangerous business into about the mid-20th century. Few children survived to adulthood. War regularly threatened national security. The threat of nuclear war was ever-present. Travel was fraught with difficulty. And your arrival was never certain. And it was just understood that various illnesses would claim the lives of Many of your family members and friends throughout your lifetime.

1:36How different our lives are today. Life is much more certain now than any other time in history. And yet, as we've learned this spring, that's something of an illusion, isn't it? In God's providence, we arrive today, our first Sunday together in about two months at 1 Corinthians chapter 16, a chapter that is all about dealing with the uncertainty of a global famine. God is infinitely wise, and his ways are perfect. We're going to learn today at the front end of this chapter that in uncertain times, faithful ministry requires holding our resources and plans loosely.

2:27Paul begins this final section of his letter with the phrase, now concerning, and that is always introducing an answer of his to one of the questions that the Corinthians asked in a previous letter that they sent to Paul. And this particular section is dealing with something known as the collection for the saints. Now, what is Paul referring to with that phrase? Well, after the gospel began to spread to the Gentiles, we find this in Acts chapter 11. Take a look at the screen.

2:57Now, in these days, prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch, and one of them named Agabas stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world. This took place in the days of Claudius. So the disciples determined, everyone according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul. Judea, of course, is the region where Jerusalem is located. And Jerusalem had the highest concentration of Jews of any particular region of the world.

3:35And many of these Jewish men and women began following Jesus after Peter's sermon at Pentecost. Now, Judea was not a wealthy region. And what that means is that if something like a famine were to hit, they would be hit especially hard. And those who were likely to feel it the most were those Jews who may have been cut off from their family members or who may have lost their jobs because they began following Christ. So Christians in other churches determined to begin sending relief to the Christians who were living in Judea.

4:14That eventually included churches from Syria, Galatia, Macedonia, and then as we see here, the church in Corinth as well. Now, two facts are noteworthy. The first is that many of these churches Sending relief were actually very poor themselves, and yet they gave what they could to alleviate the suffering of their brothers and sisters who were worse off than they were. The second noteworthy fact is that most of these churches sending relief were comprised almost entirely of Gentiles.

4:54Now, we have to remember: the Jews despised the Gentiles, and many Gentiles did not like the Jews either. Only complete transformation by the gospel of Jesus Christ would lead these Gentiles to generously give of their limited financial resources to help their Jewish brothers and sisters in Christ. In his life, death, and resurrection, Christ broke down the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles. But this tangible act of love, this sending of relief in a time of suffering, proved that the Gentiles truly believed this to be the case in their hearts. Now, church, we have to ask ourselves this morning: have we been so transformed by the gospel of Jesus Christ that we actually love those that we once despised?

5:51Not in word or in talk, but in deed and in truth? Jesus said that everyone would know that we. We are his disciples by our love for one another. Now, as he mentions at the end of verse 1, Paul gave instructions on giving to the churches of Galatia. And now he's going to repeat those instructions for the church at Corinth. Those instructions have to do with the specific offering being given to the saints in Jerusalem, of course, but these general principles that we're going to discover here apply to Christian giving in general.

6:29We're going to look at verses 2 through 4, where we're going to glean four principles for giving. Let's pick up in verse 2: On the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper, so that there will be no collecting when I come. And when I arrive, I will send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem. If it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me.

6:59And in these verses, we find four principles for giving that I'm going to boil down to planning, participation, prosperity, and integrity. I really, really wanted a fourth P, but I just couldn't make it work. I was on the third level of synonyms, and then there were just words that I didn't even know what they meant. So I was like, we're done. We're done. Planning, participation, prosperity, integrity. At least the last two end in iti. So that's something. All right, the first principle, planning. Giving should be planned. Many believers today give sporadically and spontaneously.

7:41But that's not what we find here. I want you to note or underline or write in your journal three phrases from verse 2. On the first day of the week, store it up and no collecting. First day of the week, store it up, no collecting. The first phrase is on the first day of the week. And that phrase, of course, is referring to Sunday, the day when Jesus rose from the dead. And after his resurrection, Jesus appeared to his disciples multiple times over a 40-day period, and he most often did so on the first day of the week, on Sunday. And so that day began to be known as the Lord's Day.

8:26That was when Christians began meeting for worship rather than on Saturday, which was, of course, the Jewish Sabbath. So Paul is saying, look, since you're already planning to meet every Sunday, it makes sense to present your offerings on that day when you gather together as an act of worship. That allows you to plan to give regularly. The second phrase from verse 2 that I want you to note is store it up. Each believer is to store up what he or she has set aside, which requires... Planning by the individual and the church.

9:05You know how you store up a lot of money? You do it little by little over a long period of time. Contrary to popular belief, very, very few people become wealthy overnight. They do it by storing up little by little over years and decades. Think about animals that are preparing to hibernate for the winter. Do they run out in one afternoon and collect months' worth of food? Of course not. They go out every day, weeks and months before the winter begins, and they store up little by little until they have enough to get them through months of those cold winter days.

9:47In the same way, Paul is encouraging believers to plan to give as much as possible by storing up a little bit at a time. But this requires planning, planning to steward our resources faithfully. The third phrase from verse 2 is no collecting. Paul told the Corinthians that they should set something aside and store it up and give it on the first day of the week so that there would be no collecting when he came. You see, here's what Paul wanted: he wanted the Corinthians to give joyfully, out of love, for their suffering brothers and sisters in Jerusalem. Jerusalem, because that's what they promised to do.

10:35Here's what Paul didn't want. He didn't want to arrive in Corinth and have to go from house to house like an IRS agent collecting taxes. That just totally defeats the spirit of what they're trying to do. Take a look at what he writes to the Corinthians in his follow-up letter, 2 Corinthians chapter 9. This will be on the screen. So I thought it necessary to urge the brothers to go on ahead to you and arrange in advance for the gift you have promised so that it may be ready as a willing gift, not as an exaction.

11:16See, that's what we want here at New Life as well. When we as members vote to affirm our annual budget in August of every year, we are committing together to fund that budget. We want everyone to give willingly, joyfully, cheerfully, so that the elders don't have to go around collecting like it's some kind of a tax for being a member here. We think that would defeat the purpose. But what that means is that we have to plan to store up and give regularly so that doesn't have to happen. And so the first principle is that giving should be planned. Second principle, participation. Giving should involve every believer.

12:01Look again at verse 2. Who does Paul say should put something aside and store it up on the first day of the week? He doesn't say some of you. He doesn't say most of you. He doesn't say those of you who feel you have enough disposable income to share. He says each of you, every believer in the church. Now, friends, some things in life you can just decide to do or not do as a Christian. It just depends on your particular calling, your gifts, your passions, whatever. But then there are other things like worship and evangelism and disciple making and giving that every Christian is called to participate in. We've worked very hard at New Life to help everyone understand that when it comes to missions, there are three types of Christians: goers, senders, and the disobedient. And I think we can carry that same principle across to giving as well. There are those Christians who participate in giving, and there are those who are disobedient. And anytime we are disobedient to God's Word, what is the first step for us? Well, it's repentance. We have to change our minds and change our behavior so that it can. Conforms with God's word. And that means our giving as well.

13:36Third principle, prosperity. Giving should reflect our prosperity. In verse 2, Paul says every believer is to put something aside. Something. He doesn't give an amount. He doesn't even give a percentage. He says, put something aside. But Paul doesn't leave us with no guidelines as to how to determine what we should put aside. What does he say? Look at the text. Each of you is to put something aside and store it up as he may prosper. In other words, our giving should be proportional. Those who are more financially prosperous should give more than those who are less financially prosperous. Look at what Paul wrote again in 2 Corinthians chapter 8. This will also be on the screen. For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness, your abundance at the present time should supply their need so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness. As it is written, whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack.

15:00We give in proportion to our prosperity, which means that we can cheerfully and generously give whether we have much or we have little in any particular season of our lives. Fourth and finally, integrity. Giving should be handled with complete integrity. In verses 3 and 4, Paul writes that he would send those whom you accredit by letter to carry your gift to Jerusalem, and if it seems advisable that I should go also, they will accompany me. Do you see all of those safeguards that are put in place?

15:44A group of people, he says those whom you accredit, a group of people, not one individual, is going to be responsible to handle the finances. Each member of the group is going to be accredited by the church in writing to carry the gift. And here's what blew me away this week. You may have missed this. I missed this at first. It's Paul's statement in verse 4 that he was willing to go with them if that's what they thought integrity demanded. Now, think about this. He's in Ephesus. He's not going to catch a red-eye flight from Ephesus to Corinth, get the gift, take another flight from Corinth to Jerusalem, and be back in Ephesus late that night to sleep in his own bed. What he is offering to do is go by front. Or by boat or by any other means for weeks or for months, if that's what the Corinthian church thought that integrity demanded, he was willing to do anything.

16:44Church, how we handle finances is very important. We don't want the name of the Lord to be reviled. We don't want to damage our gospel witness because a person or a group of people misused the gifts that were given to the church. That's why every member of our church is asked to view and discuss and then vote on the budget. That's why we have a finance team where multiple people count and deposit the money each week. That's why we do our best to be completely transparent about what we receive and what we save and what we spend each and every month. That's why Pastor Cody does his best to make sure that we pay every bill that comes to this church on time.

17:31These four principles, which we can boil down to planning, participation, prosperity, and integrity, should be an encouragement and a challenge to all of us. See, at all times, faithful ministry requires us to hold our resources loosely, remembering that we are stewards, we are not owners. God owns it all. We're called to faithfully manage what He entrusts to us. But faithful ministry and uncertainty. Times, whether we're talking about a famine in the first century or a pandemic in the 21st century, requires us to hold our resources even more loosely so that we can take advantage of opportunities and meet needs as they arise.

18:17Now, in verses 5 through 12, we're going to see that it's not just our resources that we have to hold loosely, it's our plans as well. In these verses, Paul doesn't just share his own travel plans, he talks about his co-laborers, Timothy and Apollos, as well. And what I want to do is, I want to begin starting at the end with Apollos and work my way back to Paul. Apollos had a reputation in Corinth for being an outstanding preacher and minister of the gospel. There can be little doubt that the Corinthians were eager to have him back in the church since they held him in such high esteem, if you recall from chapters 1 through 3.

18:59However, we learned in verse 12 that Apollos decided not to visit at the time in spite of the fact that Paul strongly encouraged him to go. Paul knew Apollos was a valuable and effective minister of the gospel, and he probably also understood that Apollos would go a long way through his preaching and teaching of reinforcing everything that Paul had just written in this letter. We don't know why Apollos. Decided not to visit Corinth. But we know from Acts 18 that he was a godly man, and his ministry really blessed and strengthened this church. And so we're left to conclude that God simply had other plans for Apollos during this season. Plans that were clearly not the same as Paul's, and plans that were probably not the same as the Corinthian church's either.

19:56But you know who was on his way to minister to the Corinthians? Timothy. And we know a couple of things about Timothy from Scripture. The first is that Timothy was not one of the Corinthians' favorite preachers. Some people preferred Paul. Some people preferred Apollos. Others preferred Peter. But Timothy did not have a fan club in Corinth. Second thing we know about Timothy from Paul's letters is that it appears that he was both young and timid, and he needed a great deal of encouragement to embrace God's calling on his life as a minister of the gospel. So you've got this situation where the Corinthians, or at least some subset of the Corinthians, would have been thrilled to have Paul or Apollos or Peter come and minister to them, and Timothy himself would have probably been thrilled. He was probably on his knees begging that anyone except for him be sent to this difficult church, rife with sin and conflict.

21:02But in God's providence, Timothy was on his way to the Corinthians. Not Apollos, not Paul, not Peter. So Paul told them in verse 10: See that you put him at ease among you, for he is doing the work of the Lord, as I am. So let no one despise him. What a reminder of the truth that we find in Proverbs chapter 16. Take a look at this: The heart of a man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.

21:42At all times, we have to hold our plans loosely, but especially in uncertain times, we must hold our plans loosely, understanding that we may not get to minister in the ways that we want to, and we may not be able to receive ministry from the people that we would prefer. And that brings us to Paul, who promised in verse 5 that he was going to visit the Corinthians and maybe even stay through the winter after he passed through Macedonia. Now, he wanted to visit for two reasons. He knew he would need their help on his journey, and he wanted to spend some quality time with them.

22:25And Paul loved the Corinthians despite their many sin issues. He lived in Ministered among them for 18 months, and he longed to return to them. And it's so encouraging that Paul did not act like he was a one-man army. He knew that he needed the help in the ministry of every other believer, and that even when he was on these apostolic missionary journeys, he saw the importance of every other believer ministering to him and meeting his needs along the way.

22:58So that was Paul's plan. He wanted to go to Corinth. He wanted to stay there for an extended amount of time to serve them and be served by them. But God had other plans. Look at verse 8. But I will stay in Ephesus until Pentecost, for a wide door for effective work has opened to me, and there are many adversaries. Paul's plan was to go to Corinth and stay with them. He says at the end of verse 7, if the Lord permits.

23:35But what was God's plan? God's plan was for Paul to remain in Ephesus at least through Pentecost because a wide door for effective work had opened to him and there were many adversaries. A wide door for effective work is the understatement of a lifetime. If you go back to Acts chapter 19, Luke records that when Paul was there in Ephesus, All the residents of Asia heard the word of the Lord. Now, he's referring to the region of Asia, which we would call today Western Turkey, not the continent, but that still means that tens upon tens of thousands of people in the first century heard the word of God preached. A wide door for effective work had opened, and Paul saw that this was where God was at work. And so he said, You know what? I'm going to put my own plans on hold. I'm going to stay here because this is where God is moving.

24:37And I don't want you to miss this. Paul acknowledged that there were many adversaries in Ephesus, and that did not change his opinion that a wide door for effective work had opened to him. See, we use the language of open and closed doors all the time, don't we? And how do we go about determining whether or not a door is open or closed? Well, we look at our circumstances and we weigh our feelings. If the road is hard, if there are obstacles, if there is opposition to us, then we conclude that the door is closed. And yet, here's the Apostle Paul saying that a wide door for effective work has opened, and also, as a side note, just so you know, there are many adversaries.

25:26Friends, when we read Scripture, we note that almost everyone is not able to do that. Every time that God is at work, there was opposition. Noah was opposed. Moses was opposed. Ezra and Nehemiah and Jeremiah and Isaiah and all of the prophets were opposed. John the Baptist was opposed. Jesus was opposed. And all of the apostles in the first century were opposed. The opposition was not proof that the door was closed. In fact, you could almost say that the opposition was proof that God was at work.

26:02And so if we're never opposed, maybe it's because we've made friends with the world. See, an open door doesn't automatically mean that it's God's will for our lives. Satan knows where the door handle is also. But we should never see opposition and immediately conclude that the door is closed and that it's not God's will for us to get involved. So you see, Paul and Timothy and Apollos, they all had plans for their lives and ministries, but all of them were willing to lay those things down and submit themselves to God. Because we exist to do God's will. He does not exist to do our will.

26:51Faithful ministry at all times requires us holding our plans loosely and remembering those truths. But faithfulness Ministry in uncertain times requires us to hold our plans even more loosely so that we're ready to meet needs and take advantage of opportunities as they arise. Friends, back in January, who could have predicted that two months later the stock market would tank and we would be forced into our homes for a prolonged period of time. There is no doubt that back in January, almost all of us had more resources than we have now.

27:35And we all had plans for our semester, for our year. But God had different plans, didn't he? And many of us, including many professing Christians, have struggled with that. The pandemic, difficult as it has been for many of us, has also served to highlight the perfection of Jesus Christ, particularly as it pertains to dealing with resources and plans. When Paul returned to the topic of giving in 2 Corinthians, he wrote this in chapter 8. Take a look.

28:18For you know that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you, by his poverty, Might become rich. Jesus was willing to hold his own infinite resources loosely, so to speak, so that we could become spiritually rich. And not only that, Jesus lived out perfect submission and obedience to God the Father. Early in his ministry, he said that he had not come to do his own will, he came to do the will of the one who sent him. And that was most clearly seen in the Garden of Gethsemane on the night that Jesus was betrayed and arrested and crucified. When he prayed, My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.

29:23God's will took him where no one, not even Jesus, would have desired to go. To the cross and to the tomb. But because he laid down his rights and obeyed perfectly, even becoming obedient to the point of death, it was the will of God to raise him from the dead to be our Savior, the one who conquered sin and death and the grave for us. Friends, the world tells us to hold on tightly to our resources and to our plans. It tells us that if we're smart enough and if we plan ahead, Enough that we can control our lives.

30:05But the pandemic has reminded us all that no matter how tightly we try to hold on to those things, they can be ripped out of our hands in a moment's time. So instead of doing that, let's look to Christ, who gave up everything and submitted perfectly to the Father's will and put our trust in Him during this uncertain time. Let's emulate the way that our Savior and believers like Paul and Timothy and Apollos handle their resources and their plans.

30:42In uncertain times, faithful ministry requires holding our resources and plans loosely. Let's pray. Oh, Father, you know the great struggle that we have as believers in America who have had it pounded into our heads over and over that we can be in control. Control. As long as we're smart enough and work hard enough and do the right things and make the right choices, we can be in control. But we have seen that for the illusion that it is during this pandemic. You are in control. We are not in control.

31:59And so, God, we pray that we would not waste this difficult trial, but instead, we would learn to hold our resources and plans loosely so that we are ready to serve you and to serve others every time the need or opportunity arises. Help us, God, to glorify you through the ways that we handle those things. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.