Seeking a Verdict For Our Existence
Download MP3Invite you to turn in your bibles to 1st Corinthians chapter 4. 1st Corinthians chapter 4. We've been taking a look at 1st Corinthians this summer. We've finally come up to chapter 4. It actually would have been a great week for me to do chapter 3, which is all about building things, building foundations, having master craft skill, and wondering if it will survive the day.
Jeffrey Heine:My real house had its judgment day, and all of my work did not survive. But the Corinthian church, their foundation is secure. Paul has taught them the gospel, which is their foundation. That's the solid rock for their foundation. But even at this point, they're starting to abandon and build on something else.
Jeffrey Heine:Just just ever so slightly they're going over towards this worldly wisdom. The church had become divided into these different camps. Some people were saying, I'm of Apollos. Well, I'm of Paul. Well, I'm of Cephas.
Jeffrey Heine:Well, I'm of Jesus. And people were becoming all divided. The church was becoming divided. And what was happening was people were staking their identity, not on the gospel, but on their leader. That's that's where they were building their identity on, is, you know, I'm with Him.
Jeffrey Heine:That's my identity. And chapter 4 addresses the reasons why they were doing this. Why are the the our hearts will naturally go away from the gospel. That's what chapter 4 addresses. What is it about our hearts?
Jeffrey Heine:What is this deep rooted problem within our hearts that abandons the gospel? And so let's read chapter 4. I want to read the first few verses. This is how one should regard us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy.
Jeffrey Heine:But with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself myself. I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. Therefore, do not pronounce judgment before the time, Before the Lord comes, who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.
Jeffrey Heine:Then each one will receive his commendation from God. I've applied all these things to myself and Apollos for your benefit brothers, that you may learn by us not to go beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up in favor of one against another. For who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive? If then you received it, why do you boast as you did not receive it?
Jeffrey Heine:Pray with me. Lord, we ask that you would come and speak tonight. We believe that your word is extraordinarily important, And we want to be good listeners, because this is so much more than just vacant words. When your spirit breathes life into your word, it changes hearts. And so we ask that you would change hearts tonight.
Jeffrey Heine:That you would redeem us, that you would redeem this community, that you would redeem this city. My words are death, your words are life, and so Lord speak life. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may your words remain and may they change us. And I pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Jeffrey Heine:Amen. I came across a quote from Charles Spurgeon a number of years ago that kind of caught me off guard. Charles Spurgeon lived a little over a 100 years ago. He was considered the prince of preachers and, there he has written more Christian literature than any other author. And he he's had a pretty profound impact on my life.
Jeffrey Heine:But I ran across this quote and it was in his lectures to preachers, And he said, preachers, don't preach the gospel in order to save your own soul. Don't preach the gospel in order to save your own soul. And as a preacher, my first response was, well of course not. You don't preach the gospel to save your own soul, you preach it to save other people's soul. I don't know what exactly you're thinking, but and and I didn't give it much more thought, but for some reason, and maybe it's just because of the way he writes, it stayed in my head and I chewed on that for years.
Jeffrey Heine:And I think I'm now beginning to come to an understanding of what he meant. And a lot of it deals with what we looked at last week. Last week, we looked at Zechariah 3 and and how we all have this uncleanliness about us. We're we all are unclean. That and that means we we feel somehow that we don't really measure up.
Jeffrey Heine:All of us have this sense that, we're unclean. Whether you're a Christian, whether you're a Buddhist, whether you're a Hindu, whether you're atheist, you have this this notion that there is a stain on your soul. You know, the religious person knows that he or she doesn't doesn't measure up to God's standard. But the irreligious person knows that they don't measure up to even their own standard. And so we're all walking around with this sense of failure that we don't really measure up, we have this stain on our soul.
Jeffrey Heine:We are unclean, and we go around trying to prove our worth. We're we're always trying to prove our worth, and this is why some of us at work, we throw ourselves in work, and we climb the corporate ladder. Why? So people will look at us and say, that's somebody. That's why some of us spend forever, you know, in front of the mirror, getting every little blemish out.
Jeffrey Heine:Because we want to be noticed, somebody to say, that person is of worth. That's why some, the the religious people might give to the poor or go to church every week. Why? Because that makes us feel like, okay, we're beginning to maybe remove this stain. We're measuring up.
Jeffrey Heine:This can even drive, and this is what Spurgeon was talking about, it can even drive a preacher to preach the gospel. The reason that he goes and he preaches the gospel is so I can make you guys think pretty highly of me, because probably most of you, at least in this room, outside of this room things might be different. But most of you in this room probably think somewhat highly of a preacher. And if you're kind of a good preacher and you can really, you know, people come up and praise you afterwards and pat your back afterwards, you begin to walk away saying, I am something. And I begin building my identity on that.
Jeffrey Heine:And Charles Spurgeon says, don't try to save your own soul in preaching. Don't do that. Preaching will never justify my existence. And this is what Paul is getting at. It's not so much preaching, but we're all looking to do something.
Jeffrey Heine:We're all looking for some kind of approval to justify our existence. Look at verse 3. Verse 3 he says this, but with me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or any human court. In fact, I do not even judge myself. Now, Paul says, I don't care if you judge me.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't care if a human court judges me, and and this is really interesting language because Paul's not on trial. Yeah, I mean, he's absolutely not on trial. These were his friends. These were people he lived with for 18 months. He's not on trial, and he says, I don't care if you put me on trial.
Jeffrey Heine:If you guys judge me or if or if any other human court judges me, and they're thinking, what do you mean? Right? You're not on trial. And yet, I I mean when you first read this, you think, Paul, you're being a little dramatic. But what he's saying is actually quite profound.
Jeffrey Heine:Quite profound, and what he realizes is this, all of life all of life is a trial. It's a trial in which we are trying to justify our existence. Our homes, our bathroom mirrors, our offices, our workplaces, our religious institutions are just courtrooms. You stand in front of the mirror and you look, you're in court, trying to get the verdict, do I measure up. Judgments are being made about you.
Jeffrey Heine:We feel this pressure and we yield to it. My favorite movie of all time, is Chariots of Fire. I love the movie. And there's a man in there, Harold Abrams, who, he was a runner, he was he was Jewish, and he used running as his weapon, he said. And there's this one great moment.
Jeffrey Heine:He ran the 100 meters. His goal was to win the Olympic gold and it is right before the race. And he's looking at the the 100 meters and he says this, I've got 100 meters to justify my existence. 100 meters to justify my existence. And what he is thinking is once I win this, everybody will point to me and I'll have proof.
Jeffrey Heine:The court's out there, and now I'll have proof. Gold medal. I ams, I do matter. I've justified my existence. Rocky Balboa, another great great movie.
Jeffrey Heine:Sylvester Stallone is always in the top ones, you know Rambo and Rambo 3. Rocky, when he was about to fight Apollo Creed, and people are wondering, why in the world are you doing this? What are you trying to prove? And he has this this great line, he he says, I just want to see if I could go the distance, then I'll know I'm not a bum. If I can just do this, then I can hold something out and say, look I'm not a bum because I did this.
Jeffrey Heine:There's a court, we're in trial, and I need evidence to prove my worth. You know, neither one of them did their sport running or boxing because they loved it. They did it to prove that they were someone. Harold Abrams didn't care about his time. He only cared if he was faster than everyone else.
Jeffrey Heine:It's always in comparison. When Lauren and I are in public with our kids, for those of you who have kids, maybe you can relate to this, you want them to behave perfectly. Perfectly. Why? Is it just so, you know, you have great kids?
Jeffrey Heine:No. It's because you want people to notice. Wow. Great parents right there. Great.
Jeffrey Heine:Look at their child. We went to the beach a couple of weeks ago, and for those of you who know my second born, this will be as no surprise to you. Natalie, we're we're at the beach, and I told Natalie to stay here, don't run away. It's just Natalie and Caroline and me. And Natalie looks at me and she runs away.
Jeffrey Heine:I bla I mean, I just told her, you're you're not to run away. She runs all the way to this pier, and I say, stop. It's actually a boardwalk. Stop at the boardwalk. And she runs away, and there's all these people around, these parents around, and I'm just devastated.
Jeffrey Heine:Now, I'm not devastated because I have a disobedient kid. I'm devastated because people saw me with my disobedient kid. It was a trial. I was in court, and there was the proof. Joel, you don't measure up.
Jeffrey Heine:Right there. You only date attractive people. Why? Because court's in session and people judge by first sight. When you invite people over to your house, you spend for ever getting everything just right, everything perfect, lighting, you know, it's just all gonna be perfect.
Jeffrey Heine:Why? It's evidence. Here's evidence that I've got style, I've got fashion, I'm somebody. You know, Richard Foster, he has this great line that says, people buy what they don't want to impress people that they don't like. And he said, that's a that's a sign of madness right there, but it's what we do.
Jeffrey Heine:Because we actually think that people we don't like are on the jury, And for some reason, their opinion of us matters. It really does matter. You spend your life on a diet because you know that in every social gathering you go to, people are going to try you. And you value what they say. You are the kindest person you could imagine at work.
Jeffrey Heine:Why? It's not because you are naturally kind, it's because you really value what your coworkers think about you. Court's in session. You're on trial every day, everywhere, and what Paul is doing is actually really profound. He's he's just being honest about it.
Jeffrey Heine:He's just being honest about it and saying you're being tried every day. So how does Paul handle this trial that we go through? He says it is a very small thing for him to be judged by the Corinthians. Essentially, Paul says, you judge me? Some of your versions might say that is a trifling thing, that I would be judged by you.
Jeffrey Heine:And we do this a lot. We we do this even at the earliest age. Somebody says something negative about us, we'll say, you know, sticks and stones may break our bones, but your words will never hurt me. And and we'd say, I don't care what you think. We like that attitude.
Jeffrey Heine:I don't care what you think. But then, the the problem with that is we always attach ourselves to something else. I don't care what you think because and you have 2 options here. I don't care what you think because I know what that person thinks about me, and they're right, and you're wrong, or I don't care what you think about me because I know what I believe about me. And we always appeal to something else, and it's a great way to think of it is you're literally making an appeal.
Jeffrey Heine:You're in court. You lost this one. I'm going to go to the, I'm making an appeal. So we're going to another court in which there'll be another verdict, and you get to pick the person who will judge you. And every time every time we don't get the verdict we want, we just make another appeal.
Jeffrey Heine:Now there's, there's some examples of this all through scripture. I just I I want us to look at one. Look at 1st Samuel. Keep your finger in 1st Corinthians. We're just gonna, we'll hop right there and hop back.
Jeffrey Heine:1st Samuel chapter 1. It's a somewhat famous story. It's about the birth of Samuel. It's a story of a woman whose life is falling apart because she can't have kids. Hannah.
Jeffrey Heine:She's married to Elkanah and they cannot have children. But Elkanah's other wife, boy, she was having a lot of children, and so there's all this bitterness that's developing there, and now in this age, having children for women were everything. Absolutely everything. If a woman didn't have a child, then she was useless to her husband. She was because because the family name would not be carried on.
Jeffrey Heine:She was useless to her clan because she wasn't raising boys to fight in the army. They weren't outnumbering all of the other clans. Useless to to all of the surrounding family, the the family at large, because no one was there to help in the fields. And so if you didn't have kids, you were seen as an absolute failure. And I know you're thinking, you know, we've really progressed beyond that, but we have our own standards as to what's a failure.
Jeffrey Heine:Now look at 1st Samuel chapter 1 verse 3. Now this man used to go up year by year from a city to worship and sacrifice to the Lord of hosts at Shiloh, where the 2 sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, were priests of the Lord. On the day that Elkanah sacrificed, he would give portions to Peninnah, that's his other wife, his his wife, and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her through the Lord, though the Lord had closed her womb. And her rival used to provoke her, grievously to irritate her because the Lord had closed her womb.
Jeffrey Heine:So it went on year by year. As often as she went up into the house of the Lord, she used to provoke her. Therefore Hannah wept and would not eat. And Elkanah her husband said to her, Hannah why do you weep and why do you not eat and why is your heart sad? Am I not worth more to you than 10 sons?
Jeffrey Heine:Now there is a whole lot to pull out from this text, but we're just going to kind of look at one point here. First off, Hannah thinks she's on trial. She's on trial. She is not measuring up, and it's driving her crazy. She is weeping.
Jeffrey Heine:She is not eating because she knows she's unclean. She doesn't measure up. And she thinks the proof I need is a child. If I could get a child, people would think highly of me. I get a child, I'm somebody.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm worthy of praise. And so then her husband, he says, no no no no. Hannah, I love you. Your identity basic on on my love is enough. And at first, when you read this, you think that such kind words.
Jeffrey Heine:What a loving husband. Actually, it is some of the most foolish words a husband can ever offer to his wife. Because what he is saying is, okay, you're trying to build your entire identity on a child. Don't do that. Build your identity on me.
Jeffrey Heine:Build it on my love. My love is all you need in this life. If you have my love, you matter. If you have my love, you measure up. And what he's doing is, what we looked at earlier, just appealing to another court.
Jeffrey Heine:I lost the verdict here. Come to this court. It doesn't matter if I don't have children. What matters is I have my husband's love. But what happens if Elkanah dies?
Jeffrey Heine:What happens if he falls in love with another woman? What happens if he leaves? He's not permanent. You can't put your verdict in the hands of something that will not last. And this is the problem with needing approval from anyone.
Jeffrey Heine:What happens when that person fails? No person or structure can carry the burden of proof that you require to say, I am somebody. Your husband can't, your job, your house, your kids, the diplomas on your walls, rising to be a CEO in a company, none of that stuff is proof. And when Lauren and I were thinking and praying about whether we start UCF about 10 years ago, we were kind of worried about a little bit of of the future, how we would make ends meet and there were there was a part of me that wanted to say, hey Lauren, know this, no matter what happens I'll work at Starbucks, I will mow lawns. I will do whatever it takes to provide for you.
Jeffrey Heine:You can count on it. I wanted to say that, but that would have been the most foolish thing I could have done because what I was said is build your identity on me. Paul won't have that. He says, we don't build our identity on Apollos, on Cephas, not on me, anybody. No man.
Jeffrey Heine:Paul could have told the Corinthians, I don't care what you think about me because all the others churches think highly about me, the apostles love me, they welcome me into the right hand of fellowship, but he doesn't appeal to that. Paul could have also said, it doesn't matter what you think because I know who I am. I know who I am and that's all that matters. Who cares what you think? I I know I'm a great guy, and he could have appealed to himself.
Jeffrey Heine:We call this self esteem. We teach this all the time to our children, you've got to have really good self esteem. Yesterday, I went back to our house because we can pick up some wireless signal there, and I I looked up a bunch of articles on how low self esteem leads to crime. And there's a plethora of articles out there. The reason people do the most heinous acts of evil, people say, is not because they're evil, it's because they had low self esteem.
Jeffrey Heine:So they're always trying to figure out what went wrong in their life, what led to this low self esteem. I read one scholarly article by a guy named Andrew Keegan, and he says, low self esteem is the underlying origin of all problematic behaviors, and the true disease that plagues the world resulting in alcohol abuse, drug abuse, and all other obsessive behavior, including criminal behavior. So low self esteem is the, it it causes everything evil in our lives. And if you don't want the scholarly route, you could go to Tyra Banks. In which she said, I was put here on earth to instill self esteem in young girls.
Jeffrey Heine:She thinks that is her her what she has put on earth to do. If you want homework, Google Oprah self esteem. Just put the 2 next to each other. Oprah self esteem, you will spend the rest of your life trying to read through all of the articles. You know, one of the things even that this place is about, and Girl not Redeemer, but Girls Incorporated or United Way, a lot of it, what they exist is to build the self esteem in young women, to empower them, to make something in their lives.
Jeffrey Heine:And so they do all these things and say, you are somebody no matter what your loser dad, who's never around, says about you. You are somebody, you know, no matter what the society says about you. And they build self esteem. Is that what Paul is appealing to here? I don't care what you think, because I know what I am.
Jeffrey Heine:I know what I think. No, not at all. Because he realizes that some of the worst acts in all of history have come from people with great self esteem. What Paul offers is humility. Not high self esteem, not low self esteem, because both of those are self centered.
Jeffrey Heine:One who thinks, has very low self esteem or thinks very little of themself, maybe a girl who looks in a mirror and absolutely hates what she sees, that person is extremely self centered because still everything goes back to her, negatively, but it still always revolves around her. She is just as self centered as the beautiful model who looks in the mirror and loves what she sees and delights in the image. They're both self centered. CS Lewis, he said that the mark of a humble person is not that they think about or they think less about themselves, but that they think about themselves less. They don't think about themselves.
Jeffrey Heine:And you never walk away from a truly humble person going, wow, that person was humble. What you do is if you walk away from a humble person, you walk away thinking, wow, that person really was interested in me. And you feel edified because that person, they weren't centered on their own identity, they were building up yours. That's true humility. And this is Paul's solution.
Jeffrey Heine:He doesn't think too highly of himself. He doesn't think too little of himself. He just doesn't think of himself. He said that he doesn't even trust himself to make a judgment about himself. I once heard a preacher, he compared our ego to a body part, which is a great image.
Jeffrey Heine:Are any of you right now thinking about your ankle? Anybody? None of you are thinking about your ankle. You know why? Because it's working properly.
Jeffrey Heine:The only reason you ever think about one of those body parts like an ankle or a big toe is if it's hurt. And when it's hurt, you concentrate on it. You think about it, and our ego is the same way. Anytime you start thinking about yourself constantly, why it's because your ego is hurt, it is not healthy. So Paul says that the key is just to do away with that.
Jeffrey Heine:That's Paul's solution. He says, you're puffed up or you're swollen. Well, how does Paul do this? Look at verse 4. 1st Corinthians.
Jeffrey Heine:I'm not aware of anything against myself, but I am not therefore acquitted, thereby acquitted. It is the Lord who judges me. The word acquitted there is the same word for justified. Same word that is used all throughout Romans. So Paul says that he can't justify himself, only the Lord can.
Jeffrey Heine:He doesn't care about what others think about him, good or bad, because he knows that their verdict doesn't matter. Because for Paul, he says the verdict is already in. That's the key. He's not waiting for a verdict when he's on trial, he's already gotten the verdict. You see, Jesus went on trial, not a pretend trial or an imaginary trial, he went on a real trial and he didn't open his mouth, and he like a lamb being led to the slaughter, and he took our grief, he took our shame, he took our guilt, he took our fear, and he took it and he buried it to the depths and then he rose again.
Jeffrey Heine:The verdict has already been declared because of that. We're not out getting any verdict. It's already been declared. So you go to you go to work or you go home, and you're on trial, and all these people are making these verdicts about you. And you know what?
Jeffrey Heine:It doesn't matter because for you, the ultimate verdict is already decided. And you look at Paul, Paul knows he's the chief of all sinners. He doesn't say that in past tense. He says that in present tense. He is the chief of all sinners, yet he doesn't have low self esteem.
Jeffrey Heine:Because the verdicts already in. You look at Paul and you could say, I'm an Apollo, so I was taken up to the 3rd heaven, but he doesn't have super high self esteem. Why? Because the verdict's already in. He doesn't work to get a verdict.
Jeffrey Heine:He's given a verdict, then he works. This separates Christianity from every other religion. Right here, all the other religions, you look at it, and you do something in order to get a judgment. But Christianity says, no, I declare the judgment. The verdict is in.
Jeffrey Heine:You were justified. And that allows us to go into work in this world. Our verdict has been decided, And so the Corinthians can't put him on trial because the trial has already happened. It's already happened. And this should free us.
Jeffrey Heine:This really should free us. It should actually enable us to really do good and to redeem this city because we're not trying to do it in order to get brownie points with God. We're not trying to erase a stain from our soul. We've already been declared righteous. This frees us to truly love and truly serve a city, not worried about what people think.
Jeffrey Heine:Our identity is not based on anything people say, good or bad. It's based on the love of Christ. Pray with me. Lord, we thank you for your love. Forgive us for our lack of understanding of the gospel.
Jeffrey Heine:More and more I'm realizing we don't understand your gospel, because your gospel needs to permeate into all of our life. The way we relate to others, the way we view work, our marriage. You already went to trial. The verdict's in. You have declared us justified.
Jeffrey Heine:I pray that would free us, that would lift a load from us and all of our relationships and all of our dealings in this world. I pray this in the name and for the glory of Jesus. Amen.
