Since we’ve been back from vacation the week has been pretty exhausting. Tuesday Marika and I, with help from Mary Kay, put in the carpet in the new office space. Wednesday we drove down to Yuma to get doors and trim for the new offices. Thursday I worked in the office to catch up on two weeks of back work. Friday we went back down to Yuma to get some antibiotics for Marika and return the doors we bought on Wednesday because they were the wrong size. Then when we got back, I worked in the office again until about 8pm. Then Saturday morning I worked on getting the new office furniture set up, and after that spent several hours putting up pictures in our house.
I was pretty exhausted with all of it. And about 3 in the afternoon yesterday I just wanted to sit and be left alone. But, then my daughter Navi wanted to plan Uno, and she is very persistent. That’s when the song, “I Just Want Talk About Me”, came to mind. I just wanted a minute to myself, but that wasn’t happening, and so I played four games with her.
There are times when we do need to have some self time, but sometimes self time will get in the way of what needs to be done. Sometimes self time makes us miss out on the things that are important in life.
And it’s this idea of self time or self-focus that brings us back into our study of 1st Corinthians, where we’ll be entering into the final chapter of Paul’s letter. And as we get into 1st Corinthians chapter 16, let’s bring ourselves back up to speed on what we’ve been talking about so far.
Over the course of the last twenty weeks, we have dove into Paul’s letter to the Church in Corinth that was going through a time of conflict. Paul writes to them so that unity would be restored in their fellowship. In the letter, Paul focuses first on the problems that the believers were dealing with in their interpersonal relationships with each other. These were issues like, judging, quarrels over who was a better leader, business practices, and arguments over secondary issues of the faith. Paul deals with these interpersonal issues in the first ten chapters of this letter.
In the second half of the letter, Paul addresses the issues that were causing disunity in the corporate worship time of the Church. These issues showed their head when the Church gathered for the community worship of God. Issues like Communion, head coverings, the gifts, and even the teaching of the resurrection, were all issues that Paul had to call the Church back to unity in.
And so after Paul deals with all these issues, we come to the last chapter of the letter, where Paul is going to call the Church to where their focus and ours needs be.
So let’s tackle one of these focuses today by reading together 1st Corinthians chapter 16 starting in verse 1.
1 Now about the collection for the Lord’s people: Do what I told the Galatian churches to do. 2 On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income, saving it up, so that when I come no collections will have to be made. 3 Then, when I arrive, I will give letters of introduction to the men you approve and send them with your gift to Jerusalem. 4 If it seems advisable for me to go also, they will accompany me.
Let’s stop there, because in these four verses, Paul challenges us to have our focus in the right place. Here we see Paul calling the Corinthian Church to take up a collection of money every week when they meet together as a corporate Church body, like we do here on Sundays. Paul is asking for a collection from several Churches to help the Christians in Jerusalem. See in the area of Judea a severe famine was spreading, and the overcrowded city of Jerusalem was being hit especially hard.
And so in the city of Antioch a decision was made to call the other Churches of God to come together and take a special collection for the believers in Jerusalem to help them out. And so, Paul is calling the Corinthian Church to join forces with the other Churches in this endeavor.
Let’s take a minute and put this calling for a collection into perspective. In the whole of this first letter to the Corinthians, Paul has been addressing a lot of issues, but at the core of everyone of these issues is a me first attitude.
Think about it, everything from who is the best leader, to should I speak in the corporate worship time, all revolves around looking to myself first before others. In chapter 13, Paul gives a more excellent way of bringing unity to the Church, he calls us to love one another. This is based in Jesus’ own words of loving God, and loving our neighbor as ourself in Mark 12. The answer to unity is sacrifice of self. Looking to another’s needs, and looking for their betterment. Self-focus is the underlining issue from which all other issues that were causing disunity stemmed.
James in his only letter writes this, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from your desires that battle within you? 2 You desire but do not have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and fight. You do not have because you do not ask God. 3 When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures (4:1-3).”
Unjustified conflicts arise when we desire ourselves above other people. Hear me clearly on this, there is a difference between justified and unjustified conflicts. A justified conflict is taking a loving stand on what God calls us to. This is why Jesus says in Matthew 10:34, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”
When we as followers of Christ follow him, there will be conflict with those who don’t. This type of conflict is inevitable, but even in those situations, we as believers must show as much love, mercy, and grace we can.
But the conflict we must avoid is unjustified conflict. We must avoid self-focused desire that would lead us to have conflicts with not only the world, but with our fellow believers.
And the course of action that Paul gives us as a tangible way of helping us to avoid self-focused conflicts, is addressing the needs of other believers that are far away from us. Now we might think, well they’re far away, wouldn’t it be better to help those right next to us? And yes, helping those next to us would be good as well, but when we seek to help those whom we will never see, we focus on problems we are not dealing with.
Think about it like this, if I know a person and their struggles my heart should break for them, because they’re right there in my life. They’re pain is my pain, I can watch them struggle and so better sympathize with them, and so helping them should be the easy choice. But when the pain isn’t at our door step it’s easier to push it aside. A great example of this ability to disassociate ourselves from the pain of others, happened over this summer.
I think we all have heard about the protests and the riots in other parts of the country. Well an ESPN reporter by the name of Chris Palmer sent out two posts on Twitter about these protests and riots. The first was in support of the riots. He tweeted this, “Burn that s-word down. Burn it all down.” But not to long afterward Palmer tweeted this, “They just attacked our sister community down the street. It’s a gated community and they tried to climb the gates. They had to beat them back. Then destroyed a Starbucks and are now in front of my building. Get these animals TF (the f-word) out of my neighborhood. Go back to where you live.”
Palmer was in support of the riots until the riots affected him. And we can be the same way sometimes. When we’re affected by pain it’s easy to respond, but when the pain isn’t close, we can easily become indifferent.
And so Paul gives us a way to begin to think about others who’s pain we cannot feel, but who’ pain we can help. This is what God is calling us to today. Right now, we have fires up and down the west coast. Right now hurricanes have beaten down communities on the southern an eastern coasts. Riots have destroyed lives from coast to coast. But here in Quartzsite our summer, though slightly impacted by the virus, has been pretty much the same as any other summer.
And so, I want to call on you Church to take up a special offering for these affected communities of believers.
See in the Christian and Missionary Alliance denomination, that we are a part of, there is a branch that deals with going into communities and helping, this branch is called CAMA Services. Starting next week, we are going to take a special collection to send to CAMA Services to help these affected communities. We will take two weeks for the offering and then send it off to help.
Are there other ways to give? Yes. This is simply one way, through which we can make sure our brothers and sisters in these areas are being helped. Paul writes to the Galatians, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all people, especially to those who belong to the family of believers (6:10).”
This is my challenge for you this week, seek God, asking him what you will give to this collection. Paul states in the above passage, “…each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income…(v. 2)”
This isn’t to out give each other, but rather seeking God to meet the needs of others who’s pain we might not feel, but we can help. In addition to seeking God in this collection, pray for those in the fires, in the hurricanes, and in the riots.
Let us begin to be challenged, as the Corinthians were challenged, to quail the possibility of disunity in our midst, by looking to help our brothers and sister in the Lord whose pain isn’t our own. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment