Simple, Sincere Lives

1:01Just think about some of the things that we've been promised by candidates in the last several years. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. We're going to build a big, beautiful wall, and Mexico is going to pay for it. You can go to college for free because money is made of paper, and we can print more of that. Broken promises. Make people upset because God is truth. He never lies. And you and I were created in His image and likeness.

1:40So it is hardwired into us, this desire for truth, this assumption that people mean what they say, that they will do what they promise to do. So some people will argue today that truth is relative, that one person's truth is not necessarily another person's truth, but anytime someone lies to us, we get upset. Anytime someone breaks a promise to us, we get upset. So maybe truth isn't relative after all. Well, friends, some of the Corinthians were upset with Paul because they felt he had broken promises to come and visit them. His opponents, and one person in particular, used this as ammunition to attack Paul to call both him and his ministry into question. And he turned a large portion of the church in Corinth against him. And so in today's text, Paul is going to defend himself against these charges, arguing that he has spoken and conducted himself with integrity at all times, that he has been faithful both to God and to the Corinthians. And so you and I are going to be challenged today to be faithful, to live simple, sincere lives by the God of God. Grace of God.

3:02Now let's turn our attention here to verse 12, where Paul begins to defend himself. And before we get in, I just want you to think about what it feels like to have to defend yourself. If you have to defend yourself to people who dislike you or disagree with you or disparage you, that's discouraging. When you have to defend yourself to people that you have led to Christ and discipled and served, given your life for, that is really hard.

3:37And that's Paul's situation here. He's having to defend his character, his apostleship, his ministry to people who should have been his biggest supporters. And specifically, some of the Corinthians, stirred up by one of these vocal opponents, they've openly questioned Paul's integrity because he changed his travel plans a couple of times. And they further insinuated that his letters to them were unclear and confusing. So I want you to understand part of the conflict is due to impure motives, just plain and simple. Some of these people did not want to submit to Paul as an apostle. They didn't want to submit to what he was telling them they needed to do as Christians. That was part of the deal.

4:17But part of the deal is that Paul's been gone for a long time. They're not face to face. They're communicating over hundreds of miles by letters. And that is really. Really difficult to do to try to resolve conflict when you're not together in person. That is the challenge for us right now during this pandemic: is that we're not face to face. So, every conflict is intensified when people aren't able to seek resolution in person. We are just more likely to assume wrong motives, to assume tone and intention that's not there, to quickly pass judgment on and dismiss each other, all because we're not having conversations and trying to resolve conflict face to face.

5:05And so, Paul's going to do his very best to answer these charges about his integrity, and he does so with this humble confidence. Look what he says in verse 12: For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience. Now, the conscience, that's a word meaning with knowledge. Con is with, science is knowledge. With knowledge, that's our psychological faculty that's been given to us by God to help us discern the difference between right and wrong. In fact, in Romans chapter 2, that's what Paul says that it is. It's a signpost pointing us to God's existence, and it's also pointing us to our need for a Savior because we regularly violate our own consciences. We do things that we know are wrong. Because they feel good, or we want to do them, or we want to get ahead, or whatever else. And so, Paul is saying that they have a testimony, a clear testimony, because they have clear consciences.

6:12What he means is that they have not conducted themselves, as he says in a moment, according to earthly wisdom. Now, earthly wisdom was the guiding principle for basically every other teacher that came to Corinth. These are people who came to the city and they had impressive abilities, they spoke with soaring oratory, they charged a hefty price for their services. And Paul, his ministry was nothing like that. Look at how he describes it in 1 Corinthians 2.

6:50He says, And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And I was with you in weakness and in fear and much trembling. And my speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

7:27So Paul doesn't show up with this impressive reference. Resume with this earthly wisdom. He doesn't come harboring these selfish, impure motives toward the Corinthians. No, what does he say in verse 12? We behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity. Now, that word simplicity can also be translated integrity or uprightness. But I love simplicity because it really captures the essence of a person of integrity. They're simple. This phrase godly sincerity, it means something like pure or unadulterated motives, motives that aren't self-serving, that aren't cynical.

8:13And so I want you to picture for a moment a character from maybe your favorite show, one of your favorite movies. Picture a character who harbors these hidden, selfish motives. Would you say that that's a simple person? Well, no, it's not. It's a complicated person. It's a complex person. Because that whole thing requires constant management. You're pretending to be something in public that you actually aren't in private. And so that's a complicated life because you're always going back and forth between who you're pretending to be and who you really are. That's complex.

8:57And Paul and his companions, they're saying, we didn't behave. In this way toward you at all, we behave toward you with simplicity and godly sincerity. They appeared to have the Corinthians' best interests at heart because they really did. And how were they able to do this? Verse 12: not by earthly wisdom, but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you. See, they understood that apart from the grace of God, none of us can act and live with simplicity and godly sincerity. Why?

9:42Because we're all complicated people, aren't we? Even our best deeds, even our most righteous acts, they're tainted with a hint of selfishness, with impure motives, with ulterior motives. So we might be serving somebody 85% of the way, but 15%, we want to get something from them. We want their esteem. We want their help. We want their money. We want their resources, whatever it would be. So Paul is saying, by the grace of God, we didn't act that way towards you. We acted simply and sincerely towards you. He's confident, but he is humble because he attributes all of that to the grace of God. He's saying, look, we're complicated people too. We've already talked about Paul and the conflicts that he had with other leaders, with other Christians. He's a complicated person, too, but he is able to do this by the grace of God.

10:42And so then he transitions to these letters that he wrote to them. And some of these people were saying, Look, Paul, your letters, they're confusing. They're hard to understand. And it's likely they're referring to this most recent letter that he sent them. He's going to talk about that in the next chapter. It's referred to as his severe or sorrowful letter because he made this visit to Corinth thinking that he was going to come and bless them and they were going to bless him. And instead, he found the church in disarray. There was all kinds of conflict. People were upset with him. They were rejecting his authority and his message. And so he left in tears, essentially. So he writes this sorrowful letter. And what these people seem to be saying is not only does Paul lack integrity because he changed his travel plans, but his letters, they're just so difficult to understand.

11:33You know, when you're reading an email or a text message from somebody and you're trying to read between the lines, trying to understand what they're saying that they're not really saying, well, Paul is saying, you don't have to do that with what I've written to you. There is nothing between the lines. There's nothing that's difficult to understand here. He says in verse 13, for we are not writing to you. You anything other than what you read and understand.

12:04This is not the Da Vinci Code. There are no Illuminati. He's just saying, listen, I'm being clear and straightforward about what the Lord wants from you. And so if you're only partially understanding that, my hope and my prayer, Paul says, is that God will help you to understand it. And his confidence is that no matter what, when Jesus returns and lays all things bare and brings all truth to light, that they are certainly going to see that Paul and his companions conducted themselves blamelessly with integrity.

12:41And so, whether the Corinthians agreed or disagreed with some of Paul's decisions, he wants them to know: look, we have a clear conscience. We've only sought to behave with simplicity and godly sincerity. And in this next section, Paul is going to explain why it's so important that they did that. And this has a direct application for you and me and how we live our lives. So let's pick up together in verse 15. He says, Because I was sure of this, I wanted to come to you first so that you might have a second experience of grace. I wanted to visit you on my way to Macedonia. And to come back to you from Macedonia and have you send me on my way to Judea.

13:38I want you to notice he uses the word wanted twice. He wanted to come to them, not just once, he wanted to actually take a detour up to Macedonia, going south and west before going north. He wanted to take a detour through Corinth just to see them and then come back from Philippi, probably, from Macedonia, to Corinth on his way to Judea. He's like, my goal, my hope, what I wanted to do was to see you not once, but twice. He says, I wanted you to have a second experience of grace. Now, what does he mean? Well, he could be talking about, if you remember back to the end of 1 Corinthians, they were collecting this offering for the saints who lived in Jerusalem and Judea because there was a severe famine, and a lot of the Christians, they lost their jobs because of their faith. They were very poor. So he wants the other churches to help them. And so he was collecting an offering. So maybe he's referring to giving them the opportunity to participate in that again so that they could bless those living in Jerusalem. Or maybe he's just saying, I wanted to give you a second opportunity to benefit from our ministry, from our preaching and teaching, from our service.

14:56And whatever the truth is here. With respect to his meaning, like what he really wanted to do and why he wanted to do it, what's clear is that Paul is saying, I just wanted to come and bless you. I didn't want to make another painful visit because he'd already done that. The most recent time that he came to Corinth, he left essentially in tears because the people had rejected him. And so he's like, What good would it do if I came back to you now while things are still in disarray, while there's still this person leading this opposition against me? What good would that do? So he decided, as hard as it was, not to come, so that hopefully next time his visit would be to bless them, not to correct them.

15:46Verse 17. Was I vacillating when I wanted to do this? Do I make my plans according to the flesh? Ready to say yes, yes, and no, no at the same time. See, some of his opponents were saying, Paul is a waffler. He just vacillates between opinions. So some days he says he's coming, and other days he changes his mind. Some days he says he's going to come here first and then go somewhere else. Other days he changes his mind. And his travel plans had changed. And so you can see how some maybe thought that.

16:24But Paul is like, look, was I really vacillating? Do you guys really think that I make My plans according to the flesh. That word flesh is the same word that he used earlier for earthly wisdom. He says, Is that what you really think that I do? You think I'm speaking out of both sides of my mouth? The kind of person who vacillates, who makes plans according to the flesh, who speaks out of both sides of their mouth, that is not a simple, sincere, godly person. That is a complicated, insincere person.

16:59Jesus says that as believers, our yes should mean yes, our no should mean no. That's the behavior of a simple, sincere, godly person. The question is: why? Why is that the case? Why does it matter that we keep our word? I mean, isn't that like so many other moral things in our day and age that we've said, you know what? Maybe living that way isn't really that important anymore. That's kind of an antiquated way to look at life. You don't have to keep your word.

17:30Look at what he writes in verse 18. As surely as God is faithful, our word to you has not been yes and no. For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, whom we proclaimed among you, Sylvanus and Timothy and I, was not yes and no, but in him it is always yes. For all the promises of God find their yes. Yes, in him. That is why it is through him that we utter our amen to God for his glory.

18:10See, friends, the reason that we keep our word, that we're called to keep our word as Christians, is given in these verses. The reason that we act with integrity, with faithfulness, is because God is faithful. He has always and will always keep his word to his people. Every promise that he's ever made, it finds its yes in the person of Christ. So I want you to just think with me for a moment about what we see in Scripture. That God is a promise maker and he is a promise keeper. Because ever since our first parents, Adam and Eve, fell into sin, God began promising to send a Savior to deal with our sin and reconcile us to Him once and for all.

19:08So in Genesis chapter 12, when He chooses Abraham, He says, I am going to make you into a great multitude, and I am going to bless all the peoples of the earth through you. In Genesis chapter 48, the son of the promise, Isaac, has sons, Jacob and Esau, and God chooses Jacob. Jacob and not Esau, and promises to carry out that blessing through him. His fourth son's name is Judah. And he comes to Judah and he says, out of you, from your loins, is going to come a king who is going to rule perfectly and righteously forever.

19:48You get to Exodus chapter 12, and all of the people have been enslaved for 400 years. And this is a picture of our slavery to sin. God says, I'm going to deliver you from that slavery. And he says, I want you to take a perfect and spotless lamb. I want you to sacrifice it. I want you to spread it over the doorposts of your home. And when I see it, I am going to pass over your sin.

20:13And he says, this is a picture of the sacrificial, perfect lamb that is to come one day. We get to Ruth chapter 3, and Ruth is this foreigner who gets brought into the nation of Israel. And in Ruth chapter 3, we see that the Redeemer, the coming promised one, is going to be a kinsman redeemer. He's going to be one of our own who is going to redeem us from destitution. You come to 2 Samuel chapter 7, and David is nearing the end of his reign as king. And he wants to build a house for the Lord. He wants to construct the temple. And God says, David, that's a great desire. You're not going to do that. Instead, I'm going to build you a house that will last forever.

21:00Your son is going to reign on the throne forever. You come to the prophets, and in Isaiah 7, we learn that the Savior is going to be born of a virgin. In Micah, we learn that the Savior is going to be born in Bethlehem. In Isaiah chapter 9, we learn that the Savior is going to have a government, a righteous rule that never ends, all injustice taken care of, all sin and evil dealt with. But he's not just going to be a king. Because in Isaiah 53, we learn that this promised Savior is also a suffering servant. He is going to come and be despised and rejected. He's going to be pierced for our transgressions and crushed for our iniquities.

21:44And in Jonah 1, we have this picture of this disobedient prophet who's in the belly of the fish for three days. And when Jesus comes and ministers, he says, just as Jonah was three days, three nights in the heart of the fish, so am I going to be buried for three days and then rise again. So when John the Baptist comes onto the scene and he sees Jesus of Nazareth walking toward him, he says, Behold, look, observe, see the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

22:33You see, God has been faithful, and his faithfulness is most clearly demonstrated in answering all of his promises through the person and work of Jesus, who lived and died and rose again to fulfill every promise that God made to his people. In those who trust in Christ, we experience that faithfulness firsthand. Look at verse 21. He says, And it is God who established us, establishes us with you in Christ and has anointed us, and who has also put his seal on us and given us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee.

23:27The first thing this faithful God does is he establishes us in Christ. If you're reading out of the NIV, it says that he makes both you and us to stand firm. In this Greek word, back in the day, it was used in the business world, and it described a guaranteed contract between a seller and a buyer. And so, what the seller was doing is he was saying, if you buy this product, if you purchase this service, I guarantee that it will come to pass, you will. Get what you paid for.

24:02And in the same way, God is establishing us in Christ. Our salvation, our future is secure, not because of anything that we've done, but because Christ is a trustworthy and faithful Savior. Second, he says that God anoints us. This word is chrisos, comes from the same root word as Christos, meaning Christ or anointed one. And if you're familiar with the Old Testament, you know that the only people who were anointed in the Old Covenant were prophets, priests, and kings. That was it. The average person was not anointed. They were not recognized and blessed in any kind of a special way by God.

24:50But you come to the new covenant, and every believer is anointed. We're told over and over again in the New Testament that we are now a kingdom of priests, that all of us are anointed. We are all called and blessed by God to serve him and to serve other people. We have been anointed. And then, third and finally, God seals us and gives us his spirit in our hearts as a guarantee. When we come to faith in Christ, we are sealed with the promised Holy Spirit. And if you watch like a bunch of BBC, Shows where people are always sealing envelopes. You know, you can picture them heating up that wax and putting it on there and then using the seal to mark their official stamp, to say this is authentic, this carries authority.

25:43That's what he's saying happened to us. We've been sealed with the Holy Spirit. But more than that, we have a guarantee because we have the Holy Spirit. And what's cool is that this Greek word has kind of morphed over the years. And now, if you go to Greece today, this Greek word is what they call the engagement ring. So when a couple gets engaged, they have this word to describe it. It is a deposit that's saying, there is something good coming in your future. You're not yet experiencing it today, but I promise it's going to happen. And that's what we have in the person of the Holy Spirit living in us as Christians through faith in Christ. Look at how Paul summarizes it in his letter to the Ephesians.

26:36He says, in him, that is in Christ, you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it to the praise of his glory. See, God always has and always would be faithful to his people. And because Paul and Silvanus and Timothy, they were God's messengers, they could rest assured that they would also be faithful to keep their word to the Corinthians.

27:24See, God's character inspired their faithful conduct toward them. And so, God's character must also inspire all of our faithful conduct toward each other. The question, friends, is where does this leave us? Where does this leave us? What does this 2,000-year-old conflict between Paul and some in the Corinthian church, what does that have to do with us today? Well, friends, I think it's true that for some of you, your relationship with God can't be described as simple. It's complicated.

28:09And it's complicated because you've made a bunch of promises to God over the years. You have promised to try harder to do better. And I know that must be the case for some of you because that was the case for me for the longest time in my life. Every time I would sin, every time I would mess up and make a mistake, Stake, I would go to God and say, God, I promise I will never do that again. Give me another chance.

28:39But despite my good intentions, and maybe despite your good intentions as well, you haven't been faithful to keep those promises to God. Instead, you've continually broken them again and again to pursue pleasure or financial gain or popularity or success or whatever it might be. And so, friends, I hope if that's you, that you see today that while you have not been faithful to God, he has always been faithful to you. He has always kept his promises.

29:13And one of the things that God promises is that he will by no means clear the guilty. He is a good and faithful judge, and that means that he can't overlook sin and rebellion and injustice of any kind. So, we are misguided when we think that he will overlook our sin and rebellion and injustices that we have perpetrated because we're trying harder to do better, because we're better than our roommates, or our neighbors, or our friends, or whoever else. No, God can by no means clear the guilty. And so, what that means is we either have to bear the punishment for our own sin or somebody else has to bear it for us.

30:00The good news is that while God is perfectly just and perfectly righteous, he is also perfectly merciful and perfectly gracious. And he sent Jesus in answer to all of those promises that we reflected on. He sent Jesus to live and die and rise again in your place, not to give you a second chance, but to pay for your sin and rebellion in full. And so I urge you, rather than making a new resolution today, to turn to Christ, the one in whom all the promises of God have been fulfilled.

30:40If you're already following Christ, then I want to challenge you this morning to consider Paul and his companions and how they conducted themselves. But even more, I want you to look afresh on the person and work of Jesus. The character of God is the challenge, the encouragement, the reminder that we need to live lives of integrity and faithfulness, of simplicity and godly sincerity. We can only do that by his grace because we are complicated people with mixed motives.

31:19If you're a member of New Life, then you know that we've made a covenant together to use our time and our talents and our treasures to serve God and to serve each other. The pandemic has made that really difficult. We may have less time and less money than we had six months ago. We may have the same, we may have more. But wherever you find yourself today, the pandemic has made it difficult for us to fulfill our promises to one another in the church, to love and serve and minister to and use our resources together for the advancement of God's kingdom.

31:57And so I want to challenge you today to look to Christ afresh, to be motivated by His integrity, His faithfulness, His promise-keeping, and to be challenged to do the same. God is faithful, He has established and anointed and sealed us, and He is the one that's calling us and empowering us to live faithful lives, simple, sincere lives by His grace. Let's pray. Father, we are a complicated people. Despite our best intentions, our hopes, it's just not possible, apart from your grace and your Spirit for us to love and serve. Serve others, to love and serve you with a completely clear conscience.

33:09Because there's some part of us that wants to gain, there's some part of us that's selfish and that wants to get ahead. And so we come to you this morning acknowledging that, just confessing that we cannot do this without you. And so we pray that you would fill us afresh with your Spirit, that you would empower us by your grace so that we can live these simple, sincere, faithful lives that we've been called to live. Be glorified in us.

33:56In 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.